Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 1.djvu/25

xvii Samaj at Madras. As will be noted from the memorial address in this volume, “the decisive step” was due, before other human factors, to the first missionary visit to Madras in 1881 of Pandit Sivanath Sastri, thence-forth “always counted, always respected, always revered as my guru,” “my soul’s parent." Accordingly, a very recent letter under date August 30, 1922, denotes thus the precedence amongst the first three in “the gradation of intimate soul-deep affections”—“the co-pilgrim (behind the veil these 33 years but never out of holy touch), the guru (similarly veiled exactly 30 years after) and the Pradhan Acharya (sightless to all but the ‘Unseen’) in far-off yet next-door Edinburgh.” During the period in question, with the rich promise in him rapidly unfolding to its fulness by strenuous aspiration and activity, he began to drink deep of the formative influences of the metropolis. At that time, he felt considerably indebted for personal spiritual guidance, among others, to the late Mannava Butchayya Pantulu, then the leading spirit of the Madras Samaj. Then he read widely; he wrote free-