The wonder that was India
An account of Indian history from the beginnings of the Indus Valley civilisation up to mediaeval India, ending before the Mughal period. A comprehensive textbook for the beginner in Indian studies, its commentary on the Indian social, religious and administrative way during the subcontinent's formative years way is particularly engaging,
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2recommend
3mentions
3people
2013–2024years
67% recommend33% neutral
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What Hacker News says
- The cited book has no information on how the surveys themselves were conducted. The book is an overall romanticization of pre-colonial india, and frequently indulges in nostalgia.
The following books have a good overview of education&caste in india.
A. L. Basham, The Wonder That Was India
Gail Omvedt, Understanding Caste
- The West hardly knows anything "true" of India; almost everybody looks at it only through a narrow perspective and thus are "incorrect".
The History of India is a multi-branched tree with the main branches being; a) Oral Tradition b) Linguistic Tradition c) Philosophical/Religious Tradition d) Literature/Poetry e) Mythologies f) Historical writings g) Writings by other cultures/civilizations h) Archeology. All of them have to be studied to get an idea of what India was/is.
1) A good book to start with is A.L.Basham's The Wonder That Was India: A Survey of the Culture of the Indian Sub-Continent Before the Coming of the Muslims.
The Book: https://archive.org/details/TheWonderThatWasIndiaByALBasham_...
The Author : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Llewellyn_Basham
2) For a modern idiosyncratic and funny take, see Sam Miller's book A Strange Kind of Paradise: India through Foreign Eyes.
- This number is vastly exaggerated. Porus was small king of a minor principality( modern day equivalent of a district). References: Ancient India : By R C Majumdar, Wonder That Was India : By A.L.Basham. I have only hard copy of these books. I don't know if e-book is available or not.
