The first LELM Director Karl Graul was an exceptional Tamil Scholar of rare distinction. I had his photo on the jacket of my book with grateful sentiments because, this German’s last dying wish was to see the three sections of the Tamil poem THIRUKKURAL published. But alas! He died before THIRUKKURAL came out of the press in 1865! His voluminous travel accounts , published as a book of five volumes with the title: “Journey to the East Indies through Palastine, Sinai and Egypt” with a total of 1716 pages will serve as a rich original source of information for conducting research in the fields of linguistics, society and culture and in other allied areas..