A Companion to Global Historical Thought

Prasenjit Duara, Viren Murthy, Andrew Sartori

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781118525364
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Historiographie

A COMPANION TO GLOBAL HISTORICAL THOUGHT

A Companion to Global Historical Thought provides an overview of the development of historical thinking from the earliest times to the present, directly addressing issues of historiography in a globalized context. Questions concerning the global dissemination of historical writing and the relationship between historiography and other ways of representing the past have become important not only in the academic study of history, but also in public arenas in many countries. With contributions from leading international scholars, the book considers the problem of "the global" – in the multiplicity of traditions of narrating the past; in the global dissemination of modern historical writing; and of "the global" as a concept animating historical imaginations. It explores the different intellectual approaches that have shaped the discipline of history, and the challenges posed by modernity and globalization, while illustrating the shifts in thinking about time and the emergence of historical thought.

Complementing A Companion to Western Historical Thought, this book places non-Western perspectives on historiography at the center of discussion, helping scholars and students alike make sense of the discipline at the start of the twenty-first century.

PART I

Premodern Historical Thought

CHAPTER ONE

History as a Way of Remembering the Past

Early India

ROMILA THAPAR

Historical consciousness and even the writing of history can take many forms, corresponding to the contours of a given society and its culture. This is why, today, investigating the notion of history has become an exercise in discovering how the past was recorded and how it can be authenticated, rather than searching for texts that conform to the idea of history as defined in modern times. The latter accounts for the repeated statement that Indian civilization was unique in that it lacked historical writing and, implicitly, a sense of history. This generalization is still taken as axiomatic. I would like to suggest that while in the early period of Indian history there may not have been historical writing in the conventional form familiar to us from European history, there are nevertheless many texts of a different kind that reflect historical consciousness. Even in those early times in India, some of these texts came to be reformulated as historical traditions, some of which gave rise to historical writing.

An understanding of the way in which the past was perceived, recorded, and used affords insights into early societies that kept such records. It is worth investigating what was written, why it was written, and the concerns that occasioned this writing. Not all texts referring to the past were necessarily historical or taken as such. Ascertaining the degree of historicity, that is, whether the event actually happened, is fundamental, but historians have to go further and analyze why certain narratives were projected as historical. Trying to understand the variety of texts that represent the past raises many questions: Why did they take the form that they did, what from the past was of relevance to their authors, and why were particular types of records maintained?¹

Seen from this perspective, there are certain aspects of the study of historical traditions that need enquiry. The widely held view that Indian civilization lacked a sense of history requires re-examination. This is particularly so when we recognize that the historical traditions of diverse cultures – be they Greek or Roman, Arab or Persian, Chinese or Indian, or any other – will inevitably differ. Given the generalization about the absence of history in pre-Islamic India, the most substantial question relates to the nature of the representation of the past in what can be called the early Indian historical traditions.

The absence of a sense of history is first hinted at, in passing, in the eleventh-century account of northern India by the central Asian scholar Al-Biruni.² History for him was the kind of narrative that his contemporary Firdausi was writing for Iran in the Shahnameh, a recital of heroes, rulers, and their narratives. Al-Biruni’s primary interests were in astronomy, mathematics, and religion and he mentions the ideas on these subjects discussed in India. He reports on the eras used in India and their calculations of time, but their historical context escapes him. Had his discussants included the scribes at court, or Buddhist scholars, he would have discovered the diverse ways of recording history prevalent in India. He refers to Indians not being too interested in the order of the past, but makes no such judgment on Firdausi, for example, whose epic is a mix of legend and history. It was only a century later that Kalhana wrote the Rajatarangini, which, it is generally agreed, is an exceptionally fine historical work, but which was also quoted by colonial scholarship as the sole evidence of historical writing in early India.

