This book provides for the first time a detailed analysis of the prasasti and donative parts of the inscriptional records of different Chalukyan families that ruled the Deccan between 600 and 1200 CE. It shifts focus away from the genre of writing regional political history to the genre of writing social history at the regional level using the same genealogical sources more effectively. Through the fourfold classification of the inscriptions spread across time and space, and inclusion of some of the families of local chiefs, it has also addressed issues relating to the use of time in its varied dimensions ? cyclic or mythical, linear or historical. The main argument in this book also disproves the theory that pre-colonial India had no historical consciousness. Since every individual, family and nation has a past, studying genealogies as records of the past increases understand how ruling families viewed their past, which was based on both memory and time.