Historical Geography of Ancient India c5.s6.1

c5.s6.1

We have at present some useful works on the early geography of India. Cunningham's *Ancient Geography of India* is mainly based upon the accounts of Fa-Hien and Hiuen Tsang, and on those of the Greek writers. The author's own great archaeological discoveries have also been embodied. This work has been re-edited with introduction and notes by S. N. Majumdar (Calcutta, 1924). N. L. Dey's *Geographical Dictionary of Ancient and Mediaeval India* is not a systematic treatise, but a dictionary and a very useful hand-book. It is defective because it omits in general the grounds of identification. In it the geography of southern India has been neglected. The first edition of the book appeared in Calcutta in 1899, and a second edition was published in 1927, by Messrs. Luzac & Co., London. Both these works are wanting in relevant inscriptional data. B. C. Law's *Geography of Early Buddhism* attempts for the first time at presenting a geographical picture of ancient India drawn from Pali Buddhist Texts. It may be added here that the same author has also written, by way of a supplement to the above work, an article entitled *Geographical Data from Sanskrit Buddhist Literature* published in the *Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute* (XV, 1934, Oct.-Jany.) and later incorporated into his *Geographical Essays* published by Messrs. Luzac & Co., in 1937. *Geographical Essays*, Vol. I, is a collection of articles eliciting geographical and topographical information which will be of value especially to geographers of ancient India.