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smuds2's review
adventurous
informative
medium-paced
3.0
Beautiful stories, don’t know if I’d use as a primary source…
geeth's review
1.0
Save for the pieces by Manu Pillai and William Darymple, the rest are all over the place. Some are too short, some too literary, some too dry. A
ravipotter's review
3.0
3.3/5.
I arrived at this rating by averaging the ratings I gave to different narratives by each author within this book. A better rating would be weighting the rating by the number of their pages and then taking the average, since the excitement or the meh feeling would be more or quickly forgotten respective to their lengths, here all being less than or equal to a novella, the length is linear in relation to the overall mood of the narrative.
Well, this is the kind of book that I believe is compiled so as to be a gateway into the bigger and richer volumes in the annuals of history, collated together to give a taste, illustrate an incident , and tell a perspective, for these all are small snippets of much bigger works from the respective authors. And I feel that the best way to review this is by putting down my thoughts on each individual chapters.
I realise the awesomeness of the Gaussian distribution, since even among these esteemed authors there is a curve where a few are fabulous and a few meh and most of them confirming to the expectations we've from these respective authors.
1. The Emergence of Empire: Mauryan India - Romila Thapar - 2/5
This seemed like a collections of some chronological facts about the Ashokan Edicts. It maybe academic in nature but it is certainly not a narrative. Reading this snippet didn't arouse me to look for the bigger volume of which this excerpt is a part of. It reminded me therefore of the robotic tone of the some of the IVRS messages —factual but lifeless.
2. The First Hindu Empire - Abraham Eraly - 4/5
This again in a collection of facts, but with a major difference. This has a warm tone that made me care more about the kings discussed as if they were characters of some novel. The reasoning provided as to why the first two Guptas maybe mere chieftains and the way light was thrown at some of the mythic deeds of the kings like the Ashvamedha yaga piqued my interest in the right direction. The way the author discusses about the mindset of the Gupta kings and which leads them to consider an act of Sri Lankan king as submission, which is chronicled in a Chinese work is interspersed into the story here, which was awesome.
Then again there was the story of Dhruvadevi, told as if a classic drama novel/movie while all the while quoting the sources made it even more enjoyable. This is an excellent narrative. The only reason I wasn't giving 5/5 is since there come later works within this book which are better than this.
3. Raja Raja Chozhar - Kalki - 1/5
This piece of work made me go WTF. This is a small two page text about how a royal sister loved his beautiful royal brother. Big deal! This text failed to provide either a context or a coherent narrative. I'm more inclined to believe that the error lies squarely with whoever compiled this book.
4. Krishnadeva Raya - Manu S. Pillai - 4/5
This is a history text of extraordinary detail that still reads like a novel. At every step the author questions the facts and the sources, so I think I read an unbiased treatise on Krishnadeva Raya. Author also provides his own interpretations of why the King acted in a certain way, like when King praised the Telugu language. The narrative if filled with a generous dose of footnotes and sources.
5. The shelter of the world - Salman Rushdie - 3/5
This work is definitely fiction with elements of magical realism. If the text is based on actual historical facts or just use historical figures to tell a a fictitious story, I don't know. This snippet from 'Enchantress of Florence' is a text of exquisite writing and flow. But to what purpose this is included in this collection is what makes me scratch my head. Looking at the title 'The Book of Indian Kings', I'd expect more facts than fiction.
6. Shivaji and His Times - Jadunath Sarkar - 3.5
This narrative has remarkable quality. In this small extract of a text we get to see many shades of the king Shivaji, just like a human he is. He is not above his tactics and given his methodology of guerrilla warfare, are bound to have non-straightforward ways of combat and trickery. Author does well not to just ramble and eulogise. Again a text rich with footnotes.
7. Tipu Sultan - Rajmohan Gandhi - 5/5
Stunning historical fragment of a text. Instead of preaching king's humanity or despotic nature and making conclusions, author just presents the facts and let you make your own conclusions. The text majorily draws from that of a Wilks writing about the same, while also not taking everything as it is, given that Wilks is a soldier of British army and bound to be biased in his words. But author does well to point out those instances where Wilks praises Tipu despite his unwillingness to do the same.
