He Learned Sanskrit by Standing Outside the Window

The boy had no money for an education, and there was a scholar's house nearby where lessons were given.

So he stood outside it and listened.

That is how Chattampi Swamikal learned Sanskrit, a language that in the Travancore of the 1860s was not merely expensive but restricted, its study being a matter of birth-right rather than of fees.

He would later write the book arguing that nobody had any such right.

The name

Chattampi Swamikal was born Ayyappan Pillai on the 25th of August, 1853, at Kannammoola near Thiruvananthapuram. His mother, Nangamma, was a Nair; his father was a Nambuthiri Brahmin, a common enough arrangement in Kerala's matrilineal order, and one that gave the son his mother's community and none of his father's standing.

The family was poor and became poorer, and the supporting of it fell on him young. He did manual work.

He picked up his letters from the neighbourhood children. An uncle eventually got him into the school of Raman Pillai Asan, where he was made monitor of the class, chattampi. It was a schoolroom job title. It stuck to him for life, and is what he is called now, which is a good accident: the most learned man in the room goes by the word for the pupil who keeps order.