POLITICAL HISTORY OF ANCIENT INDIA: From the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty

Description

This book deals with the political history of Ancient India from the accession of Parikshit to the extinction of the Gupta Dynasty. The idea of the work suggested itself many years ago from observing a tendency in some of the current books to dismiss the history of the period from the Bharata war to the rise of Buddhism as incapable of arrangement in definite chronological order. The author’s aim was to present materials for an authentic chronological history of ancient India through facts recovered from sources.

The book is divided into two parts. In the first part an attempt has been made to furnish, from a comparison of the Vedic, Epic, Puranic, Jaina, Buddhist and secular Brahmanical literature, such a narrative of the political vissitudes of the post-Parikshita-pre-Bimbisarian period as may not, be less intelligible to the reader than Dr. Smith’s account of the transactions of the post-Bimbisarian age. The purpose of the second part is to provide a history of the period from Bimbisara to the Guptas.

Hemchandra Raychaudhuriwas Carmichael Professor and Head of the Department of Ancient Indian History and Culture, Calcutta University.