The object of this volume is to provide within a moderate compass a compendious account of the history, institutions, and culture of ancient India from the dim ages of antiquity to the establishment of Moslem rule. It has not been planned to meet the needs of any particular class of readers. Its primary purpose is to serve alike students, scholars, and all others, interested in the study of ancient Indian history, as a book of ready use and reference. The pages which follow every attempt has been made to avoid presenting a mass of the dry bones of historical fact or over-burdening the account with intricate discussions on knotty problems of history, on the one hand, and giving a mere general and readable survey of India's long and fascinating past, on the other. I have endeavoured to tap and utilise properly the available sources of information, literary, epigraphic, and numismatic, and also to embody and set forth in a consistent manner the results of up-to-date researches on different topics and epochs. All the materials have been patiently sifted and critically examined with the sole desire to arrive at historical truth and scientific accuracy; and the unfortunate tendency, manifest in some modern publications, to extol or decry without warrant any of the manifolds aspects of India's panoramic story, has been scrupulously eschewed This book gives an authoritative, up-to-date, and compendious account of the history, institutions and culture of India from the earliest times to the advent of the Moslem period. It is based on all available materials - literary, epigraphic, and numismatic - and is written in a most elegant, sober, and lucid style. The author brings to bear upon his task not only profound scholarship and critical acumen but also scrupulous regard for historical truth, the accuracy of facts and impartiality of judgement. The merit of the book has been enhanced by an exhaustive Bibliography and a comprehensive Index. Students, scholars and the general reader alike will find the book highly interesting, useful and valuable for study and references.

Since antiquity, big mammals have inspired fear as well as fantasy among humans. Not only do megafauna pervade the domains of religion, art, literature, and folklore, it is also now widely acknowledged that they can serve as important, if not always adequate, indices of environmental quality. In this book, Shibani Bose looks into eras bygone in order to chronicle the journeys of three mega mammals, the rhinoceros, elephant, and tiger, across millennia in early north India. Carefully sifting through archaeological evidence and literary records in Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit, and classical Western accounts, Bose documents the presence of these big mammals in diverse cultural contexts, from hunter-gatherer societies to the first urban civilization of India and beyond. This work aims to reconstruct human interactions with these mega species through time while trying to understand the larger ecology of ancient India. This book is especially well-timed as the conservation of our megafaunal heritage is a major concern for biologists, ecologists, and conservationists. It underlines the need to historicize human interactions with these mega mammals with the contention that awareness regarding their past is critical for their future.

The present work has been undertaken not only to provide an adequate treatment of the position of the sudras in ancient times, but also to evaluate their modern characterizations, either based on insufficient data, or inspired by reformist or anti-reformist motives. Here an attempt has been made to present a connected and systematic account of the various developments in the position of the sudras down to circa A.D. 600. Since the sudras were regarded as the laboring class, in this study particular attention has been paid to the investigation of their material conditions has been paid to their economic and social relations with the members of the higher varnas. This has naturally involved the study of the position of slaves, with whom the sudras were considered identical. The untouchables are also theoretically placed in the category of sudras, and hence their origin and position has also been discussed in some detail.