| Natesa Sastri | |
| Birth Date: | 1859 |
| Birth Place: | Manakkal, Tiruchirappalli district[1] |
| Death Date: | 1906 |
| Death Place: | Triplicane |
| Occupation: | writer, Manager in the office of Inspector General of Documents Registration, Madras. |
| Language: | Tamil |
| Citizenship: | British India |
| Education: | Bachelor's degree in Arts |
| Alma Mater: | Madras University |
| Genres: | --> |
| Subject: | folk |
| Subjects: | --> |
| Notablework: | --> |
| Spouses: | --> |
| Partners: | --> |
| Signature: | Natesa Sastry -signature.jpg |
S. M. Natesa Sastri (1859–1906) was a polyglot, scholar in eighteen languages and authored many books in Tamil, Sanskrit and English. His scholarliness over Tamil and Sanskrit languages got him the title "Pandit'.
Sastri was born in a traditional Brahmin family and educated at Kumbakonam College and the Madras University. At 22, he joined the Archaeological Survey of India as an assistant to Robert Sewell.[2]
Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar was one of his prominent disciples.[3]
In 1906, he died tragically after being trampled by a horse at a temple festival in Madras.
His most popular works were his collections of Tamil folk tales. He published a four-volume collection of Tamil folk tales titled The Folklore of Southern India (1884–88). He believed that folklore was national literature, and that it was "the most trustworthy manifestation of people's real thoughts and characteristics."[4] Sastri's collections were based on Tamil versions of the folk tales drawn from his own memory and translated to English, and addressed to non-Indian audiences.[5]
It was Richard Carnac Temple, a British folklorist in India who served as the President of the Folklore Society, who inspired Sastri's work and encouraged him to publish his first book on the tales. One review of the Folklore Society proclaimed that Sastri was the only Hindu member of the organisation.[6]
Sastri was very keen in emphasising the importance of folktales. However, despite the irrefutably native credentials of folklore, it did not ultimately become an important vehicle for nationalism in Madras, having been eclipsed by the Tamil classics of the Sangam period.[7]
Apart from his work on folk tales, Sastri published critical studies of Sanskrit literature, translations of Valmiki's Ramayana and several of Shakespeare's plays and six Tamil novels, over his twenty-five year long scholarly career.