U Ve Sa Uthamathanapuram

       U Ve Saminatha Iyer. The doyen of Tamil Literature who spent his entire life scouting for old manuscipts, literature.  But for him many of the classical Tamil literature manuscripts would have been lost and we may not be aware of them.  He spent his last period of his life in Thrituveteeswarantpet, Triplicane.  His starting intial Uthamathanapuram stands for his native place. There is an interesting story as to how this place got this name:

     "  Some two hundred years back  Tanjore king used to go around his princely state enjoying the countryside, visiting Temples  and  enquiring about the welfare of his subjects.  On one such occassion he stayed at a place 15 miles from Papanasam for rest. He had his lunch, had his Thamboolam and was taking rest. While casually discussing with his subordinates he came to knew that the day was Ekadesi.  The king takes his food only once on Ekadesi and never takes Tamboolam.  Had he been in his palace his asthana  priests would have told about this to him and this would not have happened. The King felt bad that his Viradam has got a pangam and wanted to do some parikaram for it. He asked the local learned people and they suggested to coinstruct a Agraharam and donate houses for Brahmins.  The King immediately built an Agraharam on that place constructed 48 houses and 24 wells (one for two houses) and invited the learned Brahmins of nearby villages to stay there and donated the houses to them along with Nanjay and Punjay lands for cultivations.  Since the donation was Uthamamana Dhanam the place came to be called as Uthamathanapuram".