Munnirpallam Sivasubramaniam Purnalingam Pillai (25 May 1866 – 6 June 1947) was a

Tamil language Tamil (; ' , ) is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia. Tamil is an official language of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the sovereign nations of Sri Lanka and Singapore, and the Indian territory of Pudu ...

-writer and

Dravidologist Dravidian studies (also Dravidology) is the academic field devoted to the Dravidian languages, literature, and Dravidian culture, culture. It is a superset of Tamil studies and a subset of South Asian studies. Early missionaries The 16th to 18t ...

Early life

Purnalingam Pillai was born on 25 May 1866 to Sivasubramaniam Pillai at Munnirpallam in

Tinnevely Tirunelveli (, ta, திருநெல்வேலி, translit=Tirunelveli) also known as Nellai ( ta, நெல்லை, translit=Nellai) and historically (during British rule) as Tinnevelly, is a major city in the Indian state of Tami ...

district. His parents belonged to a

Saiva Vellalar ''Saiva'' is a genus of Asian planthoppers, family Fulgoridae. They are colourful insects, marked boldly in red, blue, white and black, with a prominent slender stalk like structure arising on the head that points upwards or forward. The known ...

family. After his initial education, Pillai joined as a lecturer of English at the

Madras Christian College Madras Christian College (MCC) is a liberal arts and sciences college in Chennai, India. Founded in 1837, MCC is one of Asia's oldest extant colleges. The college is affiliated to the University of Madras but functions as an autonomous institu ...

. During this period, Pillai got interested in studying Tamil history and civilization. He edited a Tamil journal called ''Gnanabodhini'' along with

Parithimar Kalaignar Parithimar Kalaignar (born V. G. Suryanarayana Sastri at Vilacheri near Thirupparankundram on 6 July 1870 – 2 November 1903), a Professor of Tamil at the Madras Christian College, was the first person to campaign for the recognition of Tami ...

Dravidology and political activism

In 1904, Pillai published the first comprehensive study of Tamil literature as a historical narrative, titled ''A Primer of Tamil Literature''. The narration was strongly imbibed with a Dravidian supremacist point of view. In the early 1920s, when excavations at

Harappa Harappa (; Urdu/ pnb, ) is an archaeological site in Punjab, Pakistan, about west of Sahiwal. The Bronze Age Harappan civilisation, now more often called the Indus Valley Civilisation, is named after the site, which takes its name from a mode ...

and

Mohenjodaro Mohenjo-daro (; sd, موئن جو دڙو'', ''meaning 'Mound of the Dead Men';T. R. Sesha Iyengar, predicted that future discoveries would establish beyond doubt that the

Indus Valley civilization The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form 2600 BCE to 1900&n ...

was of Dravidian origin and also along with it the antiquity of Tamil civilization and language. He translated the entire

Tirukkural The ''Tirukkuṟaḷ'' ( ta, திருக்குறள், lit=sacred verses), or shortly the ''Kural'' ( ta, குறள்), is a classic Tamil language text consisting of 1,330 short couplets, or Kural (poetic form), kurals, of seven ...

into English in prose and published it in 1942.

Works

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References

Bibliography

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Early life

Dravidology and political activism

Works

See also

References

Bibliography

Further reading