Book Description

The Indus Civilization by Irfan Habib is the second monograph in the People s History of India series. It continues the story from the point reached in the earlier monograph, Prehistory. The dominant theme here is provided by the Indus Civilization. In addition, other contemporary and later cultures down to about 1500 BC, and the formation of the major language families of India, are discussed.The time with which this monograph deals is often called Protohistory, since it is close to the period when history can, at least partly, be reconstructed from literary texts. Since modern territorial boundaries make little sense when we deal with the past, India here means pre-partition India, and the area covered includes Afghanistan, south of the Hindukush mountains. A sub-chapter is accordingly devoted to the Helmand civilization, whose study is indispensable for putting the Indus civilization in a proper perspective.Irfan Habib, formerly Professor of History, Aligarh Muslim University, is author of The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556 1707 (1963; 2nd rev. edn, 1999), An Atlas of the Mughal Empire (1982), and Essays in Indian History: Towards a Marxist Perception (1995). He has also authored Prehistory (2001) and Indian Economy, 1858 1914 (2006), and co-authored The Vedic Age (2003) and Mauryan India (2004), in the People s History of India series.Two sections of this monograph need to be singled out for their fine treatment. One is note 2.1 on the Indus script, and the other is the section on language change before 1500 BC. . . . The author is also to be commended for bringing up the thorny subject of the Indus civilization and the Rigveda . . . a fine overview of the subject.The Book Review