Dr. C. Minakshi When women made news by applying for a job

She passed away in 1940. She was only 34 years old. She had completed her Ph.D. in Indian History and Archaeology from the University of Madras, the first woman to be awarded the Ph.D. by the University of Madras. She was about to submit her D.Litt. thesis and had accepted a professorship in the Maharani’s College in Bangalore. She had also published innumerable research papers. One section of her Ph.D. dissertation entitled Social and Administrative Life Under the Pallavas had been published by the University of Madras in 1936 and she was awaiting the publication of several other research works.

Cadambur Minakshi, who completed her B.A. in History and Economics from Women’s Christian College, Chennai, and also her post-graduation in History from the same college, went on to become a prodigious research scholar and student of the renowned historian Prof. K.A. Nilakanta Sastri. While the latter’s name will forever be associated with the Chola dynasty as a result of his magnum opus, The Colas, the former is remembered with awe by students of history and archaeology even today for her pioneering and original research work on the Pallava dynasty. At a time when travel was not easy, this enterprising woman scholar had visited Kanchipuram, Mamallapuram and remoter places connected with Pallava history many times to study in minute detail the epigraphs, sculptures and temple architecture connected with this illustrious dynasty.

That C. Minakshi was a performing musician and musicologist is not known to most. That she had studied in depth the famous inscription on music that was found on a rock surface in Kudimiyanmalai (Pudukottai District) may be seen from the chapter on music in her book Social and Administrative Life Under the Pallavas. A scrapbook very carefully preserved by the family of her brother Prof. C. Lakshminarayanan has newspaper clippings announcing her vocal concerts and even the list of songs which were to be rendered by her!

The scrapbook also contains pencil-sketches of some of the sculptures she had studied, newspaper clippings of her reviews of books of famous historians like R.S.Tripathi in The Hindu in the 1930s as well as reviews of her books in the same newspaper. News items on the ‘Degree of Doctor of Philosophy’ conferred on her by the University of Madras for her researches in Indian History and Archaeology, along with her photographs, are carefully pasted in the scrapbook. Another newspaper article mentions her meeting with Dr. Jouveau Dubrueil, the distinguished archaeologist and historian in Pondicherry, while yet another article reports that she had attended an interview before the Public Services Commission for a broadcasting Station Director’s post.

Letters of recommendation from great scholars like the illustrious Indologist Mahamahopadyaya S. Kuppuswami Sastri and Prof. K.A.Nilakanta Sastri are also carefully pasted in this scrapbook. Prof. Sastri praises her abilities as a researcher who “has evinced a real and enlightened enthusiasm for her subject and a remarkable capacity for cogent thinking and clear writing. She is conscientious, capable and thoroughly loyal as a colleague in academic work.” Letters of condolence from eminent scholars like D.R. Bhandarkar and O.C. Gangoly poured in following her untimely death. C.P. Ramaswamy Aiyar wrote to her family in July 1940 thanking them for offering to present to the University of Travancore, Trivandrum, her collection of Indian and other coins.

It is indeed a pity that her wonderful research work The Historical Sculptures of the Vaikunthaperumal Temple, Kanchi was not published in her lifetime. In his preface to the book written on March 18, 1940, K.N. Dikshit, the then Director General of Archaeology, stated, “It is with great sorrow that I have to record that while this work was passing through the Press, the author Dr. C. Minakshi breathed her last on March 5, 1940. She was an exceptionally brilliant scholar, easily the best among Indian lady archaeologists, and by her untimely death Indian archaeology loses a singularly gifted votary.”

Other books by this scholar are The Kailasanatha Temple, Kanchi and Buddhism in South India, and also a translation of a Sanskrit play Bhagavadajjukam authored by the 7th Century Pallava monarch Mahendravarman I. Among her many research articles is one entitled ‘Some Suburbs of Madras’ reprinted from A Scientific Survey of Madras and its Environs (Fourth Annual Session of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Madras, 1938).

All of C. Minakshi’s books are out of print. Very few libraries in India even have copies of these publications. May we hope that her research works will be republished in the near future? If done, the entire community of historians, archaeologists, musicians and Indologists in general will stand to benefit.