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Buddha’s Dhammapada is a widely read scripture among the Buddhist followers. It plays a similar role as the Bible to Christianity, Gita to Hindus, Guru Granth Sahib to Sikhs, Torah to the Jews, and the Quran to the Muslims. The original version is contained in Khuddaka Nikaya, which is part of the Pali Theravada Buddhist Canons. Though Dham­mapada was composed around the third century bce, its traditions date back to the first century ce. It contains the sayings of Buddha in different situations, both to the monastic orders and others.

This work covers the history of military in the Indian subcontinent before the precolonial era. The text introduces the geographical aspects in setting up the militaristic approaches for campaigns in various battles and conquest of territories. The main part of this book deals with the history of foreign invasions in India. The author begins with the history of Greek invasions in ancient India, which is the classical military conflict between Alexander and Porus. It also covers the strategical tactics adopted. However, the greater part of this book deals with the Islamic invasions in India beginning with Muhammad Ghori’s campaign and the military stratagems adopted by the Sultans of Delhi. It covers the Mughal invasion with the first battle of Panipat in ad 1526 against Ibrahim Lodi, and the successive battles by the Mughal successors.

The issue of time and infinity or eternity has been studied across every civilization since antiquity, and nearly by all religions. This volume covers the concepts of time and eternity from Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, Christian, and modern-day spiritual movements. It covers passages collected from the Vedas, Upanishads and other Hindu sacred scriptures, Buddhist sangha literature, Sufi kalams, Biblical literatures, and the commentaries and treatises written by the Christian ascetics, monks, and theologians. Coomaraswamy, in his book, adopts a comparative approach in describing all these traditions.

The epic poem Padm?vat? was composed by Jaisi in ad 1540 under the patronage of Sher Shah Suri. It was taken up for translation in the tetracentenary year of its composition. In 1940 Shirreff completed the bulk of the translation which was started by George Grierson. The English rendering of it has definitely caught the essence of the poem of the master poet. The poem revolves around the life of Padm?vat?, the Rajput queen of Chittor. As a worthy disciple of Kabir, Jaisi still shines today as a real pioneer in the path of Hindu-Islamic cultural rapproche­ment. One point of debate is whether Padm?vat? was written in Persian or?Kaithi?characters.

Generally, when we study apocalyptic events, we refer to the Judeo-Christian and Islamic texts, where a particular prophet was assigned to prophesize about the futuristic events. However, in Hinduism, the Bhavi]sya Pura]na covers the eschatological aspects, which will occur in the Kali Yuga, the darkest age in the Hindu faith. The Bhavi]sya Pura]na is one of the most controversial texts, as many of the apocalyptic and prophetic stories were borrowed from various ancient Semitic, Mesopotamian, Persian, Christian, and other sources. This title deals with the critical analysis of Bhavi]sya Pura]na. The book deals historicity of the Puranic texts since it is one of the important sources of studying ancient Indian empires, such as Pauravas, Vidishas, Nandas, Mauryans, Shungas, Ikshvakus, Andhras, and other dynasties dating around 3rd to 4th century AD. Primarily, this book deals with the content of the texts, which records the major predictions and prophecies associated with the future.

Bengalis have been great travellers for centuries and are famous for recreating their way of life wherever they go. This book critically analyses skilled Bengali migration within and beyond India and looks at landscapes created by the Bengali diaspora beyond the terrain of their homeland, ranging from those of nostalgia and imagination (Durga Puja/Saraswati Puja) to those of subjugation and loss of identity. This book demonstrates the relationship between landscape and diaspora in terms of perception, imagination, space and place, ethnicity, race, caste, and class. With case studies from Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Dehra Dun, Oxford, Aberdeen, New York, and the Bay Area (USA), it brings together themes like evolution of the Bengali diaspora, transnationalism and identity, stratification and segregation, urban social space, adaptation and assimilation, and questions of discrimination from other communities.

