Just a thousand years ago, India was dotted with universities across its length and breadth, where international students flocked to gain credentials in advanced education. This illustrated book describes how these multi-disciplinary centers of learning existed in several forms such as forest universities, brick-and-mortar universities and temple universities. It examines the funding for these citadels of learning and their graduation ceremonies. The process by which India’s ancient systems of education helped to fuel a knowledge revolution around the world with its manuscripts, forming the basis for monographs and academic papers, is explained with references. The marauding incursions by Muslim invaders, which disrupted the idyllic world of university learning in India, followed by European colonization, which led to further erosion and degeneration of India’s traditional learning systems, have been taken up in some detail. Readers will get a snapshot view of India's education system down the ages from ancient to modern times.

Illustrations: Illustrations

It is book on cultural heritage from the perspective of tourism. With its exploration of the building of the multi-coloured cultural heritage of India, the land of diversity, from the Indus Valley Civilization to the early modern period, problems and prospects of Indian cultural heritage tourism in the global context.

This book looks at the ways in which archaeological methods have been used in debates concerning the early medieval and medieval periods in South Asia. Despite the incorporation and use of archaeological data to corroborate historical narratives, the theories and methods of archaeology are largely ignored in and excluded from the dominating, institutionalized, and hegemonic disciplinary discourses. The volume offers contesting insights, polemical narratives, and new data from archaeological contexts to initiate a debate on many foundational premises of archaeological and historical narratives. It focuses on the much-neglected region of the Eastern Ganga-Brahmaputra Basin as a spatial frame to do this and studies themes such as spatial and temporal scales of concepts and methods, multi-scaler factors and processes of continuity and changes, the settlement archaeology of the alluvial landscape, changing patterns of agrarian transformation, and material cultures, including coins, inscriptions, pottery, and sculptures, in their contexts in sub-regional, regional, and supra-regional intersections. Dedicated to historian Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya, this volume presents a crucial and unprecedented intervention in the study of the early medieval and the medieval periods. It will be useful for scholars and researchers of archaeology, ancient history, medieval history, water history, earth sciences, palaeoecology, historical ecology, epigraphy, art history, material culture studies, Indian history, and South Asian studies in general.

This volume cross-examines the stability of heritage as a concept. It interrogates the past which materialises through multi-layered narratives on monuments and other objects that sustain cultural diversity. It seeks to understand how interpretations of “monuments” as “texts” are affected at the local level of experience, even as institutions such as UNESCO work to globalise and fix constructs of stable and universal heritage. Shifting away from a largely Eurocentric concept associated with architecture and monumental archaeology, this book reassesses how local and regional heritage needs to be balanced with the global and transnational. It argues that material objects and monuments are not static embodiments of culture but are, rather, a medium through which identity, power and society are produced and reproduced. This is especially relevant in South and Southeast Asian contexts, where debates over heritage often have local, regional and national political implications and consequences. Reevaluating how traditional valuation of monuments and cultural landscapes could help aid sustainability and long-term preservation of the heritage, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of South and Southeast Asian history, heritage studies, archaeology, cultural studies, tourism studies and political history as well.

Many text on music dance and drama continued to be written in different parts of India until the 17th century. Between the 12th and the 16th century regional styles emerged. Medieval texts have been discovered in all parts. One amongst these is the Srihastamuktavali belonging to the eastern tradition.

Chronicles of Bharat: A Historical Odyssey" offers a concise journey through Bharat's history, spanning from the Neolithic to the Iron and Bronze Ages, and covering significant periods such as the Maurya Empire, medieval times, and the modern era. Readers will explore the rise and fall of empires, gaining insights into the social, economic, and cultural developments that shaped Bharat's identity over time. Whether you're interested in ancient civilizations or the dynamics of medieval kingdoms, this book provides a clear and informative overview of Bharat's diverse history.

The idea of transitions in Indian history emerged early when the term ‘transition’ denoted shifts from one period to another. The notion of transition itself has moved beyond being primarily economic to include dimensions of society, culture and ideology. This volume brings together scholarly works that re-examine and re-define the concept of transition by looking into a range of subjects including religion, culture, gender, caste and community networks, maritime and mercantile modes, ideas of nationalism and historiographies across geographical and temporal settings. With contributions by leading scholars from South Asia, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers of ancient history, modern Indian history, sociology and social anthropology, and South Asian studies.

No. [1] is made up of 4 separate pamphlets, each called "The Heriatge of Indian art" and numbered 1-4.