Arumuga Navalar

Saiva Vina Vidai Arumuga Navalar

Arumuka Navalar (18 December 1822 - 5 December 1879) was a Sri Lankan Tamil Shaivite scholar, polemicist, and a religious reformer who was central in reviving native Hindu Tamil traditions in Sri Lanka and India. He and others like him were responsible for reviving and reforming native traditions that had come under a long period of dormancy and decline during the previous 400 years of colonial rule by various European powers. A student of the Christian missionary school system who assisted in the translation of the King James Bible into the Tamil language, he was influential in creating a period of intense religious transformation amongst Tamils in India and Sri Lanka, preventing large-scale conversions to Christianity.