History, Time, Knowledge in Ancient India

This article talks about the lack of history and history writing in the Indian subcontinent. During British India, a number of blatantly racist theories were thrown out, that became quite popular. James Mills, one of the historians – though never to have visitied India and ignorant of Indian language – constantly blamed the inferiority of Hindu civilization for this lack of history. They treated Indian mythology as a mere creation of fantasy and naivety. Hegel observed: the Indian negligence towards history as a subject is one to consider. Indians had made great progress in subjects like Astronomy, Algebra, Geometry, Philosophy and Grammar. History requires understanding – looking at an object independently, comprehensively and its rational connection to other objects. Those people who are capable of this have generally arrived at that period of development where they are able to comprehend their own existence as independent. Hence, Hindus are incapable thoughtful understanding of events. All ‘history’ is confused with dreams.

This extremely biased and rigidly western view of history is rather shocking. They fail to recognize the vast number of texts including those of mythology, philosophy and maths to be any indicator of the high intellectual and literary activity. The Japanese scholar Hajime Nakamura noted that all Indian books of history are tinged with fantasy. They are works of art, rather than historical science.

They also failed to note the existence of the word ‘Itihasa’ in Sanskrit which included a wider scope than just history. The point was that Indians did not lack a sense of history. They just did not value it. The texts that were maintained in the courts of kings, were not preserved carefully enough. Indian philosophy believes in a cyclic succession of the world’s ages, not a linear one like the West. Their conception of knowledge was very different, and hence history and memory are not given the status of knowledge. Memory only revives old knowledge, which makes it representative. Genuine knowledge is presentative not representative.

Another interesting point of note is that the article completely misses out on other forms of documenting like sculpture, painting, carving etc. These art forms, thought detailed are open to interpretation. They do not provide the viewer with hard facts. This is probably why these techniques were deliberately ignored. Indian philosophy is not concerned with the details of an event the way Western philosophy is.