This book is the companion volume to A People's History of India 6,
which gave an account of the political and economic history of the
post-Mauryan period from c. 200 B.C. to A.D. 300. The present volume
deals with the important aspects of the society and culture of the same
period. It traces the diffusion of the caste system and describes its
detailed codification. The major changes in religion, notably the
emergence of Mahayana Buddhism and Bhakti in Brahmanism, are surveyed in
depth. The reader will also find much that is fresh and enlightening in
the accounts of sculpture, languages, and literature, in all of which
fields the period saw much innovation and change.