DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

STUDY MATERIAL

MA HISTORY – II YEAR

MHI33 – HISTORIOGRAPHY

DR. N. DHAIVAMSAM
Assistant Professor in History

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UNIT CONTENT PAGE NO
History- Meaning – Definition – Nature and
I Scope – Value of History 3 - 12

History and Allied Studies – Types of

II History – Whether Science or Art 13 - 21

Genesis and Growth – Greek – Roman

Historiography – Medieval Arab
III 22 - 31
Historiography

French and Marxist Historians – Evolution of

Quantitative History – Modernism - Post
IV 32 - 40
Modernism.

Indian Historiographers – Bana - Kalhana –

Ferishta – Barani – Abul Fazl – V A Smith –
K.P. Jayaswal – J N Sarkar – DD Kosami –
V 41 - 64
K.A. Nilakanta Sasthri, K.K. Pillay – N.
Subrahmaniyam.

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MA HISTORY (II- YEAR)

MHI33 - HISTORIOGRAPHY

(STUDY MATERIAL)

UNIT- I
The term historiography refers to a body of historical work on various topics. It
also refers to the art and the science of writing history. Historiography may be defined
as “The history of history”. Historiography is usually defined and studied by topic,
examples being the “Historiography of the French Revolution,” the “Historiography of
the Spanish Inquisition,” or the “Historiography of Ancient India". Historiography also
encompasses specific approaches and tools employed for the study of history.

Introduction:

History is the study of life in society in the past, in all its aspect, in relation to
present developments and future hopes. It is the story of man in time, an inquiry into
the past based on evidence. Indeed, evidence is the raw material of history teaching and
learning. It is an Inquiry into what happened in the past, when it happened, and how it
happened. It is an inquiry into the inevitable changes in human affairs in the past and
the ways these changes affect, influence or determine the patterns of life in the society.
History is, or should be an attempt to re-think the past.

History aims at helping students to understand the present existing social,

political, religious and economic conditions of the people. Without the knowledge of
history we cannot have the background of our religion, customs institutions,
administration and so on. The teaching of history helps the students to explain the
present, to analyze it and to trace its course. Cause and-effect relationship between the
past and the present is lively presented in the history. History thus helps us to
understand the present day problems both at the national and international level
accurately and objectively.

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Concepts of History:

History is the analysis and interpretation of the human past enabling us to study
continuity and changes that are taking place over time. It is an act of both investigation
and imagination that seeks to explain how people have changed over time. Historians
use all forms of evidence to examine, interpret, revisit, and reinterpret the past. These
include not just written documents, but also oral communication and objects such as
buildings, artifacts, photographs, and paintings. Historians are trained in the methods
of discovering and evaluating these sources and the challenging task of making
historical sense out of them. History is a means to understand the past and present.

Definition of history:

The origin of the word History is associated with the Greek word ‘Historia’
which means ‘information’ or ‘an enquiry designed to elicit truth’.

History has been defined differently by different scholars. Following definitions

indicate the meaning and scope of History.

Burckhardt: “History is the record of what one age finds worthy of note in
another.”

Henry Johnson: “History, in its broadest sense, is everything that ever

happened.”

Smith,V.S: “The value and interest of history depend largely on the degree in
which the present is illuminated by the past.”

Rapson: “History is a connected account of the course of events or progress of

ideas.”

NCERT: “History is the scientific study of past happenings in all their aspects, in
the life of a social group, in the light of present happenings.”

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Jawaharlal Nehru: “History is the story of Man’s struggle through the ages
against Nature and the elements; against wild beasts and the jungle and some of his
own kind who have tried to keep him down and to exploit him for their own benefit.”

Aristotle: “The manifestation of human nature, intentions and motives over the
millennia which differed in degree and not in their basic nature.”

Thomas Carlyle: “History is nothing but the biography of great men, and is a
record of human accomplishment”.

Lord Acton: “history is a story of the unfolding march to freedom”. This idea
was accepted by Turgot and Condorcet as well.

Rowse: “history is a record of the life of men in their geographical and physical
environment”.

Seignbos: “History is a science of reasoning.”

Ernest Bernheim: “History is a science that investigates and presents in their

context of psycho-physical causality the facts determined by space and time of the
evolution of men in their individual as well as typical and collective activity as human
beings.”

Rousseau: “History is the art of choosing from the many lies, one which most
closely resembles the truth.”

Benedetto Croce: “All history is one supreme spirit which is indivisible, but has
four different aspects- art, ethics, logic and economics- which emerge from the basic
unity of the spirit.”

John Findlay: “History is any sequence of events traced in their relations.”

Professor Maitland: “History is what people have done and said, above all what
they have thought.”

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G.J Renier: “History is the story of men living in societies, in which group
activity, collective response to creative thoughts and sociability and will to serve society
and act in the greater interests of common good, is of paramount importance.”

Elton: “History is concerned with all those human beings, sayings, thoughts,
deeds and sufferings which have occurred in the past and have left present deposits
and it deals with them from the point of view of constant change. “

Belgian Historian Henri Pirenne: “History is the story of men living in societies
and their deeds.”

Like Hegel and others, who insisted on the role of great men in history, Thomas
Carlyle argued that history was the biography of a few central individuals, heroes,
arguing "The history of the world is nothing but the biography of great men."

The above definitions explain History as a significant records of events of the

past, a meaningful story of mankind depicting the details of what happened to man and
why it happened. Mainly it deals with the human world.

Nature of History:

1. A study of the present in the light of the past: The present has evolved out of
the past. Modern history enables us to understand how society has come to its present
form so that one may intelligently interpret the sequence of events. The causal
relationships between the selected happenings are unearthed that help in revealing the
nature of happenings and framing of general laws.

2. History is the study of man: History deals with man’s struggle through the
ages. History is not static. By selecting “innumerable biographies” and presenting their
lives in the appropriate social context and the ideas in the human context, we
understand the sweep of events. It traces the fascinating story of how man has
developed through the ages, how man has studied to use and control his environment
and how the present institutions have grown out of the past.
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3. History is concerned with man in time: It deals with a series of events and
each event occurs at a given point in time. Human history, in fact, is the process of
human development in time. It is time which affords a perspective to events and lends a
charm that brightens up the past.

4. History is concerned with man in space: The interaction of man on

environment and vice versa is a dynamic one. History describes about nations and
human activities in the context of their physical and geographical environment. Out of
this arise the varied trends in the political, social, economic and cultural spheres of
man’s activities and achievements.

5. Objective record of happenings: Every precaution is taken to base the data on

original sources and make them free from subjective interpretation. It helps in clear
understanding of the past and enables us to take well informed decisions.

6. Multisided: All aspects of the life of a social group are closely interrelated and
historical happenings cover all these aspects of life, not limited only to the political
aspect that had so long dominated history.

7. History is a dialogue between the events of the past and progressively

emerging future ends. The historian’s interpretation of the past, his selection of the
significant and the relevant events, evolves with the progressive emergence of new
goals. The general laws regulating historical happenings may not be considered
enough; attempts have to be made to predict future happenings on the basis of the laws.

8. Not only narration but also analysis: The selected happenings are not merely
narrated; the causal relationships between them are properly unearthed. The tracing of
these relationships lead to the development of general laws that are also compared and
contrasted with similar happenings in other social groups to improve the reliability and
validity of these laws.

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9. Continuity and coherence are the necessary requisites of history: History
carries the burden of human progress as it is passed down from generation to
generation, from society to society, justifying the essence of continuity.

10. Relevant: In the study of history only those events are included which are
relevant to the understanding of the present life.

11. Comprehensiveness: According to modern concept, history is not confined

to one period or country or nation. It also deals with all aspects of human life-political,
social, economic, religious, literary, aesthetic and physical, giving a clear sense of world
unity and world citizenship.

Scope of History:

The scope of History is vast; it is the story of man in relation to totality of his
behavior. The scope of history means the breadth, comprehensiveness, variety and
extent of learning experiences, provided by the study. History which was only limited
to a local saga, has during the course of century become universal history of mankind,
depicting man’s achievements in every field of life-political, economic, social, cultural,
scientific, technological, religious and artistic etc., and at various levels-local, regional,
national, and international. It starts with the past; makes present its sheet-anchor and
points to the future. Events like wars, revolutions, rise and fall of empires, fortunes and
misfortunes of great empire builders as well as the masses in general are all the subject
matter of history. History is a comprehensive subject and includes-History of
Geography, History of Art, History of Culture, History of Literature, History of
Civilization, History of Religion, History of Mathematics, History of Physics, History of
Chemistry, History of Education, History of Biology, History of Atom, History of
Philosophy-in fact history of any and every social, physical and natural science we are
interested in. History today has become an all-embracing, comprehensive subject with
almost limitless extent.

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Values of teaching History:

Value is that experience or fruit which one gets in the path of achieving aim
whereas aim is a conscious and active purpose that we always keep before our mind. It
always remains before us in the path of achievement. History is valuable as a study in
more ways than one. Some of the values are general that is they apply to the teaching of
the subject in all circumstances. Other values are limited and specific. They apply to
particular types of history, hold for a particular level of schooling or are the necessary
result of teaching if carried out in a particular way.

The values of teaching history may be stated as under:

Disciplinary value: History is quite fruitful for mental training. It trains the
mental faculties such as critical thinking, memory and imagination. It quickens and
deepens understanding, gives an insight into the working of social, political, economic,
and religious problems.

Informative value: History is a wonderful treasure-house of information and can

offer guidance for the solution to all human problems pertaining to science and art,
language and literature, social and political life, philosophical speculation and economic
development. History shows us the roots without uprooting the tree. A mere emotional
attachment to our past can do us little good, unless it is accompanied with a sober,
matured and rational assessment of the values involved. History is a path finder of
man’s future.

Cultural and social values: It is essential that one should understand the
importance of his/her own cultural and social values. We should also develop
attachment towards our cultural heritage. History makes us able to understand our
present culture. It expounds the culture of the present time by describing the past. It
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explains the origin of existing state of things, our customs, our usages, our institutions.
It enables us to understand that the transformations in human history were brought
about by change of habits and of innovation. One of the main motives of history
teaching has been to convey to the pupils the rich heritage of the mankind. It develops
an understanding of the different forces which have shaped the destiny of man and
paved the way for his development in society.

Political values: History is regarded to be the past politics. According to T.S.

Seeley, “The historian is a politician of the political group or organization, the state
being his study. To lecture on political science is to lecture on history.” History stands
as a beacon of hope when some nation is overcast with dark clouds. History is
extremely necessary for completing the political and social sciences which are still in the
making. History supplements them by a study of the development of these phenomena
in time.

Nationalistic value: History teaching renders an effective service in imbibing the

young minds with a sense of patriotism. It is through history alone that an Indian child
comes to know of the various deeds performed by such patriots as Shivaji, Rana Pratap,
Guru Gobind Singh, Rani Lakshmibai, Bhagat Singh, Gandhiji, Nehru, etc. By reading
their great lives and deeds, the child can easily be inspired to emulate them. A proper
teaching of history can prepare the way for sober nationalism.

Internationalist value: History shows the dependence and interdependence of

nations which is the root of internationalism. The domain of history is very extensive
and wide. Through a survey of world history, the young learners will come to realize
that although different peoples had and still have different customs, habits, laws, and
institutions; they have been striving towards the same end. The realization of essential
unity of human race is the first step towards fostering universal understanding based
on the virtues of tolerance, kindliness, love, sympathy, and goodwill.

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Educational value: History has unique value and importance because it is the
only school subject which is directly and entirely concerned with the behavior and
action of human beings. The imagination of the children is developed through the
teaching of history. It is logical to treat history as a temporal canvas against which the
facts learned in other subjects can be arranged. History is a veritable mine of stories-
stories can illustrate even subject of curriculum- the only condition is that the teacher
should know enough stories and should know how to narrate them.

Intellectual value: A large number of intellectual values accrue from the

teaching of history. It sharpens memory, develops the power of reasoning, judgement
and imagination. It cultivates the qualities of reading, analyzing, criticizing, and
arriving at conclusions. In historical writings our past is alive and treasured in the form
of chronicles, biographies, stories and other forms of literary tradition. Once the pupils’
curiosity is aroused and interest awakened, he can easily browse the vast pastures of
historical knowledge.

Ethical value: History is important in the curriculum because it helps in the

teaching of morality. Through it a child comes close to the valuable thoughts of saints,
reformers, leaders, important persons and sages. The children get inspired by the life
stories of these great leaders. There are other arguments that go against this notion that
history gives ethical teaching.

