It is an excellent collection of Rajan Gurukkal’s essays offering an insightful analysis of early social formations in the present-day South Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala: from the earliest times to the early medieval period. Thematically and spatio-temporally interconnected, the essays examine the transformation from agro-pastoral to social formation in the region exploring wide-ranging areas, like economy, technology, social relations, institutions, agrarian structure, and political and historical processes. The essays -- growing from the author’s three decades of painstaking research -- are grouped into four sections: Historiography and Method, Early Social Formation, Social Transformation, and The New Social Formation. Rajan Gurukkal is Vice-Chancellor, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala – where, earlier, he was Professor and Director, School of Social Sciences.