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.
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