Ki. Va. Jagannathan (11 April 1906 – 4 November 1988), popularly known by his initials as Ki. Va. Ja, was an Indian

Tamil Tamil may refer to: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

scholar, commentator, journalist, poet, writer and folklorist from

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is the southernmost States and union territories of India, state of India. The List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of Indi ...

, India. He was a student of noted Tamil scholar and publisher U. V. Swaminatha Iyer. He was the editor of the magazine ''Kalaimagal''. He won the

Sahitya Akademi award The Sahitya Akademi Award is a literary honour in India, which the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, annually confers on writers of the most outstanding books of literary merit published in any of the 22 languages of the ...

in 1967 in

Tamil language Tamil (, , , also written as ''Tamizhil'' according to linguistic pronunciation) is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia. It is one of the longest-surviving classical languages in the world,. "Tamil is one of ...

category for his literary criticism ''Virar Ulagam''. He has written extensive commentaries on many Tamil devotional texts including Kandar Alangaram, Kandar Anubhuthi, Thirumurugattruppadai, Abirami Andathi and Kandar Kalivenba.He has written more than 200 books on various topics in Tamil literature and grammar. He was a great orator and was popularly known as Vageesa Kalanidhi, a title bestowed on him by Kanchi Paramacharya.

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