Tamil writer and college teacher Permual Murugan on Tuesday joined the Tamil department of Presidency College here, where his favourite scholar and grand old man of Tamil letters, U.Ve. Swaminatha Iyer, worked between 1903 and 1919. After joining duty, Mr. Perumal Murugan, whose novel Madhorubhagan created a stir and finally landed him here, spent some time walking along the corridors of the college.
Swaminatha Iyer, too, had worked in a government arts college elsewhere (Kumbakonam) before being transferred to the Tamil department of Presidency College. A couple of years ago, Perumal Murugan compiled a book, U.Ve.Sa: Panmuga Aalumaiyin Peruruvam , a collection of essays providing insights into Swaminatha Iyer’s scholarship and his works. The collection included essays by great Tamil scholars such as Vaiyapuri Pillai, T.K. Chidambaranatha Mudaliar, Salai Ilanthiraiyan. Mu. Arunachalam Pillai and writers like Ka.Na. Subramaniam and Kalki. He also wrote a foreword to the book Saminatham, a collection of prefaces written by Swaminatha Iyer to the works he edited and published. “It was Permual Murugan who explained the need for compiling the prefaces and encouraged me to compile them. While he is known to the world as a novelist, his deep knowledge of Tamil and the works of U.Ve. Swaminatha Iyer was a revelation,” said P. Saravanan, editor of Saminatham.
