V Venkayya Epigraphy Award Lecture - Dr Y Subbarayalu - 12 August 2022


We are delighted to inform you that Dr. Y Subbarayalu, an eminent epigraphist and historian, is the Winner of the V Venkayya Epigraphy Award in its inaugural year, 2022.

The one-of-its-kind Award was instituted by Smt. Sunitha Madhavan, the great-granddaughter of Shri V Venkayya. The Award commemorates Rai Bahadur Shri V Venkayya, a pioneering Epigrapher who was the first Indian Chief Epigraphist to the Government of India.

The annual V Venkayya Epigraphy Award (VVE Award) aims to recognize exceptional individual contributions, any Indian language, towards the discovery of unrecorded inscriptions, interpretation of inscriptions from a refreshingly new perspective, dissemination of wealth of knowledge contained in them by conventional as well as digital medium and preservation of Epigraphic resources for posterity.

The winner was chosen by a jury comprising experts from the field of epigraphy, history, and heritage.

The Award will be presented by the Chief Guest of the occasion, Sri K R A Narasiah, author and historian.

Dr. Subbarayalu will deliver the Award Lecture on "Place Names and Migration of Communities in South India".

Do join us at 6.00 pm IST on Friday, August 12, 2022 for this event at Arkay Convention Centre, Mylapore, Chennai 600004.

Born in 1940, Dr. Y Subbarayalu is one of India’s pre-eminent epigraphers and historians. He was awarded Ph.D. for his thesis “State in Medieval South India, 600-1350 AD”. He has held several academic positions in institutions like Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai, Tamil University, Thanjavur, etc., He also served as Visiting Professor at the University of Tokyo and EPHE, Paris. He was a researcher in the Department of Indology for more than a decade in the French Institute of Pondicherry.

He was General President of the Indian Epigraphical Society Conference, General President of the Indian History Congress, and Member of the Indian Council of Historical Research etc., He directed archaeological excavations at several places including Vallam, Kodumanal and Periyapattinam. He was a Member of the Indo-Japanese project for archaeological explorations in Vietnam, Laos, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Kampuchea and Sri Lanka to study South India--Southeast Asia trade and cultural contacts. He was a Co-ordinator for the project on Historical Atlas of South India undertaken at the French Institute of Pondicherry.

Dr. Subbarayalu has authored, co-authored, and edited many books, publications, and articles. Among them are South India Under The Cholas and Glossary of Tamil Inscriptions; Co-authored with Noboru Karashima and Toru Matsui A Concordance of the Names in the Chola Inscriptions. He has edited South Indian Inscriptions, Vol. XXXIV for ASI and co-edited Inscriptions of the Vijayanagara Rulers, Vol. V, Part I (Tamil Inscriptions).