V. Raghavan

Venkataraman Raghavan (1908–1979) was a Sanskrit scholar and musicologist. He was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Padma Bhushan and the Sahitya Akademi Award for Sanskrit, and authored over 120 books and 1200 articles.

He graduated from the Presidency College, Madras in 1930 with 3 College Prizes and 5 University Medals. He received his M.A. in Sanskrit Language and Literature with Comparative Philology and four schools of Indian Philosophy under Mahamahopadhyaya Prof. S. Kuppuswamy Sastri. He specialised in Alamkara and Natya Sastras and Sanskrit Aesthetics and earned his doctorate in 1934–1935 with Profs. S. Levi, F.W. Thomas and A.B. Keith as examiners. He also studied Sanskrit on the traditional lines and won medals and prizes for Sanskrit speaking and writing.

From 1953 to 1954, he toured Europe in search of Indian manuscripts in libraries, museums, and research institutions, discovering and cataloging about 20,000 previously uncatalogued manuscripts and an equal number of cataloged manuscripts. In addition, he surveyed Sanskrit and Indological studies in European universities and other institutions. He was invited to the USSR twice and to countries of East and Southeast Asia, Australia, Mauritius, Mexico, and Nepal, where he continued cataloging manuscripts, among other activities such as lecturing.

In 1936, he contributed to the Journal of Oriental Research, submitting the first comprehensive study of the Number of Rasas, i.e., Rasa, Aucitya, and Dhvani. The first edition of Number of Rasas was published by the Adyar Library and Research Centre, Chennai, in 1940.

Raghavan was among the founders of the Kuppuswami Sastri Research Institute and served as its secretary and journal editor until his death. He was the secretary (1951–1959) and the general president (1961) of the All-India Oriental Conference.

He was a founding member of the Sahitya Akademi and the Sangeet Natak Akademi, and the founding editor of Samskrita Pratibha, a journal of the Sahitya Akademi (1958–1979).

In 1931, he paid frequent visits to Tanjore villages with K.V. Ramachandran to highlight the traditional Natakas of the Bhagavata's at Merattur, Sulamangalam. He presented a paper in the Madras Music Academy's annual conference session on "Some Names in Early Sangita Literature" in 1932.

Early in his career, he wrote reviews for the renowned magazines Sound & Shadow and Triveni on Carnatic music, Bharatanatya, and Harikatha performances.

Sanskrit V. Raghavan authored numerous articles and books on Carnatic music, Bharatanatyam, and aesthetics in English, Tamil, and Sanskrit. He was known both for his command of primary texts in Sanskrit and for making them accessible to scholars, students, and Sanskrit-loving public through his articles and commentaries. It was later published as volume 53 of the Harvard Oriental Series in 1998. Part 2 of Śṛṅgāra-prakāśa, was published by the Harvard Oriental Series as volume 54 in 2023.

He translated into Sanskrit Rabindranath Tagore first drama, Valmiki Pratibha, which deals with the transformation of Valmiki from a bandit into a poet and Natir Puja, The Dancing Girl's Worship, a drama that was made into a movie directed by Tagore himself. With a foreword written by the President of India, Rajendra Prasad, this work was chosen by the UNESCO as one of the best in the Collection of Representative Works in the Indian Series.

Among Raghavan's major works of on dance and drama are the critical edition of Nṛtta Ratnāvalī of Jayasenapati (1254 A.D.) and Śṛṅgāra Mañjarī by Saint Akbar Shah (17th century),