Iravatham Mahadevan, one of the world’s leading scholars on the Indus Valley Script, a noted epigraphist and former IAS officer passed away at the age of 88 on early Monday morning. He took his last breath at around 4 am at his residence in Chennai. He is survived by his son Sridhar and grandchildren, Vandana and Vinay.
Notable Achievements
Born on October 20, 1930, Mahadevan completed his school education from Tamil Nadu, Tiruchirapalli, and attended college at Vivekananda College, Chennai and later pursued legal studies in Madras Law College.
Iravatham, known for deciphering the Tamil-Brahmi scripts and for his research on scripts from the Indus Valley Civilisation, was a civil servant who had served the Central as well as the Tamil Nadu government, before he took voluntary retirement in 1980. Following his retirement, Mahadevan became the former editor of Tamil daily Dinamani. Iravatham also founded the Vidyasagar Educational Trust for underprivileged children in the year 2010.
In the last three decades of his life, he devoted himself to the study of India’s early writing systems. He kept in active touch with leading scholars of early India, including the historian Romila Thapar and the Finnish specialist on the Indus Valley script, Asko Parpola.
Awards and Honours
Mahadevan was awarded the Padma Shri in April 2009 for his work in epigraphy.
Among the other notable awards secured by the scholar, nameable ones include the Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship in 1970 which was offered to him for his research on the Indus script. He was also offered with the National Fellowship of the Indian Council of Historical Research in 1992 which he won for his work on the Tamil Brahmi inscriptions.
