E M S J^AMBOODIRIPAD Evolution of Society^ Language and Literature In India KARL MARX was not an Indologist in the sense in which the term Indology is used today. He did not make specialized studies on any aspect of Indian life—its history, economy, polity or culture. However, his well-known articles on India in an American paper in the eighteen-fifties, together With the many observations and remarks scattered all over his works concerning prc-British Indian society, are a penetrating analysis of the socio-economic, political and cultural background against which the Indian people "lost their old world without gaining the new". Modern Indologists will find Marx^s writings on India a treasure-house of insights into Indian society. They, however, will have to take into consideration the severe limitations under which Marx was making the analysis of pre-British India and the revolutionary changes being made by the British in that society. The limitations are mainly three: 1) The main subject of his study being capitalism in the world, Marx did not make a concrete study of India's past, present and future. India had necessarily came into the field of his study only because it was the biggest colony of the first country where capitalism was developing in its many-sided manner. Ancient and medieval India came to his notice to the extent to which it provi-