200 Report on Writing Indian Words [No. 8, New Series, 



Anderson, 1819, (when medial) r 



(when final) 1 



Babington 1822, Trans. Beschi's Sen Tamil 



grammar zh 



Rhenius 1834, « a kind of rl 



Graull 1854, in the Kaivalyanavanita 1 



Wilson 1855, Glossary , 1 in Tamil. 



r in Mal m * 



Caldwell 1856, Comp. grammar r 



Pope 1856, First Lessons " something like the 



Welsh 11" with the force of rrr r 



- — 1859 Tamil hand-book do. do. and r 



B. H. Hodgson 1856 zy 



The French Jesuits xh f 



Beschi describes it as being " quoque aliud /, quod 

 crassiori sono, reflexa omnino ad interiorem palati partem 

 lingua, pronunciatur adding in a note " in aliqua istius 

 regionis parte sonat quasi j." Tamil Gr. ch. 1. s. 2. 



Bhenius observes, " for we have no proper sound in 

 English or any other European language ; it is a mixture of 

 r and I imperceptibly coalescing by turning the tongue up- 

 ward to the roof the mouth." Gram r - 3rd ed p. 1 6. Thus 

 he writes torQpasgi erluttu. 



According to Dr. Caldwell " this distinctive Dravidian 

 semi- vowel is found in the Tamil alone. Its sound resembles 

 that of the English r after a long vowel, as in the word farm, 

 but it is pronounced further back in the mouth, and in a still 

 more liquid manner. It is sometimes expressed in English 

 books as zh or rzh but this is merely a local pronunciation of the 

 letter, which is peculiar to the northern district of the Tamil 

 country : it is at variance with its affinities and its interchanges, 



* By a typographical error the Malay alam n and ip in Prof. Wilson's 

 alphabetical table at p. xi of the glossary have been made to change places. 



t This x seems to have been intended for the Greek x- Thus they 

 write'ipj^g Xkdntij "a heathen." 



