Ancient India Sources

Ancient India Chapter 1 - Sources

“One of the gravest defects of Indian culture is the aversion of Indians to writing History." Critically analyse the statement in the context of early Indian history writing tradition.

Topical Review – Purva Paksha

The literary sources for ancient and early medieval India include a large volume and variety of texts.  Initially, these historical/religious texts were opened up for scrutiny using modern techniques of analysis in the colonial context (orientalism and utilitarian context). The itihasa-purana tradition was compared with histories produced in ancient Greece and Rome, and were found wanting. They were found to be especially deficient in terms of spatial and chronological precision, which was regarded as the minimum requirement of a historical work. 

Some writers have gone to the extent of maintaining that the people of ancient India had no historical sense in them. Historians like Dr. Keith maintained that despite the abundance of its literature, history is so miserably represented and that in the whole of the great period of Sanskrit literature there is not one writer who can be seriously regarded as a critical historian.

Dr. Keith traces this fact to many causes. His view is that 

•  India failed to produce historians because the great political events which affected her, did not call forth popular action in the same sense in which the repulse of the Persian attacks of Greece evoked the history of Herodotus. The foreign attacks on India during the first century before the Christian era were probably not so important as to excite a national feeling among the people. The same could be said about the invasions of Alexander. Greeks, Parthians, Sakas, Kushans and the Huns. 

•  This attitude was also due to the Indian attitude that all things were brought about by fate and were wholly unintelligible and beyond all foresight. The Indian mind also accepted the miraculous in the shape of divine intervention, magic and witchcraft. 

•  It was also partly due to the tendency of the Indian mind to prefer the general to the particular. No distinction was made between actual facts and hearsay. The order of happening was completely ignored and no attention was paid to chronology.

(Comment - Such argument was then used to argue, implicitly and often explicitly, that, as Indians lacked a sense of history, early Indians and by extension their descendants were intellectually inferior to their western counterparts. Clearly, history and notions of the past were inextricably enmeshed in notions of power.),

Topical Review – Uttar Paksha

However, it is pointed out by Indian scholars that the Indians did possess an historical sense. The large variety of historical treatises and a number of other facts testify to the historical sense among the ancient Hindus. 

•  Genealogies – Sutas and Magadhas, Vandins or Stavakas preserved geneologies of kings, Rishis and traditions of great men which were the sources of information for Ithihasa and Purana. The Vansavalis and Rajavalis were compiled and maintained with great care. The introductory passages of the grants by the eastern Chalukyas refer to the names of the successive rulers beginning from the founder of the dynasty. The eastern Gangas of Kalinga give in their Vanshavali the details of their kings. A long Vanshavali from Nepal gives a continuous list of the rulers of that country with the length of their reigns and the dates of their succession. The Vanshavali from Orissa give a continuous list of the Kings of that province up to the Kali age in 3102 B.C. Not only the lengths of the reigns are given, even the dates of the important events are also given. 

•  Inscriptions – The inscriptions of King Kharavela of Kalinga, Rudradaman, Samudragupta, Harsha of Kanauj, the Chalukyas, the Rashtrakutas, Palas and Senas give a lot of historical information with reliable dates and generalogies. These inscriptions supply genealogies of reigning kings and donors, activities of the rulers and conditions of gifts. They give the history of the architect who constructed the gift, the priest who consecrated it, the poet who composed it and the scribe who engraved the letters. 

•  Courtly Records – At the courts of kings, careful records of important happenings were kept and this is attested by inscriptions, Dana-Patras, biographical poems and dramas. Hieun Tsang, Kalhana mention the existence of an official known as Akashpataladhikritra at the court. The Western Chalukya Kings of Kalyani got from the dynastic archives the knowledge of the earlier Chalukya Dynasty of Badami. The Silahara Princes of Southern Konkan maintained their own records and those of their sovereigns, the Rashtrakutas. 

•  Religious History-keeping – The Jains have Pattavalis which go back to the death of Vardhamana Mahavira. The Palm-leaf archives of the temple of Jagannath at Puri contain a lot of definite and reliable data concerning ancient Indian history. 

•  Dating Traditions – The introduction and colophons of literary works as compiled by Paterson and Sir R.G. Bhandarkar contain definite historical material with dates. Somadeva tells us in definite terms that "he finished that work (Vasastilaka) in Chaitra. Saka year 881 (959 A.D.) During the rule of the Chalukya prince, Krishnaraja Deva." Vikramarjuna Vijaya or Pamp-Bharata of Pampa refers to the name of king Arikesarin and gives his pedigree for the last seven preceding generations. 

It is clear from above that the ancient Hindus did possess an historical sense and consequently a lot of information about the history of ancient India is available. 

Higher Order Analysis

It is evident then that a sense of history, if by this we mean an awareness of the past, was well-developed in early India. There were several systems of reckoning dates that were in existence, and that were commonly used, as is evident from finds of inscriptions bearing dates. These have been found throughout the subcontinent. Inscriptions and in textual traditions tell us about how elites thought about the past and attempted to both use and manipulate it through specific strategies of recording. These include recording the names and deeds of generous patrons, as for instance in the Vedic danastutis. Genealogies, too, could be constructed to meet political exigencies, and could be extended in innovative ways. Besides, distinctive genres were developed to proclaim the status of rulers, most evident in the prasastis and the charitas. Yet, there seem to have been other traditions as well. Kalhana’s Rajatarangini, though for and about kings, is very different in its tone and tenor.

While there is evidence of different kinds of historical traditions in ancient and early medieval India, these traditions were very different from our modern notions of history. The intellectuals of every age and society select the aspects of the past they consider important and interpret and present them in their own way. Since ancient and modern societies differ from each other in so many respects, it is not surprising to find major differences in their ways of looking at the past. Modern historians distinguish between myth and history, ancient texts do not. The historical traditions of ancient India were connected with religious, ritualistic, and court contexts. History in our times is an academic discipline based on research linked to modern institutions such as universities and research institutes. The ways in which the past was understood and represented in ancient texts are very different from the methods, techniques, and goals of historical research today.

Romila Thapar has made a useful distinction between ‘embedded' and 'externalized' forms of history. Embedded history is where the historical consciousness has to be prised out, as in myth, epic, and genealogy. Externalized history reflects a more evident and self-conscious historical consciousness, reflected for instance in chronicles and biographies. Thapar points out that the embedded forms of historical consciousness tended to be connected with lineage-based societies and the externalized ones to state societies.