Francis Whyte Ellis

Francis Whyte Ellis (1777–1819) was a British civil servant in the Madras Presidency and a scholar of Tamil and Sanskrit.

Biography Ellis became a writer in the East India Company's service at Madras in 1796. He was promoted to the offices of assistant-under secretary, deputy-secretary, and secretary to the board of revenue in 1798, 1801, and 1802 respectively. In 1806 he was appointed judge of the zillah of Machilipatnam, in 1809 collector of land customs in the Madras presidency, and in 1810 collector of Madras. He died at Ramnad of cholera on 10 March 1819.

Dravidian language hypothesis Ellis is the first scholar who classified the Dravidian languages as a separate language family. Robert Caldwell, who is often credited as the first scholar to propose a separate language family for South Indian languages, acknowledges Ellis's contribution in his preface to the first edition of A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South Indian Family of Languages:

The first to break ground in the field was Mr. Ellis, a Madras civilian, whose was profoundly versed in the Tamil language and literature, and who interesting but very brief comparison, not of the grammatical forms, but only of some of the vocables of three Dravidian dialects, is contained in his introduction to Campbell's Telugu Grammar.

History Ellis first published his notion about the South Indian languages forming a separate language family in a "Note to Introduction" for his protege Alexandar Duncan Campbell's Telugu Grammar in 1816.

The Dravidian Proof Ellis' Dravidian Proof is a step by step attempt to establish the non-Sanskritic origins of Telugu. Ellis first compared the roots of Sanskrit and Telugu. Parallel columns of the roots were presented to show the difference between the two languages. For Sanskrit, the roots were taken from Dhatupatha and for Telugu, they were taken from a list compiled by Pattabhirama Shastri. In the second step, Ellis used a more complex comparative table of Tamil, Telugu and Kannada roots to show that the languages shared Cognate roots. In the third and final step Ellis used a comparative table of words made from the roots of the three languages to show their relationship as well. Ellis made use of Telugu scholar Mamadi Venkayya's Andhradipaka as a source for different types of Telugu words. As a conclusion, Ellis disproved the prevailing theory that though roots and words might be common to South Indian languages, the difference in their idioms was great. He accomplished this by translating the same passages from Sanskrit and English into Tamil, Telugu and Kannada and analysing the sentence structures of the translations. and the founder of the college of Fort St. George at Madras - an institution which had both British and Indian members. He even adopted their customs and way of dressing. Among Ellis contributions to oriental scholarship are his works on South Indian property ownership, Hindu law, a "fake" French Veda and his commentary on Thirukkural. In 1814, Ellis wrote an account of the Mirasi land proprietary system of South India with the help of his Sheristadar (chief of staff), the Indian scholar Shankarayya. As his reputation for oriental scholarship grew, he was requested by Alexander Johnston to research the origins of a French work titled Ezour Vedam, which was claimed as a translation of a Sanskrit work and a Veda. Ellis proved that the "Vedam" was not a translation but an original work of the Jesuit priest Roberto de Nobili, written in 1621 for converting Hindus to Christianity. His monograph on the Ezour Vedam was published posthumously in the Asiatic Journal in 1822. He delivered a series of lectures on Hindu law at the Madras Literary Society, which were published after his death. Ellis had a high regard for Tamil poet-saint Tiruvalluvar and his Thirukkural. He translated 18 chapters of the Aratthupaal (one division of Thirukkural dealing with law and virtue) into English in a non-metrical verse. 13 of those chapters were published by the college press during Ellis' lifetime. Ellis was also the first scholar to decipher and explain the first century CE "Cochin Grants" given to the Anjuvannam Jewish community in Cochin.

It has been suggested that Ellis worked with others to promote vaccinations to prevent smallpox. In order to reduce resistance from Indians, he is thought to have helped craft a Sanskrit verse that was then claimed to have been discovered and described, showing that the European form of vaccination was in fact just a modification of something known in ancient India. The publication of the letter first inserted into the Madras Courier, in 1819 under the pseudonym "Calvi Virumbom" was widely propagated.

Legacy When Ellis died in Ramnad, he left some of his papers — philological and political — to Sir Walter Elliot, on whose death they passed to G. U. Pope, who had them placed in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. According to Sir Walter, many of Ellis' unpublished works were lost when they were burned by the cook of the Madurai collector Rous Petrie. As an administrator, Ellis was well liked by his Indian subjects. The English inscription reads:

Uniting activity of mind with versatility of genius, he displayed the same ardour and happy sufficiency on whatever his varied talents were employed. Conversant with the Hindoo languages and Literature of the Peninsula, he was loved and esteemed by the Natives of India, with whom he associated intimately.