The Past Before Us

Romila Thapar

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780674726529
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: History

"An authority on thousands of years of India's past, Thapar has a rare and special perspective on the country it was and the country it is becoming." — Financial Times Winner of the Kluge Prize Romila Thapar presents a sweeping survey of the historical traditions of North India, revealing a deep consciousness of history embedded in classical Indian literature. The claim, often made, that India—uniquely among civilizations—lacks historical writing distracts us from a more pertinent question, according to Romila Thapar: how to recognize the historical sense of societies whose past is recorded in ways very different from European conventions. In The Past Before Us, a distinguished scholar of ancient India guides us through a panoramic survey of the historical traditions of North India. Thapar reveals a deep and sophisticated consciousness of history embedded in the diverse body of classical Indian literature.The history recorded in such texts as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata is less concerned with authenticating persons and events than with presenting a picture of traditions striving to retain legitimacy and continuity amid social change. Spanning an epoch of nearly twenty-five hundred years, from 1000 BCE to 1400 CE, Thapar delineates three distinct historical traditions: an Itihasa-Purana tradition of Brahman authors; a tradition composed mainly by Buddhist and Jaina scholars; and a popular bardic tradition. The Vedic corpus, the epics, the Buddhist canon and monastic chronicles, inscriptions, regional accounts, and royal biographies and dramas are all scrutinized afresh—not as sources to be mined for factual data but as genres that disclose how Indians of ancient times represented their own past to themselves.

PART I

The Search for a Historical Tradition

1

Searching for Early Indian Historical Writing

1. The Diversity of Historical Traditions

Generalizations about the nature of a society or civilization, when they take root, spread adventitiously. A couple of hundred years ago it was stated that Indian civilization was unique in that it lacked historical writing and, implicitly therefore, a sense of history. With rare exceptions, there has been little attempt since to examine this generalization. So entrenched is the idea now that one almost hesitates to argue for a denial of this denial of history. I would like to suggest that while there may not in the early past have been historical writing in the forms currently regarded as belonging properly to the established genres of history, many texts of that period reflect a consciousness of history. Subsequently, there come into existence recognizable forms of historical writing. Both varieties of texts—those which reflect a consciousness of history and those which reveal forms of historical writing—were used in early times to reconstruct the past, and were drawn upon as a cultural, political, religious, or other such resource at various times, in various situations, and for a variety of reasons. To determine what makes for this historical consciousness is not just an attempt to provide Indian civilization with a sense of history, nor is it an exercise in abstract research. My intention is to argue that, irrespective of the question of the presence or absence of historical writing as such, an understanding of the way in which the past is perceived, recorded, and used affords insights into early Indian society, as it does for that matter into other early societies.

Historical consciousness begins when a society shows consciousness of both past and future, and does so by starting to record the past. “There is no more significant pointer to the character of a society than the kind of history it writes or fails to write.”¹ To argue over whether a particular society had a sense of history or not on the basis of our recognition of the presence or absence of a particular kind of historical tradition—one which has been predetermined as being properly historical in perpetuity—seems somewhat beside the point. It is more purposeful to try and ascertain what each culture regards as its historical tradition and why it does so; and to analyse its constituents and functions as well as assess how it contends with competing or parallel traditions.

Historical traditions emanate from a sense of the past and include three aspects: first, a consciousness of past events relevant to or thought of as significant by a particular society, the reasons for the choice of such events being implicit; second, the placing of these events in an approximately chronological framework, which would tend to reflect elements of the idea of causality; and third, the recording of these events in a form which meets the requirements of that society.

Such a definition does not necessarily assume that political events are more relevant than other sorts of events, although as issues of power they tend to be treated as such. If the above definition is acceptable, then it can in fact be said that every society has a concept of the past and that no society is a-historical. What needs to be understood about a historical tradition is why certain events are presumed to have happened and receive emphasis, and why a particular type of record is maintained by the tradition.

A distinction may therefore be made between the existence of a historical tradition and a philosophy of history. The latter may follow the former. An awareness or confirmation of a philosophy of history may make a historical narrative more purposeful. But such a narrative does not thereby necessarily express greater historical veracity: narratives based on the theory that history is determined by divine intervention are fired by purpose rather than by the sifting of evidence. On the other hand, a historical tradition may not concern itself with either divine purpose in history or any other philosophical notion of history and yet be an authentic record—if not of actual events, certainly of believed assumptions about the past.

A historical tradition is created from the intellectual and social assumptions of a society. Consciously selected events are enveloped in a deliberately created tradition which may only be partially factual. An attempt to understand the tradition has to begin by relating it to its social function, to ask the question: “What purpose was served by creating and preserving this tradition?” And, flowing from this, to see how a changing society made use of the tradition.