Author points out how Tipu forced many towns and regions including the inhabitants of Coorg to Islam while also giving an aid to Sringeri Sharada Peetham upon request. Make out what you will from it.
Author gives us glimpses of Anglo-Mysore wars, which feels as if we are in one of those tents frustratingly waiting for the news about our other troops and allies which never seem to come. We get to look at the forts, strategies, and myriad of weapons used. We also learn a great deal about Cornwallis and the intentions of Napoleon which never got fulfilled. We also get to know the reasoning behind the British targeting Mysore more than the bigger Maratha Empire.
This book reads like a graph from the Tipu's viewpoint, each battle going in his favour and reaching an apogee before the eventual fall.
8. The Last Mughal - William Dalrymple - 2.5/5
Decent. Tells us about the the last Mughal, Bahadur Shah Zafar, while hinting that he was burdened by the kingdom and he is someone who'd rather be anywhere else than on the throne of the last feeble Mughal empire. Much of it is conveyed telling us about the painting by Ágoston Schoefft. A small morsel of text which left me unsure of what the point was that the compiler of this edition is trying to make.
9. Ranjit Singh, Maharajah of the Punjab - Khushwant Singh - 3/5
Filled with apocryphal stories about the Punjab King who united peoples of all faiths to form his empire by appealing to their Punjabi nationalism and successfully repelled invasions by outside armies, particularly from the northwestern frontiers. This work seems to be penned to show that the King Ranjit Singh is more than an academic character and a simple-minded nationalist and that he shouldn't be reduced to extremes either as a saint or as a vile creature. His legacy, we are told, sparkles in the way his troops tried to bring under his colors those regions which are headed by the co-religionists of the troops that befell them, citing the examples of Kabul and Tibet.
10. Madhavrao Scindia - Vir Sanghvi and Namita Bhandare - 5/5
As a rule I'm not interested in reading about kings of the modern era. To me they don't exude the same allure as the ancient kings. Much of my love of reading about ancient kings comes from the Telugu socio-mythological movies. But the author was so skilled and the text so awesome that I sat up and read page after page about a king and kingdom that existed during the time of India's Independence, 1947. Needless to say that surprised me. I don't know what trick author employed or what he did differently but it was a delectable read.
This book is a must read, if you love anything remotely related to history.
I arrived at this rating by averaging the ratings I gave to different narratives by each author within this book. A better rating would be weighting the rating by the number of their pages and then taking the average, since the excitement or the meh feeling would be more or quickly forgotten respective to their lengths, here all being less than or equal to a novella, the length is linear in relation to the overall mood of the narrative.
Well, this is the kind of book that I believe is compiled so as to be a gateway into the bigger and richer volumes in the annuals of history, collated together to give a taste, illustrate an incident , and tell a perspective, for these all are small snippets of much bigger works from the respective authors. And I feel that the best way to review this is by putting down my thoughts on each individual chapters.
I realise the awesomeness of the Gaussian distribution, since even among these esteemed authors there is a curve where a few are fabulous and a few meh and most of them confirming to the expectations we've from these respective authors.
1. The Emergence of Empire: Mauryan India - Romila Thapar - 2/5
This seemed like a collections of some chronological facts about the Ashokan Edicts. It maybe academic in nature but it is certainly not a narrative. Reading this snippet didn't arouse me to look for the bigger volume of which this excerpt is a part of. It reminded me therefore of the robotic tone of the some of the IVRS messages —factual but lifeless.
2. The First Hindu Empire - Abraham Eraly - 4/5
This again in a collection of facts, but with a major difference. This has a warm tone that made me care more about the kings discussed as if they were characters of some novel. The reasoning provided as to why the first two Guptas maybe mere chieftains and the way light was thrown at some of the mythic deeds of the kings like the Ashvamedha yaga piqued my interest in the right direction. The way the author discusses about the mindset of the Gupta kings and which leads them to consider an act of Sri Lankan king as submission, which is chronicled in a Chinese work is interspersed into the story here, which was awesome.
Then again there was the story of Dhruvadevi, told as if a classic drama novel/movie while all the while quoting the sources made it even more enjoyable. This is an excellent narrative. The only reason I wasn't giving 5/5 is since there come later works within this book which are better than this.
