ABSTRACT
The ideas and institutions that bore the stamp of cultural tradition of the Madras Presidency emerged distinctly in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the East India Company assumed responsibility to rule the inland districts. This chapter discusses the umbilical cord that subsisted between the historical and institutional legacy of the Madras Presidency and Ellis’s Dravidian idea. The local elites shrewdly understood the meaning of the changed historical context and willingly joined hands with the British in order to preserve, protect and enlarge their power, status and privileges. The study of historical relations of South Indian languages as an interrelated group of languages was a meaningful exercise that would lead to an understanding and appraisal of the general nature, relations and idiom of the south Indian languages. Lectures and presentation of the findings of studies and investigations relating to the literary, cultural, social, historical and legal heritage of South India were held under the auspices of Literary Society.
