A History of India.

• Author: Rocher, Ludo
• Position: Book Review

By HERMANN KULKE and DIETMAR ROTHERMUND. 3rd edition. London: ROUTLEDGE, 1998. Pp. x + 395.

Geschichte Indiens, by Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund, was published in Germany (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer), in 1982. A thoroughly revised edition in English, A History of India, published in 1986 (London: Croom Helm), was followed by an edition in paperback (Routledge) in 1990, reprinted in 1992, 1993, and 1995. A second English edition followed in 1996. In the present, third, edition the authors again "updated the text not only with regard to recent history, they also tried to take into account all major new publications in the field so as to reflect the state of the art in historical research" (p. viii).

The Kulke-Rothermund History of India is written "for the student and the general reader" (p. ix). It has no footnotes, but it provides ample bibliographies and occasional specific notes for each chapter. The fact that the English rather than the German version underwent several editions proves that it has been successful in Anglophone parts of the world.

Writing a general book on over four thousand years of Indian history, even when the task is shared by two authors, inevitably raises questions of inclusion and exclusion. I, for one, am surprised that some names remain unmentioned, e.g., Raja Todaramalla (the driving force behind Akbar's revenue system which long outlasted the emperor's reign, p. 189), Dara Shukoh (as a son of Shahjahan along with but different from Aurangzeb, p. 192), Henry Thomas Colebrooke (who translated more Hindu legal texts than Sir William Jones, p. 228), Nathaniel Brassey Halhed and the Code of Gentoo Laws (in connection with Hastings's desire to codify Hindu law, p. 228), and Thomas Babington Macaulay (who, in addition to his role in Indian education referred to at p. 234, also deserves to be mentioned as the draftsman of the Indian Penal Code). Among minor slips I noted, e.g., that Kalidasa's...