https://archive.org/stream/lifeinancientind00ptsr/lifeinancientind00ptsr_djvu.txt
LIFE IN ANCIENT INDIA IN THE AGE OE MANTRAS
P. T. SRINIVAS IYENGAR
This is the first of a series of monographs on the
History of the Indian people, in which an attempt
will be made to reconstruct the life of the people
of India, age by age from Indian literature,
epigraphical records, and records of foreign travellers.
This is a work that can best be done by Indian
writers trained in methods of critical investigation ;
foreign scholars can scarcely do it well, for they
have not that intimate knowledge of Indian life
as it is to-day, especially in villages which are,
remote from the railway and the telegraph and the
influence of European commerce and where are still
preserved most of the customs described in the
following pages ; and without such knowledge, work
of this kind cannot be well done. Nor is it work
to be undertaken by scholars of the type of
the Pandit, who, however estimable his personal
character and ideals in life, sees the past through
the mist of tradition and believes that Ancient
India was in a golden age when the gods roamed
the land and supermen taught the people and who
is so devoid of the historical sense that he holds
everything he has learnt from tradition must be
believed in and that an attempt at verification is
sacrilege.