ABSTRACT
The chapter shows how the Tamil language witnessed a bloom indictionary-making (initiated by foreign missionaries) between 1750 and 1900. In the beginning, the effort was directed to meet the requirements of the foreign missionaries, to enable them comprehend the Tamil language, and to make them familiar with its lexical items. The way to open these up to them was, quite naturally, to bring out bilingual dictionaries in which Tamil was either the source language or the target language. On the other hand, the foreign language component in them varied between Portuguese, Latin, French and English. In this article only those dictionaries that had employed English as a foreign language component have been taken up to follow the trends and to capture the features in the description of the words.
The chapter proceeds with the outlining of the three phases, viz. a period when Portuguese, Latin or French was employed as the primary medium, followed by a period wherein the use of English had become the most common medium, and the third period in which the earlier requirements of the missionaries to be met were considerably less and in which the academic interest took hold. This interesting transition is termed as ‘metamorphosis’ here. In delineating this metamorphosis, the article attempts to capture the essentials in the long history of Tamil bilingual lexicography.