This epigraphic study of the political geography of two historical regions, Dak?i?a Ko?ala and Vidarbha between fourth and thirteenth centuries, focuses on the interaction of physical and human geography as re­flected in the changing nature of settlement patterns both rural and urban and their political organization through time – an important exercise, based primarily on Sanskrit inscriptions from the period and the region. The study contributes to further substantiation of the critical significance of the conception of early medieval in the study of Indian history. Since almost all the inscriptions are in the nature of land grants to Brahamans, shrines and monasteries, a related area of investigation is the extent of agrarian expansion in the context of political and admin­istrative changes initiated by a series of dynasties across centuries. This also involved a gradual growth of a sense of affiliation with the region or conscious effort to appropriate its identity by the ruling dynasties. The book critically analyses the data meticulously presented in tabulated form – an established method in inscription-based studies of early medieval India. It thus adds to our knowledge and understanding of the region as it has gradually evolved over several centuries through the early medieval period.

This volume by Coomaraswamy and Horner is dedicated to the greatest teacher in the entire history of humankind, Gotama, famously known as Buddha. It commences with the life sketch of the greatest sage who formed the fourth largest religion in the world, i.e. Buddhism. The vol­ume covers the hagiography of Buddha – his birth, attainment of en­lightenment, ministry, and death. Buddha’s sermons, initiation into dis­cipleship and training, rules and regulations, moralism, and faith are all covered in this edition. Major teachings, philosophies, and metaphysical knowledge associated with Buddhism such as causality, the issue of dhamma, the meaning and the philosophy of life and death, and awareness of the inner self are discussed in this volume.

Presents a preliminary glimpse into the world of Indian art during pre-modern times. This volume presents how 'art in India' and 'art in the western world' are different entities. It explains how art in the Indian context has been passed over to different generations and describes how the issues concerning mediocracy and peculiarity of artists, changes in art form owing to theological understanding, were espressed. Divided into 18 chapters, Coomaraswamy covers the history of India from the time of the Indus Valley Civilization. This book touches upon the arts based on different religions and kingdoms that ruled over the Indian subcontinent in ancient and medieval India. These include Aryan, Dravidian, Vedic, pre-Mauryan, Mauryan, Buddhist, post-Mauryan, Puranic Hinduism, Kushanas, Andhra, Gupta, Jaina, Rajputana, Indonesian, and other medieval era influences from both northern and southern parts of India. This volume will be of great interest to the scholars, researchers, and professors in Indian art, aesthetics, and history, as it is a prelude to the scholarly writing made in the Indian art tradition.

The role of a craftsman in India from times memorial was significant to display the grandeur and patronage shown by the feudal masters. This concise volume by Coomaraswamy describes the socio-economic, metaphysical, and supernatural aspects of the Indian guild community from the antiquity period. The present work discusses the three cat­egories of craftsmen – countryside, town, and palace-cum-temple to de­scribe the activities and conditions of Indian guilds. He covers the post-Vedic and Epic era from the time of sage Manu, the author of Manusmriti and classical Hindu epics like Ramayana, and mentions the presence of guild communities and craftsmanship from the Jatakas, and also in Abul Fazl's Ain-i-Akbari. The present work reflects the issues of casteism, re­ligion, and quality standards practiced by guild communities and how guilds were organized as per the societal norms in the past.

The Mirror of Gesture is an English translation of the Sanskrit text on dance, Abhinaya Darpana by Nandikeshvara, an ex­ponent of theatre in ancient India. It is an abridged version of Bharatar­nava, which is an exposition of classical Indian dance. This treatise is based upon the principles of Indian theatre: natya, nritta, and nritya sastras. Abhinaya Darpana contains 4,000 slokas and an exposition of classical Indian dance, theatre, and music. The date of this treatise goes back to the fifth and fourth centuries bc. It was Nandikeshwara, who had much influence on popular dance exponents, such as Bharatamuni, the author of Natyasastra (second century bc), and Matangamuni, the author of Brihadeshi (fifth century bc). In this English translation, forms of posture used in Indian dance and theatre, such as head movements, mudras made by hands along with its interpretation, invocation to nine planets in the universe, veneration of ten Vishnu’s incarnations, four castes, upper and lower worlds, and living and non-living beings on Earth are discussed.

The volume is a detailed discussion of the history of Indian and Ceylonese art during ancient, medieval, and modern times. The book is the result of the development of the study of Indian art and archaeology during the nineteenth and early twentieth century India. This work starts from the Indus Valley Civilization, followed by Mauryan, Gupta, Buddhist, Hindu, and the influence of Greek and Roman traditions in Indian art. The author of this book also covers themes, such as cave art, sculptural traditions, and building architecture in ancient Mathura, Amravati, and the entire South India till Ceylon. Moreover, this book covers art from Central Asia, Java, Tibet, and Nepal. This volume also covers the impact of Islamic architecture, which was borrowed from Arabia, Persia, and Central Asia. A special section on Indo-Islamic architecture, prevalent in tile works, calligraphies, lattices, inlay mosaics, numismatics, and sculptures, is also covered in this volume.

