Romila Thapar is one of India’s foremost historians and has made an immense contribution in the field of early Indian history…At a time when we find popular myths or manufactured tales about the past being peddled as history, Thapar has stressed the duty of historians to stick with the evidence.—Srabani Chakraborty, Jacobin

An authority on thousands of years of India’s past, Thapar has a rare and special perspective on the country it was and the country it is becoming.—Benjamin Parkin, Financial Times

The breathtaking sweep of Thapar's historiographic gaze will likely remain unmatched for decades to come, and The Past before Us will surely have a considerable future as a classic in the field.—Cynthia Talbot, American Historical Review

Romila Thapar [is] arguably India’s greatest living historian…The Past Before Us sums up a lifetime’s work on the nature of historical knowledge…[and] is unlikely to be surpassed in the near future.—A.R. Venkatachalapathy, South Asian History and Culture

Groundbreaking…[Thapar] has shown, through her analysis of some important ancient Indian texts, how untenable it is to believe that India, in its two millennia of ancient history, had no sense of historical writing.—Charles Borges, The Historian

[Thapar] has used a wide variety of ancient sources and of languages, and introduced modern social science perspectives to help us better understand the richness and diversity of traditional Indian culture.—James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress

Ancient Indian civilization was perceived as lacking historical consciousness. To this ‘now dog-eared argument,’ Thapar, one of the most prominent Indian historians living today, delivers a strong counterargument. Yet the book is not written polemically; rather, it is a careful and judicious account based on Thapar’s erudition in Indian history and years of research on the subject…Reading this book would be an educative experience for many, not only for scholars of India.—Q. E. Wang, Choice

From a scholar at the pinnacle of her field comes the much-anticipated book on ancient Indian historiography, The Past Before Us—a rich feast, and a work of the highest scholarship. It will be cited and commented on for years to come. Anyone interested in the question of historical consciousness and historical writings cross-culturally, or in ancient India, will have to read Romila Thapar's masterpiece, which is destined to be a classic in the field.—Thomas Trautmann, author of Aryans and British India and Languages and Nations: The Dravidian Proof in Colonial Madras