Understanding Itihasa

8/11/2019 Understanding Itihasa

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UNDERSTANDING ITIHASA

Sibesh Bhattacharya

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED STUDY

RASHTRAPATI NIVAS, SHIMLA


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First published 2010

Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced

or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the

written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-81-7986-084-7

Published by

The Secretary Indian Institute ofAdvanced Study Rashtrapati Nivas, Shimla-171005

Typeset at Sai Graphic Design, New Delhi and printed at Pearl

Offset Pvt. Ltd., Kirti Nagar, New Delhi


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In memory of my elder son

Saugata (1965-1992), an

ardent lover of books, A

National Talent Scholar


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Contents

Preface ix

Part One The Path that Great Men Walked 1

Part Two In the Shadow of the Absolute 83

Epilogue 155

Bibliography 169

Index 177


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Preface

The following pages represent a modest endeavor to examine

the contention that traditional India had no conception of history.

However, instead of approaching the problem from this negative

focus, we have tried to approach it from a positive perspective.

We have rather centered our attention, firstly, on understandinghow the past was viewed and constructed in the traditional Indian

worldview. And secondly, we have tried to consider to what

extent this understanding is compatible with the modern concept

of history. We have thus pursued a twofold objective: (i) to

understand and amplify the traditional Indian point of view on

past, and, (ii) to highlight the similarities and dissimilarities of the

Indian point of view with the current view of history.

The present monograph has developed out of a project on

'History in Early India: Theory and Practice' for which a

fellowship was kindly granted by Indian Institute of Advanced

Study, Shimla. As we pursued the theme of the project it seemedappropriate to us to somewhat enlarge its scope to include how the

traditional understanding has been interpreted and elaborated by

modern Indian scholars. The monograph thus has two main parts;

Part One on early Indian understanding of past and Part Two on

the modern understanding of the tradition. We are of the view that

for the sake of placing the theme in proper perspective this

enlargement was necessary. One more point perhaps calls for

clarification. We have in our formulation often used the

expression 'Indian' to underline the geographical and cultural

contexts of our theme. However, the traditional Indian perspective

did not normally think in the restricted terms of cultural orgeographical identities; it preferred to think in universal and

human terms. And it is in these universal human terms that the

view of itihasa was perceived.

In the preparation of this monograph I have received help and

encouragement from numerous quarters and persons. I am

particularly beholden to the authorities of the Indian institute of

Advanced Study, Shimla for kindly granting me a fellowship to

prepare the monograph. The excellent support system and the

facilities that the Institute provides along with the academic

environment of a truly high order make working in the Institute a

memorable experience. To my teacher, Professor G.C. Pande,who fortunately also happens to be the President cum Chairman of


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the Institute at present, I owe a debt too heavy and too subtle to

express in words. But for his kindness and constant

encouragement it would not have been possible to undertake and

complete the work. I would rather remain eternally indebted to

him than belittle his kindness by a wordy expression of gratitude.

Professor Bhuvan Chandel, the Director of the Institute, has

always been unfailingly kind to me. I do not know how to express

my thanks to her for her innumerable acts of kindness and

encouragement.

I shall be failing in my duty if do not mention the cooperation

that I always received from Shri D. K. Mukherjee, the Librarian

and other Library Staff of the Institute. A special word of thanks is

due to Smt. Alekha Jabbar, the Asst. Librarian, who cheerfully

bore my numerous demands on her expertise and knowledge. Dr.

S. A. Jabbar, Dr. Debarshi Sen, Shri T. K. Majumdar, Shri A. K.

Sharma, Shri Kundan Lal and other sectional heads and their staff

at the Institute made my stay at the Institute comfortable and

pleasant. The mess and canteen staff deserves a special word of

thanks. I have also received suggestions and encouragement from

a number of fellows and scholars at the Institute. Professor D. P.

Chattopadhyaya was very kind to spare time from his very busy

schedule of work to


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Preface 7

go through the draft of Part One of the monograph and gave a

number of suggestions. I do not know how to thank him

adequately for this kindness. I have also often held stimulating

discussions with a number of Fellows at the Institute. Professor

Suresh Chandra Pande, Professor G. C. Nayak, Professor Kishor

Chakravarti, Dr. Navjyoti Singh, Professor Om Prakash, Professor

S. N. Dube, Professor R. N. Misra deserve special mention. The

monograph has benefited from these discussions. I am grateful to

all of them

Sibesh Bhattacharya


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PART ONE

The Path that Great Men Walked

Early Indian Attitude to History


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Prologue

The superstition that history has to be similar in all countries must

be abandoned. The person who has become hard-boiled after

going through the biography of Rothschilde, while dealing with

the life of Christ is likely to call for his account books and office

diary. And if he fails to find them then he will form a very poor

opinion of Christ and would say: "A fellow who was not worth

even a nickel, how come he can have a biography?" Similarly,

those who give up all hope of Indian history because they fail to

find the royal genealogies and accounts of the conquests and

defeats in the "Indian official record room" and say, "How can

there be any history when there is no politics?" are like people

who look for aubergine in paddy fields. And when they do not

find it there, in their frustration they refuse to count paddy as a

variety of grains at all. All fields do not yield the same crop. One

who knows this and thus looks for the proper crop in the proper

field is a truly wise person.

Rabindra Nath TagoreBharatavarsher Itihas,

Bhadra 1309 Bengal Era, August 1903; Translated

from original Bengali by Sumita Bhattacharya and

Sibesh Bhattacharya

Human history must in effect aspire after being a spiritualautobiography of man, a 'discovery of lost times' which is

simultaneously a creative transformation of present, a discovery

of what is hidden in the past experiences of the soul.

G.C.Pande, The Meaning and Process of Culture,

Allahabad 1989, Preface

Without Writing, without a literature, the past constantly ate itself

up.

V. S. Naipaul,Beyond Belief,New Delhi, 1998, p.71


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For Kramer, the right view of history is his own, i.e., that of a

twentieth century American professor who specializes in

academic expertise in ancient civilizations. He can not bring

himself to admit that the ancient Sumerians might have had

another view. Or if they did, he can not admit that it was a valid

view of history. For to admit that would undermine his own

beliefs about the nature of his discipline.

Roy Harris,History, Science and the Limits of Language,

p. 26, Shimla 2003.


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I

The question that we intend to investigate in part one basically

involves two issues. Firstly, was history as a discipline known and

practiced in early India? And, secondly, if it was, then what was

its nature?

History is perhaps not the most appropriate expression in the

context of our investigation. History as a discipline, it is well

known, is a product of Western experience and endeavour.Moreover, since the eighteenth century the discipline of history

has so evolved as to possess certain distinguishable

characteristics. It is regarded as a discipline based on rigorous

study of facts. Among its claimed features, the two factors,

factuality and empiricism, in spite of some recent challenges from

the resurgence of the narrative in history and the assault of the

Post Modernists, continue to be the two principal ones. Over the

greater part of the twentieth century, covering the first

three-quarters, history has been veering more and more towards

social science and moving away from humanities.1 Among the

practicing historians, particularly in India, this still continues to bethe dominant trend. With this growing trend it is empiricism that

has been increasingly becoming the most important instrument in

the tool-bag of historians. Like other social sciences, in the

historical methodology as well, a constant effort has been afoot to

approximate to scientific methodology. Despite being splendidly

unreachable, the Rankean ideal of 'exactly as it had happened'

remains the beacon light of a great many historians. If we intend to

pursue our investigation from this perspective, it ought to be

admitted right at the outset that it is more or less a nonstarter. A

mode of knowledge based on a meticulous and painstaking

collection of all facts, where factuality does not demand anything

more than a mere happening, did not develop in early India.

