Ancient India has nothing to claim as the spectacular political and military achievements of its national governments, like the wars of aggression against foreign powers, territorial acquisitions abroad, colonial exploitation of foreign lands and the people, enslavement of foreign nationals or forcible conversion of the vanquished to their dogmatic creeds on the analogy of the Arabic and Turkish religious crusaders of the medieval ages or the modern 'national states' of Europe. On the other hand, Ancient India was 'a civilization state'; it served as 'the cradle of human civilization', which not only nurtured on its soil one of the earliest civilized communities of the Homo Sapiens but also made a substantial contribution towards the religious, moral and material advancement of many other countries of Southeast and Central Asia. To match the great military generals, conquerors, emperors, and other outstanding historic personalities of the world, like Alexander the Great, Constantine the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, Mahmud of Ghazni, Muhammad Ghori, Amir Timur and Changez Khan, etc; Ancient India offers its role models to the readers in the persons of Ashoka the Great, Gautama Buddha and Vardhamana Mahavira with their eternal messages of love, peace, non-violence (ahimsa) and universal brotherhood. This is the one special feature of Ancient Indian History and culture that prompts its authors to offer their work for the perusal of the global readership. |
