Tatyana Elizarenkova
Tatyana Yakovlevna Elizarenkova (September 17, 1929, Saint Petersburg - September 5, 2007, Moscow) was a distinguished Soviet Russian Indologist and linguist, known for her study of the Vedas. She was described by Wendy Doniger as "the greatest living scholar of the RigVeda, and certainly, the greatest linguist of the RigVeda". In 1972 she published a translation of selected Rigvedic hymns into Russian, which eventually evolved into a complete translation of Rigveda in the following decades, published by Nauka 1989-1999 (3 volumes). Her complete Russian translation of Atharvaveda was published in 2005-2010 (3 volumes). In 1976, together with her husband Vladimir Nikolayevich Toporov, she published in English a linguistic analysis of Pali: The Pali Language. She was also an expert on Hindi, and published numerous works on its grammar. Elizarenkova and Toporov were also the chief driving forces of Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School. India had honored her with the Padma Shri in 2004 for her contributions in the study of Vedas. 