Sreekanteswaram G. Padmanabha Pillai (1865–1946), popularly known as ''Sreekanteswaram'', was a lexicographer and scholar best known for his

Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 22 scheduled languages of India. Malayalam was des ...

dictionary ''

Sabdatharavali ''Sabdatharavali'' ( ml, ശബ്ദതാരാവലി; "A star cluster of words") is a Malayalam dictionary having more than 1800 pages and considered as the most authentic Malayalam dictionary of the 20th century. The first part of this dic ...

''.

Life

Padmanabha Pillai was born on 1865Kathakali, the Art of the Non-worldly, p.27 in Sreekanteswaram,

Thiruvananthapuram Thiruvananthapuram (; ), also known by its former name Trivandrum (), is the capital of the Indian state of Kerala. It is the most populous city in Kerala with a population of 957,730 as of 2011. The encompassing urban agglomeration populati ...

(

Trivandrum Thiruvananthapuram (; ), also known by its former name Trivandrum (), is the capital of the Indian state of Kerala. It is the most populous city in Kerala with a population of 957,730 as of 2011. The encompassing urban agglomeration populati ...

). He studied

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia ** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, nati ...

and

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

and wrote ''Duryodhanavadham'' and ''Dharmaguptavadham'' at a young age. He later worked as a lawyer. He started his work on ''Sabdatharavali'' at the age of 32. The first part of the book came out in 1918. The dictionary, which runs into more than 1600 pages, took twenty years to complete. His son P. Damodara Pillai later compiled a concise version. Padmanabha Pillai also prepared a pocket dictionary in 1906. Padmanabha Pillai wrote around sixty books in his lifetime. He ran the magazine '' Bhashavilasam'' for a time and left two dictionaries - ''Sahityabharanam'' and an English-Malayalam dictionary - incomplete at the time of his death.

References

* ''Akhilavijnanakosam'' encyclopaedia (Malayalam), DC Books, Vol. 4, p. 24 (1990)
Glory of Sreekanteswaram
The Hindu {{DEFAULTSORT:Pillai, Sreekanteswaram Padmanabha 1865 births 1946 deaths Malayalam-language writers Indian lexicographers Writers from Thiruvananthapuram 19th-century Indian linguists 20th-century Indian linguists Scholars from Kerala

Life

See also

References