Hinduism in the Context of Social History (Set of 3 Volumes)

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It is quite surprising that despite the tremendous progress of the Indological studies in the last two centuries no encyclopedic history of Hinduism, by far the greatest contribution of India to the human civilization, has been written. It is of course true that most of its original texts and commentaries there on, innumerable histories of various Hindu seets and sub-sects, chapters on the history of Hinduism in standard works, independent monographs on the various facets of Hinduism and even small monographs on its history have been published by numerous scholars but so far no extensive history of this great religion has been attempted. The present work of S.R. Goyal, one of the greatest historians of Indian religions, we hope, will fill up this long felt desideratum. Especially discernible is the fact that here Goyal delineates the story of Hindu religion against the background of the changes in society and correlates its fortunes with changes in social and political ideas and institutions. We are sure that the world of Indology will welcome it enthusiastically.

Professor S.R. Goyal described as 'one of the five best recent historians of ancient India' by Professor David N. Lorenzen, the great Mexican Orientalist, combines all the qualities associated with scientific scholarship. He has authored more than fifty voluminous works and over 175 research papers which cover so diverse fields as political history, religious history, literature, biographies, numismatics and epigraphy. Among his his major works are included his doctoral thesis, A History of the Imperial Guptas, three 'corpus-like' volumes on ancient Indian inscriptions, two volumes respectively on Kautilya and Megasthenes, a three volume authoritative study of ancient Indian history in about two thousand pages, a three volume study of ancient Indian numismatics, a two volume study of religious history of ancient India, four volumes on great rulers of ancient India and a monograph on the recently discovered inscriptions. All his works have been highly acclaimed and admired both in India and abroad.

Professor Goyal presided over the Silver Jubilee Congress of the Epigraphical Society of India in 1999 and the 90th Annual Conference of the Numismatic Society of India in 2006. He was also invited to be the General President of the Indian History and Culture Society in 2006. He has also been honoured with several festschrifts, including Reappraising Gupta History for S.R. Goyal, S.R. Goyal: His Multidimensional Historiography, a four volume festschrift entitled Sriramabhinandanam: Reconstructing Indian History for S.R. Goyal, Investigating Indian Society and Early India: Historical Probings.

The present work, which we proudly present to the scholars of ancient Indian history and Indian religions, has been authored by Professor S.R. Goyal. Professor Goyal was former Professor and Head, Department of History, J.N.V. University, Jodhpur. Described as 'one of the five best recent historians of ancient India' by Professor David N. Lorenzen, the great Mexican Orientalist, Professor Goyal combined all the qualities associated with scientific scholarship. He published more than 50 voluminous works and over 175 research papers which covered so diverse fields as political history, religious history, social history, literature, biographies, numismatics and epigraphy. He was honoured with the General Presidentship of the Silver Jubilee Congress of the Epigraphical Society of India held at Udupi in April, 1999, and was elected the Honorary Fellow of the Society. In 2006 he became the General President of the 90th Annual Conference of the Numismatic Society of India held at Santiniketan, West Bengal. He was also invited to be the General President of the 2006 Annual Conference of the Indian History and Culture Society held at Gwalior which he could not accept because of the clash of dates.

Professor Goyal's doctoral thesis, A History of the Imperial Guptas (1967), was acclaimed as 'the best analysis of the Gupta period which I have ever read' by Professor A. L. Basham (National Professor of Australia) and as 'imaginative', 'well-written' and 'a model of historiography' by Professor Eleanor Zelliot (Minnesota, U.S.A.). The various theories propounded in it were described by Professor R.C. Majumdar as 'deserving very careful consideration'.

Among other major works of Professor Goyal are included three corpus-like volumes on ancient Indian inscriptions, two volumes respectively on Kautilya and Megasthenes, a three-volume study of ancient Indian history in about two thousand pages, a three-volume study of ancient Indian numismatics and four volumes of Great Rulers of Ancient India Series. He also edited several works including Indian Art of the Gupta Age.

This work of Professor S.R. Goyal seeks to study religion in the context of social history. Here Professor Goyal delineates the story of Hindu religion against the background of the changes in society and correlates its fortunes with changes in social and political ideas and institutions. Goyal was indeed a literary genius, an institution by himself. He belonged to that genre of historians whose contributions were not restricted to a single specialised field of study. He worked on a very wide canvas and published more than 50 scholarly works and over 175 research papers on a broad range of varied subjects relating to different branches of Indological studies. His researches that he published in his lifespan made such a great impact on the world of ancient Indian history that during the last five decades or so there has been hardly any important work which does not take note of his views and suggestions. His researches have definitely altered the approach to ancient Indian history and also the methods of its study. In fact the sheer volume of his writings and extensive range of their coverage, not to speak of their high quality and originality, have greatly amazed his contemporaries which include such great luminaries of Indology as Professors G.C. Pande, his guru, R.S. Sharma, Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, R. Champakalakshmi, David N. Lorenzen, Lallanji Gopal, A.M. Shastri and Dr. S.P. Gupta, to name only a few.

S.R. Goyal's interest in the study of religious history became pronounced in the eighties. However, in view of his all-pervasive activities in diverse fields of historical research this interest should not be thought of as sudden. A chronological observation on his publications show that he started writing in early sixties on subjects pertaining to ancient world history and Indian religions with which he became acquainted through primary and secondary sources. In the next stage, as his works reveal, he was more interested in the study of the sources in themselves, both literary and epigraphic, in course of which he increasingly realized that religious elements are inextricably blended with the materials he has been handling all through. This mastery over the sources pertaining to religious history induced him to write on the subject.