INDIA- known as Golden Bird in yore days- still retains the spell of mysticism, music, magic, and uniqueness of men and cultures. Birth place of great religions- Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism, India is the land where world's ancient and great civilisations flourished. For scholars of history, ethnology, anthropology, religion and philosophy, arts and folk culture, language and literature, fauna and flora, ecology and environment, geology and zoology, India provides ample opportunities and probabilities. A whole life span would not suffice to explore India thoroughly. A confluence for great Aryan, Dravidian and Aboriginal cultural streams- India is the land worth to visit. Despite vast and widespread landscape, inaccessible hilly terrains, mild, cold and extremely hot climatic conditions, persons visiting India find it fascinating and charming. The present book is a modest attempt in the direction of recollecting ancient glorious socio-spiritual legacy of India. The multidisciplinary work will delight and enlighten one and all.

The antiquity of man, from a geologist's point of view, has been placed clearly and fully before the English reading public. In 1865, Lord Avebury approached the problem of man's antiquity from another point of view. He was primarily interested in the culture, the industry, the civilization of ancient man; the geological details of the prehistoric landscape took a secondary place in his pictures of prehistoric times. He sought to follow the human army to its beginning in the remote past by tracing the possessions it had discarded while on the march. Lord Avebury wrote the story of the antiquity of man from the archaeologist's point of view. The problem of man's antiquity may be approached from another point of view-that of the human anatomist. The anatomist gives ancient man the centre of the stage; he depends on the geologist and archaeologist to provide him with the scenery and stage accessories. It is from the anatomist's point of view that the problem of a man's antiquity is dealt with in this book. This method of approach has its difficulties. The anatomist has to trace man into the past by means of fossil skulls, teeth and limb bones-intelligible documents to him, but complex and repulsive hieroglyphs in the eyes of most people. The mystery of man's antiquity stands in a different position. Every year brings new evidence to light-places facts at our disposal, which take us a step nearer to a true solution. In recent years discoveries of fossil man have crowded in upon us, yielding such an abundance of new evidence that we have had to reconsider and recast our estimates of the antiquity of man. No discovery of recent date has had such a wide-reaching effect. Hence the reader will find that a very considerable part of this book is devoted to the significance of that specimen of humanity.

The author has traced the history of Moghuls to Mongols whose favourite hero even now is Kutulakhan whose voice is compared to the thunder in the mountains, his hands were strong like bear's paws and with them he could break a man in two as easily as an arrow may be broken. He would lie naked near an immense brazier in the winter, heedless of the cinders and sparks that fell on his body and on awakening, would mistake the burns merely for the hits of snakes. He ate a sheep a day, and drank immense quantities of fermented mare's milk. Such is the man the Mongols delighted to honour. Great strength, great endurand and great appetite-men of a race with such ideals may over run the world. Powerful they were for destruction. Of such men the type was Chenghiz Khan, the scourge of Asia in the early thirteenth century. The Mongols were the central tribe inhabiting the Central Asia and the Turks, the western tribe. These two were more or less cognate in blood but the Turks, who had lived for ages in the West in close contiguity to Persia and inhabitants there of, had become by intermarriage different in physical characteristics from the Moghuls who had roamed over the wild steppes of Central Asia and never inter-married with a foreign race. The great Emperors of India had but little Mongol blood in their veins, they were really Turks. However, they called themselves Moghuls to maintain their connection with Chenghiz Khan. To one desiring to study Moghul rule in India, a brief account of the Mongol from the time of Chenghiz down to Baber's invasion is of considerable assistance. This assistance has been amply provided by the present book,: The History of Great Moghuls. The study of Mongols has been in great detail encompassing the Mongols before and after the death of chenghiz Khan, Mongols in the West and Mongols of the East and the centre in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The darkest period of the Muhammedan rule in Delhi was from 1393-1526 A.D. after the sack of Delhi by Taimur who had no intention of staying in India. His mission was to lead an expedition against the infidels and to purify the land itself from fifth of infidelity and to overthrow temples and idols and to become a Ghazi and Mozahid before God. His nobles said that if they established themselves here permanently, their children would become like natives of these regions and, in a few generations, their strength and valour would diminish. How true was this saying when we find that as the Moghul emperors established their dynasty in India they sapped the very root of Moghul dominion. Within a hundred years of Akbar's death, his empire, was hastening to decay. We have a graphic account of the various battles fought, who and lost by the Moghuls till Bahadur Shah lost not only the throne of Delhi but also his freedom. The plunder of Delhi by Nadir Shah shows that the accumulated wealth of three hundred and forty eight years changed hands in a moment-not only the wealth of the Imperial court but also the very resources of the people. A great book by a great author. -SHROTRIYA

Armed Forces are the most important institution of a nation-state system. Born as an anthropological necessity, it has grown into a social institution, a political instrument and a psychological deterrent. All through the turbulent years, the Indian Armed Forces have performed a vital role towards the nation's "tryst with destiny" beyond the call of the duty and for which society can be justifiably proud. But, there is also a perception amongst the men in uniform that the society is not sensitive to their needs, even though the Armed Forces continue to be on the thin line between life and death and make great sacrifices and our society doe not "Give a Damn" to it and thus one wonder on what Bernard Fall calls "Our Street Without Joy". Armed Forces are described as "the prerequisite of movement, midwife of progress and makers of destiny". Armed Forces fight for a cause and for the country. This cannot happen if the Armed Forces do not have confidence in the democratic setup of the society. The relationship is very much based upon the concept of 'propriety'. Armed Forces demands extreme sacrifice and extreme sacrifice requires extreme value of attachment from the concerned socio-political setup of the society. It is therefore, time to take a comprehensive view of the relationship between the Armed Forces and Society, which will enable the Armed Forces to continue serving the society and nation in a most befitting way. This is the challenge that cries for solution and it would have been a national crime to be complacent about this vital problem-the callous approach of Society towards its Armed Forces.