Tom's Reviews > The Wonder That Was India: A Survey of the History and Culture of the Indian Sub-Continent before the coming of the Muslims

The Wonder That Was India by A.L. Basham
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A fine survey of Indian culture up to 15th century or so. It's rare that a semi-academic book 50 years old holds up at all, but this one seems quite useful. It gives the broad outlines of Indian history, politics, society, daily life, religions, arts, and literature in a mere 500 pages. The author knew perhaps a half dozen early Indian languages, and translates from them all, comfortably discuss numismatics and prosody, astronomy and sculpture. Very impressive.

I'm sure scholars of classical India could note hundreds of advances in the field since this book's publication. One could also criticize some of the author's assumptions (i.e., that Indian culture "went into decline" with the growing political dominance of Islamic groups in the 16th century, or that history is generalizable at all), but these would be cheap shots. For a 20th century British historian, Basham is remarkably anti-imperialist, avoiding the dominant "they need overlords" narrative of many of his English colleagues, and taking pains to point out the great achievements coming from all aspects of Indian society.

In short, this book is recommended to anyone who is generally curious about early and medieval Indian history, a relatively brief introduction for the intelligent non-expert.
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Reading Progress

June 10, 2013 – Started Reading
June 10, 2013 – Shelved
June 10, 2013 – Shelved as: non-fiction
June 16, 2013 – Finished Reading

Comments Showing 1-3 of 3 (3 new)

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message 1: by Mårten (new)

Mårten what a wonderfully orientalist title


message 2: by Tom (new) - rated it 4 stars

Tom Apparently it was part of a series published in the '50s. Other titles were:

The Glory That Was Greece
The Grandeur That Was Rome
The Splendour That Was Egypt
The Greatness That Was Babylon

It's said that the author hated the title (which was assigned to him), and it was actually one of the early anti-imperialist histories of India, written soon after independence. It definitely rejects the "you guys need overlords" model of Indian history, which had been pretty popular with the British for obvious reasons.


message 3: by Megha (new) - added it

Megha Waooo how would I miss such book, thanks Tom for such perfect review, I am surely getting this book to read


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