Ramanuja Kavirayar

Ramanuja Kavirayar (1780, Ramanathapuram – 1853, Madras) was a Tamil savant and poet. Living in Madras, he dominated the world of Tamil letters and had several eminent Tamil scholars as his students. Ramanuja Kavirayar pioneered the work of bringing Tamil classics into print for the first time, and wrote commentaries on some of them. He was also a poet. His greatest service, however, like that of Minakshisundaram Pillai, was as a teacher of Tamil. He trained a band of fine native Tamil scholars and was guru or munshi (the term then current to denote language teachers) to many of the European Tamil scholars in Madras between 1820 and 1853. Few details of Ramanuja Kavirayar's early life are known. His father was one Rangien as stated in a verse at the end of a Tamil translation of a Sanskrit work called Atmabodham. Ramanujam was a contemporary of Ashtavadhanam Peria Saravanaperumal Kavirayar of Ramanathapuram. Both of them learnt Tamil from Somasundaram Pillai, who was a well-learned and religious man and was one of the 12 personal disciples of the celebrated Sivagnana Swamigal. After a thorough study of Tamil literature and grammar, Ramanuja Kavirayar came to Madras in 1820 and settled down as a teacher and man of letters working with single-minded devotion and enthusiasm, till his death in 1853, for the cause of Tamil learning and Tamil culture. He taught Tamil to many students and also published several books of his own and others, for which, it is stated, he had the control of a printing press. He soon gained fame for his scholarship and came to be referred to as Ilakkanakkadal and lyarramilasiriyar.