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Mandarin and Tamil – A historical perspective-By Dr. Nirmala Chandrahasan Source:Island The recent discovery of name- boards in public institutions which have omitted one of the national languages, namely Tamil, only to replace it with Mandarin Chinese has caused a furor with Tamil members of Parliament and other politicians voicing their protests. Certainly, this is most unfortunate but rather than blame the Chinese it is the Government Authorities in charge of the implementation of the Official languages policy who should be blamed. They have been remiss in this instance which is only a small part of the general malaise in respect of the implementation of the official languages policy. This however is not within the remit of this article. In this article, I would like to focus on another trilingual inscription on a stone tablet stele, left by the Chinese Admiral Zheng He, and dated 15th February 1409, in Sri ...