BOOK REVIEW 67 mathematics at that time. Astronomy and meteorology helped to make sowing, harvesting and irrigation more efficient. Improved geometry not only led to the building of more elaborate sacrificial enclosures, but also a more competent division of the fields, not to mention its use in the constructions of buildings. The new technology appears to have coincided with the Aryan speakers. The association of Sanskrit with the introduction of advanced technology may have led to its wide acceptance. It is significant that in those areas of the sub-continent, where an iron technology was already in existence— through the megalithic culture of the peninsula—the situation was different. Here, Dravidians remained the predominant language group.8 The author has thus successfully solved the question why north India by and large came under one system of socio-cultural organization, why the majority of tribes living in that part of the country should have been brought under the influence of Sanskrit culture and why another part of the country, south India, should by and large have maintained its own distinct cultural patterns, even though influenced to a large extent by the Sanskrit culture from the north. Neither is the former due to the ethnic superiority of the Aryan race, nor should the latter be attributed to the ethnic character of the Dravidian race. The phenomenon is to be traced, in both cases, to the character of the technological changes being brought about in the two areas, which found reflection in the two groups of languages. Marx on India Tracing the theory of Aryan civilization to the European scholars and administrators, the author goes into other theories like "Indian society having always been an unchanging society", "Oriental despotism", or "India having had in historical times no private property in land". She quotes the well-known articles of Karl Marx on British rule in India, to bring home the point that Marx too was influenced by those facts of Indian history which had been noted by imperialist scholars and administrators in order to project their own interpolation of history. This is understandable, since Marx's sources, the writings ofElphinstone, Campbell, Richard Jones and contemporary administrative records, all subscribed to this view. The facts being so limited, few thought of questioning the assumptions. In a later period Marx himself questioned the notion of a continuing and total absence of private property in land. Doubts about the validity of his earlier theory (concerning the absence of private property in land) had increased in the light of investigations made by Marxist historians themselves into the Indian pasr. On the other hand, the model put forward by Marx is more often used by scholars who by no stretch can be regarded as Marxists.6 It is necessary in this context to point out that Marx's writings on