Rahul Sankrityayan was greatly influenced by Marxist ideas. The last story ("Sumer", 1942) is about a man who goes on to fight the Japanese because he wants Soviet Russia to triumph, for this nation according to him is the only hope left for humanity. The seventeenth story Rekha Bhagat (1800 is about the barbarous rule of the East India company and the anarchy it brought to parts of India.
Baba Noordeen (1300), the 15th story is about the rise of Sufism. The eleventh story ( Prabha, 50 AD) is about the famous (also the first Indian) dramatist Aśvaghoṣa, who adopted the Greek art of drama into Indian culture in a very beautiful and authentic way, and his inspiration. One can see how easily and frequently the Indians, the mid easterners and the Greeks mingled with each other in the times of Chanakya and Alexander by reading the tenth story Nagdatt, which is about a philosopher classmate of Chanakya who travels to Persia and Greece and learns how Athens fell to Macedonia. is about the upper class manipulating religion for their own vested interests and conspiring to keep people in dark for at least 2000 years). The sixth story, "Angira" ( Taxila 1800 BC), is about a man who wants to save the Aryan race from losing its identity to other races by teaching about their true culture (precursor to Vedic Rishis). The same story tells how an arms race was started during that period and how southerners amassed great wealth at the expense of the northerners. People were wary of the newly better armament which was fast replacing the older stone equipment (fourth story – "Puruhoot" ( Tajikistan 2500 BC)). If one is to believe Sankrityayan, then an apprehension for technological advancement is nothing new. 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. Although all the 20 stories are independent, the sequence in which they are arranged nevertheless serves a very important purpose. The society or its precursor at that time was matriarchal and so the story is named after the leader of the family 'Nisha'. The first story, "Nisha", is about cavemen living in Caucasia (southern Russia) about 6000 BC. The 20 stories are woven over a span of 8000 years and a distance of about 10,000 km. Volga Se Ganga is about the history of Indo–European people who were later known as the Aryans. The first Bengali translation was published in 1954. This book is now considered a classic in history of Indian literature. It has been translated into many languages including 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.
It was first published in 1943 and is considered one of the greatest Hindi book of modern Indian literature. Later he wrote 20 short stories while imprisoned in Hazaribagh Central Jail for taking part in Indian independence movement. Meanwhile, 1941-42, he was inspired by the historical stories of Bhagawat Sharan Upadhyay. Sanskritayan wrote his debut novel Jine Ke Liye in 1938.