[6] The event which set forth in motion the writing of the "Dravidian Proof" was the report of the Committee of Examination of Junior Civil Servants issued in 1811.
Two years before, another work of Telugu grammar had been published by William Carey (an orientalist missionary from Calcutta) at the Serampore press, in which he described Sanskrit as the source of all South Indian languages.
In his grammar, Campbell set out to disprove Carey and other Calcutta orientalists like Charles Wilkins and Henry Thomas Colebrooke (proponents of the "all Indian languages are derived from Sanskrit" school of thought).
As a conclusion, Ellis disproved the prevailing theory that though roots and words might be common to South Indian languages, the difference in their idioms was great.
[1] Pattabiram Shasthri, Muthusami Pillai, Udayagiri Venkatanarayanayya, Chidambara Vaathiyaar and Syed Abdul Khadar were among Indian scholars who worked in the college.
Among Ellis contributions to oriental scholarship are his works on South Indian property ownership, Hindu law, a "fake" French Veda and his commentary on Thirukkural.
[6] In 1814, Ellis wrote an account of the Mirasi land proprietary system of South India with the help of his Sheristadar (chief of staff), the Indian scholar Shankarayya.
Ellis proved that the "Vedam" was not a translation but an original work of the Jesuit priest Roberto de Nobili, written in 1621 for converting Hindus to Christianity.
In order to reduce resistance from Indians, he is thought to have helped craft a Sanskrit verse that was then claimed to have been discovered and described, showing that the European form of vaccination was in fact just a modification of something known in ancient India.
[18][19] When Ellis died in Ramnad, he left some of his papers — philological and political — to Sir Walter Elliot, on whose death they passed to G. U. Pope, who had them placed in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.
According to Sir Walter, many of Ellis' unpublished works were lost when they were burned by the cook of the Madurai collector Rous Petrie.
[22] The English inscription reads: Uniting activity of mind with versatility of genius, he displayed the same ardour and happy sufficiency on whatever his varied talents were employed.