Includes bibliographical references (pages 790-841) and index.

Prelude: Sources and Approaches;
Introduction;
PART I - RETRIEVING PREHISTORY AND PROTOHISTORY FROM ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOURCES:
1. Hunting-Gathering and Early Food-Producing Sites;
2. Settlement Patterns, Exchange and Interaction between Communities: Harappan Urbanism,
c.2500-1500 BCE;
3. Tracing the Indo-Europeans and Indo-Iranians beyond South Asia: Late Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Early Iron Phases in South Asia, c.1900-600 BCE;
PART II - EARLY HISTORIC SOURCES: TEXTS AND CONTEXTS:
4. Early Literary Traditions, c. 1900-600 BCE;
5. Emergent Histories, Entangled ideas, c.600-400 BCE;
PART III - CREATING ARCHIVES: EPIGRAPHS, COINS, ART AND TREATISES:
6. Polycentric Networks and Devānāmapiya Piyadassi's Epigraphic Archive, c.400-200 BCE
7. Convergence, Contestation and Consolidation:
Coins, Artefacts and the Itihasa-Kâvya-Sāstra Literary Traditions, 200 BCE to the Beginning of the Common Era;
Appendix: Maps;
Bibliography;
Index.

South Asia before the Common Era engages with the way in which the early history of the subcontinent has been reconstructed by recent historians, using the rich and varied sources from the region. Exploring the context in which artefacts and texts have been retrieved and interpreted, it traces the trajectories of how humans in early South Asia responded to their circumstances, the interconnections of communities within and beyond the subcontinent, and the multilayered and variegated histories of the region. The book examines the difficulties involved in gleaning information from prehistoric, protohistoric and early historic material remains and texts—exploring what they reveal, what they hide, what is now lost. It shows how literary traditions survived and examines their tangled histories as well as their transmission, re-iteration and re-invention, creating their own layered narratives and hagiographies before being interpreted by modern historians.
This work aims at a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the past and at unpacking the information that we take for granted as the ‘history of early India’, leaving the door open for future possibilities and research.