The prospect, however, considerably brightens up if we


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The Path that Great Men Walked 12

deviate a little from the above perspective. The room for this

adjustment in standpoint is available even within the bounds of the

current conception of history. 'Varieties of history' is an accepted

notion within the discipline. The expression 'varieties' does not

only signify different divisions of history, like political,

diplomatic, social, economic, etc., but various perspectives from

which events can be viewed. It is now readily accepted that history

can be viewed and pursued from different standpoints and that

these different standpoints do not necessarily contradict and cancel

out each other. They may often be complimentary and help

illuminate different aspects of the past human life. There can be

history of smaller range (approximating the notion of particular);

there can be history of larger range (moving towards the notion of

universal). Moreover, the demands of factuality will varyaccording to the chosen range. We will deal with these issues in

some more details later. For the present it will suffice to take note

of the fact that the notion of perspectival history allows space for

viewing the past from different viewpoints.

In view of the above, we may rephrase the basic issues of our

investigation. We will try to understand the following questions.

What was the Early Indian attitude towards past? What were the

modes of its articulation? What were the implications of this

attitude?

II

The received wisdom and the burden of Western Indological

scholarship are that the sense of history was lacking in early India.

Indian mind reveled in myths and legends, often displaying a keen

sensitivity to the essence of human life, a refined moral vision, and

a touching quest for fulfillment in the life beyond. But the Indian

mind failed to come to terms with 'facts' and to produce what can

really be termed as history.

Various explanations of this 'deficiency' were also offered; the

most persistent being the one that Indian outlook in its

philosophical and psychological makeup was anti-historical. This

anti-historicity has been seen both as a virtue as well as a glaringdefect. The following remark of Amaury de Riencourt is a good

example of the former. "If the history of the Indians is as shadowy

as has already been pointed out on more than one occasion, it is

largely because, of all the peoples on this earth, they were the least

interested in history. The picture of India's historical development

is as blurred as the development of Indian soul is clear and sharply

defined. The key to an understanding of Indian culture lies

precisely in this total indifference toward history, toward the very

process of time. Aryan India had no memory because she focused

her attention on eternity and not on time."2Reactions of Hegel and

James Mill to the 'anti-historical' character of the Indian attitude

represent the latter.3


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13 Understanding Itihasa

The point has been stretched in different directions with added

nuances. Macdonell, Winternitz and Keith may be cited asexamples. Macdonell observed that history was an area of

conspicuous weakness in Indian literature. As a matter of fact, it

was more than a weakness; it was actually non-existent. A total

lack of historical sense and a complete lack of precise chronology

characterized the whole course of Sanskrit literature. These

defects have gravely vitiated the history of Sanskrit literature.

Even the date and time of the greatest Indian poet, Kalidasa, can

not be ascertained. The controversy regarding his time is so great

that dates as distant as thousand years from each other have been

suggested. Mostly, precise dates of authors were not recorded;

only approximate dates have to be surmised on the basis of

indirect evidence. "Two causes seem to have combined to bring

about this remarkable result. In the first place, early India wrote no

history because it never made any. The ancient Indians never went

through a struggle for life like the Greeks in the Persian and the

Romans in the Punic wars, such as it would have welded their

tribes into a nation and developed political greatness. Secondly,

the Brahmanas, whose task it would naturally have been to record

great deeds, had early embraced the doctrine that all actions and

existence are a positive evil, and could therefore have felt but little

inclination to chronicle historical events."4

According to Winternitz, it was not that the Indians did not

have a taste for history, what the Indians lacked was a taste forcritical inquiry into historical truths. And, he attributed this

uncritical attitude to the kinds of people who made it their

business to write history in early India. These authors belonged to

two classes: either they were court-poets or they were

religious-minded persons. The court-poets were mainly interested

in composing eulogies of their patron princes and their ancestors.

In the process they glorified not only the achievements of their

patrons and their ancestors, but also invented stories. The saints on

their parts were keen to protect and augment the interests of their

own sects. So they praised their sects and promoted their points of

view and gave preaching and sermons to the members of theirsects. The Indian historian "will not penetrate deep into the

connected topics, set down the historical data critically and

explain them psychologically; on the contrary he will entertain

and instruct as a poet (kavi), above all teach morals, when he will

explain with examples the influences of moral behaviour on the

destiny of man."5In his work on Sanskrit literature Keith observed

'in the whole of the great Sanskrit literature there is not one writer

who can be seriously regarded as a critical historian.' According to

him the probable causes of 'this phenomenon' were the lack of 'any

sentiment of nationalism', the belief in the doctrine of Karman, the

absence of 'the scientific attitude of mind which seeks to find


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natural causes for the events of nature' and the 'tendency of the

Indian mind to prefer the general to the particular'.6

The status of current opinion on the issue has been summarized

in the latest publication on the subject:

" The view that Hinduism as a religion, or the Hindus as a

people, lack a sense of history has been expressed so often as to

have become a clichE. Even when scholars have tried to take a

more sophisticated as opposed to a cliched view, the effect has

been to reinforce it. Professor A.L. Basham, for instance, would

concede to the Hindus a sense of the past, but still not history.

Elsewhere he allows for a sense of antiquity as well, if only to

suggest that Hinduism possessed an exaggerated sense of it, while

some have argued that Hinduism possessed a sense of historical

pessimism but, again, no history.

Even when scholars take a more nuanced view and distinguish

between: (1) lack of chronology, (2) lack of history, (3) a lack of a

sense of history, (4) a lack of historiography, and (5) the lack of

theory of history, the net effect is the same. The alleged lack of

historiography and a theory of history in India only buttress the

previous claim of a lack of a sense of history, while its abundant

history makes the lack of sense of history only stand out more

starkly."7

Many scholars no longer accept the Orientalist formulation that

ancient Indians lacked a sense of history.8For instance, writing in

the late 1950s A.K. Warder reacted sharply against the two majorpostulates of the formulation. He dismissed both the propositions

that 'ancient India produced little or no historical literature' and

that the ancient Indians did not possess a sense of history because

they were too engrossed in religious affairs to pay any attention to

history. "We need not trouble ourselves overmuch with the

analysis of such superficial misconceptions."9The impatience of

Warder is not wholly unjustified. To say that a people did not have

a sense of history amounts to saying that they had no view of the

past or an awareness of time. Such an obviously untenable

proposition could have been hardly seriously made about early

India. Early Indian philosophical systems reflect an acuteconsciousness of time.10Thus the central contention of scholars

like Macdonell, Winternitz and Keith seems to have been that the

way the discipline of history developed in the West is found

practically absent in early Indian literary tradition. Ghoshal and

Warder have succeeded in demonstrating that even this contention

is not fully maintainable.11

But the proposition may also be approached and evaluated from

another perspective. We may try to understand the kind of past

events that occupied or engaged the interest of ancient Indians and

how they viewed those events and in what manner they related

themselves to those events.12In other words, we may try also to

understand the conceptual and analytical universe within which


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past events were viewed in early India. However, before we take

up these issues for consideration it may be profitable to turn ourattention to some of the features of history as a discipline.

III

In the context of our study, the most significant development in

the contemporary philosophy of history has been a vigorous

assertion that "history is essentially a narrative mode of knowing,

understanding, explaining and reconstructing the past."13 This

assertion has generated a fresh series of excited debates on the

nature of history as a discipline. In some ways history, its nature

and relevance, has long been a subject of debate among thinkers.Louis Mink, a leading protagonist of the narrativist school, begins

one of his influential essays by underlining the low esteem in

which the Western philosophers had been traditionally holding

history. "Philosophers have always betrayed a certain scorn for

both history and romance. 'I knew that the delicacy of fiction

enlivens the mind,' says Descartes, explaining how he had

liberated himself from the errors of the schools, and 'that famous

deeds of history ennoble it.' But in the end, he concluded, that

these are negligible merits, because 'fiction makes us imagine a

number of events as possible which are really impossible, and

even the most faithful histories, if they do not alter or embroider

things to make them more worth reading, almost always omit the

meanest and least illustrious circumstances, so that the remainder

is distorted.' This was Descartes first and final word on all the tales

and stories of human life, and until very recently it could have

served to sum up the consensus of Western philosophy."14

However, in spite of Descartes, many Western philosophers,

especially the Idealists, found the historical process a fascinating

subject of philosophical reflection.15The debates in philosophy of

history currently revolve around the analysis of issues related to

historical knowledge, or history as a discipline. The study of

historical process has gone out of fashion; it is greeted with some

suspicion and scorn. But, nonetheless, it remains a fact thatphilosophy of history, including its present analytical concerns,

developed out of the interest in the historical process and the

debates that this interest had generated.

