Facets of Indian Archaeology and Culture: A Felicitation Volume in Honour of Professor Harihar Panda

This felicitation volume has 40 articles contributed by Scholars engaged in the profession of academics, i.e., teaching or research in colleges, universities and institutions of India and abroad. The volume is divided into three broad sections (more for our convenience than any justifiable convictions), i.e., Archaeology, History and Culture . T h e geographical spread and the historical canvas of the articles, are simply astounding and provide us with a Pan-Indian approach to the themes undertaken by the scholars. History, of late, has become a fast changing subject and its interpretation is undergoing a continuous process of evolution. Facts do not explain how they became facts or why we care about some facts more than other facts only stories do that. All the articles in the volume narrate the stories as conceived by the respective scholars. They add on to our existing knowledge-base of various facets of Indian Archaeology, History and Culture. There could not have been a more fitting tribute to Prof. Harihar Panda, than this Felicitation volume comprising of scholarly contributions by academic fraternity from reputed institutions and universities of India and abroad. The articles in this volume reflect on India’s trajectory revealing continuities and changes that have transformed the story of our existence and consciousness. How we see our past is increasingly shaping our ideas of India and where we wish to go ahead as a society. The onset of concepts like modernism, capitalism and nationalism and an overload of information in the public domain in the recent decades, has fuelled in all Indians a desire to understand our place in the world in many ways. Hence the need to relook at our history in a different perspective, which we believe, has been adopted by the learned scholars.