In his two-part Human Society series, Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar has chosen to depart from chronological order: analysing modern society in the first part of the series, and then delving into human history, and human macrohistory, in the second part.

In Human Society Part 2 the author sets out his famous theory of the social cycle. In each age of human history, people of a certain mental outlook dominate. Despite the positive contributions they may initially bring, this ruling class will increasingly exploit the other members of society and even the weaker members of their own class. The stresses they create within those whom they exploit cause some of the exploited to develop their minds in characteristic ways, enabling them to bring about revolution and dominate the next age of history.

Historians, sociologists and economists have become increasingly aware of the vast explanatory powers of this theory. It succeeds in bringing clarity and order out of the seeming chaos of humanity’s long sojourn on this planet. Further elaboration of this theory can be found in various other works by the author: Idea and Ideology, Ánanda Sútram, and the Prout in a Nutshell series.

The language of the present edition has been based as closely as possible on the first English translation, rendered by Shrii Manohar Gupta. The only exception to this is the first section of “The Kśatriya Age” chapter: here the translators have followed a later (1987) translation, only correcting any typographical errors and highlighting a few Sanskrit terms.

Footnotes by the translators have all been signed “–Trans.”

Square brackets [   ] in the text are used to indicate translations by the translators or other editorial insertions. Round brackets (   ) indicate a word or words originally given by the author.