Generally speaking, it was the thinkers and theorists who

carried on these debates. Practicing historians usually kept away

from them. They preferred to stay focussed on their chosen area of

concrete evidence and the study based on them without being

affected by the currents and the crosscurrents of philosophical

debates.16At least, that was what the historians claimed, and that

was the impression they succeeded in giving.17 Since the 1960s the

scene, however, began changing markedly. Professional historiansbegan taking much more active interest in the problems of


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historical understanding being discussed in philosophy of history.

Metahistory, which till then occupied only a marginal territory inthe concerns of philosophy, and commanded practically no space

in the concerns of history, since 1960s and 1970s began exercising

a considerably wider measure of influence among historians.

Moreover, the traffic of influence was no longer one way;

historians were no longer just listening to the debates, they began

participating in them.

For the discipline of history a more significant aspect of this

development was the entry in the philosophy of history of what

has been called 'the linguistic turn'. This entry was not a sudden

event. It was effected gradually and in stages. In the 1960s and

1970s when the practicing historians were excitedly pursuing

various forms of the 'New History' under the predominant

influence of social sciences, something of a paradigm shift was

taking place in the field of philosophy of history. The focus of

philosophical interest in historical knowledge began moving away

from the traditional debates about the epistemological problems of

historical knowledge. The earlier debates centered on such

questions as how past can be known? What do historical

explanation and causation mean? What are their implications? Is

objective knowledge possible in history?18 These issues were

displaced by a new set of questions engendered by the acceptance

that the narrative embodies the essential or the typical mode of

historical knowledge. "With this linguistic turn, the topics ofnarration and representation replaced law and explanation as

burning issues of the theory and philosophy of history. And

because what might be called the poetics of history now came to

the fore, the question 'how is history like and unlike fiction?'

replaced 'how is history like and unlike science?' as the guiding

question of metahistorical reflection."19 "There was a certain irony

about this growing philosophical interest in narrative history since

it came at a time when there was what Paul Ricoeur subsequently

called the 'eclipse of narrative' in the discipline itself."20 The

practicing historians were still profusely using concepts and

methods borrowed from different social sciences in their works.Within the discipline of history, it was the diverse forms of 'New

History' that was the dominant trend. The influence of the French

Annales School, the Marxists of various persuasions, quantitative

history and new social history in various parts of the world that

conditioned the major part of historical research and study. This

widespread influence produced such an impact on the practice of

history that it appeared that the old fashioned narrative history has

been shown the door for good. Perhaps the affect of the impact

was exaggerated; the narrative had never been completely

subjugated or banished from history. Lawrence Stone who himself

had fallen under the spell of New History21 later exultantly

declared: "Historians have always told stories. From Thucydides


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and Tacitus to Gibbon and Macaulay the composition of narrative

in lively and elegant prose was always accounted their highestambition. History was regarded as a branch of rhetoric. For the last

fifty years, however, this storytelling function has fallen into ill

repute among those who regarded themselves as in the vanguard

of the profession . . . . Now, however, I detect evidence of an

undercurrent which is sucking many prominent 'new historians'

back into some form of narrative."22

The entry of the linguistic turn in history was itself a part of a

larger shift that was taking shape right across the humanities.23

This shift began in the fifties. It questioned some of the basic

premises of positivist framework that dominated the thinking in

social sciences as well as humanities. " O thinkers increasingly

criticized a number of the concepts and distinctions central to

positivism: the analytic vs. the synthetic; fact vs. theory;

description vs. explanation; fact vs. value; the verifiable vs. the

non-verifiable; science vs. metaphysics. In so doing they began to

emphasize the perspectival character of all knowledge."24 In

contrast to the scientific attitude nurtured by the positivist

framework, a different attitude towards language and its relation

to reality began to assert itself. While the positivist view looked at

language as something transparent through which reality is seen,

the linguistic turn viewed language as something opaque and that

it 'creates or structures what is called Real'.25Reality thus can not

be represented; it is interpreted or constructed. There can be noobjective representation of fact, but only a reflexive construction.

All statements are thus rhetoric. In contradistinction to the

positivist scientific attitude, this is called rhetorical attitude. Since

1970s the rhetorical attitude has been playing a very significant

role in shaping the contemporary outlook on the nature of history.

In the first phase of its influence the rhetorical attitude restored

the narrative back to history as its characteristic mode. The issue

that dominated the debates during this phase centered on the

narrative as the device of explanation of the past. How narratives

perform the job of explanation of past events? How narrative

explanations are different or similar to causal explanations? Whatis the relation between the narrator and the narrative? These were

some of the important questions in the debate. It is in answers to

these questions that thinkers like Louis O Mink, Hayden White

and F. R. Ankersmit gave the rhetorical attitude its most radical

departure from the positivist positions.26

They asserted that history is not something given, it is

constructed; it is not discovered, it is produced. The construction

takes the form of a narrative; it is essentially a story. The narrative

structure does not naturally emerge from the evidences but rather

results from a specific discursive ordering of the evidence.27The

narrative is a form in which the outcome of the historian's

conclusion is embedded in the narrative itself; 'it is directly


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reported'. "It is the narrative history itself which claims to be a

contribution to knowledge, not something else which the narrativehistory merely popularizes or organizes. The claim of a narrative

history is that its structure is a contribution to knowledge, not just

a literary artifice for the presentation of a series of factual

descriptions."28Historical narratives are imaginative construction

based on the ordering of evidences. And they draw their meanings

not just from the 'so-called facts they describe' but also from the

form of narrative in which facts are packed.29Historical narratives

are thus stories in which fictional devices like 'emplotment,

story-types, figurative language, and so on' are employed. These

stories do not replicate actual life, they are made by the historian.

"But to say that the qualities of narrative are transferred to art from

life seems a hysteron proteron. Stories are not lived but told. Life

has no beginnings, middles or ends; there are meetings, but the

start of an affair belongs to the story we tell ourselves later, and

there are partings, but final partings are only in the story. There are

hopes, plans, battles and ideas, but only in retrospective stories are

hopes unfulfilled, plans miscarried, battles decisive, and ideas

seminal."30

Selectivity characterizes every stage of the construction of the

narrative. From the choice of the theme to the selection of the

narrative form, it is the historian who makes the decision but he is

guided by the demands of the story he has chosen to relate.

Michlet and Tocqueville wrote different kinds of histories of theFrench Revolution. " Neither can be said to have had more

knowledge of the 'facts' contained in the record; they simply had

different notions of the kind of story that best fitted the facts they

knew. Nor should it be thought that they told different stories of

the Revolution because they had discovered different kinds of

facts, political on the one hand, social on the other. They sought

out different kinds of facts because they had different kinds of

stories to tell."31

It is the cultural heritage, particularly the inherited literary

tradition and attitude, that presents the menu for the choice of the

form or the 'emplotment' the historian recourses to. It is the sharedcultural milieu that on the one hand enables the historian to weave

the intended meaning in his emplotment, and on the other, it

enables the reader to grasp that meaning. The reader is able to

identify the particular form the historian has chosen and get the

meaning embedded in the form. He can thus follow the story and

understand it. It is in this manner that the narrative performs the

task of explicating. And this is the real nature of historical

explanation. "How a given historical situation is to be configured

depends on the historian's subtlety in matching up a specific plot

structure with the set of historical events that he wishes to endow

with a meaning of a particular kind. This is essentially a literary,

that is to say fiction-making operation. And to call it that in no


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way detracts from the status of historical narratives as providing a

kind of knowledge. For not only are the pregeneric plot structuresby which sets of events can be constituted as stories of a particular

kind limited in number, as Frye and other archetypal critics

suggest; but the encodation of events in terms of such plot

structures is one of the ways that a culture has of making sense of

both personal and public pasts." The issue of meaning in history in

the narrativist formulation is linked to the culture complex where

the encodation and the decodation of the narrative take place. The

significance and relevance of itihasa-purana or carita as historical

artifacts resided within the culture complex where they were

produced and they can not be fully and fairly assessed in terms of a

different set of culture-norms.