 Truth or virtue does not always have the victory and falsehood or
wickedness does not always come to grief. Many times it has been seen
that honest and truth loving man faces difficulties throughout the life and
wicked and liars succeed in life.

 On the basis of experience and observations it has been seen that students
do not take any interest in the work and life of saints and holy persons.
They take more interest in the deeds of warriors and they almost worship
them.

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 One more argument is that the lives of great men are full of complexities.
Both good and evil are present in their characters. It would be unscientific
if only their goodness is described. It is possible that students may
emulate evils from the characters presented if both the elements are
presented.

Above given arguments are quite convincing. Teachers should be given this
suggestion that in teaching history they should impart the ethical teaching not directly
but indirectly. Vocational value: History has its vocational value. There are several
openings for persons well qualified in the subject. They can get jobs of teachers,
librarians, archivists, curators of museums, secretaries of institutions, social service
workers, and political journalists etc.

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UNIT- II

HISTORY AND ALLIED STUDIES

History and Politics:

Politics is the part of the whole of history. Politics is concerned with one aspect
of history, namely organized state and its governance. History provides necessary raw
material for political science and historical knowledge is necessary for proper
understanding of the evolution of political institutions and exercise of political power.
History provides innumerable examples of organized states like ancient Greece, Rome,
India and China and the post-Renaissance nation states. Plato and Aristole formulated
their political ideas and ideals from a study of contemporary political system of the
different Italian States and wrote his The Prince. Montesquieu, an admirer of British
institutions, wrote his The Spirit of Laws on the basis of his study of the political
systems of the countries of the West as well as the East. Likewise, Rousseau’s Social
Contract, Locke’s Civil Government and Austin’s Sovereignty drew heavily on history
and in turn exercised a profound influence on the course of history.

History and Geography

Geography and Chronology are still considered to be the right eye and left eye of
history. The indelible influence of geographical factors on history has always been
recognized. The Himalayas and the jungles of Assam have restricted foreign invasions
of India to the North and North and acted as a barrier, to a large extent, to close
relations between the two fundamental divisions of the country. The broken coastline
facilitated ancient Greece to develop her naval power. The Gobi and Mongolian deserts
provided security to china. The geography of Egypt has preserved her hoary
civilization. The geographical discoveries of the latter middle Ages altered the course of
history. Knowledge of the geography of England is necessary to understand the process
of industrialization in that country and the consequent colonization. The impact of

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geographical climate on culture was recognized by Montesquieu, Buckle and
Huntington. Anthropo-geography or human geography is concerned with the study of
the influence of geographical factors on human behavior.

History and Economics

Economic activities of man have a positive correlation with historical
developments. History also deals with the economic experience of man from age to age.
An understanding of history is a prerequisite for an appreciation of economic
engagements of man, the development of economic institutions and the formulation of
economic theories which have a bearing on the working of society. Hence, historical
source materials concerning matters economic, found in ancient and medieval
documents and inscriptions, can be of great help to scholars of past economics.
Similarly, present day historians cannot afford to neglect the economic the economic
crisis of the thirties and the post-war economic developments all over the world.

History and Sociology

History is the study of the deeds of men living in societies. Sociology is a
scientific study of society. History and Sociology were closely inter-linked till Aguste
made the latter a separate science. And yet, the interaction between the two subjects
remains intimate. Eminent sociologists like Emile Durkheim and Maxweber profoundly
influenced history by their studies of social institutions. The sociologists worked on the
same historical facts and tried to discover causal connections between them. In other
words, sociologists thought scientifically about the same facts about which the
historians thought empirically. Whereas the historians were busy discovering and
stating the historical facts as they were the sociologists were engaged in interpreting
those facts sociologically.
Both History and Sociology are concerned with the causes and consequences of
group life of man. History provides concrete data concerning a cross-section of any
given society at a particular time as well as the dynamic aspects of social and
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institutional change. Since history is devoted to describing the behavior of groups in
political, religious, military, diplomatic and economic situations “the accuracy and
insight of the historian would be materially enhanced by the knowledge of the
elementary principles of sociology”. Thus, it will be seen that both History and
Sociology are concerned with the study of man in Society and as such they are
complementary to each other. Renier goes a step further and says that “Sociology needs
history more than history sociology”.

History and Literature:

The relationship between History and Literature has been close and continuous.
There was a time when history itself was considered as a branch of literature. Literature
depends on history for themes, plots and characters. Similarly, history relies on
literature for evidences required for the reconstruction of the past. Literary style adds
charm and grace to the writing of history. Literature serves as a sure means to make
historical themes, conceptions and characters immensely popular. It portrays human
beings in action and gives us the author’s considered opinion on human character.
Essayists, poets and portrait painters do it in their own way. In short, literature
stimulates our attention by portraying human problems and assists the growth of
human understanding with which history is concerned.

History and Psychology:

History is related to psychology in several ways. Both are concerned with the
study and understanding of human behavior. Human behavior is human nature in
action and character is habitual behavior. The historian needs to understand human
behavior for the sake of explaining the behavior of men who lived in the past. An
understanding of human behavior, conduct and character can be acquired from
literature and doctrines of psychology through observation. Psychological insights will
enable the historian to make a meaningful analysis of the motives and actions of men

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and societies. Mass psychology will explain mass hysteria which moves millions into
mass action. Also, it will help us to understand better the charisma of heroes of history.

TYPES OF HISTORY
Political History:
For a pretty long time historians were preoccupied with matters political. Seeley
went to the extent of sayint that “History is past politics; and politics is present history”.
“Political history is the history of political thought”, said R.G. Collingwood. Political
history was once the story of kings, queens, courtiers and their intrigues, wars, treaties
etc. Their deeds and misdeeds mattered most. Conquest was a vial factor in the affairs
of a country. People were fascinated by the rise and fall of kings and queens, kingdoms
and empires. That aspect of human action within or about or through the state came to
be treated as political history. Voltare, Machievelli, Guizot, Augustin, Pirenne, Thierry,
Macaulay, Droysen Ranke were all primarily interested in the political history of states.
In fact, Hegel extolled the state as the noblest of God’s earthly achievements! All of
them placed the State – an artificial phenomenon – in the first rank. But all history is not
politics. It is not one-dimensional. The new interest in 45 knowing the experiences of the
common people has brought about a welcome change in historical writing.

Constitutional History:
Though an important branch of political history, Constitutional History has
attained the status of an independent discipline. It deals with an aspect of the state
organization. Viz. the constitution of the Government. Unlike the political history, it is
not concerned with the struggle for the mastery over the state. On the other hand, it
deals with political institutions which Renier calls “habits of societies”5 Constitutions
are nothing but human habits made concrete; they are the methods, the conventions
and the practices adopted by men in governing the state. Written constitutions and
constitutional conventions are the subject matter of constitutional history. However, it

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lacks self-sufficiency. For instance, medieval manor cannot be considered as the
constitutional expression of medieval politics, since it was also a socio-economic
manifestation of the medieval life. The constitutional historian has, therefore, to go
beyond the confines of constitutional history if he is to provide an accurate and
satisfying history.

Military History:
Military history narrates the story of Military Operation. It deals with warfare in
every form and aspect; technical; tactical and strategic. It also covers military
engineering, ballistics, logistics and military transport. The military historian is not
merely concerned with military planning but also the impact of wars on the fate of
nations and life of the people. Thucydides the History of the Peloponnesian War is a
classic example of military history. Outstanding works have been written on the South
Indian Rebellion, the Great Indian Mutiny, the American Civil War and the first and
second world wars. A military historian has to collect the past military events through
patient research. He has to consult auxiliary disciplines in order to convert events into
cogent and coherent military history. He must also draw from psychology to find
answers to questions concerning military morale. He has also to narrate experiences of
military societies which form regimental history. At present, military history includes
land, naval and aerial warfare.

Social History:
Trevelyan, the well known author of the Social History of England, defined it as
“history with the politics left out”. The Dutch historian P.J.Blok called it “the thought
and the work, the daily life, the belief, the needs, the habits of our ancestors”. Auguste
Comte demanded that historical facts should be used as raw materials by social
historians. Social history excludes the political, constitutional, parliamentary, legal,
diplomatic, military and national aspects of history and includes morals, manners,
religion, food, dress, art, culture etc. in its fold. In short, social history is the history of
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human society in its social aspects. It is also concerned with the origin and development
of social institutions. Since social history is concerned with the daily life of the
inhabitants in past ages it has received the attention it deserves from the historians.

Economic History:
There was a time when economic history was considered to be a branch of social
history. In fact, the Dutch historian Van Dillen identified the two and called the
composite discipline Socio-Economic History. Later, when social history became an
autonomous branch of knowledge economic history emerged as a distinct discipline.
Adam Smith‟s Wealth of Nations was the classical treatise on economic history.
Montesquieu was profoundly influenced by it. Kalr Marx‟s economic interpretation of
history widened the scope of economic history and stimulated the study of economic
factors and forces to an unprecedented extant.
Sir William Ashley economic history as “the history of actual human practice
with respect to the material basis of life”. N.S.B.Gras defines it as “the story of the
various ways in which man has obtained a living”. German Professor Heeran interprets
the history of antiquity in terms of economic relations of the people. The history of
economic thought forms part of economic history. The economic historian seeks to
know as to what extent economic ideas have arisen out of economic conditions over a
period of time. It takes into account the close connection between economic theory and
economic history. As a result of these developments the historian increasingly relies on
the results of the work of economic historians.

WHETHER SCIENCE OR ART

History-a Science or an Art:

Opinions are very much divided on the question whether history is a science or
an art. History is a science in the sense that it pursues its own techniques to establish

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and interpret facts. Like other natural sciences such as the Physics and Chemistry uses
various methods of enquiry such as observation, classification, experiment and
formulation of hypothesis and analysis of evidence before interpreting and
reconstructing the past. History also follows the scientific method of enquiry to find out
the truth. Though historian uses scientific techniques, experiment is impossible since
history deals with events that have already happened and cannot be repeated.

History is a Science:
In what respects history could be considered a science?
First, as an enquiry after truth history is a science. It is a kind of inquiry or
research. It does not consist in collecting what is already known and arranging it in a
pattern. On the contrary, it consists in fastening upon something which is not known
and try to discover it. It is, in fact, a means to an end; not an end itself.
Secondly, like science history begins from the knowledge of our own ignorance
and proceeds from the known to the unknown, from ignorance to knowledge, from
indefinite to definite.
Thirdly, history seeks to find things out. It provides answers to questions asked
by historians. Each science finds out things in its own way. In this sense, history is the
science of res gestates, i.e. the attempt to answer question about human actions in the
past. In short, history is an investigation to find out what happened at a given time and
place.
Fourthly, history is a science since it rests upon evidence and reasoning. It is
built on facts as a house is built on stones; but mere accumulation of facts is no more a
science than a heap of stones in a house. The collected data is scientifically analyzed,
classified and interpreted.
Fifthly, history employs scientific methods of enquiry. It uses various methods
of investigation such as observation, classification, and formulation of hypothesis and
analysis of evidence. The inductive view of historical method, i.e. collecting facts and
interpreting them is an accepted method of science.

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History is an Art:
As the narrative account of the past, history is an art. As a narrator the historian
looks at the past from a certain point of view. He expresses his personality in his work
like a seasoned artist. Absolute impartiality is impossible in history because the author
of history is a narrator and hence an artist. Further, an historian the artist differs from a
scientist when he communicates his results. The scientist simply reports whereas the
historian conveys the human experience. In history historian’s ethical standards and
intellectual integrity play a significant part. Like an artist, the historian also must have
the capacity for imaginative sympathy to reconstruct the past, on the basis of records.
The manner and style in which the historian gives his narrative is important.
Historians like Gibbon, Carlyle, Macaulay, Trevelyan and others distinguished
themselves by the artistic qualities of their work. Like the work of art its wholeness and
harmony and truth are inseparable from a concrete and vivid appreciation of its parts.
History also displays fine feelings and emotions. Like literature history excites
discovery of truths of character and universal values of life. History speaks only when
spoken to. To the indolent and the indifferent it is as silent as Sphinx. Like an adept
artist unless one puts oneself into other’s place history loses its humanity; the subtle
differences of outlook and sensibility between ourselves and our ancestors are blurred.
Who can say that history is a painting which requires no frame, a precious stone which
needs no setting?

