History of Civilization in Ancient India

The history of ancient India is a history of thirty centuries of human culture and progress. It divides itself into several distinct and long periods or epochs, each of which, for length of years, will compare with the entire history of many a modern people. Each of these periods has a distinct literature, and each has a civilisation peculiar to it, which modified itself into the civilisation of the next period under the operation of great political and social causes. In this book the author, R.C.Dutt, gives us an account of these historical events by which they are marked. Ancient India has a connected history to tell, and its special feature is its intense attractiveness. We read in that ancient story how gifted Aryan people, separated by circumstances from the outside world, worked out their civilisation amidst natural and climatic conditions which were peculiarly favourable. We note their intellectual discoveries age after age; we watch their religious progress and development through successive centuries; we mark their political career, as they gradually expand over India, and found new kingdoms and dynasties; we observe their struggles against priestly domination, and their great social and religious revolutions. The great causes which led to this social and religious changes are manifest to the reader, and he follows the gradual development of ancient Hindu civilisation through thirty centuries, from 2000 B.C. to 1000 years after Christ. The two volume set remains an exemplary work of presenting history of a nation as varied and as complex as India. Though many hundreds of books have been written on the subject, but the work of R.C.Dutt stands as a monument in presenting Ancient Indian history to the readers in a style which is as fresh and interesting today as when it was released for the first time more than a century ago. This is the justification for choosing to make this reference set available to the reading public again.