IV

Contemporary philosophical interest in history is restricted almost

exclusively to the questions that pertain to what is called critical

philosophy of history. These questions do not show much concern

with the historical process33. Although interest in universal history

or 'the grand narrative' in the academic circle is fast becoming a

synonym for charlatanism, the relevance of 'history as events', as

distinct from 'history as account', can not be shaken off.34 The

issue of historical understanding, its nature and its value, can not

be completely detached from the issue of understanding the

historical process. Even the most radical narrativist formulation

will not be able to defend a complete disregard for history as

events. It is the past events that provide the basic impetus for the

generation of the narrative even if the narrative does not represent

the events.35 The solicitation of meaning in history through the

narrative, through the device of emplotment, metonymy and

synecdoche,36can not be completely divorced from the desire to

locate the meaning of events.

And once we grant legitimacy to the seeking of meaning of

'events', or if one prefers, the seeking of the meaning of history

through the events, then it is difficult see how the grand narrative

can be avoided. The notion of meaning in this context can not bedetached from the notions of significance and value. And

significance presupposes relationship. Once embarked, this

trajectory finally takes us on to the fundamental question of value

and significance of human life. It is from this point of view that all

the grand narratives were constructed. And there has been a long

line of grand narrativists, from St. Augustine to Toynbee and

Sorokin.37

V

An important function that history performs is that it keeps alive

an awareness of one's debt to the past, gives one a sense ofbelonging to what might be called a tradition and heritage and


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generates a sense of continuity.38 This sense of belonging and

continuity is not necessarily the same as conservatism or abackward looking attitude. This sense of belonging and continuity

gives a temporal depth to one's existence, a depth that is absolutely

necessary and without which life runs the risk of becoming

rootless. The cultural and the intellectual orientation of early India

bears diverse marks of sensitivity towards past. Conscious steps

were taken to maintain and promote the sense of belonging to a

tradition coming down from the past. Ancestors were called

departed fathers (pitar) and they were remembered with reverence

and gratitude. It was one's sacred duty to repay the debt of the

fathers (pitr rna). No ritual, no ceremony, could begin without

offering food and water to the departed fathers. It was also a

sacred duty to remember the debt one owed to the sages of yore

(rsi rna) and preserve and increase the cultural and intellectual

heritage they had bequeathed. The importance given to kula, desa,

etc., the laws and customs (dharma, aca~ra) of kula, jati, grama,

desa, etc., the system of gotra-pravara were all designed to

reinforce the awareness of continuity from the past, a sense of

belonging, an awareness of history. All these were also reminders

of one's responsibility to what has been bestowed by the past. It is

extremely significant that the two primary divisions of the

knowledge system of early India should bear the names of sruti

(that what has been heard) and smrti (the remembered wisdom of

past). Practically the entire intellectual output of early India wasbut an elaboration of these two. And both of these hark back to

past for their source and inspiration.

Awareness of past is found embedded in the Veda itself. The

Vedic poets refer to kings and dynasties of past. This awareness

was more than just a disparate relic of past stuck in the memory.

The Vedic poets were keenly conscious of the passage of time

from the past into the future and the responsibility of the present

generation for preserving the heritage for futureyuga.39

Witzel has

noted that Indian languages have all preserved, in their own way,

some aspects of the evolution of their history. "They all have quite

involved systems of expressing various stages in the past, and thusa whole array of forms relating to several past 'tenses'." The

beginnings of this attitude can be seen already in the authors of the

Vedic texts."40He remarked that Indians often provided a social

framework for these changes. Thus theMaitrayani Samhita states

that while the form ratrim was alright for men, the devatas used

the purer form of ratrim for night. What is actually meant is that

the form with dirgha i was an earlier form.41 There are also

references to older times and learned persons of yore in the

Rgveda itself.42

The way the Veda was preserved without distortion for

thousands of years is truly a unique feat of conservation of history;

no parallel to this can be instanced from anywhere else in the


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world. It is noteworthy that while the srutipersevered to preserve

the patrimony of past without change, the smrti preserved asocially constructed tradition that was ever responsive to the

demands of changing time and situation. The dynamics of

kaiadharma and desadharma were readily recognized and

appreciated in smrti. It was not a frozen, solidified past that smrti

represented but a moving dynamic continuity. It may be noted that

itihasa-Purana was a part of smrti.43

The chosen instrument for

keeping abreast of time in thepurana was upavrmhana. Viewed

from the perspective that every culture strives to preserve from its

past heritage what it regards valuable, early India in no way can be

called less history-conscious than Greece or Rome or China. Only

that this consciousness articulated itself differently.

The high premium that early India had put on preserving this

awareness of continuity, ironically, instead of creating the

impression that India was keenly history-conscious, resulted in

producing the opposite effect. It gave birth to the stereotype of

unchanging India, India that had turned its back on history.

Fortunately, this stereotypical reading of Indian culture as a

stationary one unable to respond to the calls of change is no longer

taken seriously.44

It was not just at the collective level but at the individual level

as well that we find instances of a keen sensitivity to the past

history. Writers belonging to all branches of literature kept on

referring to earlier works and authors. It was a common practice.Grammar, linguistics, art, in all the various disciplines, we find the

later authors show close familiarity with earlier authors and

acknowledge their indebtedness to them. In a large number of

instances the names and works of earlier authors survive only in

the references made to them by later writers. Even the colossal

figures like Panini, Yaska, Bharata, Caraka, etc., those who were

the defining authorities of their respective disciplines, freely spoke

of their intellectual ancestors.45

In the Raghuvamsa, Kalidasa expresses his debt to the

predecessors (purvasun) in his inimitable style. He says that the

predecessors had already done all the hard works, only the easiertask remained for him. The predecessors had collected the

diamonds and left them cut and ready, all that he had now to do

was to just pass the thread through them.46In theMeghadutam he

refers to village elders who were experts in ancient lore

(kathakovid gramavrddha).47

While describing the city of Ujjayini

he mentions certain 'historical' spots in the city that were hallowed

by the memory of Pradyota, Udayana, etc.48 Memory of old events

and episodes thus continued to survive in diverse forms and

manners and they were continually evoked.

The notion that the early Indian lacked a sense of history seems

to have been set in motion by Alberuni. In his account of India

Alberuni observed, "Unfortunately the Indians do not pay much


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attention to the historical order of things, they are very careless in

relating the chronological succession of their kings, and when theyare pressed for information they are at a loss, not knowing what to

say, they invariably take to tale-telling. But for this we should

communicate to the reader the traditions, which we have received

from some people among them."49This statement has assumed a

kind of a sovereign status among modern practitioners of Indian

history.50It is not necessary at this stage to go in detail into the

question why Alberuni formed this impression. For the present it

may suffice to note that in early India the study of historical events

in precise chronological order did not enjoy the same degree of

attention and popularity in the intellectual world as some other

disciplines. The light in which past was viewed in early India was

also quite different from the one that Alberuni was familiar with.

We will try to deal with these aspects in some subsequent sections.

It is, however, pertinent to point out that neither the Greco-Roman

nor the Chinese travelers seem to have exactly shared this

perception.51

It is not that records were not kept or that care was not taken to

maintain them properly. Evidences rather tell a different story.

Kautilya tells us that the state used to have a very elaborate record

keeping system.52 The main record office was known as

aksapatala. It was situated in the capital and housed in a spacious

building containing many halls and rooms for keeping records.

