The Vision of Siva (Shiva) in Periyapuranam (An Old and Rare Book)

About the Author:

She is a well known educationist and scholar was born in a pious family noted for Hindu culture in Jaffna, Ceylon. She was educated in presidency College, Madras the Annamalai University and the Institute of Education London. She has had a brilliant academic record obtaining first class in the English Honours Degree, M. Litt., Philosophy and M A education London with ddistinctions and gold Medals. She was a delegate at the Geneva conference for International Understanding in 1951, and continues to be an active member in many cultural and women's organizations a past President of the Ceylon Federation of University Women, a life Member of the Royal Asiatic Society, President of the National Education Society and on the Editorial Board of the Tamil Culture Madras. For Over ten years she was head of Ramanathan College a premier Hindu Institution in Ceylon and joined the Educational Service in 1944, where she continues to serve now as education officer in the Jaffna District.

She has written several books for children books on poetry and appreciation of Indian classics and her popular book on New Frontiers in East - West philosophies of Education has been acclaimed as a bridge builder between East and West in Educational Thought and Practice. She has traveled widely in India Western Europe and the United Kingdom.

Her inherited spiritual associations, her personal contacts with great religious mystics thinkers and writers of East and West and coming under the potent influence of the Great Guru Maha Yogar Swamigal of Columbuturai but for whose benediction this book could not have been written- these enabled her to pursue relentlessly the search into the mystic fountains of the Saiva Siddhanta Seera. In this task she was guided by well known philosophers and scholars like Professor K. Subramaniam Pillai, Professor K. Swaminathan, Professor T. P. Meenakshisundaram.

The Annamalai University in 1946 published her thesis on The New Approach to Tiruvacagam and the present book. The Vision of Siva in Periya Puranam is a fitting successor to this work. In the style of Dante's Divine comedy she has captured the spirit of Great poetry and winged it to the melody of Divine Love. Saint Manivacagar's Tiruvacagam tugs at our heart strings long after we close The Testimony of Love for so indelible is her expression of the saint's immortal conquest of the Beloved the Lord of Thillai. Like wise it bodies forth in matchless fervour, the eternal quest of Man.