History
Ancient India As Described By Meghasthenes And Arrian
Asoka Text and Glossary
The text and glossary are intended to provide the student of philology with a convenient handbook of Early Prakrit. The historian will find in this the ready means of checking various translations, sometimes misleading, of these important Indian documents of the third century B.C. The student of epigraphy must go to the Rocks and Pillars, or at least to estampages, photographs and plates-but in difficulties of interpretation he can find here for every Asokan form, as read up-to-date, all the passages where it occurs, or similar forms occur, with references to most at least of the literature on disputed forms.
Babur-Nama
The book in two volumes is a translation of Babur Padshah's Autobiography, made from the original Turki text. It truly embodies the career of the founder of the Mughal empire in India. It has the rare distinction of being contemporary with the events it describes. Babur-Nama has the complete record of Babur's life (1493-1529), when Babur ascended the throne at the young age of eleven to September 1529 where he had established himself as a monarch.
Dara Shikuh
Indian tradition remembers Dara Shikuh not so much as an emperor's son, but as a mystic philosopher. The great dream of his life-a dream shattered by his untimely death-was the brotherhood of all faiths and the unity of mankind. After him the vision of unity was lost in the atmosphere of hatred and rivalry created by the warring sects and religious schools, and even today we are living in the age of religious disintegration.
On Yuan Chwang’s Travels in India
Yuan Chwang or Hiuen Tsiang, the famous Chinese traveller, commands such a high seat of eminence that he is styled as ''one of the three mirrors that reflect Indian Buddhism'' in the country of his birth. To us in India too, he is no ordinary mirror, for had it not been for the records which he so diligently maintained of his visit to India during AD 629 to 645, a good part of our past, of our history, that too of one of the golden periods of this land, would have been lost in the limbo of oblivion. To Yuan Chwang goes the gratitude of all Indians as well as Indian historians.
Perspectives in Social and Economic History of Early India
The book begins with a survey of the sources of the social and economic history of early India, and reviews the writings from the late ninteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries on social history. It discusses the problems of caste and gender relations, and shows the role of divination and communication in fostering social control and cohesion.
The Indian Craftsman
This book The Indian Craftsman, by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy is a study of the second type of genius, the Indian Craftsman. The author has treated his subject from three points of view : the village, the town and the palace or temple, i.e. where the craftsman lived, worked and had their patrons. He has also minutely examined how the caste system, religion and the guild set up standards of quality and enforced their strict adherence.
The Life of Hiuen-Tsiang
Centuries before biography became a business, before the peccadilloes of Royal mistresses and forgotten courtesans obtained a ''market value,'' the writing of the Master's life by some cherished disciple was both an act of love and piety in the far East. The very footprints of the famous dead became Luminous, and their shadows shone in dark caves that once withheld them from the world.
Thug or a Million Murders
Thug or a Million Murders is the history of the ancient practice of murdering pilgrims and the their goods which was especially prevalent in north India. Though the practice of robbing pilgrims was common the world over and the Christian and Muslim pilgrims both faced this problem it appears to have been more organised and even to some extent ritualistic in the central Indian plains.