This book is the companion volume to People's History of India, No. 6, which gave an account of the political and economic history of the post-Mauryan period from c. 200 BC to AD 300. The present volume deals with the important aspects of the society and culture of the same period. It traces the diffusion of the caste system and describes its detailed codification. The major changes in religion, notably the emergence of Mahayana Buddhism and Bhakti in Brahmanism, are surveyed in depth. The reader will also find much that is fresh and enlightening in the accounts of sculpture, languages and literature, in all of which fields the period saw much innovation and change.