topics: |  history | india | |

Excerpts

The importance of Kanauj in ancient times was probably due to its strategic advantages. The city stood on a cliff on the right bank of the Ganges, which was then the highway of commerce and communication.... The river, however, now flows at a distance of some miles to east. ·As observed by Cunningham, "the situation is a commanding one, and before the use of the cannon the height alone must have made Kanauj a strong and important position (Cunningham's Ancient Geography of India, ed. S. N. Majumdar, (Calcutta, 1914), p. 436). [FN, p.1]

One of the weakest spots in Sanskrit literature is the almost entire absence of any history. Thoroughly permeated with the idea of the unreality of material things, the ancient Brahmans have seldom cared to mark the footprints which kings and dynasties leave upon the sands of time. 7

[Kanauj finds mention] in the mahAbhAShya of the celebrated grammarian
patan~jali usually assigned to circa 150 b.c.  he gives the form
Ahicchatri and kAnyakubji in the sense of a woman born at these two towns
respectively.  the use of the adjective derived from the name of the town
thus clearly shows that kAnyakubja was a well-known place in the second
century b.c. and it must have been founded considerably earlier. 16

[defeating the Hun rulers (6th c.)] 
Janendra Yashodharman delivered the land from an intolerable foreign
thraldom.  23

Send your jottings to Book Excerptise

to contribute some excerpts from your favourite book to book excerptise. send us a plain text file with page-numbered extracts from your favourite book. You can preface your extracts with a short review.
email to (bookexcerptise [at] gmail [dot] com).