Tamil Nadu Timeline

EducationEast India Company rule

College of Fort St. George founded

· Fort St. George

Francis Whyte Ellis founded the College of Fort St. George in Madras to train officials in South Indian languages.

The College of Fort St. George was founded in Madras in 1812 to teach Indian languages to junior civil servants of the Company. Francis Whyte Ellis, then Collector of Madras, was its founder, and in 1813 he helped set up the College Press with a printing press and Tamil types. The press's first work was Beschi's Tamil grammar, and it went on to publish Tamil and Telugu grammars, translations and Ellis's commentary on the Thirukkural. Indian scholars such as Muthusami Pillai and Chidambara Vaathiyaar worked at the college, which became a centre of Tamil scholarship and printing.

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  2. 1815

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  3. 1816

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      Ellis publishes the Dravidian Proof

      Francis Whyte Ellis argued that the South Indian languages form a family separate from Sanskrit.

  4. 1819

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      Tamil scholar F. W. Ellis dies at Ramnad

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  5. 1820

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