3. Raja Raja Chozhar - Kalki - 1/5
This piece of work made me go WTF. This is a small two page text about how a royal sister loved his beautiful royal brother. Big deal! This text failed to provide either a context or a coherent narrative. I'm more inclined to believe that the error lies squarely with whoever compiled this book.
4. Krishnadeva Raya - Manu S. Pillai - 4/5
This is a history text of extraordinary detail that still reads like a novel. At every step the author questions the facts and the sources, so I think I read an unbiased treatise on Krishnadeva Raya. Author also provides his own interpretations of why the King acted in a certain way, like when King praised the Telugu language. The narrative if filled with a generous dose of footnotes and sources.
5. The shelter of the world - Salman Rushdie - 3/5
This work is definitely fiction with elements of magical realism. If the text is based on actual historical facts or just use historical figures to tell a a fictitious story, I don't know. This snippet from 'Enchantress of Florence' is a text of exquisite writing and flow. But to what purpose this is included in this collection is what makes me scratch my head. Looking at the title 'The Book of Indian Kings', I'd expect more facts than fiction.
6. Shivaji and His Times - Jadunath Sarkar - 3.5
This narrative has remarkable quality. In this small extract of a text we get to see many shades of the king Shivaji, just like a human he is. He is not above his tactics and given his methodology of guerrilla warfare, are bound to have non-straightforward ways of combat and trickery. Author does well not to just ramble and eulogise. Again a text rich with footnotes.
7. Tipu Sultan - Rajmohan Gandhi - 5/5
Stunning historical fragment of a text. Instead of preaching king's humanity or despotic nature and making conclusions, author just presents the facts and let you make your own conclusions. The text majorily draws from that of a Wilks writing about the same, while also not taking everything as it is, given that Wilks is a soldier of British army and bound to be biased in his words. But author does well to point out those instances where Wilks praises Tipu despite his unwillingness to do the same.
Author points out how Tipu forced many towns and regions including the inhabitants of Coorg to Islam while also giving an aid to Sringeri Sharada Peetham upon request. Make out what you will from it.
Author gives us glimpses of Anglo-Mysore wars, which feels as if we are in one of those tents frustratingly waiting for the news about our other troops and allies which never seem to come. We get to look at the forts, strategies, and myriad of weapons used. We also learn a great deal about Cornwallis and the intentions of Napoleon which never got fulfilled. We also get to know the reasoning behind the British targeting Mysore more than the bigger Maratha Empire.
This book reads like a graph from the Tipu's viewpoint, each battle going in his favour and reaching an apogee before the eventual fall.
8. The Last Mughal - William Dalrymple - 2.5/5
Decent. Tells us about the the last Mughal, Bahadur Shah Zafar, while hinting that he was burdened by the kingdom and he is someone who'd rather be anywhere else than on the throne of the last feeble Mughal empire. Much of it is conveyed telling us about the painting by Ágoston Schoefft. A small morsel of text which left me unsure of what the point was that the compiler of this edition is trying to make.
9. Ranjit Singh, Maharajah of the Punjab - Khushwant Singh - 3/5
Filled with apocryphal stories about the Punjab King who united peoples of all faiths to form his empire by appealing to their Punjabi nationalism and successfully repelled invasions by outside armies, particularly from the northwestern frontiers. This work seems to be penned to show that the King Ranjit Singh is more than an academic character and a simple-minded nationalist and that he shouldn't be reduced to extremes either as a saint or as a vile creature. His legacy, we are told, sparkles in the way his troops tried to bring under his colors those regions which are headed by the co-religionists of the troops that befell them, citing the examples of Kabul and Tibet.
10. Madhavrao Scindia - Vir Sanghvi and Namita Bhandare - 5/5
As a rule I'm not interested in reading about kings of the modern era. To me they don't exude the same allure as the ancient kings. Much of my love of reading about ancient kings comes from the Telugu socio-mythological movies. But the author was so skilled and the text so awesome that I sat up and read page after page about a king and kingdom that existed during the time of India's Independence, 1947. Needless to say that surprised me. I don't know what trick author employed or what he did differently but it was a delectable read.
This book is a must read, if you love anything remotely related to history.
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