Swathi Thirunal Rama Varma

Rama Varma was born in April 1813 on the day of the Swati nakshatra, and so is called Swathi Thirunal. He was proclaimed king of Travancore before he was born, and is remembered as the garbha-shriman, the king from the womb. His mother died when he was a baby, and he grew up under the regency of his aunt, learning Sanskrit, Malayalam, English, Persian and several other languages. He ruled from 1829.

The kings of Travancore ruled as servants of Shri Padmanabhaswamy, to whom the kingdom had been dedicated by Marthanda Varma in 1750, and Swathi Thirunal signed his songs with the Lord's name, Padmanabha, or one of its forms. He composed some four hundred works in Sanskrit, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Hindustani and Marathi: kritis, varnams, padams for Mohiniyattam, bhajans in the northern style, and the Navaratri kritis still sung each evening of the festival at the Navaratri Mandapam in Thiruvananthapuram. His court gathered musicians from the Tamil country, the Telugu country and the north, among them Vadivelu of the Thanjavur brothers.

He also founded the observatory at Thiruvananthapuram in 1837, took the first census of Travancore, and opened the English school that grew into the University College. His last years were darkened by grief and by the interference of the British Resident. He died in December 1846, at thirty-three. Bhavayami Raghuramam, which tells the whole Ramayana in one song, is his.