Arguments against History as a science

1. No forecasting: Rickman has rightly said, “History deals with sequence of
events, each of them unique while Science is concerned with the routine appearance of
things and aims at generalizations and the establishment of regularities, governed by
laws.”A historian cannot arrive at general principles or laws which may enable him to
predict with certainty the occurrence of like events, under given conditions. A scientist
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on the other hand, looks at knowledge from a universal angle and arrives at certain
generalizations that help him to control the present and predict the future.

2. Complex: The facts of history are very complicated and seldom repeat in the
real sense of the term.

3. Varied: The underlying facts of history have wide scope. They are so varied
that they can seldom be uniform.

4. No observation and experimentation: Historical data are not available for

observation and experimentation.

5. No dependable data: Historical data are the products of human thoughts and
action which are constantly changing. They therefore cannot provide dependable data
for the formation of general principles and laws.

History is both a Science and an Art

History is a unique subject possessing the potentialities of both a science and an
art. It does the enquiry after truth, thus history is a science and is on scientific basis. It is
also based on the narrative account of the past; thus it is an art or a piece of literature.
Physical and natural sciences are impersonal, impartial and capable of experimentation.
Whereas absolute impartiality is not possible in history because the historian is a
narrator and he looks at the past from a certain point of view. History cannot remain at
the level of knowing only. The construction and reconstruction of the past are inevitable
parts of history. Like the work of art, its wholeness, harmony and truth are inseparable
from a concrete and vivid appreciation of its parts. History, in fact, is a social science
and an art. In that lie its flexibility, its variety and excitement.

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UNIT- III

GRECO-ROMAN HISTORIOGRAPHY:

Introduction

The practice of writing history in the ancient world differed markedly from the
practices employed by historians today, in large measure because ancient historians
conceived of their task differently. The term “history” derives from the Greek
word historiê, which means “inquiry,” used by Herodotus to describe his work. This
inquiry could take many forms, and the boundaries between history as we understand
it and such genres as ethnography, geography, and biography were never clearly
defined. To the extent that ancient historians did practice their craft in a way familiar to
us, the choice of genre impacted the work that each has left to us. In addition, deep
connections with other forms of writing, including prose genres such as oratory as well
as poetic genres of epic and tragedy, contributed to the development of historical
writing in ways not always recognizable to the modern practice of history. Most ancient
histories were explicitly didactic in nature. They aimed to be useful to the reader either
imparting practical knowledge on how to address certain situations or lessons for moral
improvement through the provision of historical examples; sometimes they aimed at
both at the same time. Even making sense of the past meant something different in a
world where the gods might be considered to play active roles in human affairs.
Modern scholars have therefore expended energy in exploring the ways that ancient
historians approached issues that are central to our own notions of historical writing,
including most prominently the truth value of a text, a historian’s use of sources, and
his objectivity. These studies have made it abundantly clear that ancient writers aimed
both to make sense of the past and to produce works of literary merit and that the

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boundaries between history and other genres always remained fluid. There is
considerable disagreement among modern scholars over how far individual historians
pushed the boundaries in balancing their aims with their understanding of their task,
and modern readers must constantly work to be aware of the differences between
ancient and modern historiography to make use of these texts in an appropriate fashion.

The four historians we have selected for study are amongst the best-known in
antiquity: Herodotus and Thucydides, who wrote in Greek, and lived in the 5thcentury
BCE (BCE means Before Common Era, also known as BC while CE means Common Era,
also known as AD), and Livy and Tacitus, who lived during the Augustan era of the
Roman empire (c. 1st century BCE -1st century CE) and wrote in Latin. The 5th century
BCE is often regarded as constituting a classical age in the history of Greece in general
and Athens in particular, while the Augustan era is viewed as marking the heyday of
the Roman Empire. The works of these historians can be located within these political
and cultural contexts. Nonetheless, it is worth bearing in mind that there are no easy
correlations between these contexts and the specific forms of historical investigation
that emerged. We might expect that these histories were composed to justify, eulogies,
or legitimate contemporary political changes. While this expectation is not belied
entirely, it is also evident that Livy and Tacitus were highly critical of their
contemporaries: these histories are not simply eulogistic but are marked by anxieties
about the present.

HERODOTUS (C.484-425 B.C)

The outbreak of the Persian War in the 5th Century B.C was turning point in the
development of Greek historiography. “When Ionia fell her cities bequeathed their
culture to the Athens that had fought to save them and transmitted to it the intellectual
leadership of Greece”. The lonians who migrated to Athens during the war brought
with them the tradition of chronicle writing and criticism to the main land .in other
words the Greco –Persian war the most momentous conflict in European history freed

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Greece from the dictation of oriental despots and eastern mysticism won for Greece the
first great experiment in liberty. Secured for Greek enterprise full freedom of the sea
and stimulated the pride and spirit of the people Greece entered upon its Golden age.
The new spirit of victory and freedom found expression in historical writing as well. In
fact, one of the great achievements of Periclean prose was history. A new kind of
historical writing found expression and reached its culmination in the immoral
historical works of Herodotus Thucydides Xenophon and Polybius. First Sight – Seer
Herodotus was the native of Halicarnassus, a Dorian settlement in Asia Minor. He was
born of a family of considerable political clout. As a student he studied Greek poetry
and was impressed by Homer‟s epics. He was also influenced by the chronicles of
Hecataecus. He was excited at the age of 32 because of his uncle’s involvement in
political intrigue! Along with his uncle Herodotus embarked upon extensive travels. He
was the first to set out to travel over the earth as far as man could go. Difficulties,
discomforts and dangers were nothing to him. How far he traveled is hard to say. But
he certainly went as far east as Persia and as far west as Italy. He knew the Coast of the
Black Sea and had been to Arabia. In Egypt he went up the Nile to Assouam. Probably
he had beento Thrace, Scythia, Babylon, Cyrene, Libia, Sicily and India. Heredotus was
thus the first sight-seer of the world. After the completion of the period of exile he
settles down in Athens and lived in the court of Pericles for forty years. Then Herodotus
retreated to Thurii, an Athenian Colony in Italy, where he breathed his last.
Herodotus hazarded his travels with insatiable thirst of knowledge and
“observed and enquired with the eye of the scientist and the curiosity of a child”.
Armed with a rich assortment of notes concerning the geography, history and manners
of the people, which he meticulously and methodically collected during his far-reaching
travels, he composed his monumental Histories. His work consists of 9 books, each one
of them being named after one of the 9 Muses, the first book is presided over by Clio,
the Muse of History. The first five books recount the early conflicts between the East
and the West and the developments in Greece. The sixth one describes the Ionian revolt
and the campaign of Marathon. The last three books describe the Graeco-Persian Wars.

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Two thirds of the books are devoted to his journeys and what he learned on them. The
remaining one third deals with the Persian Wars. His travels provide the “stage setting”
for his central theme.

THUCYDIDES (C.471-399 B.C)

Thucydides was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Son of a rich Athenian
owner of gold mines in Thrace he received the best education available in Athens. He
was brought up in an environment of Greek enlightenment and skepticism. At the age
of 36 he was chosen one of the two generals to command a navel expedition to Thrace.
Because of his failure to relieve Amphipolis in time from the Spartan siege he was
exiled! Like Herodotus he spent the next couple of decades in travel, especially in the
Peloponnesus. Soon after the oligarchic revolution in 404 B.C. he returned to Athens.
Thucydides died, some say murdered, in 396, leaving unfinished his monumental work,

History of the Peloponnesian War.

The suicidal struggle between the two mighty Greek City-states, Athens and
Sparta, is the central theme of Thucydides „History. He opens the narrative where
Herodotus left off at the close of the Graeco-Persian War. He begins his book with the
following words. “Thucydides an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the
Peloponnesians and the Athenians from the moment that it broke out, believing that it
would be an important war, and more worthy of relation than any that had preceded
it… the conclusions I have drawn from the proofs quoted may, I believe, be safely relied
on… In fine, I have written my work not as an essay which is to win the applause of the
moment, but as a possession for all time” After this prefatory remarks he gives a
summary of the developments in Greece from the Minoan times to the Persian Wars.
Then he proceeds to a description of the central theme, viz., the origin, development
and denouement of the civil remains incomplete. Written in two stages his History

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seeks to narrate the civil struggle of 27 years as one war. Perhaps latter historian
divided his work into eight books on the basis of Chronology.
Father of Scientific History
Thucydides is not a chronicler. He is a seasoned historian. He claims that his
conclusions are drawn from the proofs and he does not exaggerate at the expense of
truth. Turning away from the „region of legend‟, he proceeds upon the clearest data,
proofs and evidence and arrives at conclusions “as exact as can be expected and
evidence and arrives at conclusions “as exact as can be expected in matters of such
antiquity”. His history is surprisingly devoid of romance. In his inimitable words his
work is written on the basis of “an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the
interpretation of the future – which is in the course of human affairs, must resemble, if it
does not reflect, the past-I shall be content”.
Thucydides relied on search and research. He had a thorough knowledge of his
predecessors, especially Herodotus. He left no stone unturned in his efforts to explore
all available sources. As a general in the Athenian army he observed the developments,
visited the friendly states and met prisoners of war. During his exile he had occasions to
discuss at length the cause and course of the war with the Spartans. He made copious
notes of the speeches of war veterans. He made copious notes of the speeches of war
veterans. He ascertained the accuracy of the information, analyzed the data and arrived
at conclusions. His mastery over details is indeed amazing.
Thucydides is scrupulously impartial in his approach. As an Athenian he
laments over the fall of Athens but as an historian he admires Spartan discipline. He
balances the account of military campaigns with the description of political
developments. He is strictly neutral on controversial issues. He never departs or
swerves from the central theme of his History. He turns a deaf ear to credulous
statements, hearsay reports and cock and bull stories. He avidly applies the yardstick of
reason and mercilessly eliminates statements based on beliefs, traditions and
superstitions. He frankly confessed: “My history might have been more interesting had
I made it more romantic. But I shall be satisfied if it proves useful to investigators who

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wished to know exactly how things happened in the past”. As he is analytical in his
approach so is his style didactic, prosaic and terse. His accuracy is unassailable. In
short, Thucydides is “the father of scientific method in history”.

LIVY
Livy (c. 64 BCE- 17CE) was a contemporary of the most famous imperial figure in
Roman history, Augustus. However, he was not part of the senatorial elite, nor was he
directly associated with politics. Yet, it is perhaps not accidental that he chose to write a
monumental history of Rome, which ran into 142 books. Unfortunately, more than a
hundred of these books were lost, and some survive only in summaries written by later
authors. In its entirety, the work traced the history of Rome from its legendary origins
to c. 9 BCE.

TACITUS
Tacitus (c. 55-119 CE) was closely associated with imperial administration, and a
wellknown orator. His Annals delineated the history of the Roman Empire for about
fifty years (between c.14 and 65 CE). The work begins with the end of the reign of
Augustus, and represents the concerns of the military/administrative elite, its
preoccupations with questions of succession, and the role of the army in political affairs.
What distinguishes his account is that, although he was an “insider”, he was often
critical of imperial policies and intrigues. In other words, his work suggests that the
Roman elite were by no means a homogeneous entity.

MEDIEVAL ARAB HISTORIOGRAPHY

Though, the beginning of scientific historiography in Arabic may be traced to the
second century of Islam and is associated with the life and behaviors of the Prophet.
Before it, there was a memory bank to serve as a source of information. In other
religious traditions the memory banks lived for thousands of years but in Islamic

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custom it was replaced by written sources after the end of the first century of Islam. No
doubt, human brain has astonishing capacities to preserve information in relation to the
past, yet the extensive passage of time could distort the information and events. This
distortion or dissimilar version of the events and actions of individuals made the task of
scholars hard. In view of this scholars tried their best to preclude that eventuality by
several means of scrutiny.

