ABSTRACT
The two textbooks Ancient India and India and the World , both authored by Makkhan Lal, 1 are concerned with India’s ancient period. This period covers more than three millennia, from the first known settlements in India to the establishment of Turkish rule in northern India in the twelfth century. To a certain extent, Chapters 3 and 4 of this volume constitute one unit. In this chapter, I examine how the two textbooks approach the realms of culture and religion as well as questions relating to the antiquity and basic features of Indian civilizations. The next chapter is concerned with the socio-political history of ancient India. For the most part, I focus on the textbook Ancient India , since it provides the most detailed narrative. This textbook contains what might be called ‘metachapters’, on the ground that they mostly focus on unifying features on the all-India level. I place great emphasis on these chapters, since they give narrative coherence to the presentation, and thereby incorporate different periods of time, different dynasties, cultural traditions and social segments into one framework. In my discussion, I highlight the importance of two such chapters: ‘The Study of Indian History’, which represents the introduction to the textbook, and ‘The Geographical Background of Indian History’. Both chapters establish some of the central premises upon which the textbook is based. Apart from its introduction, India and the World does not contain similar chapters. However, this textbook is much shorter, and for the most part, it presents a more general outline of Indian history, which is rather similar in style to the two metachapters in Ancient India . This difference is of course also due to the fact that Ancient India is a textbook for class XI, whereas India and the World is a textbook for class VI.
