Hyderabad - Its History & Heritage

Much of what we today call “ancient Hindu / pre-Islamic Indian history or pre-medieval history” was not preserved as continuous royal history books .  It was reconstructed later from inscriptions, coins, temples, grants, literary texts, travellers’ accounts, archaeology, coins, inscriptions, and colonial/postcolonial scholarly interpretation . 1) Brief history of archaeology in India: who started it and when? What existed before formal archaeology began:  Antiquarian curiosity, texts, & monuments Before archaeology became a formal discipline, India’s past was known through: Sanskrit texts: Vedas, epics, Puranas, Dharmashastras, kavya, regional literature. Buddhist and Jain texts. Local temple legends, genealogies, matha records. Persian and Arabic histories for later periods. Visible monuments: temples, stupas, caves, forts, pillars, mosques, tombs. Coins found by collectors. Inscriptions seen on rocks, pillars, copper plates and temples — but many could not yet be read. T...

Below is a historical + historiographical map of the kinds of sources used to construct Indian history. Important note on the categories Ancient India usually means from prehistoric/Harappan times to roughly c. 600–750 CE.  Pre-Islamic India can include all periods before major Islamic political power in North India, so it may extend into early medieval India , roughly c. 750–1200 CE, especially for Rajput, Chola, Rashtrakuta, Pratihara, Pala, Chalukya, Paramara, etc. Also, “ Muslim history of India ” should not be read only as “history of Muslims.”  In historiography it usually means the history of Indo-Islamic polities, Persianate courts, Muslim dynasties, Islamic institutions, Sufi networks, Indo-Persian culture, and Muslim communities , but these sources also contain a lot about non-Muslims, economy, caste, cities, agriculture, temples, merchants, artisans, and regional societies. 1) Sources used to construct Ancient Indian history A. Archaeology and material remains Th...