{"id":1196,"date":"2009-02-07T22:31:35","date_gmt":"2009-02-08T03:31:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s265039441.onlinehome.us\/philpaine\/?p=1196"},"modified":"2018-08-10T00:11:56","modified_gmt":"2018-08-10T04:11:56","slug":"17175-ram-sharan-sharma-indias-ancient-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=1196","title":{"rendered":"17175. (Ram Sharan Sharma) India\u2019s Ancient Past"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a long time, the most read\u00ader-friend\u00adly intro\u00adduc\u00adtion to the his\u00adto\u00adry of ancient India (i.e. any\u00adthing before the Gup\u00adta peri\u00adod) has been the first vol\u00adume of Romi\u00adla Tha\u00adpar\u2019s His\u00adto\u00adry of India. But that book was pub\u00adlished back in 1966, and advances in archae\u00adol\u00ado\u00adgy and schol\u00adar\u00adship have out\u00addat\u00aded it. I would now rec\u00adom\u00admend this book as a con\u00adtem\u00adpo\u00adrary sub\u00adsti\u00adtute. It\u2019s a good place for some\u00adone to start their read\u00ading on the sub\u00adject, though I sug\u00adgest that they read it in con\u00adjunc\u00adtion with Wikipedia entries on most of its main topics.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have some prob\u00adlems with Shar\u00adma\u2019s work. He embraces some dubi\u00adous notions of \u201csocial evo\u00adlu\u00adtion\u201d, he sees noth\u00ading of inter\u00adest in the \u201ctrib\u00adal\u201d and non-Vedic or non-Dra\u00advid\u00adi\u00adan peo\u00adples of India except their inevitable con\u00adver\u00adsion to \u201cciv\u00adi\u00adliza\u00adtion\u201d, and he writes absolute\u00adly noth\u00ading about Indi\u00ada\u2019s inter\u00adac\u00adtion with South\u00adeast Asia. This last stands in con\u00adtrast to his lengthy dis\u00adcus\u00adsions of Indi\u00adan trade, polit\u00adi\u00adcal, and cul\u00adtur\u00adal inter\u00adac\u00adtions with Cen\u00adtral Asia, and even the Roman Empire. But impor\u00adtant as these were, India nev\u00ader export\u00aded much of its cul\u00adture to these areas, where\u00adas in South\u00adeast Asia, Indi\u00adan cul\u00adture was export\u00aded on a gigan\u00adtic scale. Hin\u00addu and Indo-Bud\u00addhist king\u00addoms were set up in places as far as Viet\u00adnam. Indi\u00ada\u2019s east\u00adward trade links were every bit, and per\u00adhaps more, impor\u00adtant than its west\u00adward ones. Shar\u00adma hard\u00adly men\u00adtions them. But despite these weak\u00adness\u00ades, the book remains a good intro\u00adduc\u00adtion to a sub\u00adject with which every edu\u00adcat\u00aded per\u00adson in the world should have some basic familiarity.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a long time, the most read\u00ad\u00ader-friend\u00ad\u00adly intro\u00adduc\u00adtion to the his\u00adto\u00adry of ancient India (i.e. any\u00adthing before the Gup\u00adta peri\u00adod) has been the first vol\u00adume of Romi\u00adla Tha\u00adpar\u2019s His\u00adto\u00adry of India. But that book was pub\u00adlished back in 1966, and advances \u2026<\/p>\n

Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[946,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-b-reading","category-br-reading-2009"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1196"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8099,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1196\/revisions\/8099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}