Eighth and Ninth Century Historians

A big corpus of historical literature was produced by the Muslim scholars in
Arabic throughout the second century of Islam. Efforts were made to collect all oral
traditions floating down the stream of time. The oral traditions were critically examined
and incorporated after their veracity had been ascertained on the foundation of source
criterion. As the writers were motivated by religious spirit to compile their works on
the history of Prophet for the benefit and guidance of their contemporaries and the
posterity, their works are valuable because the historical information contained therein
was cautiously sifted, separating facts from popular legends and fiction. In other
languages, the historians took pains to separate historical jewels from dust and pebbles.
Of the early historians, mention may be made of Ali bin Muhammad al-Madaini. He
was a prolific writer, accounted to have composed hundreds of books. His works on the
history of Caliphate and monographs on the history of Basra and Khurasan are of great
importance. Though none of his works have survived the ravages of time, the passages
quoted by other writes in their works testify to the importance of his pioneering efforts.
By applying the sound ways of criticism, he gained fame for his work and it served as a
source for the compilations of the succeeding era. Inspired by Al-Madaini, Muhammad
bin Omar al-Waqidi, Ibn Sad, and Ahmad bin Yahya Al-Balazuri composed significant
works that left enduring impression which is discernible in the critical accuracy of
historical information amongst the historians of the succeeding era. Al-Waqidi‘s history
has been written in a plain narrative approach. His Kitab al-Maghazi provides a
comprehensive explanation of the campaigns led by the Prophet. Ibn Sad utilized it in

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the preparation of his history of the Prophet but supplements it by incorporating the
Prophet‘s edicts, letters, and copies of agreements that were accessible. As regards
Ahmad bin Yahya Al-Balazuri, he brought to completion his celebrated history, entitled
Futuh al-Buldan, sometime after 861 A.D. The revise of the extant copy of Fatuh al-Baldan
shows that before its completion, the compiler had prepared an earlier version which
was more voluminous. Al-Balazuri appears to have incorporated all the information
that he had composed from dissimilar sources. Later on, he revised it and deleted what
he thought inauthentic and not corroborated by other historical facts gathered. So, his
revised version became invaluable and was preserved by the posterity. Besides
information in relation to the life and achievements of the Prophet and the significant
events that took lay throughout the times of the Caliphs, the Arab conquests of the non-
Arab lands, including Iran, Makran and Sind provinces in India have been incorporated
in this work..

Tenth Century Historians

The classical custom recognized by historians reached its culmination in the
celebrated history of Muhammad bin Jarir al-Tabari entitled Tarikh al- Rasul wal-Muluk.
It needs to be pointed out that Al-Tabari was primarily a traditionalist, and in his
history he aimed to supplement his commentary on the Quran, by presenting the
historical custom of Islam with the similar fullness and critical approach as he had done
in the earlier work. But against this weakness necessity is set the positive excellence of
the rest, which by its power and comprehensiveness marked the secure of an epoch. He
spared no efforts to verify the proof he accepted for inclusions in his work. No later
compiler ever set himself to collect and investigate afresh the materials for the early
history of Islam, but either abstracted them from his Tarikh, sometimes complemented
from Al-Balazuri, or else began where he had left. It may also be added that Tabari‘s
history is the first source to record the great appeal that the teachings of the Prophet
had in the middle of the youth and the downtrodden people in the early days of Islam.
He points out that the early companions of the Prophet, mainly of whom were looked

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down upon by Meccan aristocrats for their low social status became the leaders of
Islamic revolution. Further, Tabari‘s Tarikh pointed out the ideological commitment to
Islam and the ideological unity of the Muslim society crossways the lands although the
political fragmentation had taken lay throughout his own times. In short, his Taikh is
valuable in so distant as it registers the socio-religious changes brought in relation to
the by Islam, such as the rationalization of religious and para-religious phenomenon,
development of scientific curiosity and of a critical sense which entailed a new
organisation of knowledge and mastery of the world imagination.

With Al-Musudi,, a junior modern of Al-Tabari, a fresh intellectual element

enters into Arabic historiography. Al-Musudi is, indeed, entitled to be reckoned
amongst the major Arabic historians. He was not only a historian but also a geographer
in his own right. His geographical information was gained chiefly by his wide travels.
He was therefore able to add a new dimension to Arabic historiography by combining
geography with history since human history exists in a definite environment. Al-
Masudi describes the environment of a country with the history of its people in his
work, ‗Muruj al-zahab‟. He recognizes the principles of scientific account and of
correction and coordination of human action and physical facts. Though Al-Masudi
regularly indulges in ‗Cosmographical‘ theories borrowed from earlier works, his main
contribution was the application of the results of his travels and personal observations
to history and the recognition of cause and effect in related phenomenon — human and
physical — through the relative revise of dissimilar parts of the recognized world. It is
also worth pointing out that Al- Masudi is the precursor of Ibn Khaldun, the late
fourteenth century Arab historian who is measured a philosopher of history and the
father of contemporary sociology. Because Al-Masudi‘s Muruj al-Zabab rests on sure
theoretical foundations; its author reflected thoughtfully on the way and purpose of
history. All this made early Arabic historiography rich both in content and excellence. It
also led the scholars to recognize it as a science in its own right. With this recognition,

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history entered in a era of rapid expansion. From the third to the sixth century of
Islamic era, a big number of historical works were written.
These incorporated the significant works on the history of dissimilar regions of
the Islamic World. Each region had its own history compiled by a local historian. For
instance, Abd al-Rahman bin Abd Allah Ibn Abd al- Hakam composed the history of
Egypt and the Arab conquests in the West. It is noteworthy that in this work the
explanation of conquests is based on the traditions, a mix of authentic and
untrustworthy local ones. More sober and matter-of-information, almost certainly, were
the local histories compiled throughout the third century of Islam. All of them appear to
have been lost except for one volume on the history of Baghdad, compiled by Ibn Abi
Tahir Taifur. As for those which were produced after the third century, some of them
have survived and contain much valuable material not accessible in the earlier common
histories. This additional material is of great importance because it supplements a big
amount of historical information. Another important development which necessity be
taken note of is that the 4th century of Islam onwards, the recording of political history
passed mainly into the hands of officials and courtiers. This change affected form,
context, and spirit of history writing. It was an easy task for such officials to compose a
running chronicle rather than a critical analysis of the events and people associated
with them. The sources from which they drew their information were mainly official
documents and their own personal get in touch with the court and behaviors taking lay
approximately them. It was inevitable that their presentation of events was to be
influenced by their own bias and reflected narrow social, political, and religious outlook
of their class. These historians appear to concentrate mainly on the behaviors of the
ruler and the happenings at court. Though, the information provided by these authors
with regard to the external political events of the age is usually more reliable
notwithstanding their limitations. This is testified by the historical accounts of Egypt
and of Andalusia written by Ubaid Allah bin Ahmad al-Musabbihi and lbn Haiyan al-
Qurtubi.

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UNIT – IV

FRENCH HISTORIOGRAPHY

In this part we will talk about the individual contributions made by some
significant Marxist historians in the West whose writings provided new orientation not
only to Marxist historical theory and practice but to historiography in common.

MARXIST HISTORIANS
Georges Lefebvre
Lefebvre, a French historian, was crucial in the development of Marxist social
history. He is best recognized for his work on the French Revolution. His book, The
Coming of the French Revolution provided a common synthesis of the views which argued
that the Revolution was a bourgeois one and was caused by the opposition of the
French nobility to reforms in 1787-88. Lefebvre‘s main contribution, though, is in his
insightful studies of the French peasantry. He related the Revolution to the peasantry
and argued that it was basically a peasant revolution. In his quantitative revise of the
French peasantry, The Peasants of Northern France throughout the French Revolution true of
the peasant society and economy and the peasant mentality presently before the
Revolution. After a thorough revise of archival material relating to feudal dues,
taxation, sale of church lands, changes in religious practices and Terror records,
Lefebvre outlined the differentiation within the peasant society and peasants‘response
to the appeal of Revolution. This revise was followed by his great work on the peasant
fear and hysteria throughout 1789 resulting from an imagined aristocratic conspiracy,
The Great Fear of 1789 h the Annales School, as is apparent in his articles ‗Revolutionary
Crowds‘ and ‗The Murder of Count of Dampierre‘ Revolution, 1954, where he used
storytelling to explore the mentalities of the peasants. Therefore, Lefebvre‘s contribution
ranges from quantitative history to psychological and sociological characteristics of
peasant‘s subsistence to history of mentalities.

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George Rude
Rude was one of the mainly significant Marxist historians who pioneered the
history from below. The major region of his research was the French Revolution and the
popular participation in it. In books like The Crowd in the French Revolution, Revolutionary
Europe: 1783-1815 ury e discussed in detail the nature of the Revolution and the
participation of ordinary people in it. He argued that the general people who took part
in the riots should not be measured as irrational mobs, but as thinking men who had
scrupulous aims in mind.
Albert Soboul
Soboul was a French historian who has significantly contributed to the debates in
excess of the nature of, and reasons for, the French Revolution. Although he rejected
any easy explanation of the Revolution as directly caused by the bourgeoisie, he
accepted its overall bourgeois character. In his book, The French Revolution, Soboul
adhered to the traditional Marxist location of characterizing it as a bourgeois revolution,
despite criticism of this view by Alfred Cobban in 1955. Though, Soboul‘s mainly
significant contribution to social history consisted in his revise of the Parisian
sansculottes. It was these people who took the Revolution to its radical conclusion.
Soboul was one of the pioneers who comprehensively studied the composition and role
of these people. He also wrote in relation to the French peasantry and their role in the
Revolution

MODERNISM
The procedure of modernity began in the European countries approximately the
time of Renaissance. Its centre lay in the origins and growth of contemporary sciences
which recognized a quest for certainty, truth, exactitude, common principles and
universal laws. Its ultimate philosophical justification was achieved in the works of
philosophers like Descartes, Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire, Montesquieu and

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Diderot, the German philosophers such as Kant and Hegel and several other
philosophers and thinkers. Modernity was said to herald the end of the Middle Ages or
Feudalism in Europe, and usher in an era where Cause reigned supreme. The
philosophers of modernity from Descartes to the post-Enlightenment thinkers to Marx
and Weber denounced the medieval values, faiths and beliefs. Although some of them,
like Marx, were critical of modernity, they upheld mainly of its values and norms. Alain
Touraine, a French sociologist, has stated that the dominant conception of modernity
was that of a sharp break from the past:
The mainly powerful Western conception of modernity, and the one which has
had the mainly profound effects, asserted above all that rationalization required the
destruction of so-described traditional social bonds, feelings, customs, and beliefs, and
that the agent of modernization was neither a scrupulous category or social class, but
cause itself…. The West… existed and conceived modernity as a revolution.‘
The social sciences, including history, were integrally related to the creation of
this modernity. Great thinkers like Hobbes, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Hume, Adam Smith,
Bacon were both products and producers of this modernity. Their theories were used
for legitimizing and maintaining centralized, bureaucratic states, creating new
institutions, and molding society and economy in new methods. Modernity may be said
to consist of several values and beliefs which incorporated:
Faith in the usefulness and correctness of contemporary science and technology;
Belief in Enlightenment principles that the society should follow the path of Cause and
that myth and religion should have no role in shaping social values; Belief in a linear,
progressive and transparent course of human history; More reliance on universal
principles in comparison to particularity; Faith in the autonomous, self-conscious
individual who is master of his destiny; Belief that contemporary science and Cause
would conquer nature and provide rise to affluence, freedom and a life free from fear of
mortality. Separately from new philosophical principles, modernity also generated
powerful material forces which gave rise to contemporary industries, capitalism, and an
entirely new set of social dealings in Europe by the nineteenth century. This new

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industrial society was marked by urbanization, bureaucratization, individualism,
commodification, rationalization and secularization. By the mid-nineteenth century, the
procedure of modernity had approximately totally eliminated the economy, society and
polity of the middle Ages in Western Europe and North America. Instead, it had given
rise to a totally new economic, social and political order.
As the modernity generated unprecedented progress, it also created enormous
sufferings. The peasantry, workers and artisans were all forced to go through terrible
misery in the procedure of being modernized. Even more sufferings were due for the
colonial territories in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Australia where the colonizing
Europeans eliminated the local people, occupied their lands and drained the economy
for their own benefits. This imperialist drive led to the death of millions in colonial
territories, enormous distortion in their cultures and traditions, and terrible burden on
their possessions.

POSTMODERNISM
Postmodernism and post modernity are sometimes used interchangeably. In
information, both conditions denote dissimilar, though related meanings. While post
modernity has been used to characterize the economic and social circumstances of
subsistence in modern urbanized societies, postmodernism denotes the philosophy
which has now arisen after and in opposition to the philosophy of modernity. In the
following sub-parts, we will talk about the concepts of post modernity, the history of
the term postmodernism and finally the vital concepts relating to postmodernism.

