Siddheshwar Varma, originally named Pindidas, was born on 3 November 1887 at
Rawalpindi in the erstwhile
Punjab province of
British India in a
Khatri family to Ram Dass Nanda and Jamana Devi, and did his early schooling at various places in
Punjab like
Rawalpindi,
Kamalpur,
Jhelum,
Gujranwala and
Mianwali. While continuing his linguistic studies through his years in Jammu, Varma learned several Indian and foreign languages such as Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Tamil, French, Greek, Latin, Russian, Slavonic, German, Arabic, and Persian; he was reported to have learned 30 different languages. He was also associated with organizational activities and was the secretary of the Indian chapter of the
International Moral Education Congress in 1923. He was among the scholars who assisted A. C. Woolner in founding the Linguistic Society of India in 1928 and was involved in the establishment of organizations like Association of Thinkers, Shabda Brahma Parishad, and Samabhava Mandal. He contributed to the recognition of
Dogri language by the
Sahitya Akademi and was the founder patron of Dogri Research Institute, Jammu, an institution founded in 1962 to promote the language. Varma died on 17 August 1985, at the age of 97. == Awards and honors ==