Author: D D Kosambi
Publisher: Popular Prakashan
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 415
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8171540384
Description
This significant work outlines a fundamentally new approach to the study of Indian history, and is intended to serve as a critical guide to scientific historical thought.
An Introduction to the study of Indian History is a reprint of the second revised edition of a great work on Indian history. A fundamentally new approach to the study of Indian History, its scientific methodology, modern technique of interpretation, selection and analysis of basis problems make the presentation vivid and absorbing.
Professor D.D. Kosambi has asked significant, new questions and added materially to the answers given in the past by others to several questions He has corrected many a previous error and thrown open new fields for research. One of the principal tasks of this book is to serve as a critical guide to scientific historical thought. The work marks the highest level of approach to social, political and economic processes starting from the material plane.
The reader is shown how to gain a profound insight into the past by examination of the monuments, customs and records which survive. At the same time, the present is shown to be the inevitable result of a steady historical development. Complete grasp of the material and mastery of detail shown in the survey of the movement from a pre-historic tribal society to the machine age make this volume a unique contribution to contemporary historiography.
The fruit of patient research and the mature reflection of a profoundly original mind, this volume is one of his major works – a scientific synthesis gained by unremitting search for fact and meaning. It is no exaggeration to state that this work on Indian history has earned universal recognition and honor.
Contents
PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION
PREFACE TO THE FIST EDITION
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
ABBREVIATIONS AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE
THE MAKING OF HISTORY [ILLUSTRATIONS]
COMMENTARY TO THE ILLUSTRATIONS
1 SCOPE AND METHODS
2 THE HERITAGE OF PRE-CLASS SOCIETY
3 CIVILIZATION AND BARBARISM IN THE INDUS VAILEY
4 THE ARYANS IN THE LAND OF THE SEVEN RIVERS
5 THE ARYAN EXPANSION
6 THE RISE OF MAGADHA
7 THE FORMATION OF A VILLAGE ECONOMY
8 INTERLUDE OF TRADE AND INVASIONS
9 FEUDALISM FROM ABOVE
10 FEUDALISM FROM BELOW
INDEX