The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c3.2

v1.c3.2

Regarded as a record of the character and achievements of great leaders of men, this history indeed is, and must always remain, sadly deficient. Of all the conquerors and administrators who appear in this volume there are two only—Alexander the Great and, in a less degree, Açoka—whose personality is at all intimately known to us; in the case of others the bare memory of some of their deeds has been preserved; the rest have become mere names to which research has given a time and a place. But the fragments of fact which have been rescued from the past are now sufficiently numerous and well established to enable us to construct a chronological and geographical framework for the political history of many of the kingdoms and empires of ancient India; and into this framework may be fitted the history of social institutions, which is reflected with unusual clearness in the ancient literatures.