This handbook presents a multilayered and multidimensional history of state formation in premodern India. It explores dense and rich local and subregional historiography from the mid-first millennium BC to the eighteenth century in South Asia.

Hermann Kulke did his PhD in Indology in 1967, is Professor Emeritus of Asian History, University of Kiel, Germany. His publications include Imaging Odisha (Editor-in-Chief, 2013), History of Precolonial India: Issues and Debates (with B. P. Sahu, 2018) and Kings and Cults: State Formation and Legitimation in India and South-east Asia (2021, 3rd rpt.). In 2006 he was awarded Gold Medal, Asiatic Society, Kolkata, in 2010 he was awarded the Padma Shri by the President of India, and in 2011 the Order of Merit by the Federal Republic of Germany.

Bhairabi Prasad Sahu is Professor of History, University of Delhi, India. The Changing Gaze: Regions and the Constructions of Early India (2013), Interrogating Political Systems: Integrative Processes and States in Pre-modern India (Edited with H. Kulke, 2015) and The Making of Regions in Indian History: Society, State and Identity in Premodern Odisha (2020) are among his recent works. He has served as President, Ancient India (2003) and Secretary of the Indian History Congress (2006-09), and Council Member, Indian Council of Historical Research (2008-14), New Delhi.

Introduction, PART I: Political Systems in Practice, 1. Tidal Waves of India History - Between the Empires and Beyond, 2. Autonomous Spaces and the Authority of the State: The Contradiction and its Resolution in Theory and Practice, 3. The Vana and the Ksetra: The Tribal Background of Some Famous Cults, 4. The State, Violence and Resistance, 5. Structure of the Chiefdom in Peninsular India, 6. Trade and the Making of State Society in Early India (c.600-1300 CE), 7. State Formation and the Frontiers: Autochthonous Communities, Ritual Practices and the Brahmanical Order in Early India, 8. Little Kingdoms, PART II: Early Medieval Polities, 9. A Theatre of Broken Dreams 2.0: Vidisha during the Days of Gupta Hegemony, 10. State, Patronage and Religion in the Early Valkha State (c. 4th to 5th centuries CE), 11. Violence, Courtly Manners and Lineage Formation in Early Medieval India, 12. State Formation under the Western Gangas in Karnataka (4th to 10th centuries CE), 13. State Formation and Polity of Brahmapura-Karttikeyapura in Central Himalayas (c. 5th-10th centuries CE), 14. State and its Fortunes: The Cola Experience, South India, 15. Imperial Rulers and Regional Elites in Early Medieval Central India (8th to 13th centuries CE), 16. Revisiting the Chola State, 17. Imperial Architecture and the Ideology of Kingship in Odisha: Tanjavur's Brihadisvara Temple as the Model for Odisha's Monumental Temples?, PART III: Into the Medieval, 18. The Mouse in the Ancestry, 19. Building a Past: Creation and Re-creation of a Royal Sanskrit Genealogy in Medieval Rajasthan, 20. Kosalananda Kavyam and the Making of a Rajput Dynasty: A Study on the Chauhans of Western Orissa, 21. Sultan Among Hindu Kings: Dress Titles and the Islamicization of Hindu Culture at Vijayanagara, 22. Preparing for the Mughal State: A View from the Textual Worlds of the Fifteenth Century, 23. Durga and the King: Ethnohistorical Aspects in the Politico-Ritual Life of a South Orissan Jungle Kingdom, PART IV: Beyond the Premodern, 24. The Formation of a Centre out There: The Case of Ranpur, 25. King, Goddesses and Jagannatha: Regional Patriotism and Subregional and Local Identities in Early Modern Orissa, 26. Virtual Relations: Little Kings in Malabar, 27. From Dispute to 'Disturbance': The 'Gond Disturbances' in late 19th century Bonai (Odisha)*