Professor Rao is a renowned authority on Sri Aurobindo's epic poem, Savitri. During the course of four decades of teaching and research, he has published many books, including The Peace Which Passeth Understanding: A Study of The Waste Land (1976); The Epic of the Soul: A Study of the Four Quartets (1977); The Domestic Drama (1978); Hidden Eternity: A Study of the Poetry of Sarojini Naidu (1986); and A Renaissance in South India (1994). His research papers have appeared in such journals as East and West, The Visvabharati Quarterly, and The Modern Review. 

Recently professor Rao has delivered the T.V. Kapali Sastri Endowment Lectures (1993) at Pondicherry (endowed by late M.P. Pandit) and Sri Swami Purohit Swamy Endowment Lectures at Benares Hindu University (1994). 

In his paper, "Sri Aurobindo's Savitri As a Spiritual Epic," professor Rao says: "The vital clue for my approach to a study of Sri Aurobindo is given to me by Nirodbaran's writings. The courage to attempt a study of Savitri I derived from his An Apology that, 'Sri Aurobindo had said he was first of all a poet and then all the rest. I would add that last of all too he was a poet: the work he accomplished just before he left his body was Savitri.' Reading and re-reading, sometimes after, and often along with Savitri, the writings of Nirodbaran, I began to slowly experience the emergence of the living being of Sri Aurobindo as a sacred poet in the tradition of the epic poets..." 

"Metrically, almost each line of the verse is a complete sentence in itself and each verse sentence miraculously fuses together several of such sentences into a larger unit of a sentence. In its metrical and syntactic aspects the verse of the Savitri combines the 'Mahavakya' mode of utterance with the rhythm of Marlowe's mighty line, the Shakespearean suppleness and the massiveness with a Miltonic verse paragraph. On this is grafted the vedic avrtti, the Upanishadic laconic sweep and the Kalidasian movement. Often the total effect is that of mantra, a mode of utterance which majestically couches the sacred theme. Often we hear the supreme voice, the overmind voice and the overmind music... 

The poetry of the Savitri is a kind of poetry which communicates even before it is understood. Therefore the best guide to Savitri is Savitri itself."