One of the main legacies of slavery and indentured labour is the existence of multi-ethnic and multicultural societies in former tropical colonies of the European empires. After the abolition of slavery, the indentured labourers were brought to the plantation colonies in order to meet the need for cheap labour for the production of tropical goods. From the beginning, they faced a situation in which they were regarded as competitors for the freed slaves and/or the local population. At the same time, in various cases, the freed slaves and their descendants considered themselves as the indigenous people, and were treated as such by the colonial governments. In their perspective, the colonial governments spent too many resources on the immigration of foreign labourers, resources that could have been used to improve the socio-economic situation of the descendants of the former slaves. To this date, this historical past overshadows the relations between different ethnic groups in so called plural societies.

In two parts, Louis Laurent de Federbe, Comte de Modave, like most eighteenth century Europeans came to India in search of fortune. He failed in his quest, dying under tragic circumstances, but his memoirs were saved and brought back to France. However, it was not until 1971 that Jean Deloche of the Ecole Francaise d'Etreme Orient published a properly collated and annotated text. The memoirs present a fascinating contemporary commentary on the political situation of the rapidly decaying Mughal Empire. His pen-portraits of the Emperor Shah Alam II, of Shuja-ud-Daulah, Mirza Najaf Khan, and his fellow adventurer and compatriot, Rene Madec are particularly valuable. He spent more than a year at the court of Delhi, and had the opportunity to observe the emperor closely. The latter comes across as kindly, courteous and gentle, essentially a family man, always surrounded by his sons, and never shy of showing his affection for them.

After the Portuguese held its foothold in India in 1500 ad, many European powers subsequently followed the path adopted by Casa da India, when most of India, except the South and North East, were under various Islamic Sultanates. Whether it was the English, Dutch, Danish, or French, they made a fortune through conquests, trade, and subjugation of previous politics. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the decline of the Portuguese, two great powers emerged: the English and the French, and their rivalry are known worldwide. This book is based on the dominion of the French in India during the eighteenth century from an English perspective. The author cites the work of Abbe Guyon, Col. Lawrence’s Memoirs, Col. Wilks’s Southern India, Captain Duff’s History of the Mahrattas, and other contemporary works by British and French authors to write the history of French powers.

Originally written in Dutch, Jahangir’s India is the English version of Remonstrantie translated by W.H. Moreland and P. Geyl. This small volume largely covers economic aspects during the reign of Jahangir (1605-27), such as land revenue systems, productivity, and trade in drugs and indigo. The book contains a vivid description of Mughal provinces, such as Agra, Gujarat, Deccan, Kashmir, etc. It also mentions the trading networks in Gujarat, Agra, and other places. The author discusses the emergence and mercantile activities conducted by the East India Company and the Dutch trade activities in India.

The Mughal emperor Jalal-ud-Din Muhammad, famously known as Akbar (r.1556-1605), took a lot of initiatives to discuss the issue of religion. The Ibadat Khana, built at the newly built capital of Fatehpur Sikri, invited a lot of religious clerics from almost all of the religions prevalent during the time of Akbar. Jesuit missionaries from Europe came to the Mughal court to discuss and debate the doctrines of Christianity. This volume is an English translation by C.H. Payne in 1926, based on Jarric’s account of the expedition to the Mughal court. This book covers the Mughal period under Akbar’s rule. He gives a shorter description of Akbar’s administration, judicial system, persona, and genealogy stretching from the House of Timur and early Mughal emperors.

India, during the medieval period, witnessed the arrival of European visitors and companies which served the needs of their respective em­pires. They have left behind numerous accounts of their experiences, which, in turn, served as an important source for understanding and reconstructing India’s past by British officials and modern historians. This small-volume covers the profiles of various European travellers who came to India during the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. Most of the European visitors came from powerful nations, such as Portugal, Italy, France, and England, and formed colonies in substantial parts of Asia, America, and Africa. This book covers the Christian missionary accounts active in parts of Goa and south India.

