Content area
Full text
A Sourcebook of Indian Civilization. Edited by NIHARRANJAN RAY, B. D. CHATTOPADHYAY, V. R. MANI, and RANABIR CHAKRAVARTI. Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2000. 673 pp. Rs. 650.
The project leading to this book had its origins in 1969, with a plan to publish a compendium of extracts from primary sources on Indian history previously published in English translation within three volumes on ancient, medieval and modern periods. Niharranjan Ray was the original project director until his death in 1981, with B. D. Chattopadhyaya serving as editor and V. R. Mani performing the copying of excerpts. The original manuscript for the first volume was ready in 1975 but languished until the late 1990s, when Ranabir Chakravarti volunteered to prepare an appendix that updated the work with excerpts and commentary on the movement of the field during the last twenty-five years. The result of this checkered history is a peculiar volume informed in part by the intellectual concerns of a previous generation, then retrofitted with an extended historiographic essay which is surprisingly useful as a reference tool.
The first chapter,...