摘要：A notable contemporary of Ramakrishna in South India was Ramalingaswami, 1 a saint on the old model and a prolific hymnist in Tamil. He had little learning, and poetry was his natural gift which he employed to translate his vision of God to the world.2 He was grieved at sectarian differences and was a staunch advocate of the path of harmony. At Vadalur in South Arcot, the place of his birth, he built a shrine in which the flame of an oil lamp was the only object of worship.3 He established the Samarasa Suddha Sanmarga Movement. This movement was one of the most important factors in the religious history of the nineteenth century Tamil Nadu. It was spiritual in its content but it had its own overtones in the field of social reform also.4 It was not only a new religion but also a new spiritual movement with due emphasis on social problems. It wanted everyone not to confine themselves within the limits of anyone religion but to rise to such high spiritual realms, as to shed all differences of caste, creed, religion, nationality and to experience the ultimate reality.
