Pandurang Vaman Kane

Pandurang Vaman Kane (; ; 7 May 1880 – 18 April 1972) was an Indian academic, historian, lawyer, Indologist, and Sanskrit scholar. He was awarded the ''Bharat Ratna'', India's highest civilian award in 1963.

Kane's academic career spanned for more than four decades, and included a tenure as the vice-chancellor of the University of Bombay, from 1947 to 1949. He is known for his ''magnum opus'', ''History of Dharmaśāstra'' (1930–62), a five-volume treatise on law in ancient and medieval India. He was nominated to the Rajya Sabha, upper house of the Indian parliament from 1953 to 1964.

Kane initially studied and taught Sanskrit, but later obtained degrees in law and practiced before the Bombay High Court. He taught Sanskrit at Wilson College and Elphinstone College and law at Government Law College. Kane was a member of the Bombay Asiatic Society.

The historian Ram Sharan Sharma says: "Pandurang Vaman Kane, a great Sanskritist wedded to social reform, continued the earlier tradition of scholarship. His monumental work entitled the "History of the Dharmasastra", published in five volumes in the twentieth century, is an encyclopedia of ancient social laws and customs. This enables us to study the social processes in ancient India." Provided by Wikipedia