The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c3.6

v1.c3.6

The general scheme of the work may be explained in a few words. The first two chapters are introductory. In Chapter I Sir Halford Mackinder describes the India of the present day when railways and telegraph lines have taken the place of the ancient routes, and gives an account of those geographical features which have determined the course of history in past times. The chapter is founded on *Eight Lectures on India* prepared for the Visual Instruction Committee of the Colonial Office and published in 1910. A similar acknowledgment of indebtedness is due to the Government of India for the use which the editor has made of its official publications, especially the *Census Reports* of 1901 and 1911 and the *Imperial Gazetteer of India*, in Chapter II on peoples and languages, and the sources of history. In Chapter III Dr P. Giles reviews the evidence which Comparative Philology, aided by the ancient inscriptions of Western Asia, supplies for a knowledge of the early culture of the Āryans or ‘Wiros,’ their original habitat, and the date of the migrations which eventually led some of their tribes into India. The next five chapters are devoted to accounts of political, social, and economic conditions as represented in the earliest scriptures of the Brāhmans, Jains, and Buddhists—Chapters IV and V by Prof. A. B. Keith on the Vedas and Brāhmaṇas, Chapters VI and VII by Dr J. Charpentier and Dr T. W. Rhys Davids respectively on the earliest history of the Jains and Buddhists, and Chapter VIII by Mrs Rhys Davids on economic conditions in early Buddhist literature. The five chapters which follow extend this investigation to the Brāhman sources for the history of the post-Vedic period—Chapters IX–XII by Prof. E. Washburn Hopkins on the Sūtras, epics, and law-books, and Chapter XIII by the editor on the Purāṇas. Up to this point the evidence has been gleaned almost entirely from Indian sources and confined almost entirely to India. In the next four chapters India is viewed in relation to other countries—Chapter XIV by Prof. A. V. Williams Jackson on the ancient Persian dominions in India, Chapters XV and XVI by Mr E. R. Bevan on the invasion of Alexander the Great and the early Greek and Latin accounts of India, and Chapter XVII by Dr G. Macdonald on the Hellenic kingdoms of Syria, Bactria, and Parthia. In Chapters XVIII–XX the first great historical empire, that of the Mauryas, is described by Dr F. W. Thomas; and in Chapters XXI–XXIII the editor deals with the powers which arose on the ruins of the Maurya empire—the Indian native states, the Greek successors of Alexander the Great, and the Scythian and Parthian invaders. In Chapter XXIV Dr L. D. Barnett sums up what is known of the early history of Southern India; and in Chapter XXV he gives an analysis of the history of Ceylon which possesses a continuity in striking contrast to the fragmentary records of the kingdoms of the sub-continent. In the final Chapter XXVI Sir John Marshall describes the ancient monuments, and traces the various phases of Indian art from its beginnings to the first century A.D.