Historical Geography of India- Collection of Articles from the Indian Historical Quarterly (Set of 2 Volumes)

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"A knowledge of space, no less than that of time, of geography, no less than that of chronology, is an indispensable prerequisite of any serious historical study. In fact, there can be no history without geography.

History of a people or civilization happens on the territory to which they belong or which they acquire through conquest or migration. Every historical event is connected with some place-name and therefore, when we read any ancient epic or modern book of history we come across names of rivers, mountains, towns, kingdoms, pilgrim centres, flora and fauna, climatic conditions etc. But many times we are not able to identify these place-names because, with the passage of time they have changed or new names have been superimposed upon them by foreign invaders and rulers. Here, historical geography comes to our help. It establishes a relation between ancient and modern place- names.

India is a vast country with a history going back to many millennia. Having passed through repeated foreign invasions, long periods of foreign rule and turbulence, she has been able to preserve a huge repository of literary, epigraphic and numismatic sources of its past. These sources are clothed in many classical and modern languages- Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and other old regional languages. Besides these indigenous sources, the accounts of foreign invaders, travellers, scholars and ambassadors in their own ancient languages throw valuable light on our past. Sometimes we are puzzled to find the same place-name presented to us in different phonetic or linguist forms peculiar to different linguistic groups. So we find Cholamandalam transformed into Coromandel. Vedic river Vitasta being spelled as Hydespes by the Greek and Roman writers. Historical geography alone can unravel these puzzles. But it has been a very neglected subject in our country.

Some beginnings in the study of historical geography were made by Alexander Cunningham in the nineteenth century and were carried further by Indian scholars like Nundolal Dey, BC Law, DC Sircar and SB Choudhary and some journals like Indian Antiquary and Indian Historical Quarterly conveyed their research articles, in a peace meal manner to interested readers. These journals ceased publication long back, therefore, much valuable and painstaking research done by the scholars of the old generation lies buried in their old files. Our best homage to the hallowed memory of these pioneers could be to compile and present their efforts to the inquisitive minds of the new generation. This book is a result of that craving.

**Contents and Sample Pages**