A Consecrated Career

"Of God nor man was ever this thing said,
That he could give
Life to her who gave him, whence his dead
Mother might live,
But this man found his mother dead and slain
With fast-sealed eyes,
And bade the dead rise up and live again,
And she did rise."

Thus wrote Swinburne of Mazzini. Today, these lines can be well applied to the late Dr. Swaminatha Aiyar, the great Tamil savant.

Dr. Swaminatha Aiyar is our greatest man of letters, in a large sense of that vague term. The variety of his writings, his knowledge of literature, his command of literature, the mass of his writings, published and unpublished, his passionate interest in letters,–all these entitle him to that position. It is accepted on all hands that there is none among Tamil scholars who have toiled harder, or made a more lasting mark on their profession, than this veteran scholar. It was he who vindicated the cause of Tamil scholarship and took it out of the deep rut into which it had fallen. Opening up new vistas of literary activity, he lighted the path for future scholarly enterprise.

The one aim, the one purpose of his life was to edit flawlessly the works of the Golden Age of the Tamils. For more than half a century he made every sacrifice, and devoted time, money and energy to this labour of love. And the story of how he recovered and published that long series of critically annotated classics which range from ‘Chinthamani’ (1887) to ‘Kurunthohai’ (1937) reads like a romantic tale. The modern reader, who has such an easy access to these books, seldom realises that years of toil preceded the preparation of these texts. Only very few can understand the truth that the correction of a corrupt text by collation and conjecture is one of the most difficult and the least amusing of tasks that one can undertake. It is the Doctor's tireless striving after accuracy, his passion for going down to the root of things, and unfailing commonsense in interpretation, that have marked off not only his editions but also himself from the common literary herd. Our conception of the culture of the ancient Tamils is very different from what it was when he began his life’s work. To him, more than to any other individual or institution, do we owe this supreme enrichment.

As Sri C. Rajagopalachari remarked, "Though belonging to the old school of pandits, he was a modern among the moderns". He is a writer of clear and clean-limbed prose. His latter-day prose writings are strongly marked by an utter absence of bombast or extravagance and are absolutely free from ornamentation. In them, words flow with effective simplicity and a lively sense of humour. In his biography of his Guru Minakshisundaram Pillai, and in his own incomplete autobiography, we see his excellent power of narrative and his judicious use of varied and ample materials. His sketches of the persons and personalities whom he came in contact with are destined to an enduring reputation. They are terse, vigorous and delightful, and once one has taken them up, one can scarcely lay them down.

Three personal traits distinguished him from his colleagues. Foremost was his faculty for incessant work. If there were five minutes to spare, he had a use for them. He was one of those who, knowing the true value of time, snatched, seized and enjoyed every moment of it. From his very teens he had developed the habit of industry which became in later years organic by dint of continued practice. So much so, in spite of his eighty-seven years of age, he worked to the last of his days unweariedly with a light heart that was the envy and despair of many a young man.

No one among his colleagues was more alive to the significance of modern tendencies in literature, and his outlook had always been progressive and far-sighted. His views on the influence of Sanskrit, the borrowing of words from other languages, and the study of Hindi are all well known.

Last is his reputation as a brilliant conversationalist. It is difficult to convey the pleasure one derived from his talk, as it ranged easily and spontaneously over all kinds of topics, "from grave to gay, from lively to severe". He made many things not only arresting but interesting. A master of trifles, as of weighty matters, the past stood ever at his elbow. And often when listening to him one felt oneself in living contact with the centuries that are no more. Talking with him one really forgot "all time, all seasons and their change"

Dr. Swaminatha Aiyar is one of those immortals who close one epoch, and inaugurate another in the history of a country. May his love for Tamil find an abiding echo in the heart of every lover of Tamil!