Trvivek

T. S. Krishnamurthy

T.S. Krishnamurthy was born in 1919 in a modest yet well respected vedic family in the village of Tirumangalakkudi, 12 kilometers from the city of Kumbakonam in the Cauvery delta region. His father Seetharama Sastri was a well known vedic pundit in the region. In 1995, he came out with a critically acclaimed translation of [Adi Shankara's] commentary on [Vishnu Sahasranama.]

Personal Life

Krishnamurthy, known as Kittu is family circles attended the Sri Ramakrishna Mission school at Mylapore, Madras and later pursued his BA in economics at Madras Christian College where he won the gold medal for being the top ranked student in the whole of Madras Presidency. Popular Tamil film actor 'Gemini" Ganesan was his friend and class mate in school as well as at MCC. Krishnamurthy, joined the state revenue department and rose to the position of district revenue officer. He retired in 1974, and settled down to life varied scholarly pursuits in Tiruvisainallur, a village on the banks of Cauvery, not very far from his ancestral place. Krishnamurthy was married to Lakshmi Ammal who passed away in 1992. He had four children--two sons and two daughters. His elder son T.K. Ramaseshan retired as a B.D.O. in Shivaganga, and his second son, T.K. Srinivasan, was a senior manager with State Bank of India. An extremely devout man and a cricket expert of some repute, Srinivasan carries on with the legacy of his father's scholarly works. Krishnamurthy died in 2004.

Translation of Vishnu Sahasranama

His translation of Shankaracharya's commentary on Vishnu Sahasranama is one of the very few such available works that bring out the context and meaning of the popular shloka's in simple and lucid English. The book was published by [Chennai]-based Karkotaka Vayalore Trust, a non-profit publishing house run by Krishnamurthy's nephew V.S. Suryanarayanan. In a broadbrush introduction to the book, Krishnamurthy provides a insight into the key aspects of Indic philosophy. His comparison of metaphysics and vedic thought to modern science is perhaps one of the most concise and reader-friendly work on the subject. In the writing of the book, Krishnamurthy was assisted in a big way by his elder brother T.S Seshasayee, an expert on sanskrit grammar and comparative relegion, and another vedic scholar Gudalur R Ramachandra Sastrigal of Advaida Sabha, Kumbakonam.