A short bibiliography of good sources for Indian history

High-quality Indian history sources, Part I: Secondary sources

A general word of advice that will serve you well in life: the most popular commentators, books, the most public-facing intellectuals are usually not the best in their fields, nor are they the best to learn from. Here’s what libertarian economist Bryan Caplan had to say in a different context:

In my world, Alex Tabarrok is more important than Barack Obama, Robin Hanson is more important than Paul Krugman, and the late Gary Gygax is more important than Jeremy Lin… whoever that might be.

In your dabbling in Indian history, Ananda Coomaraswamy should be far bigger than Romila Thapar; Moti Chandra should be far bigger than Sanjeev Sanyal; zinc smelting should be bigger of a “great Indian invention” than the number 0 or shampoo; the private corporation should be a more important aspect of ancient Indian society than glorification of kings and dynasties, epistemology, the Puruṣārtha and “restraint over the senses” should be bigger themes of Indian philosophy than anachronistic projections of LGBT/environmentalism/nationalism onto the ancients.

A common error in Indian history discussions is the argument from ignorance: making confident assertions about the absence of something without having comprehensively searched for it. This has a dangerous self-reinforcing effect, because history academia has a stupid norm of preferring more recent and tertiary sources, deeming old sources outdated and secondary sources non-notable: so when modern writers are poorly-read in the works of their superiors before them, those works become lost forever.

This post provides a bibiliography of high-quality, information-dense books on Indian history (1200 BC—1200). Let me know of any recommendations to add! The very first book I would start with is Moti Chandra: his information-density beats everything else on this list; you will learn a lot.

Contents

• Classic authors, mostly pre-1980

  • General

  • Economy, trade and foreign relations

  • Science, technology and academia

  • Politics and society

  • Infrastructure and aesthetics

• Archaeology, genetics and linguistics

  • Archaeology

  • Language, dating and authorship

• Twitter anons

Classic authors, mostly pre-1980

General

• RC Majumdar (1951-77), The History and Culture of the Indian People. Vols 1-5: 4022 pages. Full texts from archive.org (vols I, II, III, IV, V), gov.in (vols I, II, III, IV, V).

• RC Majumdar (1920), Corporate Life in Ancient India. 442 pages. Full texts from archive.org, indianculture.gov.in, [high-quality] vifindia.

Economy, trade and foreign relations

• Moti Chandra (1977), Trade and Trade Routes in Ancient India. 294 pages. Full texts from archive.org, indianculture.gov.in.

• DC Jain (1980), Economic Life in Ancient India as Depicted in Jain Canonical Literature. 190 pages. Full texts from archive.org, indianculture.gov.in.

• RC Majumdar (1979), Ancient Indian Colonization In South East Asia. 109 pages. Full text from archive.org.

• Ministry of External Affairs (2014), Encyclopedia of India-China Cultural Contacts. Vols 1-2: 1071 pages. Full text from mea.gov.in (vols I, II)

• Khaliq Ahmad Nizami (1994), Early Arab Contact with South Asia. 18 pages. Full text from oup.com.

• Kathryn A. Hain (2020), *The Prestige Makers: Greek Slave Women in Ancient India*. Full text from muse.jhu.edu

Science, technology and academia

• Brajendranath Seal (1915), The Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus. 305 pages. Full texts from archive.org, indianculture.gov.in.

• Bose, Sen & Subbarayappa (1971), A Concise History of Science in India. 722 pages. Full text from archive.org.

• AK Bag (1979), Mathematics in Ancient and Medieval India. 364 pages. Full text from archive.org.

• Sen & Bag (1983), The Śulbasūtras of Baudhāyana, Āpastamba, Kātyāyana and Mānava: With Text, English Translation and Commentary. 293 pages.

• Benoy Kumar Sarkar (1918), Hindu achievements in exact science; a study in the history of scientific development. 106 pages. Full texts from archive.org.

• Surender K Jain, S G Dani (2022), Mathematics in Ancient Jaina literature. 248 pages. Library access from World Scientific.

• V Raghavan (1952), Yantras or Mechanical Devices in Ancient India. 31 pages. Full texts from archive.org, [high-quality] iiwc.in.

• TM Srinivasan (1970), Water-lifting devices in Ancient India: ther origin and mechanisms (from the earliest times to c. AD 1000). 8 pages. Full text from insa.nic.in.

• PC Ray (1956), History of chemistry in Ancient and Medieval India. 574 pages. Full text from archive.org.

• Radhavallabh Tripathi (2021), Vāda in Theory and Practice: Studies in Debates, Dialogues and Discussions in Indian Intellectual Discourses. 434 pages. Preview from Google Books, buy from publisher or elsewhere.

• Radhakumud Mookerji (1951), Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist). 748 pages. Full texts from archive.org, indianculture.gov.in.

