Foreign Impact on Indian Life and Culture (c. 326 B.C. to 300 A.D.)

The book covers an interesting and colourful period of Indian history. The period from the invasion of Alexander, the great, up to the coming of the imperial Guptas in Magadha witnessed the influx of foreign people with different ethnic and racial characteristics and religious customs, leading to significant changes in social and economic conditions in north India. It is rightly observed in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (V-25), "a few areas of the world’s surface have seen more blood-shed and rapine, more external aggression and internal strife, more movement and intermixture of people, more comings and goings of policies, religious creeds and customs than the Indian sub-continent. The eight chapters of the text give a fair glimpse of the interesting facets of contemporary life in India under the impact of Alexander’s invasion and consequential influx of foreigners. One chapter analyses exhaustively foreign impact on Indian polity and administrative organization. The foreign impact on society, economic life, religion and art has received due attention in three other chapters. The book will be immensely useful students and researchers.