Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History [Hardcover]

Romila Thapar (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 3, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0195640500 | ISBN-13: 978-0195640502

Cultural Pasts collects essays on a range of subjects in early Indian history. Its focus is on historiography and the changing dimensions of social and cultural history. The essays are divided into nine thematic groups: historiography, both current and from earlier periods; social and cultural transactions; archaeology and history; pre-Mauryan and Mauryan India; forms of exchange; the society of the heroes in the epics and the later tradition of venerating the hero; genealogies and origin myths as historical sources; the social context of the renouncer; and the past in the present--the use of the early past in current ideologies.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The fifty-one articles presented in this volume testify to an ability to present scholarship in a stimulating and readable manner, as well as to the enduring quality of her work, which is of continuing value to students and specialists in the field ... a compact and well-presented volume, and is to be congratulated for the provision of an index, rarely to be found in such collections. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies

About the Author

Romila Thapar is Emeritus Professor of History.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1172 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (May 3, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195640500
• ISBN-13: 978-0195640502
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.7 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,085,544 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars South Asia Books, September 19, 2010

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0 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Cant believe the negative portrayal, May 7, 2010

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Shankar Ratneshwaran "VedicStar" (Middletown, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History (Hardcover)

I thing of Romila Thapar as a well known scholar, but after reading this book it looks like a campaign author is trying to systematically willify Indian culture using this book. I was shocked to see only negativity portrayed all over this book neatly referenced with facts from other "burn India" sources.