The records pertained to '(1) the activity of each state department,(2) the working of state factories and conditions governing

production in them, (3) prices, samples and standards of

measuring instruments for various kinds of goods, (4) laws,

transactions, customs and regulations in force in different regions,

villages, castes, families and corporations, (5) salaries and other

perquisites of state servants, (6) what is made over to the king and

other members of the royal family, and (7) payments made to and

amounts received from foreign princes, whether allies or foes.'53

One will heartily endorse the remark of Kangle, 'A more

comprehensive record-house can hardly be thought of.'54Besides

the central record office, the aksapatala, functionaries in charge ofadministrative and financial affairs, for example, an officer like

samahartr as also his subordinates sthanika, gopa,etc., had to

maintain their own records pertaining to the areas of their charge

and function.55 In the Rajatarahgini there is a reference to an

officer with special expertise in the preparation of documents.

This officer was called pattopadhyaya. And he belonged to the

establishment of aksapatala and had the responsibility of

preparing appropriate documents in execution of royal grants.56

Epigraphic evidence also refer to other categories of record

keepers apart from aksapatalika (in charge of aksapatala) like

pustapala, pustakapala, petapala, pettapala, pedapala, etc.57 "To

transmit the royal decrees a crops of secretaries and clerks was


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maintained, and remarkable precautions were taken to prevent

error. Under the Colas, for instance, orders were first written byscribes at the King's dictation, and the accuracy of the drafts was

attested by competent witnesses. Before being sent to their

recipients they were carefully transcribed, and a number of

witnesses, sometimes amounting to as many as thirteen, again

attested them. In the case of grant of land and privileges an

important court official was generally deputed to ensure that the

royal decrees were put into effect. Thus records were kept with

great care, and nothing was left to chance; the royal scribes

themselves were often important personages."58

There are numerous evidences to the effect that states used to

take great pains to prepare and maintain records. In an extensive

note Arvind Sharma has given a neat summary of the

dharmasastra material pertaining to the significance, preparation,

preservation and classification of documents. Documents were

numerous as well as varied. There were official documents

bearing official seals and stamps. There were several varieties of

official documents. And then, there were peoples' documents

(laukika, janpada); there were private documents. Elaborate

procedures were developed to verify their validity.60

Arvind Sharma gives an interesting account of the way the

dharmasastra writers projected the importance of documentation.

It is the Creator himself who created documents.59 This divine

initiative was necessary because without documents ' the worldwould have come to grief', there would have been no 'indubitable

means of apprehending the time, the place, the object, the

material, the extent and the duration of a transaction'. Since people

begin to entertain doubts about a transaction even in a matter of six

months, 'the Creator created in the hoary past letters' to be put on

record 'on writing material (patra).61The viewpoint articulated by

the dharmasastri in the above formulation is significant. It shows

that the view that the early Indians were so completely swamped

by their concept of the cosmic time flowing incessantly without

beginning and end that they lost all perspective of historical time

is apt to be very one sided. The outlook of Narada or Brhaspatiwas firmly and unambiguously historical.

It is also clear that all records did not pertain to administrative,

legal and financial matter. Documents more directly historical in

nature were also prepared and preserved. Yuan Chuwang referred

to the official practice of maintaining records of events both at the

royal court in the capital as well as in the provinces. There were

special officers who were entrusted with the task. It is interesting

that these records were called 'blue deposit'. These records

'mentioned good and evil events, with calamities and fortunate

occurrences'.62Alberuni had noticed genealogical lists of the Sahi

rulers of Afghanistan written on silk. These lists were kept for

preservation at the fortress of Nagarkot. From the manner of


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Alberuni's statement it appears that this was a dynastic chronicle

of the Sahi kings spanning a period of more than one thousandyears from the foundation of Kusana power to the fall of the

Brahmana Sahis in the 11th century.63 According to D. C. Sircar

official charters of many ruling families of post-Gupta period

contain historical accounts covering many generations spread

over, sometimes, several centuries. Such accounts would have

been difficult to prepare without the assistance of written records

already existing.64

It is well known that Kalhana in the preparation of his book had

before him twelve earlier works on the history of Kashmir.65

Besides written works, he had also consulted other evidences like

grants, consecration-inscriptions,prasastis, etc.66There is also no

reason to believe that the methodology of scrutiny, verification,

collation, etc., that Kalhana followed was not known earlier. The

tradition of composing chronicles was not limited to Kashmir

alone. There are definite evidence of their existence in Assam ( in

the form of Burahjis) and in Nepal (in the form of Vamsavalis).

On the basis of what we have observed above regarding the

custom of keeping records of 'events', it can be safely surmised

that the keeping of chronicles was a common custom all over the

country.67To this may be added the chronicles maintained by the

various religious organizations. The Buddhist Mahavamsa and

Dipavamsa are well-known examples of this class.68

There are a number of inscriptions that mention past eventswith dates. We find the narration of events belonging to the reign

of a single monarch in chronological order. There are inscriptions

that describe events that happened at different dates and belonged

to the reigns of different rulers and were under the charge of

different officers and took place at different places, but the

chronological order of enumeration was strictly maintained.69

This is a suitable point to take note of another small problem.

Sometimes the assertion that early India lacked a sense of history

is formulated in the shape of another assertion that early India did

not possess a sense of chronology. It is not clear what actually is

meant by the lack of a sense of chronology. Does it mean anapprehension of the affairs of the world as though they exist in a

dateless expanse of time, where the passage of time in its

sequential order is not properly comprehended and where no

method of calibration of the passage is used? In such a case it will

be a kind of cognition "where all generations become as it were

contemporaries."70Such a formulation about early India is totally

untenable. India's familiarity with the computation of time

sequence goes back to very early period. Jyotisa was one of the

Vedahgas and the very inspiration behind the study ofjyotisa was

the precise determination of appropriate time for the performance

of ritual. Even in theRgveda there are suggestions that passage of

time was computed through succession of years.71


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Another way the lack of a sense of chronology has been

formulated is that there was an absence of a long term datingsystem as well as the consciousness that such a system was

necessary. Early India by no means can be accused of suffering

from an absence of a long term perspective of time. The pumnic

concept of the cyclic succession of huge eons,para, kalpa, yuga

encompasses a time dimension that is mind-boggling in its

vastness; and its very immensity makes it appear meaningless.72

The thesis that there was a lack of a sense of chronology among

early Indians thus has also been presented in the following form:

as early India subscribed to the cyclic concept of time, it inhibited

the growth of the concept of linearity of time. Therefore, early

India did not develop any system of reckoning of time like an era

till such dating system was introduced by invading ruling

dynasties.73

We will take up the question of the interrelationship between

the concepts of circular and linear time and the parts they played in

forming the notion of history in early India in a later section. As

regards the question of the prevalence of dating and era, the

practice of a dating system and the practice of reckoning based on

an era are not exactly the same. And, the idea of chronology does

not have to be necessarily identified with either of them. The

consciousness of chronology simply means a consciousness of

sequence of events. A dating method takes form when in addition

to the consciousness of sequence, the sequenced events are alsoplaced in some kind of reckoning, irrespective of the length of

scale. Moreover, it can not be definitely ascertained whether or not

there were some old and indigenous eras current in the country.

There are some indications that eras dating from important events

like the onset of Kaliyuga or the demise of Mahavira or Buddha

were current in early India.74The practice of dating according to

the year of reign of the ruling monarch does not necessarily prove

that reckoning in eras was unknown. A large number of powerful

rulers continued to use regnal years in their inscriptions long after

the use of eras had become widely known.75

VI

A large number of terms denoting past events were in continuous

vogue in ancient India right from the Vedic age. It is true that the

exact connotations of these terms are debatable and that it is not

possible to ascertain how far these terms referred to actual

historical past and to what extent to mythical time. But all the

same they do represent the prevalent attitude towards past. And

they are significant from that point of view.

