Volga Se Ganga (, A journey from the Volga to the Ganges) is a 1943 collection of 20 historical fiction short-stories by scholar and travel writer Rahul Sankrityayan. A true vagabond, Sankrityayan traveled to far lands like Russia, Korea, Japan, China and many others, where he mastered the languages of these lands and was an authority on cultural studies. The stories collectively trace the migration of Aryans from the steppes of the Eurasia to regions around the Volga river; then their movements across the Hindukush and the Himalayas and the sub-Himalayan regions; and their spread to the Indo-Gangetic plains of the subcontinent of India. The book begins in 6000 BC and ends in 1942, the year when Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian nationalist leader called for the quit India movement. Publication history and translations Sanskritayan wrote his debut novel Jine Ke Liye in 1938. Meanwhile, 1941-42, he was inspired by the historical stories of Bhagawat Sharan Upadhyay. Later he wrote 20 short stories while imprisoned in Hazaribagh Central Jail for taking part in Indian independence movement. It was first published in 1943 and is considered one of the greatest Hindi book of modern Indian literature. It has been translated into many languages including Assamese, Marathi, Bengali, English, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Punjabi where he ran into several editions, besides foreign languages like Russian, Czech, Polish Chinese, and many more. This book is now considered a classic in history of Indian literature. The first Bengali translation was published in 1954.The first Tamil translation was published in 1949 by Kanna.Muthaiyyah. Synopsis Volga Se Ganga is about the history of Indo–European people who were later known as the Aryans. The 20 stories are woven over a span of 8000 years and a distance of about 10,000 km. The first story, "Nisha", is about cavemen living in Caucasia (southern Russia) about 6000 BC. The society or its precursor at that time was matriarchal and so the story is named after the leader of the family 'Nisha'. Although all the 20 stories are independent, the sequence in which they are arranged nevertheless serves a very important purpose. Here one can find a gradual transformation from a matriarchal society (the first two stories) to a patriarchal one (the rest), a gradual change from freedom to slavery, from acceptance of slavery to its loathing and the likes. If one is to believe Sankrityayan, then an apprehension for technological