Kanchi Paramacharya (Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswati)

01A boy on the peetham

Swaminathan was born at Villupuram on 20 May 1894 into a Kannada-speaking Smarta family. In February 1907 the 66th acharya of the Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham died, and his successor lived only days more; the boy, a relative, was called in and installed on 13 February 1907 as the 68th acharya with the name Chandrasekharendra Saraswati. He studied the Vedas, the Shastras and the commentaries of Adi Shankaracharya under pandits at Mahendramangalam on the Kaveri, and was formally crowned at Kumbakonam in 1909.

02On foot, for decades

From 1919 he set out on a vijaya yatra that took him, on foot and by palanquin, through the south, to Kashi and back, over some twenty years. Wherever he camped he gave talks in plain Tamil on dharma, the Vedas and daily worship; R. Ganapathy gathered them into the volumes of Deivathin Kural, published in English as Hindu Dharma. He founded and backed pathashalas so that Vedic recitation would not die out, and in 1966 he composed the hymn “Maitreem Bhajata”, sung by M. S. Subbulakshmi at the United Nations that October. He lived simply on alms until his death at Kanchipuram on 8 January 1994, aged ninety-nine.

Place · Ancient city; Pallava capital from the 4th to the 9th centuryKanchipuram, city of learningOne of the seven Mokshapuris and the Pallava capital, whose ghatika, a college of Vedic learning, drew students from across the south. Shaiva, Vaishnava, Jain and Buddhist teachers all taught here.Read →