[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Archaeology, epigraphy and coins](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.epigraphy) › [Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.epigraphy.wheeler-1959) › c4 # Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c4: Preface Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c4 - **Language:** English ### Preface ### [c4.1](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.epigraphy.wheeler-1959.c4.1) THIS BOOK is a tentative sketch of a large and growing subject. Much of its material is, in the present stage of research, fragmentary and disjointed; in fact, the archaeology of the subcontinent is passing through that phase of increasing complexity which inevitably precedes a more comprehensive synthesis. The examples here presented are chosen mainly as representative of the cultural trends in the arterial valleys and on the great plains and plateaux, where the major developments took place. Apart from incidental references, no attempt is made to describe the static communities which still, in the highlands and backwoods, occupy an appreciable part of India and often preserve their tribal usages and techniques surprisingly intact in a closing world. There is much about these remote peoples that the archaeologist would like to know but does not. His turn will come; meanwhile the anthropologist holds the field. ### [c4.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.epigraphy.wheeler-1959.c4.2) I have ended my survey with Ashoka for the good reason that it is thereby possible to anchor Indian prehistory to the first firmly documented epoch of Indian history. The common division of the study of human cultures into 'prehistoric' and 'historic' categories is an unhappy one; often enough, the interrelationships and vagaries which are intelligible enough on the historic scene are useful reminders in the interpretation of undocumented material and help to bring it to much-needed life. Ashoka's era seems to me, in that fashion, to illumine much that went before it. ### [c4.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.epigraphy.wheeler-1959.c4.3) No logical system has here been followed in the transcription of Indian names. Since 1947 a number of them have been corrected from the sort of Hobson-Jobson into which time and the British had corrupted them. In some instances this revision has perhaps been tinged with pedantry, in others a blundered or Anglicized spelling has merely been corrected. I have pursued a middle course which will please no one. Thus for Yamunā and Gangā I have retained the more widely familiar Jumna and Ganges. On the other hand, I have used the more seemly spelling of Mathurā for Muttra. In the case of the old Benares I have gone so far as to adopt Banaras but have shrunk from the archaistic Vārāṇasi. My aim has been to retain sufficient affinity between old and new to ensure recognition by the English reader, for whom this book is primarily intended. ### [c4.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.epigraphy.wheeler-1959.c4.4) References in an outline of this kind are necessarily reduced to a minimum, but the list at the end is sufficient to enable the persistent student to verify and extend the text. ### [c4.5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.epigraphy.wheeler-1959.c4.5) My indebtedness to others is necessarily extensive. In particular, I have received every possible assistance from Shri A. Ghosh, Director General of Archaeology in India, and his colleagues, especially Shri B. B. Lal; from Dr. F. A. Khan, Director of Archaeology in Pakistan; from Dr. H. D. Sankalia, Director of the Deccan College Research Institute at Poona; from Professor B. Subbarao, Head of the Department of Archaeology at the M.S. University of Baroda; and from Shri G. R. Sharma, Head of the Department of Ancient History, Culture and Archaeology, at Allāhābād University. Apart from personal contacts, I have drawn widely upon the periodical reports and studies issued by the Indian Department of Archaeology, which sets a pattern of punctual and systematic publication. ### [c4.6](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.epigraphy.wheeler-1959.c4.6) R. E. M. W. --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.epigraphy.wheeler-1959.c4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.epigraphy.wheeler-1959.c4) · Pramāṇa