orig. Venkataraman Aiyer
born Dec. 30, 1879, Madurai, Madras state, India
died April 14, 1950, Tiruvannamalai
Hindu spiritual leader.
Born into a Brahman family, he left his village at age 17 to become a hermit on Mount Arunachala, where Shiva was said to have entered the world at creation. One of India's youngest guru s, he held that evil and death were an illusion, which could be dissipated through his technique of vicara (self-pondering inquiry), and that to achieve liberation from rebirth it was necessary to practice bhakti (devotional surrender) either to Shiva or to Ramana Maharshi himself.