Despite the fact that religion is the basic theme of Vedic

literature, it contains references to certain forms of compositions

that may be termed as historical. Songs and verses were composedin praise of worthy deeds. TheRgveda states that kings were very


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fond of eulogies as a form of literary composition.76It appears that

there was a class of versifiers and singers similar to the latter-daybards: gathin, vinagathin, vinaganagin, etc., who specialized in

the composition and narration of this kind of eulogies.77Besides

the eulogies, mainly of royal power and glory, the beginnings of a

different tradition of history writing are found in the succession

lists of Vedic sages. Relatively earlier lists are found in some

brahmanas and in Sahkhyayana Aranyaka and Brhadaranyaka

Upanisad and somewhat later lists in some grhya and srauta

sutras. These lists are called vamsa and gotra-pravara lists.78

These lists differed from the gatha, narasamsi in the sense that

they show a conception of continuity, an idea of a relatively longer

time span and connectivity between events, and that they were not

purely episodic.

Various terms connoting 'historical' compositions like gatha,

narasamsi, itihasa, purana, akhyana, etc., are found referred to in

Vedic literature. These compositions, it appears, became a part of

the ritualistic tradition that dominated the Vedic literature. The

recounting of glorious and heroic stories of past was a part of the

great Vedic sacrifices like asvamedha.19These were also narrated

in the course of some domestic rituals.80 Similarly, the vamsa and

gotra-pravara lists harked back to divine ancestors and mythical

sages.81 The dominance of religion and ethics over history in

varying degrees remained a permanent feature of Indian view of

history and the two were never fully de-linked.However, there are certain indications that these historical

compositions originated independently of the ritual tradition in a

milieu that was mainly secular and later got incorporated into the

ritual system. The term narasamsi signified 'verse celebrating

men.'82The Aitareya Brahmana distinguished gatha from rk by

stating that while the former is merely human, the latter is divine.83

Although gatha and narasamsi had often been distinguished, they

had as often been represented as kindred terms.84A passage in the

Atharvaveda enumerated the following kinds of works: rk, saman,

yajus, brahmana, itihasa, purana, gatha, narasamsi.85 The

passage seems to refer to two different classes of compositions,the one may be termed as religious or adrstarthaka (rk, saman,

yajus, and brahmana) and the other secular or historical or

drstarthaka (itihasa, purana, gatha, narasamsi). The Kathaka

Samhita describes both gatha and narasamsi as false (anrtam).86

There is a statement in the Satapatha Brahmana, which appears

interesting in this context: "Twofold, verily, is this, there is no

third, viz. truth and untruth.87And verily, the gods are the truth

and man is the untruth." Anrta here seems to connote apara or

earthly. It appears that gatha and narasamsi did not belong to the

domain of religious-spiritual, but to the human and secular.88 It

may perhaps be surmised that right from the early Vedic age there

was a floating tradition of historical compositions, originally


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non-Vedic and non-ritualistic, which celebrated the heroic and

noble deeds of men. These were mainly eulogistic songs and theirmain patrons were kings who were fond of such compositions.89In

consequence of the growth of big Vedic sacrifices historical

narratives acquired a place in the ritual system because the kings

who were the clients of these elaborate Vedic scarifies were also

the patrons of historical narratives. This paved the way for the

inclusion of secular heroic narratives as parts of religious

sacrificial lore. Narasamsa, from which narasamsi was derived,

was associated with rites devoted to deceased fathers.90 The

recounting of glories of departed ancestors or past generations

thus formed an important component of what was regarded as

historical narratives. The recitation of lore of past became an

important element in the performance of rajasuya, asvamedha,

etc.91 There were experts, akhyanavid, puranavid, etc., in the

narration of historical lore, whose services were utilized in the

rituals.92According to Yaska the school of aitihasikas specialized

in interpreting Vedic hymns through itihasa, in contrast to the

nairuktas who relied on etymology for Vedic interpretation.93

Gatha, narasamsi, akhyana, etc. seem to have been

predominantly legends celebrating heroic and noble deeds. In

them the line separating the human and superhuman was not

important. Thus there were indragathas andyajnagathas, and the

akhyana of the union of a divine nymph with a mortal hero and its

inevitable tragic consequences.94 These narratives in the Vedicliterature were considered as having a mystical aspect about them

which facilitated their way into the ritual system.

Among the various history-denoting terms current in early

India, the central space was occupied by the twin terms: itihasa

andpurana, often joined together in a compound. It is not easy to

define these terms precisely and to bring out the precise

relationship between the two. Both the terms apparently were very

old; itihasa clearly and unambiguously had made its appearance

already in the Atharvaveda.95

Then in the Brahmanas and

Upanisads, it is a frequently occurring term and usually in

association withpurana.96

And already in the Vedic period itihasaand purana, jointly or separately, had acquired the status of a

Veda.97 It is clear that itihasa and purana had a very intimate

relationship; their subject matter must have covered a great deal of

common ground and must have often overlapped. The

continuation of both the terms over a very long period suggests

that they were not regarded as synonymous to begin with. With the

passage of time the points of distinction between the two got

blurred and confused. This confusion is strikingly illustrated by

the contradictory positions taken by such famous authorities as

Medhatithi and Sankaracarya on the one hand and by Sayanacarya

on the other. Whereas Sankaracarya and Medhatithi describe the

creation account (sristiprakriya) as constituting purana and


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Urvasi-Pururava legend as itihasa, Sayana regards creation

account as itihasa and Urvasi-Pururava legend aspurana998

In thearthavada (i.e., explanatory) portions of theBrahmanas, however,

the akhyanas of Urvasi-Pururava and that of Sunahsepah have

been given as examples of itihasa and creation account as that of

purana.99 There is a very interesting and revealing passage in the

Arthasastra of Kautilya. The passage gives us a fairly accurate

and broad idea about the perspective in which itihasa was viewed

at that time. The Arthasastra perspective is also additionally

significant because it is the product of an age in which Puranic

literature was receiving its standardized form.100It may indicate

that Kautilyan view might have had linkages with that of the

purana.

TheArthasastrapassage occurs in the chapter on the training of

the prince. The training programme had a clearly structured

character. The training started at a very early age immediately

after the tonsure ceremony (caula) was performed. At this primary

stage the prince was first introduced to alphabet and numbers as a

foundation for the more rigorous intellectual training to follow.

After the sacred thread ceremony (upanayana)began the training

on the three Vedas and the philosophical systems and the

management of economic and political affairs. After gaining a

thorough grounding in these and after the prince attained manhood

he was asked to cultivate constantly the association of wise and

knowledgeable people 'for the sake of improving his training'.101Itis in this context that Kautilya prescribed that the prince should

spend the second half of everyday in 'listening to itihasa'.102And

then comes the passage describing the scope and constituents of

itihasa. "The puranas, itivrtta, akhyayika, udaharana,

dharmasastra and arthasastrathese constitute itihasa".11003

Despite sharing certain common elements the purana,

dharmasastra and arthasastra represented distinct classes of

literature. And each has a distinctive personality. It may be

surmised that the other three, i.e., itivritta, akhyayika and

udaharana, too must have had their separate existences and

distinctive characters. Again, purana, itivrtta, akhyayika andudaharana appear to have shared a common family trait; all of

them seem to have been narratives of old events. They differed

from one another not so much in character as in scope and range.

Udaharana, as the term suggests, probably signified a

collection of separate events exemplifying success and failures.

Kautilya apparently gives us a few samples of udaharana in the

chapter entitled 'Casting out the Group of Six Enemies' dealing

with the necessity of controlling the evil impulses and passions by

the prince.104 The udaharana narratives were strung together

because of their illustrative value. The narratives did not seem to

have any temporal order or sequential unity. The incidents in an

akhyayika, on the other hand, had internal relatedness and unity.


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Akhyayika was a variant of, or derivation form, akhyana. This

form of narratives appears to have been popular since the Vedicperiod for their dramatic quality and for their morals and was

given a place in the ritual system.105 Generally akhyana dealt with

a particular story. Sometimes, however, a number of akhyanas

were strung together as in thepariplavani cycle.106Even the whole

of theMahabharata was sometimes called an akhyana although it

contained within itself numerous independent akhyanas.107

Akhyayika later appeared to have acquired a standardized

narrative form pertaining to the lives and activities of rulers.108

Anyway, this seems clear that akhyana-akhyayika had for its

theme a single thread: an

'event' or a string of events constituting a 'story' with a beginning,middle and end. Itivrtta and its synonym puravrtta perhaps

signified events covering a longer period and range than

akhyayika; the suffix vrtta suggests a sequential order.Itivrtta also

seems to hint at a circular or cyclical concept of history.Itivrtta or

the variantpuravrttaperhaps meant a cycle of events.