The argument from colonial scholars denying history in India was not made in passing. It was to become axiomatic to the Orientalist view of the Indian past, and is still held by some historians, both Indian and others. Derived from European definitions of history, it was also pertinent to the requirements of colonial policy. European scholars, conscious by now of historical literature as a distinct category recording the past, looked for recognizable indigenous histories from Sanskrit texts but could not find them. Indian civilization was therefore defined as ahistorical, sometimes directly so and sometimes hesitantly.³

The Indian past was said to be characterized by what colonial scholars called “Oriental Despotism.” This assumed a static society that registered no historical change and therefore had no use for recording the past, since one of the functions of the past was to legitimize changes that took place in the present.⁴ The idea that such a society remained static over millennia did not seem unreal to this scholarship. Change is a nodal point in history when new identities can emerge and the past can be reformulated, so if there is no change there is no need to record the past or even reflect on it. This view underpinned the requirements of colonial policy in a changing relationship between the colonial power and the colony. The colonial power would now write the history of the colony as it saw fit. As Lord Curzon put it, this became the necessary furniture of Empire.

Colonial scholars, therefore, made a considerable effort to discover the past. This was done through the collection of data of all kinds and its systematic organization. The oral tradition of the bards of central India and Rajasthan was recorded by James Tod and Luigi Pio Tessitori, but unfortunately not used by historians. Scripts that could no longer be read were deciphered, such as the brahmi scripts deciphered by James Prinsep. Historical monuments were identified, restored, and studied by Alexander Cunningham and others. As an attempt at revealing the sources of the past and organizing them systematically, this effort was impressive. But the interpretation of the data was restricted by the framework of colonial policy, which needed to project the colony as having been a static society dominated by despots.

Recent historical research has questioned these earlier stereotypes. The current argument is that Indian society was far from static and underwent substantial historical changes during its long history.⁵ This view has resulted from two categories of analyses of the past, not entirely unrelated. One set of analyses came from questions drawn from interdisciplinary studies, such as those asked by social anthropologists. They were examining kinship relations, clan societies, and early political forms, and also the social function of religious belief systems and the organization of institutions linked to various religions. The Buddhist Sangha or monastic system was an important institution in the spread of Buddhism and in the recording of new sects, which were often dissident groups. Such questions forced historians to look beyond the texts.

The other analyses came from attempts to use the Marxist method of historical dialectics to ascertain the way in which Indian society had functioned. Marxist historians rejected the Asiatic mode of production as being divorced from the data on Indian history. Correlations were attempted with the other modes of production that Marx had postulated for European history, but even here there were differences in some cases. The feudal mode received extensive attention and raised a substantial controversy. Even where rejected, it had introduced new dimensions to the study of Indian history, which was now seen not merely as the chronology of rulers but also as indicating the changes in Indian society and its economy. Indian history ceased to be an aspect of Indology and moved toward becoming part of the social sciences. However, these changes in the study of early Indian history were not established until the 1960s and 70s, long after the colonial interpretation had been questioned, but they resulted in a radically different view of the Indian past. Change, among other factors, led to the process of reformulating the representation of the past, and this created or modified historical traditions.

The historiography that is most frequently taken as the measure of historical writing is the Judaeo-Christian. This has a clear teleology narrating the beginning and end of humankind, from the Garden of Eden to Judgment Day. Time is seen largely as linear. However, there are other historiographies where this progression is not so evident: the Greco-Roman, the Chinese, and the Indian. Notions of recording and understanding the past were different in India, as compared to these other societies. This may be part of the reason for their not being recognized. Their recognition today derives from our current understanding of history itself having changed and the realization that its record may vary in different societies.

I would like to support my argument by considering why there was an inability to recognize historical traditions among the sources from premodern periods recording the Indian past. They were evidently different from the European. Historicity of person and event and the evidence for this, as well as their explanations, were not the same.

There were various approaches to history and historicity. Its authenticity was not a matter of great concern to the brahmanical tradition, but that there was a recorded past was significant. The Buddhist and the Jaina traditions, however, insisted on the historicity of their two teachers, the Buddha and Mahavira (also known as the Jina), as well as the history of their sectarian organizations, the Sanghas. This established historicity as an essential component of their view of the past. In the first millennium AD the brahmanical tradition also came to accept its importance, presumably recognizing the usefulness of a backing from history when claiming to legitimize power and ideology.

