Environmental History of Early India: A Reader.

• Author: Chapple, Christopher Key
• Position: Book review

Environmental History of Early India: A Reader. Edited by NANDINI SINHA KAPUR. New Delhi: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2011. Pp. xxxv + 282. $65.

This edited volume includes shortened versions of seventeen essays previously published as early as 1973 with the most recent research dating from 2004. Though neither encyclopedic nor comprehensive, this book gathers seminal essays that explore the landscape of various parts of India from the Mauryan period to the early medieval period. Relying on literary documents and chronicles, the book reconstructs patterns of agricultural practice and explores the often fraught relationship between humans and the natural world on the subcontinent. The editor places this study in the context of the history of land use patterns in Europe during the same period and acknowledges the important work completed by Guha, Gadgil, and others regarding the later colonial period.

The opening chapter by Parasher-Sen examines the Asokan edicts as a guide to land use policies. Chapter two (Nancy Falk) discusses the forest as depicted in the Mahabharata and other early Sanskrit texts. The third chapter (Campakalakshmi) studies the Cola documents regarding land use in Tamil Nadu, while the fourth (S. N. Lal) examines settlement patterns in the Sabarmati and Godavari basins.

The second section of the book probes into water issues, north and south. These three chapters by Ranabir Chakravarti, David Ludden, and Kamil Zvelebil include a piece on the monsoon's effect throughout all regions of India, followed with two chapters on irrigation and other water works projects in Tamil Nadu.

The third grouping of...