Dureisâni-Tamil-puttagam: The Lady's Tamil Book, Containing the Morning and Evening Services and Other Portions of the Book of Common Prayer, in Romanized Tamil, accompanied by the English version in parallel columns; together with an Anglo-Tamil Grammar and Vocabulary.
By Elijah Hoole.
London: Longman and Co.; Madras [Chennai]: Higginbotham, 1860.
Introduction, 1-2
The Grammar, 3-24 [omitted]
The Order for Morning Prayer, Daily throughout the Year, 25-42
The Order for Evening Prayer, Daily throughout the Year, 43-56
The Litany, 57-67
Prayers, 67-74
Thanksgivings, 74-79
Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, 79-129 [Epistle and Gospel texts given for Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Day, Ascension Day, Whitsunday. Collects only for all other Sundays.]
The Communion, 130-137
William Muss-Arnolt discusses the history of Tamil liturgical translations in Chapter XXXII of The Book of Common Prayer among the Nations of the World. David Griffiths identifies this title as 169:12 in his Bibliography of the Book of Common Prayer.
Writing in 1914, Muss-Arnolt identifies the translator incorrectly:
Elijah Hoole was one of the four C.M.S. Tamils who in 1863-65 were ordained in the Jaffna Mission. It is quite probable that he was thus named after Elijah Hoole, the well-known Tamil scholar and Wesleyan Methodist missionary (1798-1872). The ordination of these four candidates evoked from Bishop Piers Calveley Claughton (1814-84) a highly encouraging letter on the work of the Jaffna Mission.
Although the Tamil Anglican priest Elijah Hoole (dates unknown, pictured far left above in 1890) was an active member of several Bible translation committees, Dureisâni-Tamil-puttagam was translated by the elder Elijah Hoole (1798-1872). As a Methodist translator of the Book of Common Prayer, Hoole is one of many translators and scholars of the Book of Common Prayer who were not members of the Church of England. (See Alexander Elliott Peaston, The Prayer Book Tradition in the Free Churches [London: J. Clark, 1964].)
An invaluable and beautifully printed book, and apparently well adapted to the purpose for which the respected author has devoted it. The Lessons present a method by which a colloquial knowledge of Tamil (a language spoken by more than ten millions of our fellow-subjects in the East) may be improved to the valuable purpose of reading the Holy Scriptures, and conducting domestic worship, without the severe labour of learning the language in the native characters. (The Jewish Herald and Record of Christian Effort for the Spiritual Good of God's Ancient People, November 1, 1859, p. 164)
This is one of the most useful publications in the new and rational system of representing the Indian languages in Roman character (The London Review, Volume 14, p. 266)
Because of the complexity of the orthography and layout, this translation of portions of the Book of Common Prayer is presented as page scans. The text is available on this site in Adobe Acrobat format: bcp_portions.pdf [12 MB]
