A centenary deserving of note this year is that of the decision
by the Government of Madras to get work started on an official
Tamil Lexicon. This was the positive response to the proposal
forwarded to the Government by a person few would have heard of,
an American named J.S. Chandler of the American Mission and
resident in Kodaikanal. The genesis of this proposal was the
need to revise the Winslow Tamil-English Dictionary, considered
the best in the second half of the 19th Century. This dictionary
was based on Dr. Johann Rottler's, which itself had drawn
inspiration from Johann Fabricius' work in the mid-18th Century.
The Rev. Dr. Miron Winslow was sent out to Jaffna and then
transferred to Madras by the American Board of Commissioners for
Foreign Missions. He had worked on his dictionary with Arumuga
Navalar — with whom he later parted ways — in both towns. It was
published by the American Mission Press in 1862 and contained
67,452 words, the most of any Tamil dictionary up to the time.
The copyright belong