In this book the author competently takes on the task of presenting a coherent picture of the vast panorama that is India. With a prodigiously broad literature, which includes the Sanskritic past, as well as the other languages that flourished in the country, he has also drawn upon the corpus left by foreign explorers, missionaries, and the scholar-administrators of the Raj.

Dr B. N. Pandey, born in Uttar Pradesh, taught Modern Indian History at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He had also served as Chairman of the Centre of South African Studies