For quite some time it was believed that the history of India started with the Aryans. But excavation at Harappa and Mohenjodaro changed the entire outlook and old beliefs. For most of the students like me History was one of most boring subjects of their school time, but now days, after reading few books of history, I realize that Indian History is full of mysteries.
Though the literature of ancient India is very glorious, rich and varied, it fails to present a clear conception of the history of this period. There is no work like that of Herodotus or Tacitus. There are different opinion of historians regarding this deficiency in Indian literature.
But at the same time, Indians had the conception of a scientific approach to historical study, though they attached more importance to religion and remained worried about the hereafter.
Hence it will be rather wrong to say that Indians had neither historical sense nor historical material. But the truth lies in the fact that there was no proper enthusiasm among Indians for keeping historical records, and that is the reason we know very little about our past. There are still many mysteries like the reason for the destruction of the Indus Valley Civilization, their script, the origin of the Aryans, the difference between Andhras and Satavahanas.
Thus the reconstruction of a continuous history of Ancient India presents great difficulties such as lack of historical material, indefinite chronology, lack of a single government, and the mixture of fact and fiction.
But in spite of all these difficulties there are certain sources which help a lot in the reconstruction of the ancient history of India, like the Vedas, Buddhist literature, inscriptions, coins, monuments, and foreign sources .
