Suryanarayana Sastri (1870–1903), was a Madras Christian College professor and early Tamil patriot better known by his Tamil pen name “Parithimar Kalaignar.” He was one of the first modern scholars to argue that Tamil is a “classical language” and not a mere vernacular, and his work helped seed later Tamil-pride movements.

Early Life And Education

VG Suryanarayana Sastri was born on 6 July 1870 in Vilacheri, near Thirupparankundram in the Madurai region, in a Tamil Brahmin family. His father Govinda Sivan (also referred to as Govinda Sastrikal) taught him Sanskrit, while his grounding in Tamil came from the scholar Sabapathi Mudaliar, giving him an unusual early bilingual depth in both classical Sanskrit and Tamil. This dual training shaped him into a bridge figure: fully conversant with Sanskritic learning yet emotionally and intellectually committed to arguing for the autonomy and antiquity of Tamil.

After schooling in Madurai, he proceeded to Madras Christian College (MCC), where he formally studied Tamil and graduated in 1892, reportedly topping the university in the subject. At a time when salaried academic positions in humanities were limited and heavily Anglocentric, a young Brahmin graduate specializing in Tamil rather than English or philosophy already marked a quiet but significant deviation from the colonial-era norm.

Academic Career At Madras Christian College

In 1893, the influential MCC principal William Miller offered Suryanarayana Sastri a post in the Department of Philosophy, which carried a higher salary and greater prestige. Sastri, however, insisted on serving as a Tamil professor, choosing ideological commitment over career advantage, and became one of the earliest graduates to accept a full-time post teaching Tamil. By 1895 he had risen to head the Tamil department at MCC, positioning himself at the heart of emerging modern Tamil studies in the Madras Presidency.

From this institutional base he pushed for curricular recognition of Tamil as a serious academic field, not a marginal “vernacular” add-on. He worked with like‑minded colleagues such as MS Purnalingam Pillai, an English professor at MCC, to resist moves within the University of Madras to downgrade or remove Tamil from higher education syllabi.

The OG Of Tamil Identity Politics

Born with the Sanskritic name “Suryanarayana Sastri,” he became famous under the Tamilized name “Parithimar Kalaignar,” often also called “Dravida Sastri.” “Parithi” corresponds to “Surya” (sun) and “Kalaignar” to “artist/scholar,” so the Tamil pen name mirrored the original Sanskrit meaning.

While sectarian forces project this name change as some sort of resistance against Sanskrit, Suryanarayana Sastri himself continued to use his original name in academic writings and official records.

The commemorative stamp issued by the Government of India also bears the name Suryanarayana Sastri.

His adoption and use of a Tamil name became an effective symbol to elevate the status of Tamil and not peddle hate against another language.

Campaign For Tamil As A Classical Language

Suryanarayana Sastri is widely credited as the first modern scholar to explicitly argue that Tamil deserved recognition as a “classical language.” In 1901, with support from Prince Pandi Thurai Thevar and the Madurai Tamil Sangam, he helped establish an academy for Tamil often referred to as the “Fourth Tamil Sangam,” which became an institutional platform for Tamil scholarship and advocacy.

The academy’s monthly journal “Senthamizh” carried, in its inaugural issue, his research article “Uyar Thani Semmozhi,” where he articulated a sustained argument that Tamil possessed the antiquity, rich literature, and independent grammatical tradition needed to be ranked as a classical language rather than a low-status vernacular. In 1902 he reportedly sent a petition urging that Tamil be formally classified as a classical language and objected to the University of Madras using the label “vernacular” for Tamil, a move that prefigured by a century the official Government of India recognition of Tamil as a classical language in 2004.

Resistance To Marginalisation Of Tamil In Education

Around 1902, the University of Madras, then the only university in the region, considered removing Tamil as a subject from college curricula or at least reducing its status. Suryanarayana Sastri, together with allies like Purnalingam Pillai, mounted a strong intellectual and institutional opposition to this move, arguing that Tamil had to remain present at the college level as a full-fledged subject of study. Their efforts are credited with forcing the authorities to drop or dilute the proposal and helped secure Tamil a continuing place within higher education.

Beyond defensive battles, Sastri promoted Tamil’s integration into undergraduate courses at MCC and elsewhere, working to normalize the idea that modern educated elites could study and develop Tamil just as seriously as they did English, philosophy or science. This curricular embedding of Tamil undercut the colonial-era hierarchy that treated English as the language of reason and advancement and Tamil as merely a medium for folklore or basic literacy.

Writings, Research And Literary Contributions

Suryanarayana Sastri wrote extensively across genres: research articles, essays, textbooks and creative works. Apart from his Tamil essays, he authored an English novel or novella, “Rupavathi, or, The Missing Daughter,” published in 1895 from a Madras press, which indicates his comfort moving between languages and audiences. His scholarly writings frequently addressed issues of Tamil grammar, literary history and the relationship between Tamil and Sanskrit, identifying both Sanskrit influence on Tamil and the distinctiveness and depth of Tamil’s own classical corpus.

Within the early Tamil purist and linguistic reform milieu, he is often placed alongside figures like GU Pope and JM Nallaswami Pillai on the one hand, and Tamil purists such as Maraimalai Adigal on the other, as part of a generation that created modern philological tools for thinking about Tamil. Later scholars note that Maraimalai Adigal, who would become a leading proponent of “pure Tamil,” respected Suryanarayana Sastri for his devotion to Tamil, even though their approaches to Sanskrit and religious tradition were not identical.

Legacy And Memory In Contemporary Tamil discourse

Suryanarayana Sastri died relatively young on 2 November 1903, which limited the volume of his mature output but did not prevent his ideas from reverberating through later decades. His early articulation of Tamil as a classical language, institutional interventions in university policy, and adoption of a Tamil name gave later generations of Tamil nationalists and Dravidian ideologues both arguments and symbols to draw upon.

In present‑day Tamil Nadu, school social‑science textbooks present him as one of the earliest scholars to insist on the classical status of Tamil and to reject the “vernacular” label, often using his name-change story as a classroom illustration of linguistic pride. Public commemorations on his birth anniversaries, particularly in Madurai and among Tamil scholarly groups, emphasize his efforts in founding the “Fourth Tamil Sangam” and his role in the long trajectory that culminated in official recognition of Tamil as a classical language.

A Counter-Current To Dravidian Separatist Undercurrents

Historians of the Tamil purist movement and the broader Dravidian ideological sphere often identify Suryanarayana Sastri as a foundational figure. K Kailasapathy and others point out that leaders of the later “tanittamil” (pure Tamil) movement had close links with earlier scholars like Sundaram Pillai and Suriyanarayana Sastri, whose work in grammar, textual editing and language history laid the groundwork for later purist demands.

At the same time, his own positionality – a Brahmin professor comfortable with Sanskrit and Western academic methods, differs from the strongly anti‑Brahmin, anti‑Sanskritic rhetoric of later Dravidian politics. This creates an interesting tension: he is retrospectively celebrated as an ancestor of Tamil linguistic nationalism while having inhabited a more hybrid cultural space where Sanskrit, English and Tamil all coexisted in his intellectual world.

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The post Suryanarayana Sastri: The Brahmin Professor Who First Called Tamil As A Classical Language appeared first on The Commune.