History & Culture

The present work relates to the political organization in Northern India during the period from 600 A.D. to 1200 A.D. It describes, in detail, how several Kingdoms emerged and how their rulers claimed divinity, possessed absolute powers over their subjects. The author discusses the culminative effects of the separatist tendencies of the monarchs on Indian Polity whichultimately resulted in their weak resistance to the Muslim invaders from the North-West. The work is based on literary, epigraphic and foreign accounts. It is critical, informative and intelligible. The reader would find it interesting as well as instructive.

The work, in two volumes, contains 40 comprehensive studies on Ancient Indian Law, each of which is an entity in itself. The first volume contains articles on ancient Indian Law proper based on Dharmasastras, the Smrtis and the Arthasastras are liberally illustrated with quotations and references from these sources. These studies deal in particular with the theory and practice of the law of deposit; pledge; suretyship; labour; debts; and marriage. It also deals with the legal position of prostitutes and physicians; legal, fiscal, social and penal privileges; the protection of plants; infanticide and many other aspects of life in ancient India. The second volume deals in particular with the application of law and the manner in which the technical legal rules were reflected in Sanskrit literary works, such as the katha literature. The author comes to the conclusion that the often theoretical legal rules, as included in the Dharmasastras, Smrtis and other sources of ancient Indian Law are faithfully relfected in the Sanskrit classics.

The author’s direct aim in the present work is to furnish the historians of the special sciences with new material which will serve to widen the scope of their survey. The Hindus no less than the Greeks have shared in the work of constructing scientific concepts and methods in the investigation of physical phenomena, as well as of building up a body of positive knowledge which has been applied to industrial technique; and Hindu scientific ideas and methodology (e.g. the inductive method or method of algebraic analysis) have deeply influenced the course of natural philosophy in Asia-in the East as well as the West-in China and Japan, as well as in the Saracen Empire. The author has undertaken a comparative estimate of Greek and Hindu science. Hindu Philosophy om its empirical side was dominated by geometrical concepts and methods. The author has cared to see that the Sanskrit philosophico-scientific terminology, however difficult from its technical character, is rendered exceedingly precise, consistent, and expressive.

The book deals with Tibetan history from earliest times, but especially with the aims and movements of the period witnessed by the author. Anecdotes, conversations with leading Tibetans, and quotations from poetry and proverbs illustrate the Tibetan point of view. Sir Charles Bell gives an inside view of the Tibetans; he served for eighteen years on the Indo-Tibetan frontier, spoke and wrote the Tibetan language, and was brought into close touch with all classes from the reigning Dalai Lama downwards.

Recent developments in Tibet have attracted world wide attention and through this Indian edition, Sir Charles Bell’s classic study will perhaps be more eagerly read now than ever before.

Bharatiya Puralipi-Shastra is authored by mangal nath sinh, Geroge bulher.

The town of Bidar, some eighty miles from Hyderabad, flourished as the capital of the Bahmani kings during a hundred years from about the middle of the fifteenth century. It afterwards experienced sundry vicissitudes, and fell into complete decay in the later part of the nineteenth century, its once beautiful palaces and public buildings, formerly the envy of the great cities of India, becoming a neglected mass of debris. Dr. Yazdani, who visited Bidar for the first time in 1915, drew up a comprehensive programme for the thorough repair and conservation of the monuments at Bidar, and the work has been carried out through the enlightened policy of the NizamÍs Government by whose authority the present magnificently illustrated record has been made available. It surveys the physical features, history, and architecture of Bidar in Chapters I-III and thereafter treats in detail the numerous historical monuments, which include rare masterpieces of architecture and ornament in the palace buildings, temples, mosques, and tombs.

Epics of history are rare and The Peacock Throne is one of them. No royal lineage offers such a spectacle of high drama as the Mogul Dynasty of India which created the world’s most famous monument-the Taj Mahal. Not since Greek tradedy has there been so stark a revelation of the excesses of human behavior: incest, fratricide sons revolting continuously against fathers and the madness of uncontrolled aggression. These are the forces animating The Peacock Throne which brings India to both Eastern and Western readers as never before.

This work is intended to fill up a gap in the literature on the history of Education, which has not taken adequate account of the unique contributions made by Hindu thought to both educational theory and practice. The work is divided into Two Parts. Part 1 (Chs. 1-12) deals with the concepts and practices of Brahmanical Education on the authority of Veda, Astadhyayi, Arthasastra of Kautilya, Sutra literature and Epics. It discusses the problems of Legal, Industrial and Vocational Edu