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There aren't many (actually we can't think of any) Sankritists of Sheldon Pollock's subtlety, scholarship, complexity and renown who can write accessibly for non-specialist readers.  Read Professor Pollock's essay here  for a fresh understanding of the classics. And then turn to his book. The Language of the Gods in the World of Men SANSKRIT, CULTURE AND POWER IN PREMODERN INDIA by  SHELDON POLLOCK WINNER OF The Coomaraswamy Book Prize, Association for Asian Studies The 32nd Lionel Trilling Award, Columbia College and Flora Levy Foundation of Lafayette, LA. The 2006 Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division Awards for Axcellence in Literature, Language, & Linguistics, The Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers In this work of impressive scholarship, Sheldon Pollock explores the remarkable rise and fall of Sanskrit, India’s ancient language, as a vehicle for poetry and polity by tracing the two g...

MAHESH RANGARAJAN AND  K. SIVARAMAKRISHNAN, EDITORS India’s Environmental History Vol. 1: From Ancient Times to the Colonial Period Vol. 2: Colonialism, Modernity, and the Nation Environmental history in India has generated a rich literature on forests, wildlife, human–animal conflict, tribal rights and commercial degradation, displacement and development, pastoralism and desertification, famine and disease, sedentarism and mobility, wildness and civility, and the ecology versus equity debate. This reader brings together some of the best and most interesting writing on India’s ecological pasts. It looks at a variety of the country’s regions, landscapes, and arenas as settings for strife or harmony, as topography and ecological fabric, in the process covering a vast historical terrain. Vol. 1 provides an antidote to the existing historiography, which barely takes notice of the era before 1800. The essays here range from prehistoric India to the middle of the nineteenth cent...