The history of early India, from the earliest times to the end of the Maurya dynasty, has attracted the attention of modern scholars from the beginning of the Indological studies. The period incorporates what is generally described as ‘traditional’ history and also the age of the warring janapadas and of the Nanda-Maurya empire. For this vast span of time the sources available to historians are usually of uncertain date, diverse in nature, quite often contradictory in import and usually difficult to be reconciled with each other. Further, it was in this period that Indian polity saw the transition from tribal or lineage society to state and from state to empire. The attitudes and approaches of modern historians to the chronology, relative importance and significance of sources available to them as well as to what each of them thinks should be the questions he should pose before himself for investigation, have greatly differed. The present monograph makes in indepth study of these changing dimensions of the history writing of early India. It is pioneer work on the subject – at least no other work dealing so exhaustively with the new discoveries and the changing attitudes and approaches of the scholars of the post-1947 decades on the history of early India has so far been produced. It is, therefore, bound to become an indispensable work or researchers, teachers and students alike.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Shankar Goyal
Dr. Shankar Goyal (b. 1959), the young and ebullient author of the present monograph, is emerging very rapidly as one of the recognized authorities on the historiography of ancient India. He has already produced three monographs dealing with some aspects of ancient Indian history writing viz. History and Historiography of the Age of Harsha (Jodhpur, 1992), Aspects of Ancient Indian History and Historiography (New Delhi, 1993) and History Writing of Early India (Jodhpur, 1996). He has co-edited a number of works with such eminent scholars as Professors G.C. Pande, B. Ch. Chhabra and Jagannath Agrawal which are directly or indirectly concerned with this discipline, including Political History in a Changing World (Jodhpur, 1992), Reappraising Gupta History (New Delhi, 1992) and S.R. Goyal: His Multidimensional Historiography (New Delhi, 1992). He has also-co-edited several other monographs with Shri M.C. Joshi and Dr. Sobhag Maghur which include King Chandra and the Meharauli Pillar (Meerut, 1989), Spectrum of Nehru’s Thought (New Delhi, 1994) and Rajasthan Bharati, in two volumes (Jodhpur, 1995) and authored more than seventy research articles. His research output in a period of less than six years has been stupendous, and its originality and quality superb, as is evident from the reviews of his works appearing in national and international journals. Dr. Shankar Goyal did his graduation from the University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, post-graduation from the Deccan College, Pune, and Doctrate on Main Trends in Indian Historiography Since Independence from the University of Jodhpur, Jodhpur, where he is presently working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of History.
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