Author: Dilip Kumar Ganguly
Publisher: Abhinav Publications
Year: 0000
Language: English
Pages: 193
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8170171903
Description
The task of reconstructing the history of ancient India is beset with enormous difficulties compared with writing the history of ancient Greece, Rome or China. Whereas in these instances the historian safely relies on some genuine historical texts, reflecting the twofold principle of narration and inquiry, in the history of the contemporary and earlier periods, the historian working on ancient Indian history, handicapped by the absence of such texts, is forced to rest content with whatever information is obtainable from literature, coins, monuments, sculpture and archeological explorations and excavations.
The historical information thus derived is not only meagre but also biased and contrary in nature, and as such the history of any part of ancient India compiled on the basis of such materials can hardly attain the desired level of excellence in point of accuracy, acumen and arrangement of historical phenomena in proper time and space.
The problems arising from the limitation of his source materials are great and varied, and yet the historian can hardly afford to neglect his documents or to quarrel with his data, however inadequate, disjointed and incoherent they may be.
The key to writing the history of ancient India lies in the proper processing, assessment and understanding of data and in formulating concepts and generalisations underlying the body of data. It is around the source materials, their merits, demerits and some allied problems that the present work revolves.
Contents
DEDICATION
PREFACE
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Puranas: Their importance as a source of Ancient Indian Political History
Archeology as a source of medieval orissan history
Sources of the history of haryana
The Ramagupta Problem
Asvamedha coins of samudragupta
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX