The past before us : historical traditions of early north India / Romila Thapar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thapar, Romila.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Literature and history--India, Northeastern.

Literature and history.

Collective memory--India, North.

Collective memory.

India, Northeastern--Historiography.

India, Northeastern.

India, Northeastern--History--To 1500.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (784 pages)

Edition:

First Harvard University Press edition.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

1 Searching for Early Indian Historical Writing

2 Towards Historical Traditions

3 Fragmentary Narratives from the Vedas

4 The Mahābhārata

5 The Rāmāyaṇa

PART III Interlude: The Emerging Historical Tradition

6 Genealogies in the Making of a Historical Tradition: The Vaṃśānucarita of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa

7 Early Inscriptions as Historical Statements (Up to c. the Sixth Century ad)

8 History as Literature: The Plays of Viśākhadatta

9 The Buddhist Tradition: Monks as Historians

10 The Monastic Chronicles of Sri Lanka

11 Buddhist Biographies

12 Historical Biographies: The Harṣacarita and the Rāmacarita

13 Biographies as Histories

14 Inscriptions as Official Histories—and the Voice of the Bard

15 Vaṃśāvalīs Chronicles of Place and Person—The Rājataraṅgiṇī

16 The Chamba Vaṃśāvalī

17 The Prabandha-cintāmaṇi

18 Therefore Looking Back and Looking Forward

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780674726529

0674726529

9780674726512

0674726510

OCLC:

859536567