A. L. Basham’s The Wonder That Was India is a brilliant early history of one of the world’s oldest civilisations. When it was first published in the United Kingdom in 1954, it became an instant hit, as it would in the United States a few years later. Since then, it has consistently found an avid readership all over the world, been translated in many languages, and has educated and entertained generations of general readers and serious students of Indian history alike. The foreword, by Thomas R. Trautmann, brings alive the man and the academic behind this volume and illuminates the historical influences upon it.

The Wonder That Was India is a classic that anybody with an interest in the civilisational beginnings of India must read. It is a work of uncompromising scholarship and a labour of love.