Robert Caldwell 1814-1891
A Scottish, born in Ireland on 7th of May 1814 came to Madras in the year of 1838 as a missionary. Caldwell was attracted to Dravidian languages and spent many years doing research on it. His interest on languages made him fluent in Tamil,Telugu,Kannada,Malayalam and Tulu languages.He discovered Tamil is the mother language for all Dravidian languages and Sanskrit is a foreign language intertwined with Tamil.He studied palm leaf manuscripts and sangam literature in his search and made several excavations.
His mission work among the Tamils in the district of Tirunelveli is became a turning point to many mission works in South India and remains a model to this day.During his mission days Idayangudhi a village in Tirunevelli became a Christian settlement,almost all the villagers accepted Christ.Statisticly a fair number of Tamil Christians in Malaysia came from this village and settled in Buntong village in Ipoh,Perak.
Caldwell fondly called Father of Dravidian languages started his mission work by walking and meeting people.He walked all the way from Madras to Nilgiri than to Madurai and finally to Tirunelveli where he pioneered his work.Caldwell lived his life for his flock,as he once wrote my residence is India!
The erection of the large Holy Trinity Church he built at Idayagudhi kept pace with his progress of evangelism which took him 33 years to complete.Caldwell saw the gradual increase of Christians from 6,000 to 100,000 at his time
