A different approach to early history of India, attempting to relate political events and forces to underlying productive relations, in the Marxist fashion. The author goes beyond the usual sources for ancient India, such as the Vedas and the religious epics and local law treatises, to draw links to remarks of foreign writers, available epigraphical fragments, and the memories of his own archaeological field work. His work is often like a massive detective effort, as he is able to build elaborate hypotheses on the basis of just a phrase or a word here and there. ( )

D.D.Kosambi is credited with guiding Indian history into a new critical direction resulting in new perspectives. Basically trained as a mathematician, Kosambi brought the same method of rigor and intuition into the study of history. He understood history in terms of the dynamics of socio-economics processes. He presents history as a chronological order of changes in the productive base and its impact on the superstructure on the Indian subcontinent.

The first two chapters act as a guide to anthropological field work and how some surviving religious practices and cults give an insight into the pre-class phase of Indian prehistory. He then starts with the foundation of Indus cities and tracks the changes in society, economy and culture in the subcontinent until the British imperialism. His writings on tribe and caste, Buddhism and the modes of ownership in Indian feudalism are very insightful.

The book is somewhat outdated and contains some misrepresentations but is not obsolete. It is especially important in this day where falsification and misrepresentation of history has become an important part of political and commercial rhetoric. Another problem in this book is same as with many books on Indian history, that it is centered on Indo-Gangetic plain and doesn’t give much insight into south Indian history except that of Satavahanas and the Vijayanagara empire.

Lastly, this is an analytical work and I wouldn’t recommend this if you are looking for a narrative Indian history written in an engaging style.
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