Analytical History of India is a concise history written for the general reader interested in the history of the Indian subcontinent. It stretches from ancient India, from Vedic and Epic ages to the Mauryan history; the ancient history of northern regions, and Deccan. It also covers the entire medieval age of the Sultanate and Mughal rule.

Around the world, there were several books written on Buddhism, as Buddhism and Buddhist studies became quite popular in the twentieth century. This volume provides a sympathetic view of Buddhism and the practices associated with Buddhism. The author begins with a short biography of the founder of Buddhism, Gautama Buddha, followed by the positive and negative sides of his discourses, and moral teachings given by him. The book talks about the different types of Buddhism practiced in India, Ceylon, Siam, Cambodia, Burma, China, Korea, and Japan while ex­cluding Buddhism in Nepal, Tibet, and Mongolia. It also discusses about the rise and popularity of Mahayana Bud­dhism, temples and monks in China, sects found within Buddhism, such as Zen Buddhism in China, etc.

Muslims face acute political deprivation at all levels in spite of their immense contribution towards the survival of democracy in India. The volume attempts to gauge and analyze the political underrepresentation of Muslims in the Parliament and state assemblies as well as their nomination by the mainstream national and regional parties. The book analyzes the reasons responsible for their absence in politics and power, including their under-nomination in secular parties, denial of SC status to them, Muslim-majority seats being reserved for SCs, etc. The book also discusses the rise of the BJP and, its exclusionary attitude, communalization of political space and its fall out on the attitude of the secular parties, which thrive on Muslim votes. It also focuses on the internal factors within Muslims, such as presence of many Muslim candidates in Muslim-dominated seats, division of secular votes, lack of leadership, and their inability to forge a viable political alliance with other deprived groups. The volume also attempts to analyze the rise of upper caste Hindus in politics, political deprivation of Hindu OBCs, and necessity of due share of Pasmanda Muslims in politics for secularization of political space. The author delves closely into what strategies Muslims must adopt to have at least proportional share and introspection on how to create an effective political space. The volume advocates a forceful change of attitude, thinking and action on the part of various factors involved: govern­ment, political parties, media, academic circles, the community itself and other deprived sections.

In the nineteenth century, the British crown expanded its reach in almost all parts of the world from China to America, overpowering the Portu­guese, Spanish, Dutch, and the French. The period also witnessed the contestation between the English East India Company, the Czarist Russia, and the Qajar Persian kingdom to prevent Russian expansion into India by creating a buffer zone in Central Asia along with the support of the Emirate of Afghanistan. The English East India Company’s feud with the Persians in 1856, also known as the Anglo-Persian war, forms the basis of this monograph. This book contains descriptions taken from memoirs, journals, letters, and correspondences from lower and upper officials, military men, and the Governor-General.

This volume is primarily based on two essays, ‘Roman and the British Empire’ and ‘Extension of Roman and English Laws throughout the World’. The first essay is a comparative study of the modern British Empire and the classical Roman Empire. This part is deals with the British and Roman attitudes towards race, military character, and strength, despotic systems followed by both empires, taxation, revenue, and administrative policies, attitude towards natives, and induction of the native population into civil services and the military, and influences of climate and geographic condition in the expansion of British and Roman Empire.

Kerala’s Puḷḷuvas and Pāmpum Tuḷḷal is a story about the lives of Kerala’s Puḷḷuva ritual specialists and their days-long ritual performance, pāmpum tuḷḷal, or the “jumping dance” of the serpent deities (nāgam or pāmpu). The ritual is commissioned by members of Kerala’s landed communities to bring health and prosperity to their extended families. Belonging to an ancient South Indian tradition, the ritual is orchestrated by Puḷḷuva ritual specialists, who hold the sole hereditary right to perform it. This book is the first in Kerala to approach this ritual tradition from the viewpoints and agency of its Dalit (formerly known as ‘untouchable’) ritual specialists—men and women, and to examine Puḷḷuva ritual practice in the context of rapid and extensive social change. The study sheds important light upon Puḷḷuva rituals, lives, and livelihoods, within the broader contexts of changing class, caste, and kinship relations; land tenure and ritual patronage; labour migration; and the decline of Nāyar matrilineality and old landed families. These wide-ranging social trends, indexed and acted out in ritual, are the backdrop for understanding Puḷḷuva ritual practice from the 1980s, and in terms of history, point to multiple structures and hierarchies of practice and meaning.

