In the wake of Kerala Varma's translation of "Abhijñānaśākuntalam", several attempts were made to translate numerous plays from Sanskrit and English into Malayalam. These plays were seldom acted. The stage conditions of those days were crude and unfit to project a performance. As if irritated by this imitation plays of low quality, P. Rama Kurup wrote "Chakki Chankaram" (1893). Kerala Varma's nephew A. R. Raja Raja Varma went a step further than his uncle in the promotion of a synthesis between the different trends current in the literature of his time. A professor in the His Highness Maharaja's University College, Thiruvananthapuram, he had to modernize the process of teaching Malayalam language and literature; this made him write books on grammar and rhetoric (which earned him the title of Kerala Panini) and eventually prepare the ground for an enlightened renaissance in Malayalam poetry and literary criticism. A close associate of both Kerala Varma and Raja Raja Varma, K. C. Kesava Pillai wrote "Kesaviyam" (a "mahakavya") and a number of "attakkathas". Azhakathu Padmanabha Kurup (1869–1932: author of "Ramachandravilasam"), Pandalam Kerala Varma (1879–1919: author of "Rukmangatha Charitam"), Kattakkayam Cherian Mappila (1859 – 1937: author of "Sri Yesu Vijayam"), Ulloor S. Parameswara Iyer (1877–1949 : author of "Umakeralam") and Vallathol Narayana Menon (1879–1958: author of "Chitrayogam"), all paid their obeisance to this neoclassicist trend.