This work is not just to reiterate that ‘we’, the Indians have been nurturing multiple cultural streams, particularly two majorly contesting spirits of orthodoxy and heterodoxy from our past and that we inherit them today as well. But it goes much...

This work is not just to reiterate that ‘we’, the Indians have been nurturing multiple cultural streams, particularly two majorly contesting spirits of orthodoxy and heterodoxy from our past and that we inherit them today as well. But it goes much beyond that in scrutinizing and analyzing the processes leading to the growth, rise, deviations and decline of these spirits in the past as well as today. This of course along with the changing material conditions of the ages reflect in the social and political formations, economic structure and religious movements of all shades in our past. We in this book have tried to understand the features and phenomena of our social and cultural behaviour in the present if at all they have their roots in our ancient. We intend to re-examine the methods and processes of social and religious developments accompanied with political and economic forces of the ancients leaving a legacy of mutually opposite tendencies for the posterity from our so remote past. That is, of course, what we mean by the ‘historical dichotomy’ what we may be inheriting today. It is more than important for now to make a rational understanding of our past in view of the fast erasing concept of ‘unity in diversity’ and interdependence among different communities which, otherwise, is the very fabric of our present nationhood.