A BRIEF INTRODUCTION OF REV. Dr. G. U. POPE AND HIS CONTRIBUTION To TAMIL

By: K. ANANTHANATHAN, MA, MSW, RSW

On the 200th anniversary of his birth on April 24, 2023, Reverend George Uglow Pope, better known as Rev. Dr. G.U Pope, is still a relatively unknown but incredibly impactful Canadian Tamil scholar. The Canadian born Pope contributed significantly to the scholarship of Tamil literature through his English translations of seminal Tamil texts such as Thirukkural and Thiruvasagam. More importantly, his contributions to Tamil society are going to be featured in this article and hopefully with more discussion of him, continue to be celebrated in Tamil society. 

Rev. Dr. George Uglow Pope was born on April 24, 1820, in Bedeque, Prince Edward Island in Canada and died on February 11, 1908, Walton Well Road, Oxford United Kingdom. The family moved to Nova Scotia, St. Vincent’s before returning to Plymouth, England in 1826 where the elder Pope became a prosperous merchant and ship-owner. George Uglow Pope’s and his younger brother William Burt Pope studied at the Wesleyan schools in Bury and Hoxton and at the age of fourteen George Pope joined missionary service in southern India. 

When he arrived in Tamil Nadu, he was taken by the society, the culture and literature of the Tamils. Of Tirukkural, Pope said “the Tirukkural has entered the very soul of a whole people. It proclaims in sweetest mystic couplets virtue, truth, wealth and joy. Thiruvalluvar is a seer of spotless souls.” Pope also remarked upon the Tamil culture and history, saying that “the great antiquity of Tamil, which is the one worthy rival of Sanskrit, is abundantly plain. The ancient grammatical works existing in Tamil and its wonderful metrical system prove its assiduous cultivation for long ages.” 

In addition to the translation work, Pope built the G. U. Pope College, Sawyerpuram near Thoothukudi in Tamil Nadu and many educational institutions to help and promote the education of poor students in Tamil Nadu. He built a variety of Tamil Grammar schools, various English translations of classical Tamil texts that helped widen their distribution across many countries outside of Tamil Nadu over the course of living in south India for 40 years. 

In his later years, Rev. G. U. Pope left south India, settling in Oxford, England, where he made mark as a senior lecturer in Tamil and Telugu languages at Oxford University. Also, he received an honorary MA in 1886 and a Gold Medal of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1906. He worked as a senior lecturer in classical languages at Balliol College, at Oxford University in England. Rev. Dr. G. U. Pope died on February 11, 1908, in Oxford. 

In honour of what would have been his 200th birthday on April 24th, 2023, the Canadian government is releasing a commemorative stamp in his honour. Beyond this stamp, he has a statue in his likeness on Merina Beach in Chennai. The stamp and statue are praise for a Tamil scholar whose English translations of Tamil texts especially of Tirukkural and Tiruvasagam, were important contributions to the Tamil culture and proper introduction for non-Tamil speakers to foundational classic Tamil texts. Particularly, in the Thiruvasagan author Manikavasagar 67 times called himself as a dog Rev. Dr. G. U. pope translated instead of dog, he used the word cur that means inferior dog this shows us his deep knowledge of classical Tamil language.  While his contributions and his presence in South India during that time as an Anglican missionary are not well come without controversy, what hopefully shines through is his genuine love of Tamil culture and classical Tamil language in a time period where that was not the case with Europeans in South India. In his grave Rev. Dr. G. U. Pope requested in his last Will they should write “A student of Tamil” said to be seen in his grave in Oxford. His main contribution was the translation of Thirukkural and thiruvasagam at the age of 86 years. Particularly he described Thiruvasagam as “Bone Melting” text in Tamil.