A handbook of the Ordinary Dialect of the Tamil language

Pope, G.U. (1911) A handbook of the ordinary dialect of the Tamil language. London: Oxford University Press. Seventh Edition.


George Uglow Pope (24 April 1820–11 February 1908) or G.U. Pope was a Anglican Christian missionary and Tamil scholar who spent 40 years in Tamil Nadu and translated many Tamil texts into English. His popular translations included those of the Tirukkural and Tiruvachagam. He was the head of the Bishop Cotton Boys' School, Bangalore and a Lecturer at Balliol College, Oxford. A statue on the Chennai beach recognizes him for his contribution to the understanding and promotion of the Tamil language.

Pope was along with Joseph Constantius Beschi, Francis Whyte Ellis, and Bishop Robert Caldwell one of the major scholars on Tamil. His first work was A Catechism of Tamil Grammar (1842). His most famous work is the translation of the Tirukkural which he completed on September 1, 1886. His Sacred Kural contains introduction, grammar, translation, notes, lexicon and concordance. It also includes the English translation of F. W. Ellis and the Latin Translation of Constanzo Beschi (வீரமாமுனிவர்) with 436 pages. He had, by February 1893, translated Naaladiyaar (நாலடியார்), a didactic work of moral sayings in quatrains (வெண்பா), 400 in number in 40 chapters, each by a Jain ascetic, according to a Tamil tradition. His magnum opus, the translation of Tiruvachakam(திருவாசகம்) appeared in 1900. Of this he said: "I date this on my eightieth birthday. I find, by reference, that my first Tamil lesson was in 1837. This ends, as I suppose a long life of devotion to Tamil studies. It is not without deep emotion that I thus bring to a close my life's literary work". He dedication this last work to Benjamin Jowett who had been a friend while serving as chaplain at Balliol College (1888).