The Wakankar family from Ujjain is a reputed, illustrious and respected family. They have a recorded history from 1700 A. D. spanning over 8 generations.

A unique feature of this family, even today, is that many of its members have excelled in fields which were not their core fields during academic period. Late Padma Shri Dr. Vishnu Shridhar Wakankar was an artist by education (G. D. Art from Mumbai), however, he switched over to history / prehistory, archaeology and numismatics and earned worldwide fame for his contributions in art, archaeology and social work.

His elder brother Late Laxman Shridhar Wakankar was a Chemical Engineer from Banaras Hindu University. He specialized in ceramic art and later became expert in the evolution of scripts and digitalization of Devanagari script.

This site has been created by junior members of this family who are again not connected to these fields but were enthused with the work done by these stalwarts and felt a need or rather a social obligation to reveal their contributions to the world.

Content in these sites are scripted based on various references and narrations. There could be technical insufficiencies or lacunae in understanding, but we have tried to project things in a very un-biased open minded way, without any aim of influencing the thought process of the readers.

We will be more than happy, if readers are excited and develop interest in these fields and then continue their individual journey by gaining more knowledge and insight from various sources.

Like any other area there can be views and counter views and we respect both.

I am greatly indebted to members of this family for their active support in creating these pages.

Million thanks to Wakankars’ extended family of well-wishers, past students, friends and experts for their unstinting support over scores of decades and for providing valuable data which forms the content of this site.

Similarly we are greatly indebted to Dr. J. N. Dubeyji and Dr. Bhagwatilal Rajpurohit in their untiring efforts in documentation of numismatic collection, Shri. Omprakash Sharma for creating, maintaining records and preserving antiquities at Ujjain.

I am also thankful to Dr. Ravi Korisettar, Senior Fellow, Dr. V. S. Wakankar Archaeological Research Institue, Dharwad and Dr. D. C. Pavate Chair for Art and Archaeology at Karnataka University for reviewing the text and recommending changes / corrections.

I am also thankful to members who have contributed financially to support creation of this site.

Last but not the least, I wish to express my gratitude to Shri. Milind Sathe of “Indiaart Gallery” for designing and managing this website.

– Dr. Dileep Madhusudan Wakankar