A major contribution towards the different perspectives and issues central to understanding ancient India

This book engages with some of the most important issues, debates, and methodologies in the writing of ancient Indian history.

Thematically structured, the first section discusses religious and regional processes through a meticulous analysis of inscriptions and material remains. The second—based extensively on archival sources—connects ancient and modern India through a discussion of the beginnings of Indian archaeology and the discovery, interpretation, and reinvention of ancient sites in colonial and post-colonial times. The third underlines the importance of reconstructing the intellectual landscape of ancient India through a sensitive, yet, critical historicization of political ideas in texts and inscriptions. The final section makes a strong case for situating ancient India within a broader, Asian, frame.

Introduction
I. Religion and Region
Sanchi: The History of the Patronage of an Ancient Buddhist Establishment Nagarjunakonda: Buddhism in the ‘City of Victory’ Cults and Shrines in Early Historical Mathura (c. 200 BC to AD 200) Early Medieval Orissa: The Data and the Debate
II. Archaeologists and the Modern Histories of Ancient Sites
Archaeologists and Architectural Scholars in 19th-Century India Amaravati: The Dismembering of the Mahacaitya (1797–1886) Buddhism, Archaeology, and the Nation: Nagarjunakonda (1926–2006) Exile and Return: The Reinvention of Buddhism and Buddhist Sites in Modern India
III. The Intersection of Political Ideas and Practice
Governing the State and the Self: Political Philosophy and Practice in the Edicts of Asoka Politics, Violence, and War in Kamandaka’s Nitisara The Power of a Poet: Kingship, Empire, and War in Kalidasa’s Raghuva?sa
IV. Looking beyond India to Asia
Gifts from Other Lands: Southeast Asian Religious Endowments in India Politics, Piety, and Patronage: The Burmese Engagement with Bodhgaya Index