High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Prathapa Mudaliar Charithram ("The Life of Prathapa Mudaliar"), written in 1857 and published in 1879, was the first novel in the Tamil language. Penned by Mayuram Vedanayagam Pillai, it was a landmark in Tamil literature, which had hitherto seen writings only in poetry. The book gave birth to a new literary genre and Tamil prose began to be recognized as an increasingly important part of the language.