S Settar is visiting Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Indian Institute of Science Campus, Bangalore. He has earlier held the chairs of Prof. S. Radhakrishnan (NIAS, Bangalore); Indian Council of Historical Research (Ministry of Human Resources, New Delhi), and Department of History and Archaeology (Karnatak University, Dharwad); and the Directorships of Indian Institute of Art History, the Indira Gandhi Centre for the Arts (Southern Regional Centre, Bangalore). A bilingual writer (English and Kannada), he has so far published 30 books on history, art history, archaeology, epigraphy, religion and philosophy, Kannada Classical language and linguistics, both in Europe and India.