Coming to modern times works written wholly and deliberately in prose, not reckoning commentaries as such, commence with Beschi’s Vediyar Ozhukkam. And we may even say that a new impetus was given to prose composition only during the early part of the last century by the Tamil pandits of the early Madras University, of whom Tandavaraya Mudaliyar, Viraswami Chettiyar, and Saravanapperumal Aiyar deserve special mention. In the latter part of the nineteenth century a number of Tamil prose works, translations as well as original productions were published by learned Tamil scholars. The labours of the late T. E. Srinivasa Raghava Chariyar and Arumuga Navalar may still be in the memory of every lover of Tamil literature. And the foremost among the living writers of Tamil prose and scholarly commentaries is undoubtedly Mahamahopadhyaya V. Swaminatha Aiyar Avargal of the Madras Presidency College, who may be styled the Nachchinarkinivar of the present day.
A prose literature worth the name is only a recent growth, which is sufficient to account for the absence of prose classics in Tamil. The influence of English literature, the great increase in the Tamil reading public, and the conditions of life in this age with its forms of popular government, its commercialism and industrial activities favour the rapid expansion of prose literature ; and a prose style also has begun to form.
