The air was hot in the morning. A group of students were sweating it out on a sprawling football ground at the Pope’s College at Sawyerpuram in Thoothukudi. When missionary and Tamil scholar George Uglow Pope arrived here 180 years ago, the area was nothing but acres of sand dunes; for a European, it would have been a burning furnace. Driven by zeal, Pope, who later translated Tirukkural, Thiruvachagam, Naladiyar, Purananuru (selected verses) and Manimekalai (incomplete) into English, lived here for eight years and did missionary work.
“In summer, he beat the heat by placing a table and a chair in a huge well [a bath tub]. He would read and write by sitting in the water,” writes K. Meenakshisundaram, the author of The Contribution of European Scholars to Tamil.
Two huge wells constructed by Pope are still in the seminary started by him at Sawyerpuram. But they lie derelict. The bath tub used by him is also there in the Bungalow where he lived.