Historical traditions emerge from and reflect their social context, and the context may produce and extend to a broad range of social forms. Within these forms, history is generally the record of recognizable socio-political groups. Historical writing in such cases tends to incorporate a teleological view, even if it seems to be only a narrative of events. So, cultural symbols and stereotypes have a role in delineating the past.

Studying a tradition involves looking at a number of indices: first, the point in history at which the need to create and keep a tradition becomes imperative; second, the social status of the keepers of a tradition; third, whether the tradition was embedded in sacred literature to ensure its continuity; fourth, the genres that emerged in order to record the tradition independent of other literary forms; fifth, the social context in which the historical tradition was composed and the changes that it underwent when society itself changed; sixth, the audience for which any specific text of that tradition was intended; seventh, the social groups which used or manipulated the tradition, and their reasons for doing so; for, above all, such a tradition legitimizes the present and gives it sanction.

Together, these constitute the broad framework of analysis for the texts and traditions that I examine in the book. Flowing from the framework, certain key questions recur or are implicit during the examination of a text or tradition: does it provide an instance of a past authorship looking further back into a more distant past in order to record or interpret that past? Can it be seen as outlining a sense of time and/or a fresh chronology of past and sometimes a future time? Can we detect in the material the deployment of historical events or the construction of narratives that are at bottom historical for hegemonic purposes or for cultural and political legitimation?

. . .

The precise point at which a historical tradition emerges is often difficult to determine. Initially, it may take an oral form. When, with increased literacy, it comes to be written, its form may change. Each generation prunes its historical tradition in accordance with what it believes to be most worthy of preservation, thus making it virtually impossible to locate the tradition’s starting point. Examining the process of reformulation and pruning is, of course, of interest in its own right. Every explanation of the past is coloured by values existing at the time of the explanation. Periodic explanations of the same event introduce new interpretations, and these become the basis of historiography. The interpretations are conditioned by the social and intellectual background of the compiler of the tradition. Historical tradition, therefore, refers to those aspects of the past, recorded orally or in texts, which are consciously transmitted from generation to generation carrying the sanction of antiquity and a believed historicity. Historical writing, when it emerges, can question that believed historicity. But it need not always, and does not if it is building on such foundations of belief.

The existence of historical traditions then relates less to historical writing and more to historical consciousness. Such consciousness implies the need to refer to a past, perhaps even to construct a past, for the past has a social function.² Societies are aware of their past, or, more correctly, of their many pasts, and communities have constantly to situate themselves in relation to the past.³ The past is therefore a permanent dimension of human identity, although its constructions and contents can change with new definitions of identity. This is sometimes demonstrated by the existence or appearance of variant readings of the past; it becomes particularly apparent when there is an official version which differs from other versions. The meaning of such constructions is not always apparent, requiring historians to reach behind the symbols. Because the past is often constructed from the perspective of the present it can become an attempt, sometimes subconsciously, to intertwine the present with past society.

To ask why a society records an event, and in what form, involves understanding some of the ideological debates of the past. A tradition is created and taken forward, but it often needs reformulation in accordance with later requirements. This process then constitutes a historical tradition—although not necessarily history. The narrative is given a chronological framework, and the explanations of events assume some causal connections. Proving the veracity of the record is at this point less crucial than examining the nature of its construction. History, or historical writing in the forms that we now acknowledge as history, emerges from such historical traditions.

A historical tradition has to claim that what it narrates are events that happened in the past, a claim which differentiates it from fiction. Such constructions of the past draw either on a transmission which is said to have been handed down, or on witnesses who, while writing about contemporary events, are also aware of posterity as an audience. The tradition seeks to provide origins, and it claims that its explanations are valid for all time. But, as noted earlier, the tradition can change over time, partly on account of the many ways in which the past is used in the present. Historical consciousness is not therefore reflected whimsically via just any sort of construction of past times. The construction has a function, it claims historicity, and it implies some degree of causation.

Our reading of the nature of historical perceptions manifest within a tradition also has to relate to a range of evidence on the society contemporary with the period of the perceptions: else our reading will be arbitrary. The perspectives and perceptions that constitute a historical tradition can be juxtaposed to observe how some either conflict with others, or possibly incorporate and reformulate them.

. . .

To reiterate: it is not my intention to prove the historical authenticity of what is being narrated about the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Part I: The Search for a Historical Tradition
• Part II: The Embedded Tradition
• Part III: Interlude: the Emerging Historical Tradition
• Part IV: Alternative Histories
• Part V: The Historical Tradition Externalized
• Bibliography
• Index