Post Modernity
It has been a belief in the middle of some, particularly the postmodernists that
we have passed beyond modernity and the age we are now livelihood in is a
postmodern one. Keith Jenkins, one of the postmodern theorists of history, declares that
Today we live within the common condition of post modernity. We do not have a choice

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in relation to this. For post modernity is not an ideology or a location we can choose to
subscribe to or not; post modernity is precisely our condition: it is our fate. ‘
Frederic Jameson, a benevolent critic of postmodernism, also thinks that
postmodernism is a cultural procedure initiated by a radical change in the nature of
capitalism. In a well-known book, he has characterized postmodernism as the ‗cultural
logic of late capitalism‘. Basing in this belief in relation to the emergence of a new
society, many thinkers have argued that this has led to a change in our knowledge-
system. Therefore Jean-Francois Lyotard, a French thinker who popularized the term
‗postmodernism‘, states that ‗the status of knowledge is altered as societies enter what
is recognized as the postindustrial age and cultures enter what is recognized as
postmodern age‘. In by the term post modernity, the emphasis is basically on the social
and the economic. It implies the exhaustion of modernity and stresses the rise of new
information and communication technologies leading to globalization and the
enormous growth of consumerism. The theorists of this transformation have claimed
that presently as in the past the agrarian societies based on land were replaced by
industrial societies based on manufacturing, in the similar method, the industrial
societies are now being replaced by a postindustrial world in which the service sector is
now the mainly prominent.
Features of Modernism and Post-modernism

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Postmodernism Thinkers
There are several thinkers associated with postmodernism. Though, in this part, we will
take up the thoughts of only some of the mainly significant thinkers are.

Michel Foucault
Foucault, a French philosopher, was a intricate thinker whose thoughts encompass
several themes and multiple thoughts. Nevertheless, he is measured a postmodern
thinker because of his trenchant criticism of the Enlightenment thoughts and
modernity. His writings had and have still sustained to exert tremendous power in
humanities and social sciences. His work is regularly referred to in disciplines such as
history, cultural studies, philosophy, sociology, literary theory and education. He is
well-known for his critiques of several social institutions which he considered the
products of European modernity. Institutions and disciplines such as psychiatry,
medicine and prisons invited his trenchant criticism. Separately from his works on
these, he is also renowned for his common theories concerning power and the relation
flanked by power and knowledge, as well as his thoughts concerning discourse‘ in
relation to the history of Western thought. In later life he also worked on the history of
sexuality. Foucault expressed his thoughts through a series of significant books –
Madness and Culture choreology of Knowledge of the Prison oucault‘s writings are
mostly set in historical contexts, but he discourages the notion of totality and stability in
history. Instead, he promotes the thought of discontinuity. Therefore, for him, history is
not continuous and unifocal, nor can there be any universalisation of history. Foucault‘s
thoughts in relation to the history and society progresses from the concept of
archaeology to that of genealogy. But throughout his works, he stresses the thought of
variation. Moreover, he rejects the Enlightenment thought that the rule of Cause can be
equated with emancipation and progress. He says that instead of serving as an
emancipatory force, the knowledge centers on power and helps in creating new shapes
of power in contemporary times. He therefore criticizes the attempts to separate
knowledge and power and emphasizes that the pursuit of knowledge, particularly in
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contemporary times, is indissolubly associated with pursuit of power and quest for
power. In brief, his thoughts can be stated as follows: The history or the society is not
unifocal but is decent red; The discourses constitute the subject; the subject is not the
originator of discourses. The discourses instead originate from institutional practices;
Knowledge is not neutral but is intricately linked with manners of power and power.

Jacques Derrida
Derrida, another French philosopher, has proved crucial to the development of
the postmodern theory, particularly the ‗linguistic turn‘. The vital contribution of
Derrida to the development of the poststructuralist and postmodernist theories is his
theory of deconstruction. It views all written texts as product of intricate cultural
procedures. Moreover, these texts can only be defined in relation to other texts and
conventions of writing. According to Derrida, the human knowledge is limited to texts;
there is nothing outside the texts. Reality is constituted by language. It does not,
though, mean that there is no world outside of language. But it does mean that the
world we know is accessible to us only through language. It is language which
constitutes our world and, so, language precedes reality. The knowledge of reality is not
beyond language and its rules of subsistence. Another point related to deconstruction is
the thought of variation which states that the meaning of anything is ascertained only
through variation from other things. Any text is conceivable only in relation of variation
to other texts. In this sense, variation precedes the subsistence of things. Another point
is in relation to the unity of opposites, because without unity, there are no opposites.
Unity and opposition alternate with each other. Deconstruction emphasizes on the
instability and multiplicity of meanings. There is no fixed meaning of anything and no
single reading of a text.

Jean-Francois Lyotard
Lyotard is the main thinker who made the word postmodern wellknown. His
book, The Postmodern Condition, published in French in 1979 and in English in 1984,
38
made the term popular. He defined the term in the following method: ‗Simplifying to
the extreme, I describe postmodern as incredulity towards met narratives‘. These met
narratives are grand narratives such as ‗the dialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of
meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creation of wealth‘.
Lyotard expresses doubt towards all these. In his opinion, theories and discourses of all
types are ‗concealed narratives‘, that is, close to-fictional accounts, despite their claims
for universal validity. He criticizes the modernist theories which tend to totalize and
universalize thoughts which are basically contemporary European products. He also
rejects the foundationalism which bases all knowledge on secure theoretical
foundations. He attacks the met theories, articulated through what he calls the
masculinist met language, which support the power of several sorts – of one class in
excess of another, of men in excess of women, of majority in excess of minority. Instead,
he advocates the thoughts of variation and plurality, of radical uncertainty, and
possibility of alternatives.

Jean Baudrillard
Baudrillard, another French thinker, is also closely recognized with
postmodernism and symbolizes a particularly extreme form of it. His thoughts have
been highly influential in the world of media and arts. He stresses that we are now a
part of the postmodern world. He distinguishes flanked by modernity and post
modernity on many counts: Contemporary society was based on manufacture while
postmodern society is based on consumption; Contemporary society was marked by
swap of commodities, whereas symbolic swap is the hallmark of the postmodern
society; In contemporary society representation was primary where thoughts symbolize
reality and truth, but in postmodern society, the simulation takes precedence where
there is no reality and where the meanings dissolve.
The three phenomena which, in Baudrillard‘s opinion, make the postmodern
condition are simulation, hyper-reality and implosion. In the new era of information
and communication technologies, the media images replace the real things. These

39
simulations increasingly become so powerful that they set the ideal for the social life.
The media simulations of reality, video games, Disneyland, etc, supply more intense
experiences to the consumers than the mundane everyday life. This, so, becomes the
universe of hyper-reality where the distinctions flanked by the real and the unreal are
eliminated. In information, these media images become more real than reality itself.
Therefore, the whole situation becomes inverted. Baudrillard also defines the
postmodern world as one of implosion where the traditional boundaries of classes,
groups and genders are collapsing. This postmodern world has no meaning, no rhyme
and no cause. There is no anchor and no hope. It is a world of nihilism.

40
UNIT- V

INDIAN HISTORIOGRAPHERS
The period extending from the seventh to the twelfth century AD proved to be a
blooming one in the history of historical writing in ancient India. A number of historical
biographies were produced in different parts of India during the period. The court poet
who wrote the biography of his patron highlighting his life and achievements was no
less than a historiographer. There were many such court poets. The kings who
patronized them also deserve the credit of giving fillip to the production of biographical
works by encouraging them to undertake such works. They wanted their court poets to
records both the past and contemporary events for the purpose of preserving them for
the future. The biographies of many famous kings who occupy important place in the
annals of ancient India were composed by their respective court poets during the
period. Some biographies are the productions of the historical school that flourished in
the post-Harsha period under the patronage of the Palas of Bengal, the Paramaras of
Malawa the Chalukyas of Gujarat and Kalyani and the Cahamanas of Sakambari. The
chronicles were also written in Sindh, Kashmir, Gujarat, Odisha and Nepal. The writing
of historical biographies and chronicles were the two significant stages in the evolution
of Indian historiography. The biographies and chronicle composed during the period
from important parts of historical literature. Besides these works, other historical works
of various kinds were produced during the period.
A historical biography in the true sense of the words deals with the life, character
and deeds of a historical personality, royal personage, eminent king, great ruler or
emperor, who occupies an important place in the history of a particular nation or
region. It is based more on facts than fictions. It can easily be distinguished from a
biography of literary figure, religious saint or particular individual and a biography of
semi-historical nature.

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BANABHATTA (HARSHACHARITA)
Of all the extant historical biographies of ancient times, mention may first be
made of the Harsacarita of Banabhatta), the court poet-cum-historian of Harsa (AD 606-
48) of Sthanvisvara (modern Thaneswar in Haryana) and Kanyakubja (Kanauj). Bana
himself calls his work an akhyayika as it has a historical basis. It consists of eight
ucchavasas (chapters).
In the first chapter, the author speaks of his own ancestry and lineage. According
to the information supplied by him, he was the son of Citrabhanu in the Vatsyayana
line of the Bhargava Brahmanas. His ancestral home was at Pritikuta, a village situated
on the western bank of the river Sona within the limits of the kingdom of Kanyakubja.
The first three chapters are devoted, of course, partly to the life and family of the author
himself. He belonged to the family, which was famous for scholarly tradition. His
inclination towards or interest in history was quite consistent with his family tradition.
Harsa’s ancestors find mention in the third chapter of the Harsacarita. The
author of the work informs us that it was Pusyabhuti who founded the kingdom of
Srikantha with its capital at Sthanvisvara (in the late fifth or early sixth century AD). He
has been described also as the founder of the royal Vardhana dynasty. His successors,
Naravardhana, Rayavardhana and Adityavardhana (mentioned in Madhuvana copper-
plate inscription of Harsa) do not find place in the genealogy preserved in the work.
These kings who flourished probably between AD 500 and 580 were the feudatory
chiefs. They might have acknowledged the supremacy of the Guptas and the
Maukharis. The next king in the line of Puspabhuti, as mentioned in the work was
Prabhakaravardhana who was blessed with two sons, Rajyavardhana and
Harsavardhana and a daughter, Rajyasri. In the fourth chapter itself, it is stated that
Rajyasri was married to Grahavarman, the son of the Maukhari prince Avantivarman of
Kanauj. The fifth chapter is devoted to Prabhakaravardhana’s and his eldest son
Rajyavardhana’s conflicts with the Hunas.

42
The information furnished by Bana in the second chapter of his work regarding
the administrative system and military organization of Harsa is of considerable
historical value. He has highlighted the feudal structure of his administration. It may be
stated here that the increase in the number of Samanta, Mahasamanta and feudatory
chiefs after the disintegration of the Gupta Empire had great bearing on the
administrative system of Harsa. Bana has presented an enlarged picture of the feudal
system that had already existed in ancient India prior to Harsa’s time. The same system
continued in the time of Harsa. According to Bana, there were different categories of
Samanta, viz., Samanta, Mahasamanta, Apasamanta, Pradhanasamanta,
Satrumahasamanta and Pratisamanta who offered their services to Harsa and his
predecessors. The samantas ruling over the territories assigned to them used to pay
taxes annually to the said kings. They used to render all kinds of services to the kings.
Those who occupied high positions among the Samantas were designated
Pradhanasamanta. Satrumahasamantas were conquered chiefs who had to obey the
orders of the king. They were treated with some respect. All other Samantas had to offer
their services in the kingly court and royal palace whenever needed. The loyal and
faithful Mahasamantas used to accompany the kings while going on military
expedition. Some of the feudatory kings in the time of Harsa also find mention in the
work. Bana has also focused on the inter-state relations in the time of Harsa. The
policies he followed towards kings are in perfect harmony with what we find in the
Prayaga-prasasti of Samudragupta. In the same chapter Bana has provided the details
of military strength of Harsa with special description of elephant force and cavalry.
With regard to religious beliefs and faiths of the people, Bana informs us that altogether
twenty-one religious sects existed in India. He has referred to three popular cults of
Hinduism, the Saiva, Sakti and Vaisnava, the Lokayatika sect, Buddhism, Jainism, etc.,
that had already flourished before the dawn of the seventh century AD. On the
combined testimony of the data available in the third, fifth and eighth chapters of his
work it can plausibly be concluded here that Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism were
three popular forms of religion. Their co-existence is a proven fact. In the times of Harsa

43
and his predecessors, Brahmanism and Buddhism flourished side by side, after having
reigned for about for a decade Harsa passed away in AD 647 or 648.

