Way back in 1872, Hermann Gundert created the first Malayalam-English dictionary. More than 150 years later, 83-year-old Njattyela Sreedharan recently published his dictionary which is a compilation of four major South Indian languages — Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada. There are a whopping 12.5 lakh words in this unique dictionary. Sreedharan says, “For each Malayalam word, you find a corresponding word in Kannada, Tamil and Telugu. It is truly my labour of love.”
This was his life’s work, wherein he invested over 25 years painstakingly compiling it, in his hometown — Thalassery in Kerala. What is worth mentioning here is that Hermann was also in Thalassery when he compiled his dictionary all those years ago!
“I think it is his spirit that entered my body and made me work on this project,” begins Sreedharan. What is even more surprising is that Sreedharan did not even complete formal schooling. He dropped out of school when he was in Class IV itself, but it was…