Towards Standardisation? The Prose of Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth-Century Tamil Vacaṉams in Lexica

This article examines the integration of Sanskrit loan- words into late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Tamil prose, highlighting the diverse spellings and meanings used during this period. The vacaṉam genre is the main focus of study, for it seems to have preceded any kind of standardisation that Tamil prose underwent. Its study raises important lexicographical questions: how do we represent diverse spellings and their meanings in a his- torically sensitive dictionary? Particularly, do we prioritise archaic versions, or their modern, standardised ones? Through the lens of lexicography, this article also strives to serve as an account of the development of Tamil prose, a topic that remains unpopular in scholarly and lay circles alike.