This is a collection of articles, originally selected by Prof. Zhen Liu of Fudan University and to be published in their series. However, the plan fell through as Chinese censors demanded a full translation of the book into Chinese. As the title says, this is a partial selection of M.Witzel’s writings on Vedic, Old Indian, and Nepalese history, from a discussion of the Ṛgveda up to recent reactions to the writing of Indian history as such. Nevertheless even this selection indicates how the subject has developed and expanded over the past fifty years, with increasing stress put on archaeology, and now also on human genetics. The now emerging combination of philology, linguistics, archaeology and genetics is most promising for the development of the field. It has enabled historians to reach increasingly finegrained results in describing and reconstructing the early stages of Indian history.