It is not possible to trace the evolution of the termpurana with

precision. That it referred to accounts of 'olden past' is obvious;

the very expression purana is a sufficient indication. Whether

Puranic traditions antedated the Vedas, whether they were

anti-Vedic and anti-Brahmanic are questions that will have to wait

for precise answers.109This, however, seems clear that by the time

the Arthasastra was composed and the Puranic literature was

getting formalized, the scope of the theme of puranas had

acquired a truly vast sweep. It included the entire process of

creation and evolution and accommodated within this frame a

number of secondary beginnings and disintegration of the world

and the succession of theyugas and the accounts of all significant

beings and events. It is not only the sumptuousness of the

marvelous elements in these accounts, but also the vastness of the

scope that disagrees so strikingly with our contemporary

sensibilities. The point that we are trying to make here is that

udaharana, akhyayika, itivrtta andpurana represented a series of

graded perspectives in history; the scope of akhyayika was widerthan udaharana, itivrtta was wider than akhyayika, and purana

was wider than itivrtta. According to Kautilya, itihasa included all

of the above and even more; it also included dharmasastra and

arthasastra. The inclusion of dharmasastra and arthasastra

appears particularly interesting as it seems to underline the social

perspective of history.110 The underlying suggestion seems to say

that events ought to be situated against the dharma and artha

perspectives. To act as an aid to the realization of thepurusarthas

was the central raison d'etre of ithasa.111

Itihasa in the light of theArthasastrapassage appears to have

been considered as a wholesome study of the affairs of this worldpreparing man to comprehensively meet his social obligations. Its


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study seemed to have an especial value for a ruler. It ranked in

importance next to the three Vedas and anviksikl. The Vedas andanviksikl were geared predominantly to the realization of moksa,

and vartta and dandanlti to economics and politics.112Itihasa, in

contrast, put equal emphasis on all of the caturvargas .113

TheArthasastrapassage would also afford us an idea about the

way that an 'event' in history was conceived. Any narrative was

not necessarily historical; to acquire the status of history a

narrative had to be instructive.114 It is the ability to teach and

instruct that invests an event with significance. The notion of

significance from this point of view is essentially ethical because

only that has the ability to instruct which can contribute to

well-being and happiness and because the attainment of

well-being hinges on the ability to make the distinction between

right and wrong. It is noteworthy that although Kautilya's

Arthasastra was a text that predominantly dealt with such secular

matter as the success of royal policies; the way history (itihasa)

was perceived by Kautilya had a strong ethical underpinning.115

This is clear from the narration of events of excesses committed

by the rulers of yore that led them to their doom. Kautilya narrated

those events as part of instructions to the prince as illustrations of

conduct to be abjured.116

Normally an event was also regarded as one with a fulsome

story. It usually contained one or more of akhyana/akhyayika

characterized by different parts that succeeded in sequential order.Prof. V.S. Pathak has described and illustrated these parts in his

work.117 These parts were: beginning (prarambha), the efforts

(prayatna), the hope of achieving the objective (praptyasa), the

certainly of achievement (niyataptV) and the achievement

(phalagama). A book of itihasa could consist of a single

akhyana/akhyayika likeHarsacarita.imIt could also include many

akhyanas sewn around a central theme as in the

Mahabharata that was also called Bharatakhyana though it

contained a large number of other independent akhyanas.119

The Arthasastra passage also sheds some light on the

relationship between itihasa and purana. In Kautilya's view, wehave noted above,purana was a part of itihasa, and the two were

thus intimately related. The scope of itihasa was perhaps wider

thanpurana, forpurana was only one of the various elements or

forms of itihasa. Generally, the Arthasastra passage has been

interpreted as indicating that purana was only one among the

several elements which together constituted itihasa. However, the

passage is also liable to interpretation to the effect that iitihasa had

many forms or variants as specified by Kautilya and that these

variants separately or together merited the name of itihasa. We

have also noted above that the relation between itihasa andpurana

and the scope and content of them were a matter on which famousauthorities disagreed and took opposite positions. Thus it is not


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possible to decide whether the passage in the Arthasastra

represented merely Kautilya's personal view of itihasa or itreflected the commonly perceived perception of his time. That

Kautilya included dharamasastra and arthasastra in itihasa may

help us to understand why the Epics andpuranas included didactic

material and dharmasastra and arthasastra matters in such

abundance.

It is worth trying to understand why the expression purana

stood both for ancient lore as well as for a specific class of

literature. Winternitz has surmised that a mass of ancient lore and

traditions existed as a floating body which served as a common

storehouse from which various forms of literary expressions like

gatha, narasamsi, vamsa, akhyana, etc., drew their material.120

The Puranic form seems to have developed by absorbing many of

these forms within it. The Visnupurana, for example, tells us that

there were three constituent elements of the puranas: gatha,

akhyana and supplementary akhyana.121

They were collated

within the framework of vamsas to produce the vamsanucarita to

provide the puranas with some of its so-called distinctive

marksthe pahcalaksanas.122 The development of puranas

through adaptation, absorption and integration of earlier mass of

historical traditions and compositions represented a process of

growth of historical narratives. It represented growth even in

physical terms in the sense that purana came to constitute a

collection of an enormous corpus much larger in scope andvolume than the earlier forms of historical narratives. However,

the growth of purana reflected more than mere physical

expansion; it also marked the broadening of the scope and subject

matter of history as new elements and aspects were added by

puranakaras. puranas thus also represented a widening of the

perspective in the conceptual framework of history. Sincepuranas

became the repository of diverse aspects of past, the expression

purana came to signify both the old lore as well as the class of

literature preserving the old lore.

From another perspective also, pumnas may be considered as

marking a continuous and dynamic growth of the historicalnarrative. Through the process of upabrimhana new material

covering immediate past was continuously added to the existing

corpus updating the narrative and keeping it attuned to

contemporary requirements and tastes.123This saved the narrative

from getting stale investing it with a certain amount of evergreen

quality. This, moreover, also underlined the relevance of past to

the present by relating the past to the contemporary.

It is clear that the custom of documenting the past in India had a

very long and old history. There were bards and minstrels whose

business was to compose, narrate and preserve glorious and heroic

deeds. It seems that a class of specialists arose who developed

expertise in preserving the records of past; these experts


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constituted the 'school of historians' for the society. We have noted

above that originally they did not seem to have been an integralpart of the Vedic ritualistic tradition. The matter that was of

primary concern to the preservers of heroic lore, the school of the

aitihasika-puranika, was mainly secular in character. These were

heroic and noble deeds of great men.

And it appears that the orthodoxy did not always view the

composition of these accounts kindly. Even if one does not

wholeheartedly agree with Pargiter's view124 that purana-itihasa

tradition represented Ksatriya tradition in contrast to the Vedic

Brahmanicalthe two might not have been as antithetical as

Pargiter contendsthere is no denying the fact that they originally

belonged to two distinct traditions.A large number of terms for these specialists are found. Some

of the more frequently used terms in Pauranic literature were

puravid, puranavid, puranajna, puranika, vamsavid,

vamsacintaka, vamsa-puranajna, anuvamsapuranajna, etc. It is

not possible to locate and demarcate specific areas of

specialization associated with these terms. They were often used

loosely without adhering to a fixed meaning.125From thepuranas

it appears that these specialists were also known by a common and

broader term, the suta. The duties and functions of suta can be

sketched with certain amount of definiteness. "The sutas special

duty as perceived by goodmen of old was to preserve the

genealogies of gods, rishis and most glorious kings, and the

traditions of great men, which are displayed by those who declare

sacred lore in the itihasa and puranas."126

It was thus suta's

function to preserve the memories of 'glorious kings', 'the

traditions of great men', 'the eulogies' of famous people and 'the

genealogies.' The suta was a pauranika, a specialist in ancient

lore, a vamsakusala, an expert in genealogies.127

The pauranika sutas were different from the varna samkara

sutas mentioned in the smrti literature. Kautilya makes a clear

distinction between the two.128 The pauranika sutas appear to

have been learned people and apparently they belonged to the

cultivated class. V.S. Pathak has drawn the attention of scholars tothe fact that the Bhrigvangirasa families had shown special

aptitude and interest in the preservation and propagation of

historical lore.129The close relation between the Bhrigvangirasas

and itihasa-purana has been recorded especially in the Candogya

Upanisad. At one place it states that the Atharvavedabears the

same relation to itihasa-purana as theRgveda to rik, Samaveda to

saman, Yajurveda to yajus. At another place we find a clearer

statement: "Atharvangirasas are the bees, the itihasapurana is the

flower." At yet another place it states that the hymns of the

Atharvangirasas brooded over the itihasapurana.130

It is possible

that thepaumnika sutasbelonged to the Bhrigvangirasa extraction


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and the antiquity of the itihasapurana was not very much shorter

than that of theVedas.131

An account of the compilation ofpurana is found in the Vayu,

Brahmanda and Visnu purana. There the compilation is attributed

to Veda Vyasa. After accomplishing the stupendous task of

systematization and division of Vedas into four, the Rk, Saman,

Yajus and Atharva and entrusting them to four of his disciples

Paila, Vaisampayana, Jaimini and Sumantu respectively,

Maharsi Krisna Dvaipayana complied a purana samhita and

entrusted it together with itihasa to his fifth disciple suta

Lomaharsana or Romaharsana. After that he composed the

Bharatakhyanam.132

This account of the systematization of the Vedas, the

compilation of the purana and the composition of the

Mahabharata is highly interesting. Even though generally

scholars have treated this account with skepticism, no really valid

argument can be advanced for completely dismissing off its

authenticity. If Vedic literature is silent about this tradition of

Vyasa's dividing the Veda into four; there is nothing surprising

about this omission. Vyasa had merely organized the Vedas; there

is no reason why the texts should contain any reference to him, he

only arranged the Vedic texts without, presumably, any kind of

interference with the texts themselves which were already in

existence before his own time and which were traditionallyregarded as of non-human (apauruseya) origin. It is also natural

that the language, culture and the universe reflected in the Vedas

on the one hand and thepurana and theMahabharata on the other

should be quite distinct because the methods followed by Vyasa in

regard to the Vedas and purana-Mahabharata were quite

different. In the case of the Vedas, Vyasa's work was limited

merely to arrangement and organization, in the case of thepurana

and the Mahabharata he was not just an organizer but also a

composer author. It is interesting further to note that whereas for

the Vedas he divided a single text into four divisions, for the

puranas he collected a large number of existing traditions andaccounts into a single whole. As for the Mahabharata Vyasa is

credited with composing it.

That the later history of the development of Vedic Literature

andpurana itihasa should take on different lines was also natural;

the reason for this lay inherent in the very nature of the texts. Vedic

texts were finished products, they dealt with things become, the

purana on the other hand dealt with things becoming, there was

scope for continuous addition of new material to it as new

historical facts kept piling up. When looked at from this point of

view, Vyasa's work in regard to the arrangement of the Vedas

proved much more enduring than his compilation of the

purana-samhita; the Veda-samhitas as arranged by Vyasa have


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remained intact, the purana-samhita compiled by Vyasa has got

buried under later growth.The traditional number of the purnnas is considered eighteen,

although the extant numbers of puranas greatly exceed this

traditional number. These different puranas appear to have

branched out of the originalpuranasamhita compiled by Vyasa.

This originalpurana could hardly have condensed all the existing

past traditions, there must have been other existing ancient

traditions leading to its augmentation and later proliferation into a

number ofpuranas. Thepuranasby their very nature easily lent

themselves to augmentation and adaptation. According to Pargiter

the later Brahmana editors of the puranasthe custody of the

puranapassed from the hands of professional sutas into those of

sectarian Brahmana priestly classtook full advantage of the

situation to introduce a great deal of extraneous matters,

particularly religious and didactic, besides the fresh historical

material that were accumulating over the time and stamp the

puranas with their sectarian views and attitude. Thus the

handiwork of Vyasa got lost.133The Brahmanical embellishments

led to a change in the nature of thepuranasby giving the original

secular Puranic accounts a religious character and thus narrowing

the gulf that divided the theological Vedic traditions and the

non-religious Puranic heritage.134

The traditional account of the compilation of the original

purana-samhitaby Vyasa tells us that he had collected akhyana,upakhyana, gatha and kalpa-jokti for the same.135 In this

connection it may also be noted that traditionally purana was

regarded as a class of literature that contained the following five

characteristics (pahcalaksana): original creation (sarga),

dissolution and re-creation (pratisarga), genealogy (vamsa),

transition of Manus (manvantara) and accounts of persons

mentioned in the genealogies (vamsanucarita).136These give us a

fair idea about the kinds of materials originally used for the

composition of the Puranic literature. Same kinds of material must

have also constituted the basic raw material of the itihasa. The

subject matter of the originalpurana thus seems to have consistedmainly of traditions about gods, about ancient rsis and kings,

about ancient genealogies and biographies.

No great distinction seems to have been made between

itihasa-purana and akhyana; they were often treated as

synonymous. "As collective terms itihasa and purana are often

mentioned as distinct, and yet are sometimes treated as much the

same; thus the Vayu calls itself both apurana and an itihasa, and

so also theBrahmanda. TheBrahma calls itself apurana and an

akhyana; theMahabharata calls itself by all these terms."137An

akhyana, however, does not seem to have been just any kind of old

tales. It seems to have been a tale of special nature, a tale to

illustrate a moral or a lesson. It was generally didactic. It is


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important to remember that the concept of history in ancient India

generally had always been strongly didactic in nature. However,according to Pargiter, the didactic dharma matter which loom very

large in the extant puranas were added later by the Brahmanas

into whose hands the task of the preservation of the puranas had

passed from their original custodians, the sutas.138It is significant

that dharma does not directly figure at all among the five

characteristic features of thepuranas (thepahcalaksana).Neither

does it figure in the list of the materials used by Vyasa for his

compilation of the originalpuranasamhita. Upakhyana obviously

belonged to the same genre as akhyana, the difference being

perhaps in size and dimension.139Gatha meant a song in praise of

noble and heroic deeds.140 Besides the kalpajoktis, the heroic

traditions, lore and tales of past embodied in akhyana, upakhyana,

gatha, etc., constituted the main Puranic material.

Of the original five characteristics of the purana, the

pahcalaksana, (original creation, dissolution and recreation, the

manvantaras, ancient genealogies and accounts of persons

mentioned in the genealogies) Pargiter writes "The first three

subjects thatpuranas should treat of, are based on imagination, are

wholly fanciful, and do not admit of any practical examination,

hence it would be a vain pursuit to investigate

them ... The fourth and fifth subjects are, however, genealogies

and tales of ancient kings, profess to be historical tradition and do

admit of chronological scrutiny, hence they are well worthconsidering."141

Not questioning the validity of Pargiter's observation it may be

pointed out that although it is true that the first three subjects are

not valuable for empirical history, nevertheless they provide a

grand sweep to the concept of history. Such sweeps form one of

the chief characteristics of some of the most influential schools of

historical interpretations. An obvious example is the Christian

idea of history, which encompasses all empirical events within a

single all comprehensive framework of divine plan.142 Similarly,

the Puranic framework of creation and dissolution, within which

the vamsa and vamsanucarita have their existence, give allempirical events a meaningful perspective and from that point of

view these three subjects sarga, pratisarga, manvantara are

highly valuable. They provide a synthesist framework and try to

Understanding Itihasa

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Transcript of Understanding Itihasa