Both of them learnt Tamil from Somasundaram Pillai, who was a well-learned and religious man and was one of the 12 personal disciples of the celebrated Sivagnana Swamigal.
Vishakaperumal Aiyar attained fame as an editor and commentator and was for several years the head of Tamil Department of the Madras University.
Saravanaperumal Aiyar was also an equally well-known scholar, blessed with a philosophical bent of mind and such catholicity of outlook that he sang a brilliant Nanmanimalai on the great Muslim-mystic and Tamil poet Gunangudi Masthan.
Of Ramanuja Kavirayar's European Tamil students, the most prominent were George Uglow Pope, Miron Winslow, William Hoyles Drew and C. T. E. Rhenius.
My first teacher of Tamil (Ramanuja Kavirayar) was a most learned scholar long dead (peace to his ashes) who possessed more than any man I have known, the cleverness, ingenium perfervidum.
I remarked one day about a long white line or scar on his neck, where his rosary of Eleocarpus beads are hung and ventured to ask him (I had to wait for such occasions for the mollia temporafandi) its history.
So in despair, I went to a temple of Saraswathi (the goddess of learning) and with a passionate prayer, I cut my throat and fell bleeding at her feet.
Yet he was courteous, serious and charming, and his movements and words possessed a dignity and humanity wholly unrelated to the popular image of him in the last 30 years of his life.
Nannool was a grammatical masterpiece written by Pavanandi Munivar, a Jain ascetic, around the late 12th or early 13th century AD which has been held in high esteem by Tamil poets and scholars ever since.
The story goes that Ramanajua Kavirayar's disciple Visakhaperumal Aiyar forestalled his master by publishing an elaborate gloss on Nannool earlier and this somewhat estranged their relationship.
Though the maxims of Avvaiyar are short, yet some of them, on account of their extreme brevity and enigmatic expression are like Sutras requiring elaborate elucidation which was done with great force and clarity by Kavirayar.