Bhairabi Prasad Sahu, A People’s History of India, Volume 7: Society and Culture in

Post-Mauryna India. c. 200 BC- AD 300 (Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2015), pp. xii+81, Rs.
200, ISBN: 978-93-82381-75-4.

Bhairabi Prasad Sahu’s book on the society and culture in post-Mauryan India is the Volume
7 of the ongoing A People’s History of India series, published by the Aligarh Historians’
Society, under the general editorship of Irfan Habib. This is actually a companion volume to
the Volume 6 which deals with the political and economic history of the same period. The
five centuries intervening between the two pan-North Indian empires, the Mauryas and the
Guptas, usually known as the ‘post-Maurya period’, is a significant period in early Indian
history. It can very well be considered a formative period of early Indian society and culture.
This period had witnessed the infiltration of various Central Asian tribes into the
subcontinent, including the Śakas, the Indo-Greeks, the Parthians and the Kushanas, bringing
an unprecedented range of political and cultural churning. It was also the heyday of the
lucrative trade network extending to China on one hand and the Western Roman Empire on
the other. Buddhism and Jainism had received immense patronage from these newcomers,
and witnessed the zenith of their theology, art and literature. Much of the Buddhist canon
took shape in this period, while the rise of Mahāyāna Buddhism also took place. The
Brahmanical orthodoxy also reacted to these new developments. On one hand, they tried to
codify every aspect of social life to regulate the lives of their adherents, leading to the
composition of the dharmaśāstras starting with the Manu Smṛti. Prescriptive treatises were
composed on various spheres of human activities, and these – such as Bharata’s Nāṭyaśāstra
and Vātsyāyana’s Kāma Sūtra – became invaluable source materials for the historians. On the
other hand, reforms took place within the Brahmanical system, and the devotional cults of
Vaiṣṇavism and Śaivism were also taking shape. The Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata were
canonised mostly in this period. Both Mahāyāna Buddhism and the devotional Brahmanical
sects popularised anthropomorphic worship, leading to a proliferation of fine arts, especially
sculpture which flourished in different schools associated with Gandhara, Mathura,
Amaravati and Nagarjunaconda. The earliest Sanskrit inscriptions were composed in this
period, as well as some of the earliest Sanskrit, Prakrit and Tamil creative literature.

However, because of the fascination with ‘empire’ in both colonial and Nationalist
historiography, this period had received considerable less historical attention than the periods
associated with the Mauryas and the Guptas. While this period has been often viewed with a
negative framework of ‘foreign infiltration’, the Gupta period usually received much more
attention as the ‘golden age’ or ‘classical age’ in the social and economic fields, even though
most of the developments associated with the Gupta period had their origin in this period.
Doing justice to such an important period in a summary volume like this, focussing on the
social and cultural aspects which were even more fluid and nuanced than the seemingly linear
political and economic narratives, was a difficult task. Sahu has accomplished that task
brilliantly. The book is divided in four small sections on Society, Religion, Art, and
Languages and Literature. While Sahu composed the first three, the last section has been
contributed by Kesavan Veluthat. Each section is written in lucid simple text, divided in short

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sub-sections, and accompanied by rich extracts from primary sources, notes and
bibliographical notes.

The Aligarh Historical Society introduces the motive behind this series as ‘promoting the
scientific method in history and resisting communal and chauvinistic interpretations’. While
the resistance to communal and chauvinistic historiography is the need of the hour, speaking
about an overarching ‘sceientific methodology’ in history writing bears the historical baggage
of nineteenth century Positivism and early Marxism. History, after all, can no longer be
viewed as science, and what the ‘scientific methodology’ may stand for in our present
understanding of history is highlighting the necessity to closely follow the sources in history
writing. This volume has accomplished the task superbly. Every chapter introduces the
readers with the source material used, acquaints them with their contents, and provides
extracts from the primary sources at the end. However, the book also makes the readers
aware about the diverse kinds of sources, rather than privileging one over the other. For
instance, while writing the chapter on Society, Sahu closely follows the Manu Smṛti in
outlining the crystallisation of caste and the Brahmanical attempt to codify every aspect of a
person’s life. However, he also notes the difference between the rural and the urban life, and
shows how the Kāma Sūtra’s prescriptions for the urban elite are very much different from
what Manu would prescribe. Not restricting his discussion to mere prescriptions, Sahu also
discusses how the donative inscriptions at the Buddhist sacred sites reflect the social realities.
Therefore, Sahu’s discussion of the post-Maurya society does not remain a stereotypical
survey of caste and gender, but becomes a commentary on the sources of the period, without
making his writing text-heavy. Similarly, the chapter on Art is accompanied with several
images acquainting the readers with the primary evidence, but it also contains extracts from
the inscriptions accompanying the art objects, placing them in their historical context. The
chapter on Religion thoroughly surveys the new developments, and shows the religious
trends from both the theological and material aspects, extracting passages from donative
inscriptions as well as from the Dhammapada and the Bhagavad Gītā.

Veluthat’s chapter on Languages and Literature is an extremely important one, noticing the
development of Sanskrit literature in the period, but focussing more on Prakrit and Tamil,
making the essential point that these languages were as much important as Sanskrit, if not
more, in forming the corpus of ancient Indian literature. Veluthat also engages with nuanced
issues such as how Pāli developed as one form of Prakrit and why the popular perception of
early Tamil literature as Saṅgam Literature is a misnomer.

The volume presents a chronological table at the end of each chapter. However, at times,
giving a precise date without any qualification has a risk of overlooking the issue that many
dates in early Indian history are not fixed but subject to much debate. For instance, giving
precise dates for the beginning and the end of the composition of the Rāmāyaṇa and the
Mahābhārata, without any reference to the varied attempts to date them, is problematic. In
fact, the volume overlooks the major historiographical debates about the period concerned
and creates a possibility of looking at history as a singular narrative, without any reference to
how the same sources can be and have been used in different ways by different historians.
However, despite these limitations, the volume is an extremely well-written one in presenting

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the history of a crucial phase of early India in a simple, comprehensive and resourceful
manner, pointing out the relationship between the sources and history writing for both the
general reader and the student of history. Hence, it can serve well both as a pleasure reading
for the common reader and as a text book for school and college students. At a time of ever-
widening gulf between academic history writing and popular perceptions about the past, if
this work can contribute in bridging this gap, that will be its greatest contribution.

Kanad Sinha

Assistant Professor,

Department of History,

Udaynarayanpur Madhabilata Mahavidyalaya,

Howrah.