DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

CHAPTER I
SCOPE AND METHODS
1.1. Special methods needed for Indian history.
1.2. Available materials.
1.3. The underlying philosophy.
THE light-hearted sneer “India has had
some episodes, but no history “ is used to justify lack of study, grasp,
intelligence on the part of foreign writers about India’s past. The
considerations that follow will prove that it i« precisely the episodes
— lists of dynasties and kings, tales of war and battle spiced with
anecdote, which fill school texts — that are missing from Indian
records. Here, for the first time, we have to reconstruct a history without
episodes, which means that it cannot be the same type of history as
in the European tradition. 1
1.1. For the purpose of this work, history is defined as the
presentation, in chronological order, of successive developments
in the means and relations of production. Before coming to the
implications and the technique for its effective utilization, let us first
see why this definition is necessary.
India, for all its great literary heritage, has produced no historical
writer’s comparable to Herodotus, Thucydides, Poly-bius, Livy,
Tacitus. Many Indian kings of the middle ages (e.g. Harsa circa 600-
640) were incomparably superior in their education and literary
ability to contemporary rulers in Europe; they had personally led