India's Past: A Survey of Her Literatures, Religions, Languages, and Antiquities

"This work summarizes India's intellectual history, which in its various aspects has been the subject of my studies for slightly more than half a century (1875 to 1926). It sets forth in nine chapters the mental development of the most easterly branch of Aryan civilization since it entered India by land till it came in contact by sea with the most westerly branch of the same civilization after a separation of at least 3,000 years." ... "Each chapter concludes with a selected bibliography including works that supply further references. For the range of our knowledge of India's past is now so extensive that the information supplied by this book could cover the main and essential points, the selected bibliography being intended to serve as an up-to-date and trustworthy guide for both the general reader and the student in which ever direction further details are sought. Its content are meant, within a small compass, to direct both the English and the Indian reader through the long tract of time from the beginning of the Vedic age down to the epoch when the modern European became acquainted with the Indo-Aryan. At the time of original publication in 1927, Arthur Anthony Macdonell (1854 - 1930) was Emeritus Professor of Sanskrit in the University of Oxford.