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P. Seshadri Iyer, a great and scholar, was born in Kerala. After Passing his B.A. and M. L., examinations he began his career first as a school teacher and then as a sub-registrar.
His innate love for learning different languages arose out of his desire to learn at first han the great classics oaf various languages in their original. Thus, he learnt Bengal to read all the writings of Swami Vivekananda, Marathi to read Jnaneswari, Greek to read Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus.
And he learnt Russian to read Tolstoy's War and Peace as well as French, Finnish and polish to read masterpieces written in those languages. He had also a mastery over the different regional languages of South India. But his proficiency in Bengali-both spoken and written-was so great that he could hold a Bengali audience spell-bound by his learned discourses in that language; and the late Shri. C.Rajagopalachari chose him to translate his Mahabharata in Bengali. He also translated it in Malayalam and helped Rajaji to render it in English from the original Tamil. Indeed, shri Seshadri was a linguist par excellence.
It was Sir. C.P.Ramaswamy Aiyar (the then Dewan of Travancore State) who recognized the innate worth of Shri Seshdri. Hearing that such a great linguist and scholar was languishing as a sub-registrar, he commissioned him to translate into Malayalam such classics as Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne's Essays and Plutarch's Lives, as also for writing an original commentary on Bhagavad Gita, with the interpretations of Sankara, Ramanuja, Sri Aurobindo and Lokamanya Tilak. Sir C.P.then appointed him as the Superintendent of Travancore University's Department of Publications.
In his later years, Shri Seshadri's talent and scholarship were utilized by the Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, for translating into Malayalam the great works of some Bengali. Hindi and Marathi writers as well as the History of Peloponnesian war from Greek. Shri Seshadri was a highly spiritual soul, endowed with the twin qualities of love and humility. He passed away in Bombay in August, 1989.
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