AL Basham's The Wonder that was India is a brilliant early history of one of the oldest civilisations. When it was first published in the United Kingdom in 1954, it became an instant hit, as it would in the United States a few years later. Since then it has consistently found an avid readership all over the world, been translated into many languages, and has educated and entertained generations of general readers, serious students and travellers to India. This edition celebrates its fifty years in print with a foreword by Thomas R Trautmann, professor at the University of Michigan and once Basham's student, which brings alive the man and the academic behind this cherished volume and illuminates the historical influences upon it.