South Asia before the Common Era engages with the way in which the early history of the subcontinent has been reconstructed by recent historians, using the rich and varied sources from the region. Exploring the context in which artefacts and texts have been retrieved and interpreted, it traces the trajectories of how humans in early South Asia responded to their circumstances, the interconnections of communities within and beyond the subcontinent, and the multilayered and variegated histories of the region. The book examines the difficulties involved in gleaning information from prehistoric, protohistoric and early historic material remains and texts—exploring what they reveal, what they hide, what is now lost. It shows how literary traditions survived and examines their tangled histories as well as their transmission, re-iteration and re-invention, creating their own layered narratives and hagiographies before being interpreted by modern historians.

This work aims at a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the past and at unpacking the information that we take for granted as the ‘history of early India’, leaving the door open for future possibilities and research.