#JamsetjiTata

“The Sangam poems, the Cilappatikāram, the Thirukkuṟaḷ's whole ancient world — the literature five earlier chapters of this book have lived inside — very nearly did not survive to be read. That it did is substantially the work of one professor with a bullock cart, a notebook, and no days off for half a century.”

“By 1880 the ancient classics of Tamil — one of the oldest living literatures on earth — survived only as rotting palm-leaf bundles in private houses, unread and unreadable. One man spent the rest of his life finding them, deciphering them, and printing them, and handed Tamils back two thousand years of their own literature.”