CHENNAI, INDIA, December 15, 2013 (Vedic Granth): The late scholar M.R. Jambunathan’s full translations of the four Vedas are available now for free at “source” above.
The following article on the pundit appeared in April, 2012, in The Hindu newspaper (http://www.thehindu.com/features/friday-review/history-and-culture/article3273061.ece):
M. R. Jambunathan (1896-1974) was born in a learned family of Vedic scholars of Manakkal, Tiruchirapalli District, Tamil Nadu. Jambunathan was proficient in Tamil, Sanskrit, and English. He also studied the Vedas in depth. In his high school days, he went around the villages and towns of Tamil Nadu to collect ancient scriptures. He was also interested in numismatics and collected ancient Indian coins.
Early in life, Jambunathan made it his mission to translate the four Veda Samhitas — Rig, Yajur, Sama and Atharva Vedas — into Tamil, so that all literate Tamils could have access to the Vedas and learn for themselves the eternal values and the spiritual thoughts enshrined in them. At various fora, he enthused scholars to translate the Vedas into the language of the region from which they hailed, so that all Indians could have access to the ancient scriptures.
Translations of the Yajur, Sama and Atharva Vedas were published in Jambunathan’s lifetime. After almost three decades of painstaking labour, he completed the translation of the Rig Veda, the larger compendium of the Veda Samhitas. The Rig Veda translation Vol.1 was posthumously released by Raja Ramanna, who was then the director of BARC, in 1978, and Vol.II by I. G. Patel, Governor, Reserve Bank of India, in 1980.
(end of The Hindu article)
Dr. S. Sabharathnam, a Tamil scholar and expert in both Agamas and Vedas responded as follows when asked by HPI about M.R. Jambunathan:
“Thank you very much for bringing to my memory one of the rarest, noblest and the most refined souls of India, Sri Jambunathan. His translation of all the four Vedas has been rendered in a flawless and standard Tamil. I do not think that such a high quality translation of the Vedas could be available in other languages of India! His translation is far better than the English translation by Griffith and Wilson. He lived a very calm, serene and dedicated life, devoting his whole time for the promotion of Vedic culture. With his meager monthly income at that time, he was helping the poor students for their good education, ignoring their caste-distinctions.”