The transformation, within the framework of the history of India, of a classical civilization into a modern Nation State is a process of profound interest to social historians and scholars in the human sciences. The social, the biographical, the institutional, and last but not the least, the intellectual facets of this phenomenon are explored in the essays incorporated in this book. These essays are further held together by the belief that historical explorations not only provide clues to the past of a society; but they also illumine the present and provide the basis for its reconstruction in the future.