• Jayatilleke (1963), Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge. 526 pages. Full text from archive.org.

• Patrick Olivelle (1992), Saṃnyāsa Upaniṣads. 114 pages. Full text from archive.org.

• Karl Potter (1977), The Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies. Vols 1-26: ~19,000 pages. Full texts of vols 1-5, 7-10 from archive.org, library access of vol 6 from JSTOR, no clue about the rest. This work is included because it is a monumental effort, but I think it should be seen more as an index of analyses of primary sources, rather than a pedagogical tool.

Politics and society

• Benoy Kumar Sarkar (1922), The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus. 265 pages. Full texts from archive.org, indianculture.gov.in.

• JP Sharma (1968), Republics in Ancient India. 294 pages. Full text from academia.edu.

• VS Agrawala (1953), India as known to Pāṇini. 594 pages. Full text from archive.org.

• Ananda Coomaraswamy (1942), Spiritual Authority And Temporal Power In The Indian Theory Of Government. 104 pages. Full text from archive.org.

• Moti Chandra (1973), The World of Courtesans. 272 pages. Full text from archive.org.

• Radhakumud Mookerji (1943), Chandragupta Maurya and his times. Full text from archive.org.

Infrastructure and aesthetics

• Percy Brown (1959), Indian Architecture (Buddhist And Hindu). 396 pages. Full text from archive.org. (artistic illustrations of cities)

• PK Acharya (1927-46), Manasara series. Full texts from archive.org (vols I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII), esp. Vol VI

• Ananda Coomaraswamy (1930), Early Indian Architecture: Cities and City Gates, Etc. 33 pages.

• DN Shukla (1960), Vastu-shastra: Hindu science of architecture. 2543 pages. Full text from wisdomlib.org.

• SK Joshi (1981), Defence architecture in early North Karnataka. 306 pages. Full text from Shodhganga. (includes illustrations of city layouts)

Archaeology, genetics and linguistics

Archaeology

• Robin Coningham & Ruth Young (2015), The Archaeology of South Asia: From the Indus to Asoka, c. 6500 BCE – 200 CE. Excerpts from @Peter_Nimitz.

• Robin Coningham et al (1997), The Archaeology of Early Historic South Asia: The Emergence of Cities and States. Library access from archive.org.

• Richard Salomon (1998), Indian epigraphy: a guide to the study of inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the other Indo-Aryan languages. Full text from archive.org.

• Amalananda Ghosh (1989), Encyclopedia of Indian Archeology. Full texts from archive.org (vols 1, 2), indianculture.gov.in (vols 1, 2)

• Iravatham Mahadevan via R Champalakshmi (2003), A magnum opus on Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions. Full text from Webpage.

• Archaeological journals, reports and databases — just for reference. No one expects you to read these.

  • National Mission on Monument and Antiques [SEARCHABLE DATABASE of archaeological finds]. From nmma.nic.in.

  • Archaeological Survey of India [Alexander Cunningham’s reports] (1871—73). Full texts from archive.org (vols 1, 2, 3).

  • Epigraphia Indica [main publication of ASI] (1888—1979). Full texts from archive.org, ignca.gov.in, bjp.org

  • The Indian Antiquary (1872—1933). Full texts from UPenn

  • Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum (1877—1925). Full texts from archive.org

  • Indian Archaeology: a review [annual report] (1953—2003). Full texts from asi.nic.in, nmma.nic.in.

  • Annual Report on Indian Epigraphy [annual report] (1887—2018). Full texts from UPenn

Language, dating and authorship

• MR Yardi (1986), The Mahābhārata, Its Genesis and Growth: A Statistical Study. 288 pages. [Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute]

• MR Yardi (1994), The Rāmāyaṇa, Its Origin and Growth: A Statistical Study. 302 pages. [Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute] Full text from benjaminindology.wordpress.com

Twitter anons

Some Twitter accounts that post on Indian history, worth a follow:

• Myself: @real_mahalingam

• Academic-coded: @suhasm, @AnushaSRao2 @avtansa, @ShivalikToto, @maitra_varuna, @vicitracitta, @sharmasatyan, @vicitracitta

• Trad-coded: @blog_supplement (manasataramgini), @shrikanth_krish, @satoverma, @arya_amsha

• Brahmanical Patriarchy Enjoyer-coded: @sapratha (substack), @dhanyavisnu

• AIT-Alt-coded: @agenetics1, @Ugra___

• Non-Right-coded: @sialmirzagoraya, @The_Equationist

• Not Indian-specific: @Peter_Nimitz, @XianyangCB, @razibkhan, @orientalismus, @Paracelsus1092

• A very interesting project, not out yet: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Indian History. Website, Twitter: @ilustratedindia.

Some particularly good snippets by these authors:

• <redacted>, Some reflections on the history of Indian science

• @sapratha, Journey to the East