This book is an analytical study of the Sikh Gurus’ perception of women and their societal roles with an emphasis on their impact of the religious ideology on gender dynamics. Sikhism stands apart because of the respectful position granted towards women. This book explores how these religious perspectives shaped social relation and evolution of the Sikh community (Sikh Panth), and whether there existed major differences in the view and ideologies of Sikh Gurus, contemporary Bhakti saints and Guru Nanak himself. The book also seeks to examine the influence of Sikh Gurus’ on patriarchal ideology, and whether there existed a gap between the normative beliefs and operative realities. The book attempts to connect with the past and comprehend the nuanced message of the Sikh Gurus who advocated for a more gender sensitive society.

India in ancient times has encountered many foreign travellers and invaders. Shakas, Kushanas, Greeks, Persians, Huns, and Indo-Romans had conquered parts of India. Many Greek chronicle writers had written about the description of India. However, the Chinese Buddhist monks had a unique experience with India. Several Chinese travelers came to India, most of whom were Buddhist monks.One of them was Hiuen-Tsiang (c. ad 602-664), who visited India during the reign of Harshavardhana. He wrote extensive pieces of literature on Buddhism and India in Chinese and studied under various Buddhist monks in India. This book covers the biography of the Chinese Buddhist monk along with his accounts written by I-Tsing. Divided into five chapters, it covers his nativity at Chenliu, and his parentage, his stay at Kau-Chang. The book covers his interactions with the Turkic tribes at Khotan, experiences in Central Asia, and other parts of Xinjiang province. His epic visit to India has been described in a detailed manner, where he stayed at Kie-jo-kio-she, known as Kannauj, visited places associated with Buddha such as Kapilavastu, Bodh Gaya, etc., and also world famous Nalanda University.The book also covers his interactions and training under various Buddhist monks cum scholars, his visit to Ujjain and Sindh region, and his visit to Bamiyan and other sites in the Hindu Kush region. This book ends with his final years at Kauchang and his demise from the world.

The debate on India’s political economy during the post-independence period has focussed mainly on a macro-level, sectoral level, or some specific issues, it did not pay much attention to the study of the issues at the regional or ground level. It is significant to note that while the macro-level or sectoral level debates on India’s political economy have largely failed to provide reasons for the SCs, STs and to informal sector labour force has not improved, and the factors that are responsible for this phenomenon during the post-independence period. In other words, the question as to how the strategies of post-independence development experience has failed to uplift the SCs, STs, and gender and informal sector labour force, from the political economy point of view is being analysed. The debate also failed to capture the political economy of environment, society, polity, gender, and labour history at the regional and grassroots level during the post-independence period. Conse­quently, scholars have emphasised that the importance of political eco­nomy of modern India in terms of lower level of political system, public culture, gender, and masses or lower classes or the landless needs to be studied. Given the background, the present book attempts to capture the regional and micro-level issues and problems on a wide range of issues such as: environment, society, polity, gender and labour history to understand the political economy of modern south India during the period.

Traffic in light benefits donor and recipient, without the ambiguities that always cling to the traffic in goods. It can link all mankind into a family and can enable the people of any country today to become the inheritors of the legacy left by the peoples of any epoch of any land. There is a great tradition of Arabic learning in this country. But not all Indians have equally benefited from that heritage. The language barrier is, admittedly, formidable. But it is equally formidable in the case of Greek. Nevertheless there is a not inadequate awareness of ancient Greek literature in India and the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides have been presented on the Indian stage. Our links with the Arabic heritage are closer and yet the general awareness remains sadly inadequate. This book may help towards remedying this unhappy situation. For the layman, original material will continue to remain inaccessible. But the corpus of translated material is large enough. However, some stimulus to explore it is necessary and this book seeks in all humility to provide it. Though it does not want to claim to be anything more than an outline, it seeks to provide a fairly complete frame.

This volume covers the brief history of the Mughal Empire stretching from the time of Timur, popularly known as Tamerlane, who invaded India in 1398 and defeated the last Tughluq ruler in Delhi. The book covers the history of the Mughals stretching from Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, and Nur Mahal, or popularly known as Nur Jahan, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb.