India- Through The Ages

The book on India through the ages is a survey of the evolution of modern India by a renowned, widely read and versatile historian of India. Even those who criticised Indian Nationalism have admitted that beneath the manifold diversity of physical and social type, language, custom and religion, there is an underlying uniformity of life from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin. There is in fact an Indian character and a general Indian personality. India is at cross-roads because of crisis of character and vested interests of political parties. This is therefore a must-read book.

This book contains the first course of Sir William Meyer lectures delivered by me at the Madras University in March, 1928, with Sir Venkataratnam Naidu, Vice-Chancellor, in the chair.

A survey of India's growth through the ages, when confined within the limits of a course of six lectures, is, bound to consist of generalizations and to give only the broad features of the country's development. Minute illustrations and justificative evidence cannot be supplied; but the very lack of these deprives the author of the means of meeting possible objections in advance. References to sources have been given in the foot-notes in important points only.

Then, again, certain passages in these lectures have no pretension to originality, as the lines of thought and reasoning followed by me therein had been first marked out by some preceding writers, and my work has consisted in continuing what they began, in supplying useful details, and in weaving their thoughts into the texture of my survey. This is specially the case in the chapter on Buddhism and its history in India. In certain other passages I have repeated what I had previously written on the same subjects,-such as Islam's work in India and the Indian Renaissance in the 19th century. This was necessary in order to give completeness to the survey.

It will be noticed that this study of India's past practically confines itself to Northern India and that all the illustrations of the British period are taken from Bengal and Bengali literature. This restriction has not sprung from any narrow spirit of provincialism nor from any contempt for the glorious past of the Southern land, but is the result of the necessities of the case. My survey would have consisted of hazy and commonplace generalizations only, if I had extended it over the entire Indian continent, instead of confining my gaze to a homogeneous and compact group: of facts relating to one province. The objective basis of these discourses had to be made firm and to be built up from facts known to me from original study. If I had tried to import details drawn from Southern India, I should have gone out of the depths of my personal knowledge and presented second hand information; nor could I have succeeded in fitting a few South Indian examples into the body of my illustrations which are all taken from Northern India. My subject would then most probably have lost the organic connection of its parts.

Though the limitations of my know ledge and the needs of the case have prevented me from doing justice to the contributions of Madras and Mysore to the evolution of modern India, it is to be hoped that some South Indian scholar will work out the cultural history of our country from the point of view of local knowledge, on the lines sketched by me in the following pages from the Northern angle of vision.

**Contents and Sample Pages**