Iravatham Mahadevan, one of the world’s leading scholars on the Indus Valley Script and Tamil Brahmi script, passed away in Chennai at the age of 88 after a brief illness.
About:
Iravatham Mahadevan (1930 – 2018) was an Indian civil servant and an epigraphist.
Civil services: He joined the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in 1954 and took voluntary retirement in 1980 after holding various positions in the Central and Tamil Nadu governments.
Epigraphist: He is known for his successful decipherment of Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions and for his expertise on the epigraphy of the Indus Valley Civilization.
‘The Indus Script - Texts, Concordance and Tables,’ compiled by him and published by the Archaeological survey of India in 1977, continues to be an indisputable resource for Indus Valley scholarship.
His work ‘Early Tamil Epigraphy’, published by the Central Institute of Classical Tamil as a thoroughly revised version in 2014, is regarded as the most authoritative work on early South Indian epigraphy.
He established the Indus Research Centre at the Roja Muthiah Research Library with his personal funds.
Fellowships: He was awarded the –
Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship in 1970 for his research in Indus script.
National Fellowship of the Indian Council of Historical Research in 1992 for his work on Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions.
Positions held:
In 1998, he was elected the president of the Annual Congress of the Epigraphical Society of India.
In 2001 he became the general president of the Indian History Congress.
In 1987, he became the Editor of the Tamil daily, Dinamani.
Awards:
He received the Padma Shri award from the Government of India in 2009 for arts.
He received the Tolkappiyar award for lifetime achievement in classical Tamil by the Government of India for the year 2009–2010.
He received the Campbell Medal by the Asiatic Society of Mumbai in 2014.
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