'A Memoir' by S.R. Venkataraman of Mangalore that appeared in the Hindu Nesan, March 2, 1935.

Dr. U. V. Swaminatha Iyer

About six feet in height his figure is well proportioned; his features are suffused with the culture of ages; his moral ­expression is only equalled by his cultural, for there is a softness, a gentleness, and delicacy about it, and that air of ­profound religious veneration which characterises supermen. Verily, Mahamaho­padhyaya Dr. U. V. Swaminatha Iyer is one without a second in the field of Tamil research and scholarship.

For over two generations Mahamahopadhyaya Dr. U. V. Swami­natha Iyer has been devoting his best talents and energies for Tamil research. He will be celebrating his 81st birthday on the 6th March, 1935. He was born in 1855 of respectable parents in the village of Utta­mada­napuram in the district of Tanjore. His father Venkata­subramanya Iyer was a great devotee of Lord Shiva. Early in life Swaminatha Iyer was initiated into the study of Tamil literature and music by his dutiful father whose proficiency in those two subjects was of no mean order. Swaminatha Iyer possesses even to this day a good voice and his knowledge of ­music is full and complete.

His old students remember even now the sonorous cadence of his voice with which he used to read Tamil poems in class. He was very fortunate indeed in ­respect of his early year ­teachers. He studied Tamil ­literature dealing with Saiva and Vaishnava cults at the feet of the exponents of the respective schools. Unlike the present day students, young Swami­natha Iyer lived with his teachers and studied the whole gamut of Tamil literature. To give a finishing touch to his studies, his father apprenticed him to the celebrated Tamil scholar of the day, one Meenakshi­sun­da­ram Pillai of Mayavaram, who seems to have influenceed the life of the young protege in an extraordinary manner. Swami­natha Iyer was then a lad of barely 16 or 17.

Pillai had a host of disciples, all of them taking up advanced study in Tamil literature. He did not at first know that his new acolyte had attained very high proficiency in Tamil which is not ordinarily associated with young colts of his age. Naturally, Pillai entrusted the supervision of his studies to one of his assistants. As days wore on, the assistant found he learned more from his ward than he could teach him. He felt helpless to clear the doubts raised by his ward. In good time, Pillai came to know of this and very gladly agreed thereafter to supervise the studies of Swaminatha Iyer,.

The disciple never for a day even absented himself from the presence of his guru. He was present with his guru when great scholars carried on discussions on Tamil literature and dialectical disquisitions. He used to accompany him during his travels. Whenever Pillai taught him, he listened to him with great attention and respect. Pillai himself was very proud of his new disciple and spared no pains to shape him well. Swaminatha Iyer’s love and respect of his guru have taken the shape of a biography which was published last year. As a biographer, Swami­natha iyer has, perhaps, excelled even that prince of biographers in English, James Boswell.

Meenakshisundaram Pillai was highly respected by the Thambirans of the Thiruvava­duthurai Mutt. He used to pay frequent visits to them, accompanied invariably by Swami­natha Iyer. The head of the Mutt, Srilasri Subramania Desikar and the Thambirans were equally impressed with Swaminatha Iyer’s scholarship, his manners and behaviour. He became a great favourite with the Mutt. Later when Pillai died, the head of the Mutt appointed Swaminatha Iyer to succeed him. He was entrusted with the supervision of the Tamil studies of the sanyasis in the Mutt.

A few years later, Swami­natha Iyer was asked by a friend and well-wisher of his, one Thiagaraja Chettiar, the Pandit of the Kumbakonam College at the time, to take up the post of Tamil Pandit in the College, as he very much wanted to retire from service having become old. The Kumbakonam College at that time was at the height of its fame and was rightly called the Cambridge of South India. Swaminatha Iyer agreed to take up the post, though the head of the Mutt where he first served, was against Swaminatha Iyer ­accepting the assignment.

Swaminatha Iyer, before he was appointed to the post, had to face a Board of Examiners in Tamil! He was subjected to a stiff viva voce examination in which professors of the college took part. They examined him in grammar, in prosody, and in extempore poetry. Swaminatha Iyer came out with flying colours in the examination and was appointed to the post. This was in 1880.

As a teacher of Tamil, it is said that Swaminatha Iyer touched the high watermark. Students used to flock to his class and scramble for seats. It is said that the then Principal, Rai Bahadur T. Gopala Rao, who guided the destinies of the College with great success and distinction at the time, used to stop for a few minutes and listen to the lectures of Pandit Swami­natha Iyer.

In 1903, Swaminatha Iyer was transferred to Presidency College, Madras. He too was anxious to go to Madras as he was at the time engaged in research work and in editing the Tamil classics. He felt that his transfer to ­Madras would facilitate his publication of the Tamil classics.

He retired from service in 1919 at the age of 64. After retiring, he was persuaded by Raja Sir Annamalai Chettiar, the founder of the Annamalai University, to take up the princi­palship of his Tamil College in Chidambaram. He held that post from 1924 to 1927 when he retired so as to whole-heartedly devote his time to research and study.

For over forty years Swami­natha Iyer taught college students and created in them a love and respect for Tamil ­literature. Among his students he counts, with legitimate pride, many who are leaders in various walks of life and many who have filled with credit to themselves posts of trust, power and influence. His old students recall with respect and reverence those eventful and happy college days that they spent sitting at the feet of Swaminatha Iyer.

