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{{Short description|Tamil writer and folklorist}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2019}}
{{Infobox writer
| honorific_prefix = Pandit
| name = Natesa Sastri
| image = Natesa Sastry (cropped).jpg
| alt =
| caption = Natesa Sastri before 1903
| native_name =
| native_name_lang =
| birth_date = 1859
| birth_place = Manakkal, [[Tiruchirappalli district]]<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://chandra-ideapark.blogspot.com/2008/11/my-great-grand-father-shri-pandit.html |title=Chandra: My Great Grand Father Shri Pandit Natesa Sastri Avargal |last=Chandrasekharan |first=G. |date=2008-11-13 |website=Chandra |access-date=2019-11-10}}</ref>
| death_date = 1906
| death_place = [[Triplicane]]
| occupation = [[writer]], Manager in the office of Inspector General of Documents Registration, Madras.
| language = Tamil
| residence =
| nationality = [[British India]]
| citizenship = [[British India]]
| education = [[Bachelor's degree]] in Arts
| alma_mater = [[Madras University]]
| home_town =
| period =
| genre = 
| subject = folk
| movement =
| notableworks = 
| spouse = 
| partner = 
| children =
| relatives =
| signature = Natesa Sastry -signature.jpg
| signature_alt =
| website = 
}}

'''S. M. Natesa Sastri''' (1859–1906) was a noted exponent of [[Harikatha]]. He came from [[Tiruvarur]] and lived during the second half of the 19th century and the first 20 years of the 20th century.

== Life ==
Sastri was born in a traditional [[Brahmin]] family and educated at [[Government Arts College, Kumbakonam|Kumbakonam College]] and the [[Madras University]]. At 22, he joined the [[Archaeological Survey of India]] as an assistant to [[Robert Sewell (historian)|Robert Sewell]].<ref name="Blackburn">{{cite book |last1=Blackburn |first1=Stuart H. |last2=Dalmia |first2=Vasudha |title=India's Literary History: Essays on the Nineteenth Century |year=2004 |publisher=Permanent Black |isbn=978-81-7824-056-5 |pages=130–132 |url=https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/India_s_Literary_History/2N046vzK824C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Natesa+Sastri&pg=PA130&printsec=frontcover}}</ref>

[[Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar]] was one of his prominent disciples.<ref>{{cite web|title=A-rags-to-riches-story|url=http://www.thehindu.com/features/friday-review/music/a-rags-to-riches-story/article2729798.ece|website=The Hindu|accessdate=2 February 2017}}</ref>

In 1906, he died tragically after being trampled by a horse at a temple festival in Madras.<ref name="Blackburn"/>

== Work ==
His most popular works were his collections of Tamil folk tales. He published a four-volume collection of Tamil folk tales titled ''The Folklore of Southern India'' (1884–88). He believed that folklore was national literature, and that it was "the most trustworthy manifestation of people's real thoughts and characteristics."<ref>{{Cite book|title=India and the Contemporary World - II|year=2011|publisher=NCERT|isbn=978-81-7450-707-5|location=New Delhi|page=72|chapter=Nationalism in India|oclc=750383036|chapter-url=https://ncert.nic.in/ncerts/l/jess303.pdf}}</ref> Sastri's collections were based on Tamil versions of the folk tales drawn from his own memory and translated to English, and addressed to non-Indian audiences.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Narayan |first1=Kirin |authorlink1=Kirin Narayan |title=Storytellers, saints and scoundrels: folk narrative in Hindu religious teaching |date=1992 |publisher=Motilal Banarsidass Publ. |isbn=978-81-208-1002-0 |page=27 |url=https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/Storytellers_saints_and_scoundrels/rmfR4nQvbSsC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA27}}</ref>

It was [[Richard Carnac Temple]], a British folklorist in India who served as the President of the [[Folklore Society]], who inspired Sastri's work and encouraged him to publish his first book on the tales. One review of the Folklore Society proclaimed that Sastri was the only Hindu member of the organisation.<ref name="Blackburn"/>

Sastri was very keen in emphasising the importance of folktales. However, despite the irrefutably native credentials of folklore, it did not ultimately become an important vehicle for [[Indian nationalism|nationalism]] in Madras, having been eclipsed by the Tamil classics of the [[Sangam period]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Blackburn |first1=Stuart H. |title=Print, Folklore, and Nationalism in Colonial South India |year=2006 |publisher=Permanent Black |isbn=978-81-7824-149-4 |page=174 |url=https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/Print_Folklore_and_Nationalism_in_Coloni/y-BxrNKdwPMC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Natesa+Sastri+-inauthor:sastri&pg=PA174&printsec=frontcover}}</ref>

Apart from his work on folk tales, Sastri published critical studies of [[Sanskrit literature]], translations of [[Valmiki]]'s ''[[Ramayana]]'' and several of Shakespeare's plays and six Tamil novels, over his twenty-five year long scholarly career.<ref name="Blackburn"/>

===Novels===

*His first original Tamil novel, ''Dinadayalu'' was first published under a [[pseudonym]] in 1900. It was the story of a ''Brahmin'' man whose mother died when he was young. A revised and enlarged edition appeared in 1902.<ref name=Zvelebil>{{cite book |last1=Zvelebil |first1=Kamil |authorlink1=Kamil Zvelebil |title=Tamil Literature |year=1974 |publisher=Otto Harrassowitz Verlag |isbn=978-3-447-01582-0 |pages=271–272 |url=https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/Tamil_Literature/OQ33i496MsIC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Natesa+Sastri&pg=PA271&printsec=frontcover}}</ref>
*''The Rejuvenation of Komalan'' (1902), is a piece of bizarre comic romance in which two sisters obtain a drug which makes younger.<ref name=Zvelebil/>
*''The Two Orphans'' (1902) is a moralising story covering the life of two orphaned sisters from their birth till their marriage.<ref name=Zvelebil/>
*''A Wife Condoned'' (1903) is a melo-dramatic story in which a woman has an adulterous relationship with another man. The motif of women's adultery was quite new in Tamil fiction at the time.<ref name=Zvelebil/>
*''The Mother-in-Law in Council'' (1903) is somewhat a historical novel combining social criticism, set in the 18th century.<ref name=Zvelebil/>
*''Curtain Lectures'' (1903) is an adaptation of [[Douglas Jerrold]]'s ''[[wikisource:Mrs. Caudle's curtain lectures|Mrs. Caudle's curtain lectures]]''.<ref name=Zvelebil/>

==References==
{{Reflist}}

== External links ==
*[https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Search/Home?lookfor=%22Natesa%20Sastri,%20S.%20M.%22&type=author&inst= Works by or about Natesa Sastri] at [[HathiTrust|Hathi Trust]]

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sastri, Natesa}}
[[Category:1859 births]]
[[Category:1906 deaths]]
[[Category:Tamil writers]]
[[Category:Indian folklorists]]

Natesa Sastri - Revision history

imported>Tom.Reding: +{{Authority control}} (9 IDs from Wikidata), WP:GenFixes on