Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Aryans and British India
"Aryans and British India is a seminal work and will be read and reread by serious students of Indian history for many generations."—Stanley Wolpert, author of India "This is a creative and venturesome rethinking of issues of race, language, and caste in the British colonial understanding of India."—Aram A. Yengoyan, University of California, Davis
Elephants & Kings
Because of their enormous size, elephants have long been irresistible for kings as symbols of their eminence. In early civilizations—such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Civilization, and China—kings used elephants for royal sacrifice, spectacular hunts, public display of live captives, or the conspicuous consumption of ivory—all of them tending toward the elephant’s extinction. The kings of India, however, as Thomas R. Trautmann shows in this study, found a use for elephants that actually helped preserve their habitat and numbers in the wild: war. Trautmann traces the history of the war elephant in India and the spread of the institution to the west—where elephants took part in s...
India
India: Brief History of a Civilization provides a brief overview of a very long period, allowing students to acquire a mental map of the entire history of Indian civilization in a short book. Most comprehensive histories devote a few chapters to the early history of India and an increasing number of pages to the more recent period, giving an impression that early history is mere background and that Indian civilization finds its fulfillment in the nation-state. Thomas R. Trautmann believes that the deep past lives on and is a valuable resource for understanding the present day and for creating a viable future. The result is a book that is short enough to read in a few sittings, but comprehensive in coverage--5,000 years of India in brief.
Languages and Nations
British rule of India brought together two very different traditions of scholarship about language, whose conjuncture led to several intellectual breakthroughs of lasting value. Two of these were especially important: the conceptualization of the Indo-European language family by Sir William Jones at Calcutta in 1786—proposing that Sanskrit is related to Persian and languages of Europe—and the conceptualization of the Dravidian language family of South India by F.W. Ellis at Madras in 1816—the "Dravidian proof," showing that the languages of South India are related to one another but are not derived from Sanskrit. These concepts are valid still today, centuries later. This book continue...
India
"This is an outline of Indian civilization, comprehensive in coverage but brief enough to be read in a few sittings. It gives an overview of 5,000 years of history in South Asia, from the beginnings of farming, cities and writing to the present. It gives readers new to the topic a map of the territory and the tools to take on more advanced and specialized readings"--Provided by publisher.
Arthashastra
This book is a definitive introduction to the classic text, the Arthashastra, the world’s first manual on political economy. The 2000-year-old treatise is ascribed to Kautilya, the prime minister of King Chandragupta Maurya, and is as important to Indian thought as Machiavelli’s The Prince is to Europe. Arthashastra, or ‘the science of wealth’, is a study of economic enterprise, and advises the king-entrepreneur on how to create prosperity. Thomas Trautmann’s exploration of this seminal work illuminates its underlying economic philosophy and provides invaluable lessons for the modern age.
The Aryan Debate
Part of the prestigious Debate series, this book brings together aa selection of pioneering essays. The introduction spells out the extremely topical Aryan debate. The central question behind this selection is, did the Sanskrit-speaking Aryans enter India from the Northwest in 1500 BC, or were they indigenous to India and identical with the people who inhabited the Indus Valley between 2800 and 1500 BC.
Time
Considers an important dimension in understanding culture
Kinship and History in South Asia
Kinship and History in South Asia presents four papers given at a small conference of kinship studies scholars, “Kinship and History in South Asia,” at the University of Toronto in 1973. They draw upon one another and show several common concerns, particularly the theoretical importance of Dravidian systems. Yey they remain specialist studies, each within its own raison d’être. Brendra E. F. Beck contributes a study of the “kinship nucleus” in Tamil folklore, Levi-Straussian both in its treatment of kinship and of mythology. George L. Hart’s study of woman and the sacred in the ancient Tamil literature of the Sangam attempts to elucidate this literature in its own terms, and also to relate it to Beck’s “kinship nucleus.” Thomas R. Trautmann presents a critical examination of the evidence for cross-cousin marriage in early North India, attempting to determine historical fact from literary materials. Narendra K. Wagle offers a survey of the kinship categories to be found in the Pali Jatakas.
The Clash of Chronologies
The Clash of Chronologies shows the crucial value of the ancient period of Indian history for understanding India's deep history. In this valuable volume, Thomas Trautmann makes this connection with great acuity through a series of studies, on topics ranging from the contrasting theories of time and history in India and Europe, persistent codes of kinship and marriage between north and south India, the conjuncture of ancient Indian and European traditions of language analysis in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, legacies of European scholars of India's deep history such as Sir William Jones and A.L.Basham, and structures of the ancient Indian state. At a time when ancient history is being dismissed by some as a projection of colonial rule or hyper-magnified by others as the charter of the modern state, this book finds a middle way that restores the true weight and value of ancient history, namely as an essential component of the long view, a way of finding our place and a tool for making a future. This is a critical volume for students and scholars of ancient as well as modern Indian History, Anthropology and Linguistics.
