S. Vaiyapuri Pillai

Who was S. Vaiyapuri Pillai?

Rao Sahib S. Vaiyapuri Pillai was a renowned scholar and Professor of Tamil. An advocate by profession, he edited and published several Tamil classics from original manuscripts. He is best remembered as the editor of the Tamil lexicon published by the Madras University in the 1920s. He was a voracious reader and had in his own private collection thousands of books in Tamil, English, Sanskrit and Malayalam. His collection also included hundreds of palm-leaf manuscripts. This collection was later donated to the National Library of India in Kolkata.