INDIA CONCISE HIST 2E PA

by WATSON,FRANCIS

• ISBN13: 9780500283738
• ISBN10: 0500283737
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2002-09-17
• Publisher: THAMES&HUD

Summary

The history of India is a story of many states and empires which begins in the third millennium BC with the Indus Valley civilization. The subsequent influx of pastoral nomads, first in a long series of invasions from the northwest that included the Moghuls nearly 3,000 years later, established the Vedic religious tradition. In a gradual assimilation of popular cults, formalization of the Sanskrit language, and the institution of caste, this tradition supplied the cohesion upon which a national consciousness, in its Western sense, is a comparatively recent grafting. In modern times, two hundred years of British ascendancy were followed in the twentieth century by India taking its place among the nation-states of the modern world. For this revised edition, a new chapter by Dilip Hiro covers the events that have taken place in India from the 1980s to the present day. The enduring distinctiveness of India, its widely recognized but often bewildering "diversity of unity," emerges from these pages as a product of geographical simplicity and historical complexity. 186 illustrations and 4 maps.

Table of Contents

Prefatory note	p. 7
Introduction: Unity and Diversity	p. 11
The Roots: Men and Cities, the Coming of the Aryans, Gods, Kings and Sages	p. 21
The Light of Asia: The Power of Ideas, the Rise of Magadha, Alexander on the Indus, the Mauryan Empire	p. 39
The Heirs of Ashoka: Indo-Greeks and Scythians, the Kushan Prelude, the Imperial Guptas, Harsha of Kanauj	p. 53
The Deccan and the South: The Trade Factor, the Andhra Supremacy, Regional Conflicts, the Expansive South, the Empire of the Cholas	p. 71
The Impact of Islam: Arabs and Ghaznavids, the Feudal Scene in the North, the Turco-Afghan Paramountcy	p. 87
Moghuls and Europeans: Christians and Spices, the First Four Moghuls, the New Arrivals, Aurangzeb and the Break-Up of the Moghul Empire, the Anglo-French Involvement	p. 105
The British Period: The Path to Paramountcy, Reform and Revolt, the Victorian Zenith, the Tide of Nationalism	p. 129
The new India: Freedom by Division, the Shape of Development, India in the World	p. 159
India after Nehru: The Dynastic Succession, Into the Twenty-First Century	p. 175
Select Bibliography	p. 186
List of Illustrations	p. 191
Index	p. 196
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