Bana has not only provided the life history of Harsa but also a true picture of
social, economic, political, religious and cultural life of the people of India in his time.
Some other historical information of great value has also been incorporated in his work.
His historical knowledge was superb. He has nowhere in his work lavished extravagant
praise on his patron. Nor do we come across any exaggeration in his presentation of the
subject matter. He has dealt with main theme of the work without much bias and
prejudice. He has plainly stated the truth. Most of the facts stated by him are historically
authenticated. However, it is undeniable that his work suffers from rhetorical
descriptions and literary embellishment. The work after all belongs to a branch of
literature called kavya (epic).

KALHANA (RAJATARANGINI)
Rajatarangini of Kalhana. Ancient India produced several historical biographies and
genealogies. But all these were embraced in literary forms Rajatharangini is only the exceptional
one it is the dynastic history or the dynastic chronicle produced in Kashmir by Kalhana in 12th
Century AD. It is the chronicle on the kings of School of Distance Education Kashmir. It is
considered as first historical work produced in India. Even from the early period the people of
Kashmir maintain a tradition of historical writing. Because they maintained a close relation with
Chinese Islamic people from the early period was also a seat of Budhist culture and Sanskrit
learning. Budhism displayed a strong historical sense in Kashmir.
Kalhana was the son of Kanpaka who was the minister of king Harsha in Kashmir but
Harsha was deposed and killed by Loharas the contemporary rulers of Kashmir in the time of
Kalhana later Kanpaka did not take up service under the new rulers.
Kalhana was a Brahmin and because of his father’s early position he had interest in
history he studied different chronicles on Kashmir and the local Purarans.
The writing of Rajatarangini was completed by him in around 1148 AD the introductory
verses of Rajatarangini give a list of sources for its writing. He consulted 11 chronicles which

44
were written before him. Nilamata Purana –a local work which included certain historical
tradition ,the works of Suvrata-which contains the summary of earlier chronicles , Kshemendras
chronicle on Kashmir, coins, decrees, inscriptions and verbal traditions were also used by
Kalhana for the writing. Besides all these sources he used personnel knowledge and current
accounts and applied his own sense of criticism and judgment, the style of the writing is simple
narrating.
The text Rajatarangini consist of eight books and 8000 verses .it is translated and edited
into several languages. Aruel Stein translated it into English language. The work is divided into
three parts, the first part includes, the first three books, generally based on tradition. It describes
the legendary kings. Second part includes the next three books covering the karkota and utpala
dynasties, based upon the existing chronicles, the third part consist of the last two books deals
with contemporary Lohara dynasty, which were written on the basis of eye witness account,
personnel knowledge and prasaties of earlier kings etc.
Kalhana did not consider himself as an historian, but as a poet or Kavi. According to him
“only a poet can bring the past with the eye of his mind, by divine intuition .he state that the
purpose of the work is to establish true places and time of kings and to inform the reader about
the events of the ancient days without consider the different tradition. He believed that while
studied history of earlier reigns, the wise man might for see the fortunes and misfortunes of
future kings.
Kalhana had a deep feeling of regional patriotism that is he had written that the rulers of
Kashmir had conquered the whole India in ancient days. His ideal king is strong and he should
be benevolent towards his subjects and sympathetic towards their wishes. He also wants the
bureaucracy should not get more influence in Government. He was against petty feudal chiefs
and because they had brought political anarchy in the kingdom.
In these works Kalhana gives details of the carrier and achievements of each kings of
Kashmir in chronological order. He also explained the about the foundation of Kashmir by
prajapati kasyapa, who had raised it from the great lake. He mentioned that in the year 653 of
kaliyuga the first king of Kashmir came into power, in Rajatharangini Kalhana also gives the
minute details of the contemporary ruler Jayasimha. He believed in the theory of Karma. He
states that good kings arise through the merits of people and the oppressive kings inevitably

45
suffer the same. He was also believed in fate, he states that fate leads the kings even against their
will.
The principles Kalhana followed for carrying out his historical investigation also
merit our attention. His strict adherence to the exposition of facts can best be qualified
in his own words: “That virtuous (writer) alone is worthy of praise who, free from love
or hatred, restricts his language to the exposition of facts.”. He tells us that the
discovery of truth was his sole object. He discarded all bias and prejudice, which is duty
of a true historian. He laid stress on the fact that while writing a history of the past one
has to pronounce his judgments like a judge. The mission of a historian, he says, is to
“make vivid before one’s eyes pictures of a bygone ago.” He further says about the
methodological technique he adopted for writing the history of the past: “How great a
cleverness is required in order that men of modern times may complete the account
given in the books of those who died after composing each the history of those kings
whose contemporary he was! Hence in this narrative of past events, which is difficult in
many respects, my endeavour will be to connect.” He had, no doubt, clear
understanding of fundamental principles of historiography. His impartiality, honesty
and objectivity find reflection in the statement of facts recorded in his work.
Now we can conclude with the sentence that Kalhana was the first historian in India, who
had understand the value of historical sources and necessity of their critical examination. during
his period the historical approach of Kalhana was unknown to the other parts of the country .but
his approach was adopted and continued in other parts in the later period.

MUHAMMED QASIM FERISHTA.

Firishta or Ferishta full name Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah was a historian
of Persian origin, who later served the Deccan Sultans as their court historian. He was
born in 1560 and died in 1620. The name Firishta means angel in Persian.

Firishta was born at Astrabad on the shores of the Caspian Sea to Gholam Ali
Hindu Shah. While Firishta was still a child, his father was summoned away from his

46
native country into Ahmednagar, India, to teach Persian to the young prince Miran
Husain Nizam Shah, with whom Firishta studied.

In 1587 Firishta was serving as the captain of guards of King Murtuza Nizam
Shah when Prince Miran overthrew his father and claimed the throne of Ahmednagar.
Prince Miran spared the life of his former friend, who then left for Bijapur to enter the
service of King Ibrahim Adil II in 1589.

Having been in military positions until then, Firishta was not immediately
successful in Bijapur. Further exacerbating matters was the fact that Firishta was
of Shia origin and therefore did not have much chance of attaining a high position in the
dominantly Sunni courts of the Deccan sultanates. In 1593 Ibrahim Shah II ultimately
implored Firishta to write a history of India with equal emphasis on the history of
Deccan dynasties as no work thus far had given equal treatment to all regions of the
subcontinent.

When adil shah asked him to write a comprehensive of India, he had wrote the
work ,Tarikh –i- Ferishta in two volumes. In this work he narrated the events without
making any didactic statements and showing favour to anybody it contains the history
of north India from the invasion of Muhammed Ghazni to Akbar, the history of
Kashmir to Malbar and the history of the Gujarath to bengaline this work he also
records the history of north India prior to the invasion of Ghazni.

ZIA –UD –Din BARANI

He was considered as the most important historical chronicler of the sultanate
period. He was born in 1286 AD in a Sayyid family of kaithal. He had his education at
Delhi and later he rose to high position in the court of Alaud din khalji and served as an
advisor to Muhammed bin Thuglaq for about 17 years. He passed away at the age 73,
It is believed that Barani wrote 10 books but some of them are not traced ,Tarikh
–i-Firoz shahi and Fatwa-i-Jahandari are the famous works of Barani for these works he

47
gathered information from his associates like Amir Khusru. His stay at Delhi and his
own experience as a court official also enabled him to these works.
The Tarikh –i-firoz shahi includes the reign of Balban ,Kaiquabad, jalaludhin
Khalji Alaudhin khalji, Ghiyasudhin Thughlaq , Muhammed bin Thughlaq and the first
6 years of Firoz thughlaq. In this work he followed a lenient attitude towards the Sultan
except Muhammed bin Thughlaq. In this work he discusses the administrative reforms,
revenue policy, land revenue and the agrarian and the economic conditions of the
sultanate state. He also discusses the market control of Alaudhin khilj and severely
criticises the transfer of capital and currency reforms of Muhammed bin Thughlaq.
Barani considers Firoz Thughlaq as the personification of an ideal monarch. His
was to propagate his philosophy of history through his works. He also wanted to
educate the sultans to exercise his powers in the right way. According to Barani history
is an indispensible study for a good life in this world and the history opens us the
wisdom of past and opens the lives of great men he further believed that the duty of a
historian is to teach the lessons of history and the records of the truth with fear and
faver he treated history as an academic subject.
Like all other medieval historians he was also an elitist historian .he against the
subaltern historical writing and emphasized that the historian should write the history
on rulers, nobles and other upper class people he also emphasizes that history should
not be about the base of the society like the ancient Roman historian, he also had
adopted the method of putting his ideas into the mouth of some historical personalities.
Fatwa-i-Jahandari was his another important work .it deals with creation of the
world, teachings of the prophets, ideals of government and principles of administration
like the right and duties of rulers ,special privileges of nobles, crime and punishment,
organizations of the army and maintenance of law and order the language of the work
Persian but Hindustani words occurs frequently his style of presentation is simple and
lucid but preface is ornamental his subject of writing included the rulers, court, nobles
,scholars, saints, astronomers and also the features of daily life like mode of dress, food

48
habit and drink etc. he was also a didactic historian in the sense that he believed that
history has a significant purpose to serve to guide humanity on the right way.
So his works are producing the assistance to us understanding the social and
economic life of people. So we can conclude that, despite the prejudices and narrow
views, his position as a historian of medieval India is generally accepted.

Barani also elaborates the purpose of writing history in explicit terms:

‘The mean, the ignoble, the rude, the uncouth, the lowly, the base, the obscure,
the vile, the destitute, the wretched, the low-born and the men of the marketplace, can
have no connection or business with History; nor can its pursuit be their profession. The
above-mentioned classes can derive no profit at all by learning the science of History,
and it can be of no use to them at any time; for the science of History consists of (the
account of) greatness and the description of merits and virtues and glories of the great
men of the Faith and State… The (Pursuit of the) science of History is (indeed) the
special preserve of the nobles and the distinguished, the great men and the sons of great
men.’
Barani also declares that the job of the historian is not only to eulogise the deeds
and good works of the rulers but also to present to readers a critical account of the
shortcomings and drawbacks of policies. Moreover, the scope of history is considerably
widened by Barani with the inclusion of details about the cultural role performed by
intellectuals, scholars, poets, and saints. Barani’s style of history writing inspired the
historians of the subsequent period, many of whom tried to follow his ideas.

ABDUL FAZL
Son of the renowned scholar sufi Sheikh Mubarak and younger brother of Faizi.

Abul Fazi was born on 14th January 1550. He was precocious as a child and on

intellectual prodigy as an adult. After receiving sound education Abul Fazl became a

teacher at the age of 20 and attracted the personal attention of Akbar in 1574 when he

49
was 23. An intimate friend philosopher and guide of the Emperor he held important

position in the empire. He distinguished himself as a soldier. statesman, scholar,

philosopher and historian. When Prince Salim rebelled against Akbar, assumed the
royal title and even issued his own coins the emperor addressed Abul Fixl, his alter ego
and political factotum who was then in the Dakhan. On his way to Agra Abul Fazl was
waylaid and murdered by a Rajput Bir Singh, a vile instrument of Salim. When the
traginc news reached him Akbar cried out “If Salim wished to be emperor, he might
have slain me and spared Abu-l- Fazl”.

At the royal orders of Akbar, he wrote Akbarnama for this writing he used
official records, eye witness accounts, interviews with officials, nobles and provincial
rulers at the result of 7 years work he completed the book in his 42 years and submitted
to akbar in 1597.
Akbarnama has three parts .the first part deals with political history of Babur
and Humayun and the background of the birth of Akbar. Second part includes the
details of Akbars reign upto 1602.and the third part known as AIN-I-AKBARI, and
consist of the details of the administration including the central and provincial
administration, population, trade, and commerce, industry, revenue system, social
customes, and Hindu culture etc.
Abul Fazal also translated Gita from Sanskrit to Persian and he wrote a preface to
Persian translation of Mahabharatha .According to him history is the chronological
order of events .He considered Akbar as the personification of all virtues in the world.
No other court historians of the medieval India can claim the degree of adoration
shown by him to his master in many places in this work he exaggerates the virtues of
Akbar and minimises his vices. He deliberately wrote the book in a very complex style
because it was written for not the common people, but only for the enlighted monarchs.
Akbarnama became reference book for the modern historians because it contains the
authentic information about the reign of Akbar.

