Project Illustrated India
Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Indian History
Have you ever thought of getting into a time machine and get transported to Ancient India? The India of Dreams! – The India that Alexander failed to conquer, the India that was the wealthiest in the world, the India that Megasthenis wrote about , the India that built the earliest of cities, the India that created universities where students from the known world thronged to study in thirst for quality education and superior knowledge, the India that gave Birth to women Rishis whose Vedic hymns are still in vogue after many thousands of years, the India that was advanced in surgical procedures, The land of mathematicians and astronomers and Engineers of the finest kind ? Then This is the way forward…
What Is It About?
Illustrated encyclopaedia of Indian History – From Earliest times until 600 CE is the first in a magnum opus book series project that aims to portray Ancient and Early India in its full glory - in 350 pages filled with more than 1300 colourful illustrations. These illustrations will consist of heavily researched, originally made high quality oil paintings created by highly skilled artists with years of experience in visualisation and illustration. The book series will showcase Life and times in Ancient and Classical Bharat along with the achievements of Bhartiyas in the last 8+ millennia in every walk of life ranging from Astronomy to Mathematics, from Metallurgy to Ecology, from City planning to Philosophy, which all together have formed the foundations of the Indian civilization – The Great Bhartiya Samskriti.
This book will be the prequel of the other 2 volumes: Illustrated Encyclopaedia: from 600 CE to 1600 CE - the Medieval Indian History and 1600 CE to 2021 CE - the Modern Indian History
Mission Of The Book
● To inspire children’s minds and make them aware of Ancient and Classical India, to make them feel proud of her unparalleled knowledge traditions in plethora of fields, her true history beyond politics, kings and wars, her cultural and spiritual heritage, her encounters and relationships with other ancient civilizations and the contribution that the Indic civilization has made for the world
● To invoke a sense of belongingness to the Nation and make them realize the value of collective responsibility which will naturally push them to go beyond their limited self
● To assist them transform as Social Engineers who will rebuild the Great Bharata of the future
Chapters & Illustratable Contents:
1. Pre-Human History and Early Humans in the Indian Sub-continent
2. Cities of the bronze age
3. The rise of Great kingdoms: Iron Age and Mahajanapadas
4. Agriculture and irrigation
5. Food and Drink
6. Society and order
7. Occupation
8. Administration
9. War and Army
10. Trade and travelling
11. Clothing, jewellery and fashion
12. Learning and art
13. Literature
14. Architecture
15. Science and Technology
16. Medicine and Health
17. Ecology
18. Religion - Philosophy
19. Leisure / past time
20. Legacy
The Current Problem
1. lack of children inspiring books
We lack colourfully illustrated books with less texts that
1. would make the children’s eyes wide open with curiosity and wonder 2. inspire and teach them about Indian civilization and Indic knowledge traditions. 3. make them inquisitive about the greatness of India and her achievements which would fill their hearts with pride.
School text books of History make our children sleepy. Amarchitrakathas and Chinmaya Mission books are simply not enough.
2. Negative ideas about India
Since the true history of India is not being taught to both Indian and world children, they are fed with all sorts of negative perceptions about Indian history, culture and way of life. California school text book controversy is one such common example.
3. Limited identity
As Children grow up with lack of pride and knowledge about India, their social and cultural identity gets limited to their family and caste. While they have the potential to transform India and the world, they limit themselves within their comfort zones. This limited identity results in brain drain, degradation of ecology and so on. Expansion of identity comes from the knowledge of who we are as a nation. A population with expanded, inclusive identity could decide the fate of Indian civilization which is 1/7th of humanity and in turn that of the whole world.
Our Book Aims To
1. Inspire Children to Make India a Superpower
Because of the pride that our book generates in the young minds and with the knowledge of ancient India, every single modern day Indian and world problem such as pollution, ecological degradation, geo political – religious conflict, water management, inclusive economics, excessive population, extensive consumerism, psychological problems and more can be fixed because we believe India’s knowledge traditions and way of life has solutions to all of them.
2. Rebuild Indian civilization for the 3rd Millennium
We solve nearly a 1000-year-old problem of Indian civilizational collapse and help stop a possible disintegration of India in the near future by transforming fresh minds, decolonize them and make them the future problem solvers. This can be made possible by educating school and college goers through visually engaging mediums that portray varied facets of Indian civilization in a powerful way –for which our book, the illustrated Encyclopaedia Is a starting point.
3. Change the perception of the way future minds look at India
The colonial, biased and euro-centric views on India history distorts people’s perception and has resulted in skewed image of Indian History and Culture across the globe. While there are progressive changes, the school textbooks of both the western world and India still project a prejudiced opinion of everything about Indian ways of life. We uproot this false perception and distorted lenses through which scholars of western institutions are seeing our civilization through our wonderfully illustrated book.