Most of the outstanding writings on the historical geography of ancient India, such as those of F.E. Pargiter, S.N. Majumdar Sastri, N.L. Dey, H.C. Raychaudhuri and B.C. Law, were produced in Calcutta, and the tradition is maintained by Prof. D.C. Sircar through his works entitles Cosmography and Geography in Early Indian Literature and Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India. While the first of these is a general treatment of the evidence of early literary works, mostly Indian, on the cosmographical ideas and geographical knowledge of the Indians of old, the second work, i.e., the present book now in its second edition, contains dissertations on numerous problems relating to India’s historical geography of the ancient and medieval periods. In some of the chapters, the author has edited certain important geographical texts; in these as well as in many of the other chapters, attempts have been made to determine the correct forms of hundreds of geographical names as well as their location. There are also some special studies such as those on the sphere of the Indian emperor’s influence, the early Indian conceptions regarding the earth, the addition of numbers to geographical names, identical names of different localities, cartography, and elephant forests. A mere glance at the contents will be enough to indicate the wide scope of the work.
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