50
Muslim historiography attained maturity under the patronage of the Mughal
Emperors. Some of the Mughal Emperors themselves like Babur and Jehangir were
writers of rare distinction. Babur was the author of Babur-nama and his daughter
Gulbadhan Begam, wrote the Humayun –nama. Mughal historians improved upon
their Sultanate predecessors and presented a sober, prosaic and objective history. They
dalt not only with the emperors and their deeds but also with the institutions of the
people. History assumed the myriad forms of biography, autobiography diary and
general and specialized history.
The Ain-i-Akbari:-
Akbar commissioned Abul Fazl “to write with the pen of sincerity the account of
the glorious events” of his times the latter undertook the assignment with all
seriousness, collected the records and documents interrogated the servants of the state
and members of the Royal family examined the statement of the young and the old and
produced his twin monumental works Ain-i-Akbari and Akbunama. Ain-i-Akbari or

Institutes of Akbar in three volumes was compiled about 1595 after seven years of

serious labour. It is a detailed descriptive statistical record of the Mughal Empire in the

16th century. It gives a kaleidoscopic account of the various departments of government

the resources, material and human, the revenue system etc. It deals with a code of
Akbar‟s regulations in all departments and on all subjects and includes besides some
extraneous matter, a valuable account of the empire with historical notes. The data and

details presented range from “the 4revenues of a province to the cost of a pine-apple,

from the organization of an army and the grades and duties of the nobility to the shape
of a candidates and the price of a curry – comb” The work is refreshingly original.
“Even in Europe it would be difficult to find an authoritative compilation of a like kind
until quite recent times. Abul fazl id entitled to the gratitude of later ages for the
industry and skill with which he handled his embarrassing mass of material”. It is
plagiaristic because it contains many passage form alberuni‟s beatise without
acknowledgment inclusion of the Happy Sayings of Akbar and the Autobiography of

51
Abul Fazl in the Ain is incongruous. Despite these defects. “Its originality and unique
historical value are indisputable. On the whole, it is a masterly performance.

Akbar – nama:-
Akbar –Nama in three volumes is the most celebrated official history of Akbar. It
traces the ancestry of Akbar from Timur and deals in detail with Humayun. It covers
the history of Akbar‟s reign in full. The work is complete and chronologically accurate.
As Akbar desired Abul Fazl recorded the achievements and victories of imperial patron
with the pen of sincerity devotion and loyalty. Written in sparkling Persian the History
of Akbar is prolonged panegyric culogising the Emperor. Abul Fazl “told his master‟s
life with forgivable fondness in the Akbar Nama”.

Veracity as a Historian:-
Abul Fazl regarded history as “a unique pearl of science”. He compiled his
voluminous history with scrupulous regard for truth. He depicts the mind and mood of
the age so that posterity could cherish and nourish the memory of the accomplishments
of Akbar th Great, Whose impact on all aspects of human activity was indelible. Ain-i-
Akbari and Akbar –Nama are the products of an accomplished man of broad views and
broader perspectives. His information is authentic, topics dealt with are astonishingly
varied and the analysis is admirable. He took pains to settle the chronology of Akbar‟s
reign. In short, his work is the fruit of extraordinary industry and erudition.
However, Abul Fazl‟s Veracity as a historian questioned. He is accused of “gross
flattery suppression of facts, and dishonesty” He is a plagiarist and an encomiast. Like
Harisena and Bana, court historians of Samudragupta and Harsha respectively Abul
Fazl indulges in unashamed flattery of his promoter and patron. He admires adores,
nay, deifies Akbar. He attributes to his hero powers bordering on the supernatural. He
ignores the vices of the emperor and exaggerates his virtues. He is palpably unfair to
shershah. His style is somewhat involved, unattractive and terse, which only the well –
versed could understand. His narrative in florid fickle and indistinct” “Abul Fazi is not

52
for a moment to be compared either in frankness or simplicity, with Comines sully,
Clarendon and other ministers who have written contemporary history”. And yet, Abul
Fazl stands supreme among the Muslim – Mughal historians. He need not be
condemned because he writes about hero per excellence He is “ too great to pervert
history” Though the indisputable statesman – historian depicts Shershah as a rebel and
usurper his Ain – i- Akbari is indisputable to the study of the revenue system of the
Afghan King “What Thucydides is to Greece, Tacitus to Rome and Ibn Khaldun to
Arabs, Abul Fazl is to the Mughals” In short, “The most important author of the entire
Mughal age was Abul – Fazl Allami”.

VINCENT ARTHUR SMITH

Vincent Artur Smith. was born in 1848 in Dublin, the son of a prominent doctor
who was also a well known amateur numismatist and archaeologist. Smith joined the
Indian Civil Service in 1869, and served in what is now Uttar Pradesh. After retirement
in 1900, he taught Indian history at Dublin.
By the time Smith wrote, a vast corpus of new source materials had been brought
to light, and the chronology of ancient Indian history had been placed on a firmer
footing. In 1904 he produced his famous Early History of India incorporating the
advances made in the knowledge of India’s past. In 1919 appeared the Oxford History
of India. In the interval between the two books Smith also wrote The History of Fine Art
in India and Ceylon, and several lesser works. Both the Early History and the Oxford
History were great successes as standard textbooks in Indian colleges and universities.
Smith shared with the other administrator historians of India, the pragmatic view that
those desires of knowing modern India and solving its numerous problems must know
its ancient history. In the Early History he aimed to present the story of ancient India in
an impartial and judicial spirit. But he knew well that even the most direct evidence is
liable to unconsciousness distortion, as some degree of subjectivity is inevitable for it is

53
impossible for the historian to altogether eliminate his own personality however great
may be his respect for the objective fact.
But the Early History and the Oxford History are primarily political histories,
and in this aspect Smith becomes an imperialist historian. Here the impartial and the
judicial spirit leave him. The political moral that he draws from ancient Indian history is
starkly imperialist. Out of the 478 pages of the Early History of India covering the
period from 600 B.C to A.D 1200, sixty-six are devoted to the Indian campaigns of
Alexander. Smith writes “The triumphant progress of Alexander from the Himalayas to
the sea demonstrated the inherent weakness of the greatest Asiatic armies when
confronted with European skill and discipline. In point of fact, however, King
Purushothama or the tribes of northwestern India, whom Alexander confronted, did
not possess the greatest Asiatic armies. The classical writer themselves alludes to the
Nandas. Smith concedes that Seleukos’s treaty with Chandragupta as humiliating to the
Greek king. The historian especially admires the India of the Guptas. India had
probably never been governed better after the Oriental manner than under
Chandragupta-II. The Arthasastra is criticized for its autocratic and Machiavellian
character, and its penal code is stigamatized as ferociously severe. Autocracy and
despotism- the only political forms known to ancient India- are for Smith, forms which
do not admit of development, and for this reason, presumably, India has not developed.
But the despotic sway of the British over India has not benevolent and necessary. The
paramount lesson of Indian history is the ever present need for a superior controlling
force to check the disruptive forces always ready to operate in India. The description in
the Early History of India of the condition of northern India after Harsha’s death is an
unconcealed justification of the continuation of British rule in India. Here Smith gives
the reader a notion of what India always has been when released from the control of a
supreme authority, and what she would be again, if the hand of the benevolent
despotism which now holds her in its iron grasp should be withdrawn. The Imperialist
strain runs through the later Oxford history too. Smith tells us that the desire of the

54
Indians for political unity is shown in their acquiescence to British rule, and in the
passionate outbursts of loyal devotion to the king Emperor.

K.P. JAYASWAL (1871 -1937)

Kashi Prasad Jayaswal was born in Mirzapur (U.P.) in a Vaishya family and was
educated at Oxford. He practiced law in the Calcutta High court, but later decided to
make Patna his home, where he became a good friend of Rajendra Prasad, Mazahar-ul-
Haq and Syed Hasan Imam. His passionate love of the country did not find favour with
the British authorities who declared him to be a dangerous revolutionary. His deep
conviction in the glory of India’s past exceed the limits of historical objectivity. His
main field of activity was research in Indian history and culture which found in him
such a strong advocate that most of his conclusions appear to be biased. He had a good
knowledge of Sanskrit which enabled him to be a sound epigraphist and a
numismatist; He attempted to decipher the Hathigumpa inscriptions of Kharavela of
Orissa. He was a staunch nationalist who believed in thy high ideals and traditions of
the country, He would not stand believed Western scholars on any aspect of India's
past, and he attacked them bitterly.

Jayaswal stands foremost among those Indian historian who were swent off
their feet in the torrential flow of national sentiments. His writings make good reading
but bad history. We accuse Macaulay as exuberant and excessive but Jayaswal
surpassed him in this respect. He was so obsessed by the glory of India’s past that even
in the absence of any solid

Evidence he would make a cursory remark the foundation of a great historical

discovery. For example, to prove the point that India was ready for self-government in
the 20th century, he would argue that democracy was nothing new to India and that it
existed and functioned very well in ancient India. In his most famous work Hindu
Polity, he has shown how a representative form of government was a normal feature of

55
India's past, and how the form of government was not despotism but constitutional
monarchy in which the authority of the king was limited by the law of dharma. He goes
to the extent of saying that the republics in ancient India were not much different from
the republics of modem times. It is in this thrust of modem concepts and institutions on
the situations of the past that he appears to be victim If chauvinism which has no
parallel in history. In his History of India, A.D. 150 to A.D. 350 (1933), he makes heroes
of the Nagas, who have hardly been known in history, as the national liberators. When
he translated a part of the Buddhist text, Manjusri-Mulakalpa, which contained a
confused list of kings who had ruled over Northern India, he could not think of any
other title to the work than an imperial History of India (1934) His writings assume o
the me character more of fiction than of history. Thus, Jayaswal belongs to those school
of Indian historians who were ultra-nationalists, and who were prepared to sacrifice
truth for serving the national cause. They subordinated history to politics m order to
rouse national sprit. Jayaswal, along with Swami Dayanand Saraswathi, Swami
Vivekananda, Mrs. Annie Besant and others believed that ancient India had reached a
very high degree of moral, spiritual and cultural level. They even believed that in the
fields of science and technology as well. India had attained a position that could be
compared to the European achievements of nineteenth century. Jayaswal reminds us of
Coulange's dictum that patriotism is a virtue, but history is a science, and that the two
should not be confounded.

JADUNATH SARKAR

Jadunath Sarkar was born on 10 December 1870 in village Karchamaria, under

Singra upazila of Natore district. Son of Rajkumar Sarkar, a zamindar of Karchamaria,
he graduated with Honours in English and History in 1891 and stood first class first in
MA in English in 1892. He got the Premchand Roychand Studentship in 1897, and his
essay, India of Aurangzeb was published in 1901.
For a period of exceeding thirty years he filled the professional chairs both of
history and English literature at different places such as Calcutta, Patna, Benaras and

56
Cuttack. Jadunath is the greatest historian Indian has produced. He occupies an
outstanding position not only among the historians of Indian but also of the world. His
fame rest of the range of subject he chose for history, the technique and treatment he
adopted for his research, and for the copious works he produced over a long and active
period of nearly sixty years. He is not a narrow specialist digging himself in one
particular area, but a versatile genius whose pen produced remarkable works in
biography, topography, easy, art, architecture, religion, economics, statistics, survey,
corpuses and military science. Whatever he touched, he turned it into a master piece.
The treatment he adopted was of Ranke’s technique, where he ignored the general
histories as useless and went to original documents letters, diaries and other records
which were to a great extent a reflection of the reality of the situation, and not a partisan
and prejudiced version of an author personal views and political ideology. As for a rich
harvest of historical crops he created a sensation by contributing over fifty works of
great merits.
The historical works of Jadunath can be divided into two broad types. In the first
category were his major works, such as History of Aurangzib (5 Vols, 1912-1958),
Shivaji and His Times (1919), Mughal Administration (1920), Later Mughals (ed., 1922, 2
Vols.), Fall of the Mughal Empire (4 Vols, 1932-38), Military History of India (1960) etc.
The other category included all his translations into English and Bangla of the Persian
and Marathi documents as well as innumerable articles in English and Bengali, reviews,
forewards etc. His published Bengali articles numbered 148, much less than his English
articles which numbered 365. He had only four Bengali books while the number of his
English books, including those edited by him, was thirty-one. It is difficult to formulate
Jadunath's concept of history since he had rarely written on the subject. It is also
difficult to determine why Jadunath veered to the medieval history of India after
studying English literature.

