Volga Se Ganga
Rahul Sankrityayan
 Volga Se Ganga is about the history of Indo–European people who were later known as the Aryans. The 20 stories are woven over a time span of 8000 years and a distance of about 10,000&nbsp;km. This is a very good attempt at freeing our brains of the clutches of space and time. The first story Nisha is about cavemen living in Siberia about 6000 BC. The society or its precursor at that time was matriarchal and so the story is named after the leader of the family 'Nisha'. Although all the 20 stories are independent and equally enjoyable in their own right, the sequence in which they are arranged nevertheless serves a very important purpose. It is an indispensable aid to anyone who has been baffled by discontinuities in the evolution of societies and their cultures. Here one can find a gradual transformation from a matriarchal society (the first two stories) to a patriarchal one (the rest), a gradual change from freedom to slavery, from acceptance of slavery to its loathing and the likes. If we are to believe Sankrityayan then an apprehension for technological advancement is nothing new. People were wary of the newly better armament which was fast replacing the older stone equipment (Fourth story – Puruhoot (Tajikistan 2500BC.)). The same story tells us how an arms race was started during that period and how southerners amassed great wealth at the expense of the northerners. The sixth story Angira (Taxila 1800 BC) is about a man who wants to save the Aryan race from losing itself to other races by teaching about their culture (precursor to Vedic Rishis). The eighth story (Pravahan (700 BC. Panchal, U.P.). is about the upper class manipulating religion for their own vested interests and conspiring to keep people in dark for at least 2000 years). One can see how easily and frequently the Indians, the mid easterners and the Greeks mingled with each other in the times of Chanakya and Alexander by reading the tenth story Nagdatt about a philosopher classmate of Chanakya who travels to Greece and learns how Athens fell to Macedonia. The eleventh story (Prabha, 50 AD) is about the famous (also the first Indian) dramatist Ashwaghosh, who adopted the Greek art of drama into Indian culture in a very beautiful and authentic way, and his inspiration. Baba Noordeen (1300), the 15th story is about the rise of Sufism. The seventeenth story Rekha Bhagat (1800 is about the barbarous rule of the East India company and the anarchy it brought to India. The last story (Sumer, 1942) is about a man who goes on to fight the Japanese because he wants Soviet Russia to triumph, for this nation (i.e., the Communist Party) is the only hope left for humanity.