Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History

By Romila Thapar

Book Overview

Cultural Pasts collects essays on a range of subjects in early Indian history. Its focus is on historiography and the changing dimensions of social and cultural history. The essays are divided into nine thematic groups: historiography, both current and from earlier periods; social and cultural transactions; archaeology and history; pre-Mauryan and Mauryan India; forms of exchange; the society of the heroes in the epics and the later tradition of venerating the hero; genealogies and origin myths as historical sources; the social context of the renouncer; and the past in the present--the use of the early past in current ideologies.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195664876
• ISBN13: 9780195664874
• Release Date: March 2003
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 1168 Pages
• Weight: 2.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.2" x 5.5" x 8.5"