Paper
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
An Ancient Harappan Genome Lacks Ancestry from Steppe Pastoralists or Iranian Farmers
DNA from a woman buried at Rakhigarhi (Haryana): the first genome from a Harappan individual.
Journals & research papers
Peer-reviewed research behind the history on this site: landmark papers, the main journals of Indian history, and official archives where you can read the original sources. Every paper links to its publisher through its DOI.
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Research papers 2
Paper🏛 Library access
The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia
Ancient DNA from 523 individuals tracing how the peoples of the subcontinent formed.
Paper🔓 Free to read
Fluvial landscapes of the Harappan civilization
Rivers, monsoon and the rise and decline of Harappan cities; widely cited in the Saraswati–Ghaggar debate.
Paper🏛 Library access
Abrupt weakening of the summer monsoon in northwest India ~4100 yr ago
Lake sediments from Haryana showing a sharp drying around 2100 BCE, linked to Harappan de-urbanisation.
Paper🔓 Free to read
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
Oxygen isotope in archaeological bioapatites from India: Implications to climate change and decline of Bronze Age Harappan civilization
Isotopes in animal bones and teeth from Bhirrana suggest farming continued as the monsoon weakened.
Paper🏛 Library access
Revolution in the Urban Revolution: The Emergence of Indus Urbanization
A classic review of how Early Harappan villages became the Mature Harappan cities.
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
Aśoka and Buddhism
Argues that Ashoka's dhamma was a social ethic for his empire rather than simply Buddhism.
Covers: Mauryan Empire
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
The Theory of Aryan Race and India: History and Politics
How nineteenth-century 'Aryan race' ideas shaped the writing of early Indian history.
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
How feudal was Indian feudalism?
The case for 'Indian feudalism' after the Guptas: land grants, decline of trade and dependent peasants.
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
Was there feudalism in Indian history?
The best-known critique of the feudalism model; read it alongside R. S. Sharma's reply.
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
Political Processes and Structure of Polity in Early Medieval India: Problems of Perspective
Proposes 'integration' — the spread of state society into new regions — as the key to early medieval India.
Paper🏛 Library access
The Cosmopolitan Vernacular
How Kannada, Telugu and other regional languages became languages of kingship alongside Sanskrit.
Paper🏛 Library access
Inscribing the Other, Inscribing the Self: Hindu-Muslim Identities in Pre-Colonial India
Uses Andhra inscriptions to show how identities were described in the Kakatiya and Sultanate era.
Paper🏛 Library access
Temple Desecration and Indo-Muslim States
A documented, case-by-case study of temple destruction and its political context, 1192–1760.
Paper🏛 Library access
The Formation of Chinese Maritime Networks to Southern Asia, 1200–1450
Indian Ocean trade between China and South India, including Zheng He's voyages to Calicut.
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
Potentialities of Capitalistic Development in the Economy of Mughal India
Money, markets, crafts and credit in the Mughal economy — and why they did not lead to capitalism.
Covers: Mughal Empire
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia
Reads Mughal India as part of a connected early-modern world rather than an isolated civilisation.
Paper🏛 Library access
Law, State and Agrarian Society in Colonial India
How colonial courts and property law reshaped land, caste and the village.
Paper🏛 Library access
Knowing the Country: Empire and Information in India
Spies, runners and news-writers: how the Company took over Indian systems of information.
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
The Basis of Ancient Indian History (I)
Kosambi's method: reading ancient Indian history through how people produced and lived, with evidence from the field.
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
The Image of the Barbarian in Early India
How early Indian texts described outsiders — the mleccha — and what that reveals about society.
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
The Tyranny of Labels
Questions reading the Indian past through fixed, single-religion labels for whole communities.
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
Cults and shrines in early historical Mathura (c. 200 BC–AD 200)
Buddhist, Jaina, Brahmanical and local cults side by side at Mathura, from sculpture and inscriptions.
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
Politics, violence and war in Kāmandaka's Nītisāra
Ideas of kingship, power and war in the Nītisāra, an early medieval text on statecraft.
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
The Yavana Presence in Ancient India
Greeks and other westerners ('Yavanas') in ancient India: traders, donors and settlers.
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
An Aspect of Harappan Agricultural Production
How Harappan farming produced the surplus that fed the cities.
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
Archaeology and identity in colonial India
How archaeology in colonial India — from the ASI to the Harappan discovery — became tied to identity.
Covers: British Raj (Crown Rule)
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
Forms of Production and Forces of Change in Ancient Tamil Society
Pastoral, farming and coastal economies of the Sangam age and how they changed.
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
The temple and the state in medieval South India
The temple as landholder, bank and seat of royal legitimacy under the Cholas and after.
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
The Peasant in Indian History
A sweep of Indian history told through the peasant — land, tax, caste and revolt.
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
Trade and merchants in Indian history
A short overview of Indian trade and merchant communities from early times to the colonial age.
