M.A. Sreenivasan

The 39 chapters of the book cover Sreenivasan’s experiences as a family man and administrator, from his selection for the Mysore Civil Service in January 1918 to his tenure as a Minister in the Princely State of Mysore in 1943, and Dewan of Gwalior in 1946.


Reviewed by: Vijaya Ramadas Mandala
Nayanjot Lahiri

The book is a historian’s personal quest for a ruler who crafted himself in multiple ways and was in turn received and recast in more ways than he could have imagined. Thus, the book is really not about Ashoka who is no stranger to history and historians, but rather about how Ashoka comes through to us in stone and metal, text and poetry, scattered through the subcontinent and outside over centuries.


Reviewed by: Lakshmi Subramanian
Herman Tieken

Herman Tieken’s command over the source language Prakrit and the Brahmi script is writ large in the book. His training in classical Kāvya literature led him to view the inscriptions as a literary corpus.  The book in some ways offers fresh perspectives, even though one may disagree with one or two.


Reviewed by: Suchandra Ghosh
Uma Chakravarti, Naina Dayal, Bharati Jagannathan, and Snigdha Singh (Ed.)

What comes out clearly is the extent of the work and influence that Kumkum Roy’s own research have had on a range of aspects of early Indian history—gender, of course, but also questioning the texts, minutely, meticulously and critically examining these texts, and then developing new ways of understanding the past.


Reviewed by: Radhika Seshan