Ganges: The Many Pasts of an Indian River

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About Ganges: The Many Pasts Of An Indian River

Product Description A remarkable portrait of the Ganges, India’s most sacred and important river and a potent symbol across South Asia. "Indisputably the single best text on the Ganges and its history.”—Wall Street Journal Originating in the Himalayas and flowing into the Bay of Bengal, the Ganges is India’s most important and sacred river. In this unprecedented work, historian Sudipta Sen tells the story of the Ganges, from the communities that arose on its banks to the merchants that navigated its waters, and the way it came to occupy center stage in the history and culture of the subcontinent.   Sen begins his chronicle in prehistoric India, tracing the river’s first settlers, its myths of origin in the Hindu tradition, and its significance during the ascendancy of popular Buddhism. In the following centuries, Indian empires, Central Asian regimes, European merchants, the British Empire, and the Indian nation-state all shaped the identity and ecology of the river. Weaving together geography, environmental politics, and religious history, Sen offers in this lavishly illustrated volume a remarkable portrait of one of the world’s largest and most densely populated river basins. Review "...pleasingly written and indisputably the single best text on the Ganges and its history." -  The Wall Street Journal "Sudipta Sen's Ganges:The Many Pasts of an Indian River invites its reader across the space and time of this iconic riverscape. Through a sweeping yet carefully textured history, the layers of the Ganges's past assume a life that is both consequential and contemporary... Ganges is neither social nor environmental history; it is inseparably both... an invitation to think about all environmental history not only as a story of a changing natural world but also as a story about ourselves." - Science "...an all-encompassing history of the river, its ecologies and the people who have lived alongside it for millenniums...  Sen shows how it has played an integral role in shaping the geography, economy and spiritual life of civilization..." - Los Angeles Times "...engrossing and challenging ...a glittering current of impressions and eras, a book very much meeting Sen's own description of the goddess Ganga herself: part human, part water."― The Christian Science Monitor "...masterful and enyclopaedic."― Geographical (Magazine of the Royal Geographical Society) "magisterial".― American Historical Review   "...a superbly wide ranging history of plains culture and settlement."― The New York Review of Books "...outstanding scholarship, marked by brilliance and brimming with insight... [a] magnificent and inspired effort."― Water Alternatives About the Author Sudipta Sen is professor of history at the University of California, Davis, and the author of Distant Sovereignty: National Imperialism and the Origins of British India. He lives in Woodland, CA.