How India’s history has been written: Approaches to ancient Indian history

 

History-writing is most of the times like having an eagle's eye view. The writer is always looking to catch her or his prey. (Photo: Prabhash K Dutta)

History is what happened in the past. But it is not fully recorded. It is often reconstructed like an investigator recreates a scene of crime. And, it is often open to interpretation. The most dominant interpretation comes as a textbook of history. It is held as the accepted true version of the past. It may or not exclude certain facts of the past. This is why scholars agree to have different schools of thought interpreting history during its reconstruction. The distant the subject in the past more difficult it is to get it accurate. There have been certain accepted views that reconstructed ancient Indian history. Here’s a look at those approaches to reconstruction of ancient India.

COLONIAL VIEW

Modern research on ancient Indian history began in the second half of the eighteenth century because of the needs of the colonial administration set up by the British, who ruled over India. When Bengal and Bihar came under the rule of the East India Company in 1765, they found it difficult to administer, particularly the Hindu law of inheritance.. Hence, in 1776, the law book of Manu, Manusmriti was translated into English as A Code of Gentoo Laws.

Pundits were associated with the British judges to administer the Hindu civil laws and the manuals to govern the civil laws, and Maulavis to govern the civil laws of the Muslims.

[This was possibly the first instance in India when a uniform civil code was shredded to pieces. Earlier, the king would roll out a uniform code of law although that code, as Manusmriti shows, were prescribed harsher punishment to people belonging to the lower rungs of the highly stratified society and milder for upper class. 

However, Mahabharata presented another account where the upper class offenders were given harsher punishment and lower rung holders lesser on the basis that people with more social power had greater responsibility to behave as a civilian. 

During the phases of Islamic rule in India, the sultans and badshahs imposed Islamic civil as interpreted by Maulavis. The Islamic law-prescribed punishments were given to both Hindus and Muslims. Hindus paid additional taxes, according to Islamic laws, under the Sultanate and Mughal rules. 

The East India Company officials sensed the fragile sentiments of Hindus and Muslims for their religious beliefs and tried not to attract unwarranted hostility and cause unity among the two powerful social groups.]

Initial efforts by the East India Company officials to understand the ancient laws and customs culminated in the establishment of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784 in Kolkata, then called Calcutta, by Sir William Jones.

Jones translated great Sanskrit dramatist Kalidasa’s Abhijnanshakuntalama into English in 1789. Thje Bhagavadgita had already been rendered into English in 1785. The Bombay Asiatic Society was set up in 1804, and the Asiatic Society of Great Britain was set up in 1823 in London.

William Jones emphasised the point that originally European languages were very much similar to Sanskrit and Iranian languages. This finally resulted in the establishment of chairs in England and other European countries.

The greatest push to Indological studies was given by F Max Mueller, who spent most of his time in England. The Revolt of 1857 was an eye-opener to the British. It was strongly realised in Britain that it badly needed to understand the manners and social systems of an alien people over whom it had to rule. Similarly, the Christian missionaries wanted to find out the vulnerable points in the Hindu religion to win converts and strengthen the British empire.

To meet these needs, the ancient scriptures were translated on a massive scale under the editorship of Max Mueller. Altogether, fifty volumes were published under the title of “The Sacred Books of the East” series. Although a few Chinese and Iranian texts were included, the ancient Indian texts dominated the series.

In the introduction to these volumes, Max Mueller and other western scholars made some generalisations about the nature of ancient Indian history and society. They said that the ancient Indians lacked the sense of history especially of time factor in historiography and chronology. They said that the Indians were accustomed to despotic rule. 

Further, the natives were engrossed in the problems of spiritualism or of the next world, and least bothered about the problems of this world. The caste system was considered as the most vicious form of social discrimination. They stressed that the Indians had experienced neither a feeling of nationhood nor any kind of self-government.

Many of these generalisations appeared in “Early History of India” by WA Smith, who prepared the first systematic history of ancient India in 1904. It served as a textbook for nearly fifty years and is still used by scholars.

Smith’s approach to history was pro-colonialist. He emphasised the role of foreigners in India. Macedonian warrior emperor Alexander’s invasion accounted for almost-one-third of his book. India was presented as the land of despotism which did not experience political unity until the establishment of the British rule.

In sum, British interpretation of Indian served to denigrate Indian character and achievements and justify the colonial rule. A few of these observations appeared to be somewhat valid. Thus, compared to the Chinese, the Indians did not show any strong sense of chronology although in the earlier stage, important events were dated with reference to the death of Gautam Buddha.

However, generalisations made by historians were either false or grossly exaggerated. They could serve as good propaganda material for the penetration of the despotic British rule. Their emphasis on the Indian tradition of one-man rule could justify the system which vested all powers in the hands of the viceroy.

Similarly, if the Indians wee obsessed with the problems of the other world, the British colonial masters had no option but to look after their lives in this world. Truly, at the heart of such generalisations lay the need to demonstrate that the Indian were incapable of governing themselves.

NAITONALIST APPROACH

The colonialist view came as a great challenge to the western-educated Indian scholars. They were irked by the colonialist distortions of their past and at the same time distressed by the contrast between the decaying feudal society of India and the progressive capitalist society of England. They took upon themselves not only the mission to reform Indian society but also to reconstruct ancient Indian history in such a manner as to make a case for social reforms and more importantly for self-government.