As regards sources, in earlier times neither the Greeks, the Chinese, nor the Indians distinguished between primary and secondary sources, nor were these put to any rigorous test of reliability. This accounts for the mixture of fact and fiction in Herodotus, among others. He was a controversial writer even in his own times, when some criticized him for accepting narratives of events and persons without verifying them.

In Sanskrit sources, the term used for a tradition pertaining to the past was itihasa-purana. Itihasa literally means “thus indeed it was,” and purana “that which is ancient.” Texts taken as itihasa could be of various kinds: from those that referred to the past in a seemingly authentic fashion but laced the reference with attractive fantasy, to others that briefly gave the bare bones of an official record of events.

Essential to historical traditions is the shape and accounting of time, which allows a distinction to be made between the past and the present. The argument for the lack of a sense of history in India has been tied to the erroneous idea that India had only a cyclic concept of time.⁶ The cycle is described in the theory of the mahayuga, the great age, incorporating the four yugas or ages of time. The mahayuga was divided into four cyclic ages whose length declined according to geometrical progression. They also registered a decline in dharma or righteousness. The first was the Kritayuga of 4,800 years, the second was the Tretayuga of 3,600 years, the third was the Dvaparayuga of 2,400 years, and the fourth, which is the present age, is the Kaliyuga of 1,200 years. These were divine years totaling 12,000 and had to be multiplied by 360 to convert them to human years. The length of the mahayuga was therefore 4,320,000 human years. The attempt to make the scheme conform to a mathematical pattern is of interest, particularly as the figures often tally with numbers in Mesopotamian cosmologies. Ideas and figures seem to have circulated in a broad area that comprised West and South Asia. The Indian scheme did not, however, pick up the Greek notion of associating the ages with metals – gold, silver, bronze, and iron. The decline in dharma makes the present into one when the norms of society are turned upside-down.

The end of the cycle witnessed either a cataclysmic collapse of the universe, or alternately the arrival of the savior-figure of Kalkin, the final incarnation of Vishnu, who would save the universe and inaugurate a new mahayuga with a fresh Kritayuga. It was therefore argued that cyclic time inhibited the writing of history since events were repeated in each mahayuga. However, what was overlooked was that in each of the four cycles there was a marked change that resulted in fundamental alterations of social functioning and a different sequence of events. Therefore this could hardly be called a static society. This concept of time dates approximately to the turn of the Christian era and the early centuries AD. It is set out in the epic Mahabharata, in some Puranas, and is referred to in Manu’s Dharmashastra.

It was argued that linear time, essential to history, was lacking in this theory. However, linear time in India is often parallel to, or intersects with, cyclic time. It is central, for example, to the extensive incorporation of genealogies into texts on the past. These are tellingly referred to as vamsha, bamboo. This was a visual form of a node and a stem symbolizing generations and descent. Regnal years were given alongside the dynastic lists. Royal inscriptions recording grants to persons came to be precisely dated. This was particularly necessary since the grant of land had to be at an auspicious moment in order for the king to be able to claim merit for making the grant. Furthermore, the shift in astronomy from the lunar to the solar calendar also had an impact on time reckoning. This made chronology more precise and introduced calculations in eras, the samvat. Precise chronology was essential to the authenticity of documents, especially those recording donations along with dues and obligations. It came to be widely used in historical records.

A sharp dichotomy between linear and cyclic time is not feasible because some elements of each are often parallel, although pertaining to different functions. Cyclic time is often viewed as cosmological time, whereas time measured in human terms is linear, with successive generations and individual chronologies. The present cycle – the Kaliyuga – is not a repetition of the past, although it was once described as such. Each cycle gets shorter and records change. It may have been thought that the entire great cycle could be repeated,...