Jadunath is remembered for his books, some of which he re-edited in his later
years. His Aurangzib and Shivaji narrated the history of the seventeenth century

57
around two individuals while his Later Mughalsand Fall of the Mughal Empire dealt
with the personalities and events of the eighteenth century. Aurangzib traced the fall of
the Mughal Empire and Shivaji, a contrast, the rise of a nation under a heroic leader. To
Jadunath, it was individual leadership which mattered, but actually, these two were
tales of the decadence of an empire and the rise of another, the state being the principal
object.
The other works almost had the same picture, the decline of both the Mughals
and the Marathas and the rise of the English. It was the country and the state that
concerned Jadunath in the background of the contrasting forces. Strictly speaking,
Jadunath dealt only with the decline of the Mughals and did not go into the details of
the decline of the Marathas or the rise of the English, who were kept always in the
background, so that their attempts at expansion were not given due attention.
Jadunath was attracted to Vincent Smith's pragmatic concept of history as a view
of the past, from which one could learn some lessons. But he was far more concerned
with the concept of the progress of civilisation, obviously taken from Mill. The change
towards the pragmatic concept came somewhere between 1928 and 1932. By then
Jadunath had become conscious about the formation of Indian nationality. That
Aurangzib, by his fundamentalist approach, had heightened communal tension,
thereby destroying the formation of Indian nationality, in contrast to that of Akbar, an
Elphinstonian touch, had been the theme of Jadunath.

Despite all these, Jadunath has narrated events with extraordinary skill and
eloquence. The structure he has given to the decline and fall of the Mughal Empire in
his account, with some modifications, has remained intact. The picture of the individual
Mughal and Maratha nobles moving towards their final destiny like the characters of a
Greek tragedy against the background of the decline, with all their personal conflicts,
cowardice, heroism and self-sacrifice, so ably created by Jadunath, has remained
unsurpassed even to this day. Jadunath Sarkar died on the night of 19 May 1958.

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DAMODAR DHARMANAND KOSAMBI

Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi (1907-1966) is best known as a mathematician,

but he is endowed with a truly Renaissance versatility. His formula for chromosome
distance occupies a central place in classical genetics. His work on coins makes the
numismatics of hoards into an exact science.
An unrivalled collection of microliths, the discovery of a Brahmi inscription at
Karle, and of a remarkable number of megaliths with rock engraving form substantial
contributions to archaeology. His editions of the poetry of Bhrtrihari and of the oldest
known Sanskrit anthology are landmarks in Indian text-criticism.
With the writings of D.D.Koasmbi, a fundamentally new approach to the study
of Indian history, scientific methodology, modern technique of interpretation, selection
and analysis of basic problems appeared in Indian historiography. Kosambi’s work is
most refreshing in its range of new material, original discoveries of megaliths,
microliths, rustic superstition, and peasant customs. He explains how to gain an insight
into the past by examination of the monuments, customs and records. For this, makes
an impressive use of scientific methods in many fields like archaeology, ethnography
and philology.
Works of Kosambi:
1. An Introduction to the Study of Indian History (1956, 1975)
2. Myth and Realty: Studies in the Formation of Indian Culture (1962)
3. The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India in Historical Outline (1965, 1970)
4. Indian Numismatics (1981)
Kosambi’s first book, “An Introduction to the Study of Indian History”,
published in 1956, was a shift from what he professionally stood for. He had little use
for a chronological narrative in history since he argued that chronology for the early
period was too obscure to be meaningful. For him, history was the presentation order of
successive developments in the means and relations of production.

59
Because of the reliable historical records he argued that Indian history would
have to use the comparative method. This meant a familiarity with a wide range of
historical works. Kosambi’s own familiarity with classical European history is evident
in his writings; it also meant the use of various disciplines and interdisciplinary
techniques to enable historian to understand the pattern of social transformations.
The knowledge of Sanskrit led Kosambi to a series of etymological analyses
which he used to a great effect in reconstructing the social background, particularly of
the Vedic period. Thus, he argued that the names of many of the established Brahmanas
in Vedic literature and the Puranic tradition clearly pointed to their being of non-Aryan
origin.
From the study of gotra he went on to the logical point that the language of the
Vedic texts could not have been pure Aryan and must have had an admixture of non-
Aryan elements, reflecting the inclusion of non-Aryans as Brahmanas. This theory is
now more acceptable to those who have worked on Indo-Aryan linguistics, on the basis
of the linguistic analyses of the texts and language which clearly indicates non-Aryan
structures both in syntax and vocabulary.
It was the recognition of cultural survival, which led Kosambi to weave so much
material from ethnology and anthropology into his historical narrative. He mentioned
that the presence of a tribe, which had once given rise to jati, and of another which
became a quasi-guild. He noticed trees and sacred groves, stones making a sacrificial
ritual, caves and rock shelters, which may have been occupied successively by
prehistoric men, by Buddhist monks and later by practitioners of Hindu cult.

At a wider anthropological level one of the clues to understand the Indian past
was the basic factor of the transition from tribe to caste, from small, localized groups to
a generalized society. This transition was largely the result of the introduction of
plough agriculture in various regions, which changed the system of production, broke
the structure of tribes and clans and made caste the alternative form of social
organization. This process Kosambi traced in part from the evolution of clan totems into

60
clan names and then into caste names. The agency through which plough agriculture
was introduced would therefore become the major factor of control in caste society. This
society he saw as the Brahminical settlements in various parts of the country. These led
to the assimilation of local cults into the Brahminical tradition as is evident from the
various Puranas and Mahatmyas. But equally important is his contribution to the
sanskritization of local folk cults with the incorporation of Brahmin priests and rituals,
the association of epic heroes and heroines, and by the inclusion of such cults in
Sanskrit mythology.
Kosambi also refers to the agrarian technology in the Indus Valley. He assumed
that it was a culture without the plough, that the river bank was cultivated with a
harrow, and that the seasonal flood water was utilized for irrigation with dams and
embankments helping in retaining this water and the river silt for a longer period.
Plough agriculture and iron technology, when introduced into the Ganges valley,
led ultimately to the growth of urban centres as well as the recognizable forms of caste.
Recent views would include as causal factors in this development the role of changes in
crop patterns with a dependence on rice agriculture, the diversity of irrigation systems,
and the use of labour in the new technologies and the range of control over these factors
by different social groups.

The limitation of Kosambi’s thought and analysis are marginal to the serious
quality of his work. Kosambi presented a view of ancient Indian history which sought
answers to the fundamental questions of how and why Indian society is what it is
today. In attempting to provide answers to such questions he provided a theoretical
framework which was not a mechanical application of Marxism. He did not accept the
Marxian notion of the Asiatic mode of production in relation to the Indian past, and as
for the feudal mode of production, he made his own qualifications so far as Indian
history was concerned. Based as it was on dialectical materialism, Kosambi’s frame was
hammered out of his proficiency in handling a variety of sources, and originality of

61
thought. Fresh evidence may well lead to a reconsideration of his influence is bound to
priest much longer.

K.A. NILAKANDA SASTRI (1892 – 1975)

Kallidaikurichi Aiyah Nilakanta Sastri (August 12, 1892 – June 15, 1975) was an
Indian historian and Dravidologist who is generally regarded as the greatest and most
prolific among professional historians of South India.
Nilakanta Sastri was born in a poor Brahmin family in Kallidaikurichi near
Tirunelveli, on August 12, 1892. He completed his FA in M.D.T Hindu College,
Tirunelveli and his college education in Madras Christian College. Sastri obtained his
MA by coming first in the Madras Presidency. He joined the Hindu College as lecturer
in 1913 where he taught till 1918. He served as Professor of History, Banaras Hindu
University from 1918 to 1920. After that he became the Principal of the (then) newly
started Arts College of Annamalai University.In 1929, he was employed as Professor of
History at National College, Trichy. The same year, he succeeded Sakkottai
Krishnaswamy Aiyangar as the Professor of History and Archaeology at the Madras
University, a post he held till 1946. He was the Professor of Indology (Currently
renamed as Department of History and Archaeology) at the University of Mysore from
1952 to 1955
He was appointed as the ex-officio Director of Archaeology for the Mysore State
in 1954. He was also the President of the All-India Oriental Conference in the early 1950.
From 1957 to 1972, he served with the UNESCO's Institute of Traditional Cultures of
South East Asia, as the Director of the institute. In 1957, he was awarded the Padma
Bhushan, India's third highest civilian honour. In the summer of 1959, he was a visiting
professor at the University of Chicago where he delivered a series of lectures on South
Indian History. Nilakanta Sastri died in 1975.
Eminent Historian Professor R.S. Sharma writes of him as: "K.A. Nilakanta Sastri,
the great historian from South India, was not a revivalist. His "History of South India" is

62
a very dependable book." Tamil historian A R Venkatachalapathy views him as
"arguably the most distinguished historian of twentieth-century Tamil Nadu".
In 1915, a Bengali historian Jadunath Sarkar, wrote an essay Confessions of a History
Teacher in the Modern Review regretting the lack of acclaimed historical works in
vernacular languages and stressed that efforts should be made to write history books
and teach history in vernacular languages. Nilakanta Sastri, who was then a young
teacher in Thirunelveli, wrote a letter to the newspaper opposing Sarkar's suggestion by
saying that "English serves me better as a medium of expression than Tamil - I mean in
handling historical subjects. Perhaps the vernacular is not so well off in this part of the
country as it should be". Sastri's comments evoked sharp criticism from the nationalist
poet Subramanya Bharathi.
According to Venkatachalapathy, Sastri's Tamil proficiency was not good and he
relied on Tamil scholar S. Vaiyapuri Pillai for understanding Tamil literary works. Thus
he was not able to analyze the changing meaning of words over time.
Venkatachalapathy says, the professional historiography in Tamil Nadu practiced
during K. A. Nilakanta Sastri's period there was rarely any interrogation of sources
(except in terms of authenticity and chronology.
Prof. K.A. Nilakanda Sastri was a prolific writer. His voluminous works include
The Pandyan Kingdom, The Colas, A History of South India, Studies in the History of
Sri Vijaya, History of India, Cultural Expansion of India, Aryans and Dravidians,
Comparative History of South India, Foreign Notices of South India, Further Sources of
Vijayanagar History and Historical Methods in Relation to Indian History. He also
edited The Age of the Nandas and Mauryas and contributed many chapters to it.

K.K. PILLAY

Kolappa Kanakasabhapathy Pillay was an Indian historian who headed the

Department of Indian history at the University of Madras from 1954 to 1966. He served
as a President of the Indian History Congress and as the founder-President of the South

63
Indian History Congress. Pillay was born on 3 April 1905 to Kolappa Pillay
and Parvathi, a Tamil-speaking couple in the village of Aloor in the Kalkulam taluk in
the Southern division of Travancore state, he was educated at the Scott Christian
College in Nagercoil. After graduating, Pillay worked as a lecturer in Kumbakonam, he
joined the faculty of the Presidency College, Madras as Professor before moving to the
University of Madras. In 1948, Pillay obtained a doctorate from the University of
Oxford for his thesis on "Local Self-Government in Madras Presidency, 1850-1919", he
won a D. Litt. in 1953 for his paper "The Suchindram Temple". Pillay headed the
Department of Indian History and Archaeology at the University of Madras from 1954
to 1959 and the Department of Indian History from 1959 to 1966.

In 1966, Pillay was made head of the newly created Department of Social
Sciencies and Area Studies, a position he held till 1971. In 1972, Pillay succeeded K. A.
Nilakanta Sastri as the Director of UNESCO's Institute of Traditional Cultures of South
East Asia. Under his stewardship, the institute conducted two conferences one in 1977
and 1978. Pillay died on 26 September 1981 at the age of 76. Pillay, K. K.. Local Self-
Government in Madras Presidency, 1850-1919. University of Oxford. Pillay, K. K. The
Suchindram Temple. Pillay, K. K. History of higher education in South India 1857-1957.
University of Madras. Pillay, K. K.. Prof P. Sundaram Pillai Commemoration Volume.
Pillay, K. K. South India and Ceylon. University of Madras. Pillay, K. K.. History of
the Tamil press. Pillay, K. K. A social history of the Tamils. University of Madras. Pillay,
K. K.. The caste system in Tamil Nadu. Pillay, K. K.. The early history of Nanjil Nadu.
University of Madras. Pillay, K. K. History of Tamil Nadu: Her people and culture.

Pillay, K. K... Historical heritage of the Tamils. Pillay, K. K. Studies in Indian

history: with special reference to Tamil Nadu. K. K. Pillay

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