The story of human civilization, in truth, begins in the wild — where humans had neither learned to write nor speak, only to live Before there were kings, kingdoms, or scriptures… before the first brick of any city was laid… human history began with survival. This was the age when life was not measured in…
Early Beginnings: The Asiatic Society and the Curiosity for India’s Past Before there was any official institution to study history in India, there were individuals full of curiosity. Let’s begin with one such person: 👨🏫 Sir William Jones (1784) This marked the first institutional step towards understanding India’s past. 📘 Asiatic Researches (1788 Onwards) So,…
🧱 What is “Construction of History”? Writing history is not simply telling stories from the past. It’s like being a detective and a judge at the same time — examining scattered pieces of evidence, analysing them critically, and reconstructing a picture of the past. In the context of Ancient Indian History, this process is particularly…
When we move from archaeological remains to literary sources, we are not just reading old books — we are stepping into the mental world of ancient Indians. These texts reveal what they believed, valued, feared, and aspired to. But remember — literary sources are not neutral documents. They reflect the ideals of the time, not…
📜Inscriptions – A Window into Ancient India Let’s begin with a simple question: If ancient people didn’t have books, newspapers, or videos, then how do we know what they thought, did, and built?One of the most authentic and permanent answers to this is “Inscriptions.” What Are Inscriptions? Think of inscriptions as the ancient equivalent of…
Let’s suppose you are trying to piece together the story of a civilization that spans thousands of years — its people, their beliefs, their cities, their rulers, their conflicts, and their contributions. But there’s a challenge: there’s no continuous narrative, no single book that tells it all. What you do have are fragments — scattered,…
Before we study what happened in ancient history, we must understand how we even know it. After all, there were no journalists in the Stone Age, no CCTV in Harappa, no Google Drive to store Vedic chants. So, how do we reconstruct the past? We rely on the scientific disciplines that decode Earth’s and humanity’s…
“How do historians or archaeologists know that a particular tool is 10,000 years old?” We often believe history is about memory, texts, or legends—but when it comes to prehistory, there are no written records to rely on. That’s where science steps in. To understand when a prehistoric tool, fossil, or artefact was made or used,…
Before we start studying the events of Indian history, one thing we must understand is this: Not all parts of history are equally recorded. Some periods have no written records, some have undeciphered texts, and some have abundant literature and inscriptions. Based on this availability of records, historians divide the human past into three major…
Before we dive into the actual events of history, let’s first learn how to read time in history. History is not just what happened, but also when it happened. And to know when, we must understand how time is measured—in centuries, millennia, and using systems like BCE and CE. Let’s understand this: 📅 The Calendar…
