Time Pieces : A Whistle-Stop Tour of Ancient India
Much about [ancient India] is familiar because it has come down to us. There are continuities.' The oldest surviving love graffiti on a cave wall immortalizing an intimate bond in the third century BCE; charred seeds and chewed animal bones that provide evidence of a peoples' food obsessions; architectural minutiae that point to the alarming regression of a civilization's potty habits; intriguing sculptures that reveal myriad facets of the human–animal relationship... In Time Pieces, award-winning historian Nayanjot Lahiri whimsically sifts through the intricate clues left behind by the early inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent – in plaques and inscriptions, fragments of jewellery, bones and tools, poetry, art and pottery – to reveal to us our ancient world in all its variety, splendour, complexity and contradictions. Sparkling with wit and reflective of a scholar's keen and curious energy, the ten essays in this delightful volume seamlessly connect the past to the present and leave us with the sobering thought of how evolved we once were.