The Cambridge History of India
Open-knowledge reference entry
The Cambridge History of India was a major work of historical scholarship published in five volumes between 1922 and 1937 by Cambridge University Press. Some volumes were also part of The Cambridge History of the British Empire. Production of the work was slowed by the First World War and the ill health of contributors, and Volume II was eventually abandoned.
The Cambridge Shorter History of India, edited by H. H. Dodwell, appeared in 1934. The New Cambridge History of India was published from the late 1980s.
Volumes I and II
E. J. Rapson noted in his Preface to Volume I that the bulk of that volume had been prepared by 1914, but the onset of the First World War had delayed completion. Rapson was an authority on the coins of ancient India, and once worked in the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum. The Times noted in their review of the volume that coin evidence provided some of the only sources for the earliest rulers mentioned, there being in many cases no surviving written sources.
Rapson was known for his scrupulous attention to detail and for checking not only his own references carefully, but the references of every other contributor. He also invariably agreed to help fellow scholars with their work.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Cambridge History of India” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.