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
The Passing of Empire: The Mughal Case
Why the Mughal Empire declined in the eighteenth century.
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
Towards an interpretation of the Mughal Empire
What kind of state the Mughal Empire was: nobility, mansabs and revenue.
Covers: Mughal Empire
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
The Pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal Politics
How Persian became the language of Mughal government and of Hindu and Muslim elites alike.
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
The Company Army and Rural Society: The Invalid Thanah 1780–1830
How the East India Company settled retired sepoys on land, and what that did to rural society.
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
Landownership and Inequality in Madras Presidency: 1853-54 to 1946-47
Nearly a century of land records measuring how unequal landholding was in the Madras Presidency.
Covers: British Raj (Crown Rule)
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
The Indian capitalist class and imperialism before 1947
Where Indian business stood between the British Raj and the national movement.
Covers: British Raj (Crown Rule)
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
Colonialism, stages of colonialism and the colonial state
The stages through which British colonialism in India changed — from trade and plunder to finance.
Paper🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian scholarship
Indian Nationalism as Animal Politics
A famous critique of the 'Cambridge school', which explained Indian nationalism as mere self-interest.
Covers: British Raj (Crown Rule)
Journals 1
Journal🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian institution
The Indian Historical Review
The ICHR's journal, published since 1974: research on every period of Indian history.
✓ Official site · journals.sagepub.com
Journal🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian institution
The Indian Economic and Social History Review
Economy, society and everyday life: land, trade, caste, labour and more.
✓ Official site · journals.sagepub.com
Journal🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian institution
Studies in History
JNU's journal of Indian history.
✓ Official site · journals.sagepub.com
Journal🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian institution
Studies in People's History
The Aligarh Historians Society's journal: economy, society and people across Indian history.
✓ Official site · journals.sagepub.com
Journal🏛 Library access
The Medieval History Journal
Medieval societies in India and across the world, often comparative.
✓ Official site · journals.sagepub.com
Journal🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian institution
Proceedings of the Indian History Congress
Papers read at the annual Indian History Congress since 1935 — a vast archive by Indian historians.
✓ Official site · www.jstor.org
Journal🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian institution
Social Scientist
Home of many classic essays on Indian history, including several listed here.
✓ Official site · www.jstor.org
Journal🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian institution
Economic and Political Weekly
India's leading weekly of social science; strong on modern and contemporary history.
✓ Official site · www.epw.in
Journal🏛 Library access
Modern Asian Studies
Early modern and modern South Asia; publishes many of the field's most cited papers.
✓ Official site · www.cambridge.org
Journal🏛 Library access
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
One of the oldest journals on Asian history, languages and inscriptions (since 1834).
✓ Official site · www.cambridge.org
Journal🏛 Library access
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
Languages, texts, religion and history of Asia and Africa.
✓ Official site · www.cambridge.org
Journal🏛 Library access
The Journal of Asian Studies
The main journal of the Association for Asian Studies.
✓ Official site · read.dukeupress.edu
Journal🏛 Library access
South Asian Studies
Archaeology, art and architecture of the subcontinent.
✓ Official site · www.tandfonline.com
Journal🔓 Free to read
Ancient Asia
Free, peer-reviewed archaeology of South Asia and its neighbours.
✓ Official site · www.ancient-asia-journal.com
Journal🏛 Library access
🇮🇳 Indian institution
Indian Journal of History of Science
Mathematics, astronomy, medicine and technology in Indian history — Aryabhata to Ramanujan.
✓ Official site · link.springer.com
Archives & libraries 5
Archive🔓 Free to read
🇮🇳 Indian institution
Archaeological Survey of India
Protected monuments, excavation reports and ASI publications.
✓ Official site · asi.nic.in
Archive🔓 Free to read
🇮🇳 Indian institution
Indian Culture portal
Rare books, manuscripts, gazetteers, photographs and museum collections, free online.
✓ Official site · www.indianculture.gov.in
Archive🔓 Free to read
🇮🇳 Indian institution
Abhilekh Patal — National Archives of India
Digitised government records from 1748 onwards: the primary sources of modern Indian history.
✓ Official site · www.abhilekh-patal.in
Archive🔓 Free to read
🇮🇳 Indian institution
National Digital Library of India
One search across millions of books, theses and papers from Indian institutions.
✓ Official site · ndl.iitkgp.ac.in
Archive🔓 Free to read
🇮🇳 Indian institution
Epigraphia Indica (digitised volumes)
The ASI's series of edited inscriptions, from Ashoka to the Vijayanagara grants; old volumes are free to read.
✓ Official site · archive.org
How we choose: each paper’s details were checked against the Crossref registry of scholarly publications, and each link was opened before it was listed. “Library access” items usually need a subscription; many Indian universities and public libraries provide one, and JSTOR lets registered readers view some articles free.