Rangachari Champakalakshmi[a] (1932 – 28 January 2024) was an Indian historian and social scientist whose work focused on the study of early and pre-modern South Indian history. She served as a professor in the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). In addition, Champakalakshmi was president of the Indian History Congress.
Early life
Champakalakshmi was born in 1932 to Pattammal (mother) and R. Rangachari (father) in a family from Srirangam in present day Tamil Nadu.[1][2][3] Her father was an advocate.[4][5] Champakalakshmi obtained a doctorate in history from the University of Madras. Her doctoral dissertation under historian T. V. Mahalingam, was on Vaishnava iconography in Tamil Nadu, a topic that she continued to research later into her career.[6]
Career
Champakalakshmi started her academic career teaching at the University of Madras from 1959 to 1972, after which she joined the Centre for Historical Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) as an associate professor of ancient history, where she continued to teach for the next 25 years, until her retirement in 1997.[6] She started her research studying religion, specifically Jainism and Vaishnava hinduism in ancient South India, and later expanded her research to include trade, economy, and emergence of urban centers in pre-medieval South India.[7] Some of her research was published in a book Vaishnava iconography (1981).[8] As a part of this work, she brought together evidence from Tamil Sangam literature, the Bhakti movement of the Alvars, the Agama traditions, and combined this with extensive fieldwork to bring out the distinct medieval period iconography of the Vaishnavism faith.[9]
Some of her later works studying the social, cultural, and economic history of early and medieval South India were published in Trade, Ideology and Urbanization (1996) and Religion, Tradition and Ideology (2011).[6][10] The latter was a collection of essays discussing the contribution of religious traditions to the social capital in pre-colonial south India.[11][12] She wrote about growth of urban centers under the Pallavas and Cholas including Kumbakonam and Thanjavur in the Cauvery delta region, and Kanchipuram in the Palar valley among other centers.[13][14]
^Though many of the bibliographic sources indicate Champakalakshmi's first name as Radha, her first name is most likely Rangachari (alternately spelled as Rangachary), a patronymic reference to her father's name.
^ abMahalakshmi, R. (2 February 2024). "R. Champakalakshmi's Abiding Legacy". The Wire. Retrieved 3 February 2024. With the passing of Professor Radha Champakalakshmi on January 28, 2024, we have lost a historian of JNU who helped to not only define historical scholarship in India but also painstakingly trained generations of students, who then went on to enrich their chosen fields.
