Iravatham Mahadevan

Iravatham Mahadevan (2 October 1930 – 26 November 2018) was an Indian epigraphist and civil servant, known for his decipherment of Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions and for his expertise on the epigraphy of the Indus Valley Civilisation.

Early life Iravatham Mahadevan was born on 2 October 1930 in Thanjavur district in British India into a smartha Tamil Brahmin family. Mahadevan had his schooling in the town of Tiruchirapalli and graduated in Chemistry from the Vivekananda College, Chennai and law from the Madras Law College. Mahadevan successfully passed the Indian Administrative Service examinations held in 1953 and was allotted to the Madras cadre.

Civil service Mahadevan worked as an Assistant Collector in Coimbatore district and Sub-Collector at Pollachi.

Indus script Mahadevan started his research on the Indus script following a brush with W. W. Hunter's book on the Indus Script at India's Central Secretariat Library in Delhi.

Significant contributions Iravatham Mahadevan's The Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables (1977) is the only openly available corpus of the Indus Script. He wrote over 40 papers to further the Dravidian hypothesis of the Indus Script and argues for a continuity between the written records of Indus and the oral transmissions from the Rig Veda. He was instrumental in firmly establishing the view of K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer that the writings found in the caves of Tamil Nadu in a script similar to Brahmi are a variant of Brahmi, which Mahadevan calls Tamil Brahmi, and in ascertaining that the language of the script is indeed Tamil. Mahadevan went on to read the names and titles of several generations of Pandiya and Chera kings in Tamil Brahmi writings, all corroborated in early Tamil literature.

Awards and honours Iravatham Mahadevan was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship in 1970 for his research in Indus script and the National Fellowship of the Indian Council of Historical Research in 1992 for his work on Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions.

In 1998, he was elected the president of the Annual Congress of the Epigraphical Society of India and in 2001 he became the general president of the Indian History Congress. He received the Padma Shri award from the Government of India in 2009 for arts. He was conferred the Tolkappiyar award for lifetime achievement in classical Tamil by the Government of India for the year 2009–2010.

He was conferred the Campbell Medal by the Asiatic Society of Mumbai, formerly the Royal Asiatic Society, in November 2014.

A bronze bust of Mahadevan was created by artist G. Chandrasekaran and placed at the Roja Muthiah Research Library.

Publications Corpus of Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions (1966) The Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables (1977) Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. (Harvard Oriental Series, 62) (2003) Early Tamil Epigraphy: Tamil-Brahmi Inscriptions. Revised and Enlarged Second Edition: Volume 1 (Central Institute of Classical Tamil) (2014) Akam and Puram : 'Address' Signs of the Indus Script (2010) Dravidian Proof of the Indus Script via the Rig Veda: A Case Study (2014) Toponyms, Directions and Tribal Names in the Indus Script (Archaeopress) (2017)