Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi (July 31, 1907 - June 29, 1966) was a man with a Renaissance type of versatility: he had a wide range of knowledge without sacrificing depth. He was a mathematician, statistician, and polymath who contributed to genetics by introducing Kosambi's map function. He did pioneering work in numismatics and in compiling critical editions of ancient Sanskrit texts. Above all, he was an outstanding Marxist historian.//The present volume brings together articles by scholars who assess Kosambi's contributions to Indian historiography, Indology, philology, the study of religions, historical materialism, and our understanding of caste in Indian history. While most essays deal with Kosambi the historian, the final essay presents a detailed scientific, historical and political assessment of his mathematical work. The essays are neither allergic to, nor adulatory about, Kosambi's work, but seek to present a balanced and critical appraisal, as well as updating our knowledge with the current thinking in the field. //The editor of this volume, Prof. D. N. Jha, is an acclaimed historian. The other contributors are: Irfan Habib, Suvira Jaiswal, Prabhat Patnaik, C.K. Raju, Krishna Mohan Shrimali, Eugenia Vanina, and Kesavan Veluthat.

This book fills an important gap in studies on D. D. Kosambi. For the first time, the mathematical work of Kosambi is described, collected and presented in a manner that is accessible to non-mathematicians as well. A number of his papers that are difficult to obtain in these areas are made available here. In addition, there are essays by Kosambi that have not been published earlier as well as some of his lesser known works. Each of the twenty four papers is prefaced by a commentary on the significance of the work, and where possible, extracts from technical reviews by other mathematicians.

This Volume Brings Together Twelve Of Kosambi`S Major Essays On The Statistical And Analysical Study Of Coins From Ancient India.

First published in 1965, The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India in Historical Outline is a strikingly original work, the first real cultural history of India. The main features of the Indian character are traced back into remote antiquity as the natural outgrowth of historical process. Did the change from food gathering and the pastoral life to agriculture make new religions necessary? Why did the Indian cities vanish with hardly a trace and leave no memory? Who were the Aryans – if any? Why should Buddhism, Jainism, and so many other sects of the same type come into being at one time and in the same region? How could Buddhism spread over so large a part of Asia while dying out completely in the land of its origin? What caused the rise and collapse of the Magadhan empire; was the Gupta empire fundamentally different from its great predecessor, or just one more ‘oriental despotism’? These are some of the many questions handled with great insight, yet in the simplest terms, in this stimulating work. This book will be of interest to students of history, sociology, archaeology, anthropology, cultural studies, South Asian studies and ethnic studies.

This book is the culmination of patient research and mature reflection of a profoundly original mind and has earned universal recognition and honour over the last few decades.

What India’s founders derived from Western political traditions as they struggled to free their country from colonial rule is widely understood. Less well-known is how India’s own rich knowledge traditions of two and a half thousand years influenced these men as they set about constructing a nation in the wake of the Raj. In Righteous Republic, Ananya Vajpeyi furnishes this missing account, a ground-breaking assessment of modern Indian political thought. Taking five of the most important founding figures—Mohandas Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru, and B. R. Ambedkar—Vajpeyi looks at how each of them turned to classical texts in order to fashion an original sense of Indian selfhood. The diverse sources in which these leaders and thinkers immersed themselves included Buddhist literature, the Bhagavad Gita, Sanskrit poetry, the edicts of Emperor Ashoka, and the artistic and architectural achievements of the Mughal Empire. India’s founders went to these sources not to recuperate old philosophical frameworks but to invent new ones. In Righteous Republic, a portrait emerges of a group of innovative, synthetic, and cosmopolitan thinkers who succeeded in braiding together two Indian knowledge traditions, the one political and concerned with social questions, the other religious and oriented toward transcendence. Within their vast intellectual, aesthetic, and moral inheritance, the founders searched for different aspects of the self that would allow India to come into its own as a modern nation-state. The new republic they envisaged would embody both India’s struggle for sovereignty and its quest for the self.

Chen Hansheng was not only a pioneer of modern Chinese social science, remembered for the village studies he organized by teams of researchers in the 1930s. He was also a political operative whose career as an underground and aboveground Communist activist spanned the twentieth century and the globe. This book draws on unique interviews, beginning in 1979, with Chen himself, his family and associates, along with an exhaustive examination of documents, writings, and archives, to build a rounded portrait of Chen, the man, and his world.