౨౪
transliteration or orthography by which alone the stigma may be removed. The earlier sheets of the engraved map of the country - the Indian Atlas --are covered with irregularities of orthography and mistakes, many of them misleading and often extremely Indicrous / Some of them are due to the ignorance of engraver in London and the bad writing of the manuscript , but had thee been any uniform or acknowledged system of orthography, the copyist might might have detected the errors or idiosyncrasies of the writer in stead of perpetuating them, especially if he had possessed lists of reference,such as in here offered , only properly completed and corrected/ The Government has now determined to adopt a system ,and if it will adhere to it and carry it out consistently in all official publications and departments , the coming generations will fail into the way of insensibly and with greater ease(?) than the present and past generations have enjoyed in acquiring the unsystematic practice hitherto current, so that we may now hope that the literature of the future will be free from the blunders and irregularities that now disgrace that of the past and no puzzle the new comer and the foreigner/ An attempt has been made in this paper to carry out the approved system of transliteration , nut the first gazette of the Madras Government on the subject (dated 2nd August 1878) was so lamentably defective that its application to Tamil names was very uncertain and event its amended publications in a new and revised gazette leaves much to be desired."
"Besides obtaining the correct form of each name and so helping to improve our Maps. I thought that such a list as this might prove of some use to the gazetteer (compiler) and historical writer, and of interest to the traveler, the ethnological inquirer , the ordinary reader and writer and most of all to the Map Maker also to say one else curious in such matters of the inhabitants on the physical features of the country they dwell in, the language they speak , and the race they belong to"
" All proper names wee or were originally derived from words of sounds having a meaning , but process of time and the long confused wear and tear of familiar are have to be rubbed off the corners that were rough to the tongues , and have run together the