Swaminatha Iyer’s house has been an institute of research and postgraduate study in Tamil literature for over a generation. Any casual visitor to Thyagaraja Vilas in Pillaiyar Koil Street, Thiruvetteeswaranpet, will find the venerable Bhishma in a room surrounded by a number of eager and devoted disciples. His room is a veritable storehouse of rare Tamil manuscripts which he had collected with great difficulty and at great cost. You will find the disciples engaged in deciphering these manuscripts and helping their Kulapathi in editing them. If you sit for a while and watch the great scholar at work you will really marvel at his memory power and scholarship. The way in which he gives cross references to similar words in other classics of Tamil literature, quoting chapter and verse and giving the special sense in which it is used in each of these classics, is nothing short of an amazing feat of memory.

The Mahmahopadhyaya’s title to lasting fame as the greatest scholar that the Tamil world has seen within the last two generations rests on his bringing to light the great Tamil classics. It may surprise many to be told that the Tamil classics Jivaka Chintamani, Silappadhikaram, Manimekalai etc. were known to scholars fifty years ago only through references to these classics in other pieces of Tamil literature. Nodody had ever read these classics fifty years ago, as their existence was not at all known. It is even said that the great guru of Swaminatha Iyer, the late Meenakshisunda­ram Pillai, had not read some of these works as their existence was not known. When Swami­natha Iyer started on his mission of collecting rare manuscripts of Tamil classics, some of the works came to light one after the other. It was found later, when going through the manuscripts, that some of the passages in these works couldn’t be easily understood without any commentary.

The first book that Swami­natha Iyer took up for editing and annotating was the Jain classic called the Jivakachinta­mani. Its first edition appeared in 1887. It was an epoch-making work and at once it established Swaminatha Iyer’s reputation as a rising star of the first magnitude in the literary firmament of the Tamils. Since then, that book had undergone three editions and the discerning reader will find that every succeeding edition has been an improvement over the preceding one. It may be mentioned here in passing that almost all the classics deal with Buddhism and Jainism. In editing these works, Swaminatha Iyer took very great care to correctly represent the religious import of the works. He consulted Buddhist and Jain scholars and studied their philosophy and religion along with them. If Buddhists and Jains hold Swami­natha Iyer’s commentaries on these works as authoritative and correctly representing their faiths, it only speaks of Swami­natha Iyer’s German-like tho­rough­­ness in his work.

In his publication of Patthu­ppattu, Swaminatha Iyer has touched the highest plane of ­research scholarship. At first he could not get original of the book. A rare manuscript, a commentary of the Patthuppattu, fell into his hands and the commentator had dealt with its peculiar prosody and grammatical construction. Taking these technical suggestions as the basis, like the expert jeweller who makes an ornament of beauty and brilliance out of ill-shaped diamonds, Swmainatha Iyer, exercising his scholarship and imagination, was able to reconstruct the whole of the original of the book. In a similar manner, he has improved the commentaries on Silap­padhikaram, Purananuru and Manimekalai.

Besides this, Swaminatha Iyer has played a distinguished part in the cultural life of the Tamils. He has attended invariably almost all the important conferences of the Tamil pandits and religious leaders and has contributed not a little to the promotion of Tamil learning. He played the role of a University lecturer in 1927 and delivered a series of lectures on the topic “Tamil of the Tamil age and the Post Sangam age”.The Government also honoured him by conferring on him the title of “Mahamahopa­dhyaya” for the solid and lasting contribution he had made to Tamil literature. The Madras University also honoured itself when two years ago it conferred on him the ­Doctorate in literature. He is a member of the Boards of Studies  of the Madras, Benares, Mysore and Anna­malai Universities.

Quiet and unassuming, compassionate and charitable, as he is, Mahamahopadhyaya Dr. V, Swaminatha Iyer is a type of superman, always returning good for evil. He remembers small helps with gratitude. His charity is not known to the public. He is even now helping the widow of the Satagopachariyar of Ari­yalur, under whom he read Tamil at the very outset. He is, to this day, helping the grandson of his  guru, the late Meenak­shisundaram Pillai. He has ­endowed a scholarship in the Government College, Kumba­konam, in the name of the late Thiagaraja Chettiar who was ­responsible for inducing him to accept the post of Tamil Pandit in that College.

The significance and importance of Swaminatha Iyer’s services and contribution to Tamil literature cannot be over-stated. Before Swaminatha Iyer published his works very little was known about the culture and civilisation of the Tamils. Now he has made the glorious past of the Tamils live in these books of his. As a commentator he is superb and unrivalled. He has tried in his works to always give the views of the author instead of foisting his own views on him.

He has made the lot of the Tamil pandits much better than what it was before. He has induced the Pandara Sannidhi of the Thiruppanandal Mutt to give a prize every year to the student who passes first in the Vidwan’s examination.

In any other country Swami­natha iyer would have been raised to the peerage; statues would have been erected to honour him; institutes would have been established to continue the useful work in which he has been engaged for more than fifty years.

The Celebration Committee that has been formed in Madras would do well in the first place to make arrangements to continue the work that he has been carrying on for over half a century. We should have an institute named Dr. Swaminatha Iyer Institute and it should be subsi­dised by the Government like the Bhandarkar Oriental Institute in Poona. Attempts ought to be made to publish a commemo­raton volume with a fairly good biographical sketch of Swami­natha Iyer. His brithday should be observed all over Tamil Nadu in every important town and ­village, and attempts ought to be made to start a ­reading room and library in each village, named ­after him. It is high time that the Madras ­Committee issues ­necessary ­instructions to such of the local committees as are ­willing to ­celebrate the day in their own places. In conclusion, let us all join hands to honour one that has done yeoman ­service to Tamil literature.