In doing so, most historians were guided by the nationalist ideas of Hindu revivalism but there was no dearth of scholars who adopted a rationalist and objective approach of historiography. To the second category belonged Rajendra Lal Mitra. He wrote a book entitled Indo-Aryans.

Rajendra Lal Mitra took a rational view of ancient society and produced a forceful tract to show that in ancient times, people consumed beef. Others tried to prove that in spite of its peculiarities, the caste system was not basically different from the class system based on division of labour found in pre-industrial and ancient societies of Europe.

In Maharashtra, RG Bhandarkar and VK Rajwade emerged as two great dedicated scholars who pieced together varied sources to reconstruct the social and political history of the country. RG Bhandarkar reconstructed the political history of the Satavahanas and the history of Vaishnavism and other sects. Through his researches, Bhandarkar advocated widow marriages and the evils of the caste system and child marriage.

VK Rajwade laboured hard in search of Sanskrit manuscripts and sources of Maratha history. He produced the history of the institution of marriage that he wrote in Marathi in 1926. It is considered a classic text because of its solid base in Vedic and other texts and also because of the author’s insight into the stages in the evolution of marriage in India.

Pandurang Vaman Kave continued the earlier tradition of scholarship. His “History of the Dharmashastra” is an encyclopaedia of ancient social laws and customs.

The Indian scholars diligently studied polity and political history to demonstrate that India did have its political history and that the Indians possessed expertise in administration. DR Bhandarkar published books on Ashoka and on ancient Indian political institutions.

HC Roychaudhury reconstructed the history of ancient India from the time of Bharat war (tenth century BC) to the end of the Gupta period. His writings are marked by impeccable scholarship but show a streak of militant Brahmanism when he criticised Ashoka’s policy of peace. A stronger element of Hindu revivalism appeared in the writings of RC Majumdar, who edited “History and Culture of the Indian People”.

Most writers on early Indian history did not give adequate attention to South India. Even KA Nilakanta Shastri followed the same approach in his “A History of Ancient India”. This was more than rectified in his “History of South India”. His style is terse but his writing is lucid. However, his general observations on the nature of polity and society in South India are questioned by several historians.

Shastri emphasised the cultural supremacy of Brahmins and also highlighted the harmony that prevailed in early Indian society. Until 1960, political history attracted the largest number of Indian scholars who also glorified the histories of their respective regions on dynastic lines. Those who wrote history books at a pan-India level were inspired by the ideas of nationalism.

Some scholars such as KP Jayasawal and AS Altekar overplayed the role of indigenous ruling dynasties in liberating the country from the rule of the Shakas and Kushanas, little realising that central Asian and some other people became part and parcel of India’s life and did not exploit its resources for their original homeland.

However, the greatest merit of KP Jayasawal lay in exploding the myth of Indian despotism. He showed that the republics existed in ancient times and Indians enjoyed a measure of self-government. His findings finally appeared in his “Hindu Polity” in 1924. Although Jayasawal is charged with projecting nationalist ideas into ancient institutions, and the nature of the republican government presented by him is attacked by many writers including VN Ghoshal, his basic thesis regarding the practice of republic experiment is widely accepted.

SHIFT TO NON-POLITICAL HISTORY

AL Basham questioned the wisdom of looking India from the modern point of political view. His book, “Wonder That Was India” is a sympathetic survey of various facets of ancient Indian culture and civilisation free from the prejudices that plague the writings of VA Smith and other British writers.

Basham’s book marks a great shift from political to non-political history. The same shift is evident in DD Koshambi’s “An Introduction to the Study of Indian History” published in 1959, later popularised in “The Civilisation of Ancient Indian in Historical Outline”.

Koshambi blazed a new trail in the Indian history. His treatment followed the materialist interpretation of history, which is derived from the writings of Karl Marx. He presented the history of ancient Indian society, economy and culture as an integral part of the development of the forces and relations of production. His was the first survey book to show the stages of social and economic development in terms of tribal and class processes.

MULTI-DISCIPLINARY APPROACH

In the last few decades, there has been a sea change in the methods and orientation of those who work on ancient India. They lay greater emphasis on social, economic and cultural processes, and try to relate them to political developments. They take account of the stratification of the texts and compare their conventional nature with archaeological and anthropological evidence. All this bodes well for the future of historical studies.

Unfortunately, a few Indian writers magnify the role of religion, and believe that everything good and great originated in their country.

Western writers no longer insist that all such things came to India from outside. But some of them hold that religious ideas, rituals, caste, kinship and tradition are the main forces in Indian history. They also underscore various divisive features which made for stagnation. They are more concerned about the problem of stability and continuity. They seem to be fascinated by old, exotic elements and want to preserve them forever.

Such an approach implies that Indian society has not changed and cannot be changed. It means that underdevelopment is an integral part of the Indian character. Thus, the chauvinists and sophisticated colonialists use the study of India’s past to prevent its progress. It is therefore essential to take a balanced and objective view of ancient India.

(Note was prepared during preparation for civil services exam. I don’t really remember the source.)

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