KA Nilakanta Sastri

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
KA Nilakanta Sastri

Kallidaikurichi Aiyah Nilakanta Sastri (born August 12, 1892 in Kallidaikurichi , † June 15, 1975 in Madras ) was a Tamil historian.

Life and offices

KAN Sastri was the son of a Brahmin from Kallidaikurichi, a small town near Tirunelveli in what is now the Indian state of Tamil Nadu . After finishing school, he attended colleges in Tirunelveli and Madras. He then taught at the college in Tirunelveli for about 5 years. From 1918 to 1920 he taught at Banaras Hindu University , after which he got a job at Annamalai University with Chidambaram . In 1929 he received the professorship for history at the University of Tiruchirappalli , but shortly afterwards he switched to the professorship for history and archeology at the University of Madras ; he held this post until 1946. In the years 1952 to 1955 he was professor of Indology at the University of Mysore . From 1957 to 1972 he was director of the UNESCO Institute of Traditional Cultures of South East Asia .

Works

KAN Sastri wrote numerous standard works on topics of Tamil history and culture. The most important are:

  • The Pāṇḍyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century (1929)
  • The Colas (1935)
  • The Tamil kingdoms of South India (1948)
  • South Indian Influences in the Far East (1949)
  • A History of South India: From Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar (1955)
  • The Culture and History of the Tamils (1964)
  • Cultural Contacts Between Aryans and Dravidians (1967)

Web links