The volumes of the Project on the History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization aim at discovering the main aspects of India’s heritage and present them in an interrelated way. These volumes, in spite of their unitary look, recognize the difference between the areas of material civilization and those of ideational culture. The Project is not being executed by a single group of thinkers and writers who are methodologically uniform or ideologically identical in their commitments. In fact contributions are made by different scholars with different ideological persuasions and methodological approaches. The Project is marked by what may be called ‘Methodological Pluralism’. The current accounts of the history of civilization do not generally appear to give adequate importance to Non-Western Civilizations. Works like Needham’s Science and Civilization in China are rare. The accounts of Indic Civilization on the other hand have either neglected the factor of civilizational contacts or represented them in an inadequate manner. Few serious attempts have been made to gain an insight into human civilization through the comparative historical and integrated studies in all its aspects. Historical research necessarily tied to the study of the source material is still in the process of rising to the level of universal history. The present volume, is intended to review the history of science, philosophy and culture in Indian Civilization in the context of civilizational contacts with Iranic, Semitic and Hellenic worlds and comparable developments in them. The volume is divided into four sections: Proto-Historic people and language, Social and technological foundations of civilization, The most ancient Indian religious traditions and Birth and rise of science and philosophy. The focus of the present volume is on science, philosophy and culture, and not on political history or merely regional and epochal developments. It is not intended to give in this volume a general history of civilizations between India and the Mediterranean world but is intended to highlight how contributions were made to the common human quest of Truth, Goodness and Beauty under varying conditions and wide ranging contacts.
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