Online resources for researching Indian history

Written and Virtual

WRITTEN SOURCES

I have been researching Indian history for the articles I write for years now.

I always try to go back to authoritative sources to back my research findings. These include -

translations of original texts (I read the English translation of Madhura Vijayam of Gangadevi to get a feel for her topic under discussion as well as for the language of the 16th century. Of course, nothing would come close to being able to read the original but this is a close second.)
Books by historians who are widely acknowledged as being experts - e.g. KA Neelakantha Shastri, RC Majumdar
Books by eminent writers who are known to have undertaken painstaking research for their subjects - The Queen of Jhansi by Mahasweta Devi
Newspaper reports on location and description of places (discovery of the memorial stone of Rani Rudramadevi commemorating the place on the battle field where she was martyred, thus bringing hard evidence to a historical fact.)
Online resoures to soak in the location and the atmosphere of the place and events being described. (articles on the local history of Sivaganga and Velu Nachiar)
Reference material such as dictionaries Pali-English, Sanskrit-English.
Travelogues and first-hand accounts by travellers such as Domingo Paes to the Vijayanagara empire

There have been times when I have postponed writing a profile of a woman in Indian history because I have been unable to get any authentic information about her and her times. I would rather not write, and wait until I have the information, than use popular media as a primary source when very often they do not mention their sources.

The internet is now a huge repository of books, manuscripts and other printed material that used to lie in musty libraries scattered all over India and abroad. This trove is now available in the form of scans, at various sites on the internet, open to anybody who cares to search for them from the comfort of their workplace. No travel, no dust allergies (the bane of my life in the presence of old paper!), no reason to quaver at the thought of having to dig through material for nuggets of information.

Online sources now are so vast and interconnected that referring them is like entering a maze. It is very easy to spend hours happily going down the various links that come up and emerging a long while later with no information that you originally went for. Learning to use search terms will make your time there more productive.

Some of the sources I go back to again and again are these...

www.archive.org. A treasure trove of original scanned books, books by experts, film footage, sound recordings and much else. It is usually my first port of call when I begin a project. Its vast repository gives me foundational information that I can further build on with subsequent research to write my articles authoritatively. I have read the books of the women writers I profile thanks to this wonderful site.
Digital South Asia Library of the University of Chicago. https://dsal.uchicago.edu
Cambridge Digital Library of Cambridge University https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk
DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals
Academia.edu for scholarly papers on a huge variety of subjects
Bodleian Library (https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk)
Foodtimeline.org is a huge site on food history compiled by Lynne Olver, a reference librarian with a passion for food history. Utterly fascinating resource.
https://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/history/asia/about
https://ancientfoods.wordpress.com for fascinating accounts of food in the ancient world
www.sanskritdocuments.org for a large number of books in Sanskrit which can be downloaded.
https://www.bl.uk/subjects/south-asia# huge resource on South Asia
https://www.rarebooksocietyofindia.org is a great resource for photographs, paintings, maps and written accounts on India.
https://www.wisdomlib.org a resource for ancient Indian medicine, philosophy and much more.

Do check this page every now and then. I will be adding worthwhile resources as I find them.

VIRTUAL TOURS OF HERITAGE SITES IN INDIA
UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites in India.

What is a World Heritage Site designated by UNESCO?

World Heritage is the designation for places on Earth that are of outstanding universal value to humanity and as such, have been inscribed on the World Heritage List to be protected for future generations to appreciate and enjoy.

There are 1007 natural and cultural places worldwide inscribed on the World Heritage List to date. India has 40 sites on the list - 32 are cultural, 7 are natural and 1 is a mixed type, The Kangchendzonga National Park.

Here is a partial list of World Heritage Sites in India with links to virtual tours. Do check back now and then, this is a growing list.