The author has, however, taken the opportunity to update the bibliography and added a new chapter to the second book. Broadly speaking, the first volume deals with the period of the Cholas and the Pandyas with a chapter on the Nayakas and the Mirasidars of the 17th and 18th centuries; the second part deals with the periods of the Vijayanagar and the Nayaka rule in Tamil Nadu.

Prof. Karashima rightly pays tributes to the pioneers in historical studies like Prof. S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar and Prof. Nilakanta Sastri who "vigorously produced a great many of the foundational works" and characterises the period as "the first golden age of South Indian historical studies."

The recent and the ongoing theoretical analysis of the history and its implications, exemplified by the works of Prof. Burton Stein and others, marks, in his opinion, the second bright period. Prof. Karashima's contribution to the historiography of the latter period is impressive and valuable as could be seen through the pages of these volumes.

Thanks to his innovative approach involving the use of computerised techniques and statistical analysis he is able to present a fascinating perspective on the development of South Indian society during and after the Chola period which ushered in a new social formation under the Vijayanagar-Nayaka rule.

The first chapter contains four articles, which discuss the pattern of land-holdings in the Chola times. An intensive and comparative study made between Brahmadeya villages and the non-Brahmadeya villages revealed two different patterns; individual holding in the former and communal holding in the latter. This was in the earlier period. But in the later Chola period, individual land holdings were prevalent in the non-Brahmadeya villages also. Since the latter type of villages formed the overwhelming majority, the relations in those villages, can be regarded as the basic determinant of social relations of the day.

The three articles of the second chapter deal with the social integration or the power structure of the state, that is the apparatus through which the ruler or "the ruling class controlled the peasants and other sections of the population to extract their surplus products." This question impinges on the problem of the existence or otherwise of bureaucracy in the Chola period.

In the second section, the problem of the village community is examined and the author opines that the Indian village community was not a self-sufficient unitary place as is usually supposed; but rather it depended on a larger area.

A statistical analysis of personal names, together with the titles and status terms, seems to indicate the existence of the administrative system or bureaucracy maintained by the central government. An "analysis of the revenue terms in two Mandalas shows uniformity of terms and also creation of Valanadus and also systematic land survey, indicative of a central controlling machinery and political integration that the Cholas consciously tried to build up."

Prof. Karashima does not agree with the view that ancient and medieval South Indian society followed Asiatic mode of production. He also cautions against the "mechanical application of the concept of feudalism in the South Indian context as has been done by scholars like D.N. Jha.

He points out the many fallacies in their argument and observes that the number of villages granted by rulers to Brahmins and temples was decisively in minority and also says "it seems too hasty to take royal grants of villages as an evidence for a prevalence of feudalism or serfdom, unless we study the conditions of the non-grant villages".

Chapter three deals with the revenue systems of the Cholas and Pandyas, which include revenue terms, assessment, and socio-agro-economic terms in Thanjavur district.

Under the heading "Aspects of later periods," he deals with the problem of land holdings under the Nayak rulers followed by the Mirasidars in Chengalpattu area in the 17th and 18th centuries.

It seems that the prototype of the Mirasidars of the British period existed even in the later Chola period. The way in which the author has collected a vast body of evidence by a close study of hundreds of inscriptions and the meaning of the terms (like revenue, titles, etc.) that occur and interpret them in a broad historical framework is indeed admirable. Another important aspect of his approach is that it is free from pre-conceived ideological fixations. He discusses all the theoretical interpretations but arrives at his own independent conclusions backed by objective criteria and fresh insights.

Needless to say that this work will be widely welcome as a valuable tool for understanding the complex socio-economic conditions of medieval Southern India.