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

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 ...

-writer and Dravidologist.

Early life

Purnalingam Pillai was born on 25 May 1866 to Sivasubramaniam Pillai at Munnirpallam in Tinnevely district. His parents belonged to a Saiva Vellalar 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 institut ...

. 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 language, Tamil at the Madras Christian College, was the first person to campaign for the recog ...

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 () is an archaeological site in Punjab, Pakistan, about west of Sahiwal, that takes its name from a modern village near the former course of the Ravi River, which now runs to the north. Harappa is the type site of the Bronze Age Indus ...

and Mohenjodaro were in their nascent stages, Pillai, along with another Dravidologist, 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 from 2600 BCE ...

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

Tirukkural The ''Tirukkuṟaḷ'' (), or shortly the ''Kural'' (), is a classic Tamil language text on commoner's morality consisting of 1,330 short couplets, or Kural (poetic form), kurals, of seven words each. The text is divided into three books wit ...

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