Honorary doctorates University of Chicago, University of Oxford, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris, University of Edinburgh, the University of Calcutta, University of Hyderabad, Brown University, University of Pretoria. Inaugural holder, Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South, US Library of Congress; Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, winner John W Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanity, 2008.
Romila Thapar (born 30 November 1931) is an Indian historian. Her principal area of study is ancient India, a field in which she is pre-eminent.[1] Thapar is a Professor of Ancient History, Emerita, at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
Thapar's special contribution is the use of social-historical methods to understand change in the mid-first millennium BCE in northern India. As lineage-based Indo-Aryan pastoral groups moved into the Gangetic Plain, they created rudimentary forms of caste-based states. The epics Ramayana and the Mahabharata, in her analysis, offer vignettes of how these groups and others negotiated new, more complex, forms of loyalty in which stratification, purity, and exclusion played a greater if still fluid role.[2]
The author of From Lineage to State, Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, Early India: From Origins to AD 1300, and the popular History of India, Part I, Thapar has received honorary doctorates from the University of Chicago, the University of Oxford, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris, the University of Edinburgh, University of Calcutta, University of Hyderabad, Brown University, and the University of Pretoria.
Thapar is an Honorary Fellow of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, where she also received her Ph.D. in 1958, and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2008, Romila Thapar shared the US Library of Congress's Kluge Prize, for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities and Social Sciences.[3]
^Peterson, Indira Viswanathan (2019), "Romila Thapar 1931-", in Kelly Boyd (ed.), Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, London: Taylor & Francis: Routledge, pp. 1202–, ISBN 978-1-136-78764-5, archived from the original on 1 September 2021, retrieved 1 February 2021 Quotr: "The pre-eminent interpreter of ancient Indian history today. ... "
^Peterson, Indira Viswanathan (2019), "Romila Thapar 1931-", in Kelly Boyd (ed.), Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, London: Taylor & Francis: Routledge, pp. 1202–, ISBN 978-1-136-78764-5, archived from the original on 1 September 2021, retrieved 1 February 2021 Quote: "Among the major historians of ancient India in recent times, Thapar's emphasis on social history differentiates her approach from that of the cultural historian A. L. Basham, while her rejection of ideological frames of reference sets her work apart from that of the Marxist scholar D. D. Kosambi."
^Garreau, Joel (3 December 2008). "Historians Peter Robert Lamont Brown and Romila Thapar to Share 2008 Kluge Prize". washingtonpost.com. Archived from the original on 11 January 2017. Retrieved 1 February 2021.
RomilaThapar (born 30 November 1931) is an Indian historian. Her principal area of study is ancient India, a field in which she is pre-eminent. Thapar...
late journalist Romesh Thapar was his cousin and Thapar is also a cousin to historian RomilaThapar. Thapar is also related distantly to the family of Prime...
historian RomilaThapar is his aunt. He married theatre personality Sanjana Kapoor and the couple have a son, Hamir. They live in Delhi. Valmik Thapar spent...
brother. He was the father of journalist Romesh Thapar and the noted author and historian RomilaThapar. Ascaris Infection among the Gurkhas (MD thesis)...
Sastri, 1972 RomilaThapar 2003, p. 184. RomilaThapar 2003, p. 231. RomilaThapar 2003, p. 242. RomilaThapar 2003, p. 211-212. RomilaThapar 2003, p. 229...
Indian Army medical officer. He was the brother of RomilaThapar, the historian. General Pran Nath Thapar, sometime Chief of Army Staff, was his paternal...
Nehru. General Thapar and Smt. Bimla Thapar had four children, of whom the youngest is the journalist Karan Thapar. The historian RomilaThapar is his niece...
JSTOR 44156189. Aśoka and the Decline of the Mauryas by RomilaThapar, Oxford University Press, 1960 P200 Thapar 2013, p. 296. Lahiri 1974, p. 29. Lahiri 1974,...
conservationist, Valmik Thapar, son of the journalist Romesh Thapar. Valmik is a nephew of JNU historian RomilaThapar (sister of Romesh Thapar). Sanjana and Valmik...
Luzac & Company. pp. 146–147. ISBN 81-208-1204-2. Guruge 1993, p. 27. RomilaThapar 1961, p. 13. Sudhakar Chattopadhyaya (1977). Bimbisāra to Aśoka: With...
the "unseen" Sarasvati, which adds to the sanctity of the confluence. RomilaThapar notes that "once the river had been mythologized through invoking the...
According to RomilaThapar, "if there were any gates at all" anywhere, they "might have been some fort gates". The order, states Thapar, is best seen...
India, for NCERT, which replaced a previous textbook co-authored by RomilaThapar, Satish Chandra et al. Meenakshi Jain is the daughter of journalist...
beauty from Campā )" John S. Strong 1989, pp. 204–205. RomilaThapar 1961, p. 26. RomilaThapar 1961, p. 20. John S. Strong 1989, p. 204. Nayanjot Lahiri...
undermined the "military backbone" of the Maurya empire. Others, such as RomilaThapar, have suggested that the extent and impact of his pacifism have been...
Vivekananda. Vol. 4. Thapar, Romila (2004). Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History. Penguin Books India – via archive.org. Thapar, Romila (2005). Somanatha:...
claimed to be part of the Lunar dynasty). According to Indian Historian RomilaThapar, The Chandela kings narrated a complex origin myth linked to the lunar...
Digby 1990, p. 419. Hermann Kulke & Dietmar Rothermund 1998, p. 160. RomilaThapar 1990, p. 342. Wendy Doniger 2009, p. 420. Peter Jackson 2003, pp. 175–177...
by the rise of Buddhism. However, historian RomilaThapar considers these claims to be exaggerations. Thapar writes that archaeological evidence casts doubt...
superior to all that is produced abroad. And that is why Irfan Habib or RomilaThapar or R. S. Sharma are figures respected even in the most diehard anti-Communist...
pp. 39–40. Thapar 2005, pp. 36–37. Thapar 2005, p. 75. Thapar 2005, Chapter 3. Meenakshi Jain (21 March 2004). "Review of RomilaThapar's "Somanatha,...
Sanghamitta, who became a Bhikkhunī. A section of historians, such as RomilaThapar, doubt the historicity of Sanghamitta, based on the following points:...
Ashoka's son and presumptive heir Kunala. Historians Vincent Smith and RomilaThapar advanced the popular theory of a division of the Mauryan Empire amongst...
stretching "from the sixth century BC to the sixth century AD", according to RomilaThapar. At least in northern India, there was no larger state until the Delhi...
historian to be recognised by the association, joining the ranks of RomilaThapar and Jadunath Sarkar, who received the honour in 2009 and 1952, respectively...
clan because of their foolhardiness. According to a modern historian, RomilaThapar, the kinship system of the Yadavas shows traces of matrilineal structure...
Global Information