Lifetime
Born: 04.01.1934Passed away: 21.02.2010
About
Prof. Jagdish Prasad Sharma was a renowned historian of ancient India and Indian religions and cultures, born in Kota Village in Uttar Pradesh (India) on January 4th, 1934.
He earned a bachelor's degree in 1955 from Agra University and went to the University of London's School of Oriental and African studies. He completed a Bachelor of Art honors degree in Sanskrit and classical languages of India and a doctorate degree in ancient Indian history. His guide and friend in this time was the late Dr. A. L. Basham who encouraged many young scholars from South Asia to pursue doctoral studies at SOAS.
He subsequently taught at Columbia University, the University of Virginia and the American University in Washington D.C. and was in his early years one of only three historians in the United States specializing in ancient India.
In 1964 he joined the history faculty at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and remained at that university through his retirement in 2003. Jagdish Prasad Sharma was best known for his work "Republics in Ancient India" (1968) but steadily wrote and edited with special reference to pre-modern South Asia.
He passed away in Honolulu on Sunday, February 21st, 2010.