STUDIES IN INDIAN HISTORY

Description

Included in this volume are three articles and two lectures by the late Sardar K.M. Panikkar mainly on the impact of India, its thought and its culture, on the rest of the world during ancient and medieval times and how, in turn, India was influenced by the outside world. The first article deals with the impact of India on European culture in ancient times; the second deals with India’s contacts with what is known as the Middle East, or West Asia, and Western Europe during the middle ages. Next we have series of lectures on contacts between India and China from the earliest times onwards. Sardar Panikkar dispells the popular notion that this contact was maintained only through Chinese pilgrims coming to India and some Indian monks going to China. He also analyses the position of Tibet in Indo-China relations and the interactions of India and China in the field of art. Next are lectures on the development of civil services with particular reference to the civil services in India, set in the background of the Indian tradition combined with the British legacy. The problems confronting the civil services today dealt with and a few lines of enquiry are suggested. The last article in the book is a novel treatment of Vatsyayana, the ancient Indian sage, who wrote on the art and science of love.

Born in 1895, Sardar K.M. Panikkarwas educated in Madras and Oxford. He was a scholar or Christ Church and was later called to the Bar (Middle Temple). After a period as a professor at Aligarh Muslim University, he became editor of The Hindustan Times. Later he went to Patiala State as Foreign Minister, during which period he was also Secretary to the Chancellor of the Chamber of Princes. He then went to Bikaner as Foreign Minister, later becoming Prime Minister of that State.