Wednesday, March 31, 2010

History, time and knowledge in ancient India

One thing that I noticed while going through this article was that it was being written by an author with a single perspective. He is very much molded into his very limited western influence of thinking and sticks to it through most of the article.
The author keeps commenting on the history of India or rather the lack of it. He points out and comments on the ways of conception of knowledge which he considers to be an important reason of India’s apparent lack of history. However, India’s definition of conception of knowledge was highly experience based and did not leave behind evidences very obvious such as pictorial, literary etc. However, this does not prove of a place without a history. Several forms of historical evidences of ancient history in India is lost, due to numerous reasons, both naturally and due to the changing human nature, which over a period of time, forgets.
It just simply opposes the western ideology of historiography. James Mills, who never visited India decided to declare India as a history less place and blamed the Hindu civilizations and establishments for it for it. How is his comment strong enough to conclude the history of a place? Through the article, the author eventually brings down everything to a point where he is comparing two very different poles which eventually exaggerates the idea of the ‘eastern’ and ‘western’ thinking to be a completely different dimensions. He at lots of points in the article has described the western ideologies and concepts more advantageous and trying to declare it as the ultimate truth.

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