M Dominic Raj was born on January 6, 1942, at Tiruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu. He completed his schooling at Campion High School in 1958 and his PUC in 1960 at St. Joseph’s College, Tiruchirapalli (both run by Jesuits). He completed a three-year course in philosophy in Latin medium at Salesian College, Yercaud when he was with the Salesians of Don Bosco for a few years. After working for five years as a school teacher, he resigned his job and joined M.A (English) course at St. Joseph’s College, Tiruchi, and passed it securing the 3rd rank in the undivided University of Madras in 1972. He learnt his English from Fr. Hession S.J. while in school and from Fr. T. N. Sequeira , Fr. Lawrence Sundaram, (Jesuits) and professors P. Marudanayagam, A. Joseph, M.S. Nagarajan and others. He learnt the audacity to criticize even the canons of Philip Sidney, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Arnold and others from Prof. S. Ramasamy, who was engaged by the college to take classes after his retirement from service as Head, Dept. of English, Presidency College. In 1975, he left St. Joseph’s College and joined VHNSN College, Virudhunagar as Asst. Prof. of English. In 1981, he completed the Post Graduate Diploma in the Teaching of English course conducted by the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad. He obtained his PhD degree in1989 from Madurai Kamaraj University after research on the topic ‘Indian Contribution to English Literary Criticism’ under the able guidance of Prof. P. Marudanayagam. He retired as Reader and Head of the Department of English, VHNSN College, in the year 2000. His interest in Tamil Classical Literature came about when he worked as Chief Resource Person, Department of Translation, Central Institute of Classical Tamil, Chennai (from 2009 to 2013). He had to edit the English translations of Classical Tamil Texts (some in verse and some in prose) carried out by some of the highly reputed translators at that time A.K. Ramanujan, Prema Nandakumar, Alain Danielou, J.V. Chellaiah, Nalladi R. Balakrishna Mudaliar, P.N. Appusamy, K.G. Seshadri and several more. After leaving the Institute, thinking of contributing something to Tamil literature, he thought of translating Thembavani which was much talked about but about which no worthwhile scholarly work had been done. In fact, the text itself was not easily available, much less the facts about Beschi’s life and his works. It is hoped that through this translation Thembavani will no longer be discarded by the very people for whom it was written and that it will spur the younger generation to engage itself in serious academic work, and that all who read it will enjoy the extraordinary poetic genius of Veeramamunivar and the sweetness of his poetic diction.
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