Book Review : History of Precolonial India: Issues and Debates

Hermann Kulke, History of Precolonial India: Issues and Debates,
English edition revised and edited by Bharabi Prasad Sahu,
New Delhi : OxfordUniversity Press, 2018, 383 pages, Rs 1195

The book was originally published in the year 2005 as a volume in German, as Indische Geschichte bis 1750. It was a part of Oldenburg Grundriss der Geschichte series. The South Asian volume has been translated into English by Parnal Chirmuley, and revised and edited by B.P. Sahu. The original text was more than a decade old, and so this book has been updated and made relevant to current readership. The book follows a clearly defined structure of being divided into three main parts. The first part is a concise presentation of historical events, following Ranke’s principle, wie es eigentlich gewesen ist (how things actually were), and is titled ‘Historical Representations’.