TERALUNDŪR VEÑKATARĀMA MAHĀLINGAM was born on the 15th July 1907. Tēralundūr, his native place, is a village six miles from Māyavaram in the Tañjavur District, Tamilnadu and famous for its association with the Tamil poet Kamban, who composed the classic Rāmāyaṇam. He hails from a family of reputed Vedic scholars. The part of the village in which he was born, known as Tuḷajēndrapuram is said to have been given to a group of Vedic scholars as sarvamānya by the Tanjore Marāṭha ruler Tuḷajāji (1763-87). One of the recipients of this grant was an ancestor of Professor Mahalingam.
After spending his initial years in the village with his parents he moved to Chidambaram in the South Arcot district in 1915 to start his school education from the house of his maternal uncle. He had his schooling at the Ramaswami Chettiyar Town High School and passed his School Final examination in 1924. Later he joined the Sri Meenakshi College for higher education. In 1929 he passed the B.A. degree examination and won the Sir Annamalai Chettiyar I prize for proficiency in History. In 1931 he passed his M.A. degree examination and again won the same prize for proficiency in History. The Sri Meenakshi College, which was the nucleus of the later Annamalai University, had been affiliated to the University of Madras 1931.
After taking the M.A. degree he moved to Madras where he worked as a Research Scholar under Professor K. A. Nilakanta Sastri in the Department of Indian History and Archaeology in the University of Madras from 1931 to 1934, the subject of his research being Administration and Social Life Under Vijayanagar. From 1934 to 1939 he was working mostly as a Research Assistant in the same Department and in the Department of Islamic Studies. From 1939 to 1942 he was an Assistant Editor in the Journal Federated India edited by the late Mr. V. Venkateswara Sastrulu.