viiiPREFACE
India’s history is the fascinating epic of a great civilisation. It is a history of
amazing cultural continuity which has reasserted itself again and again.
Today it is the history of one-fifth of mankind which is, therefore, of
importance to all of us. Both Indian and foreign historians have been
attracted by this great theme and each generation has produced its own
histories of India. Several histories of India have been written in recent
times, thus the authors of the present volume may be asked why they have
dared to publish yet another account of Indian history. First of all research
in Indian history to which both authors have contributed in their own way
is progressing rapidly and an adequate synthesis is needed at more frequent
intervals which reflects the current state of knowledge and stimulates
further inquiries. This kind of up-to-date synthesis the authors hope to
have provided here. Furthermore, Indian history from antiquity to the
present is such an enormous subject that it requires more than one author
to cope with it. Consequently many surveys of Indian history have been
presented by teams of authors, but these authors rarely have had the
benefit of working together in the same department discussing problems of
Indian history for many years. This has been the good fortune of the
present authors who have worked together at the South Asia Institute of
Heidelberg University for nearly twenty years. In the late 1970s they first
embarked on this joint venture at the request of a German publisher. The
German edition of this volume was published in 1982. The first English
edition was published by David Croom of Croom Helm, London, in 1986.
Subsequently the rights were acquired by Routledge, London, and ever
since the Routledge editorial team has been helpful in bringing out several
new editions of this text which seem to have attracted many readers.
Inspired by this interest in their work the authors have prepared this
thoroughly revised edition in January 1997. They updated the text not only
with regard to recent history, they also tried to take into account all major
new publications in the field so as to reflect the state of the art in historical
research. They have benefited from numerous discussions with Indian,
British and American colleagues many of whom cannot read their German