DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

1.1J GANGEYADEVA ‘AND BENGAL 3
(written about A.D. 1030), taking the epithet to mean ‘conqueror of
Bengal.’ As usual, doubt was immediately cast upon
the identification. The couple of Sanskrit inscriptions of the Kalacuri
dynast which survive contain neither the special epithets nor
supporting evidence for the conquest. A good photostat of the codex
exhibited at Lahore in 1940 enabled one of the scholars present to
notice that the colophon had been misread : the correct title was
gamda-dhvaja, which meant slight modification of one letter, with
completely changed meaning. Far from being a conqueror of Bengal,
the princeling was at most a follower of the god Visnu, who rides the
mythical garuda eagle with which the royal banner was presumably
emblazoned. The most plausible current interpretation is that we have
here mention of a minor subordinate chieftain of southern (Rastrakuta)
descent who ruled over a small portion of Bihar, in the year A.D. 1019-
20, the period when Muslims were consolidating their hold over the
north-west. That such miserable sources have to be discussed at
great length for a comparatively recent well-documented period shows
without further argument the straits to which the formal historian is
reduced in India.
However, classical European historical records do not by
themselves convey full meaning to the reader, nor do they constitute
a balanced history. Anyone can enjoy a good translation of Polybius,
Livy, or Tacitus for the clarity of style, restraint in panegyric, unadorned
narrative. Nevertheless, for a real history of Rome, one would have
to read Theodor Mommsen’s Romische Geschichte, or the
corresponding volumes oi the Cambridge history. Only a part of the
difference between the classical text and its modern interpreters is
due to comparison of several writers. The results of internal and
external text-criticism are perhaps seen at their best in Grote’s History
of Greece, with its patient, beautifully written, enduringly useful analysis
of Athenian democracy. Mere textual erudition does not suffice to explain
the greatness and validity of such a magnificent individual effort as
Eduard Meyer’s Geschichte des Altertums, let alone the works of
cooperative scholarship on the history of antiquity that now hold the
field.