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A History of India. By HERMANN KULKE and DIETMAR ROTHERMUND. Revised edition. London and New York: ROUTLEDGE, CHAPMAN & HALL. 1990. Pp. 411. $19.95.
This revised paperback edition of a textbook first published in 1986 is a welcome addition to the limited corpus of instructional materials on South Asian history. The collaboration of two respected German historians, one a specialist in the premodern era (Hermann Kulke) and the other a scholar of modern India (Dietmar Rothermund), has resulted in a work that is both evenhanded in its treatment and consistent in its quality. Unlike most textbooks dealing with the entire span of the subcontinent's history, A History of India allocates as much space to the period before A.D. 1500 (chs. 1 through 4) as it does to the subsequent centuries (chs. 5 through 8). Each section is equally current in its scholarship, in striking contrast to other comprehensive texts whose conceptions of the premodern period are often themselves approaching antique status.
Readers of this journal will particularly appreciate the first four chapters, written by Hermann Kulke and comprising approximately two hundred pages. To the best of my knowledge, A History of India is the only textbook that incorporates research...