Ancient, medieval & culture

Concepts to cover

1. Prashastis, land-grant copper plates, donative records, edicts; Brahmi decipherment (Prinsep 1837); key inscriptions Hathigumpha, Allahabad, Junagadh, Aihole, Nashik, Uttaramerur, Mandasor, Gwalior
2. Punch-marked, Indo-Greek portrait, Kushana and Gupta gold, Satavahana lead, Chola and Vijayanagara gold (varaha, fanam), tanka and jital, rupiya and dam
3. Megasthenes, Pliny and the Periplus, Ptolemy, Fa-hien (Chandragupta II), Hiuen Tsang (Harsha), I-tsing
4. Al-Biruni, Marco Polo (Pandya, Kakatiya coast), Ibn Battuta, Abdur Razzaq, Nicolo Conti, Paes and Nuniz, Barbosa, Bernier, Tavernier, Manucci
5. Cunningham (ASI 1861), Burgess, Walter Elliot and Alexander Rea (Amaravati and south Indian sites), Longhurst (Nagarjunakonda), Robert Sewell (Vijayanagara, A Forgotten Empire), Marshall (Harappa), Wheeler
6. Colonial, nationalist, Marxist and subaltern readings; periodisation debates (ancient, medieval, modern)