The Past Before Us : Historical Traditions of Early North India / Romila Thapar.
Thapar, Romila, author.; Thapar, Romila, contributor.
2013
DS483.65 .T53 2013eb
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Title The Past Before Us : Historical Traditions of Early North India / Romila Thapar.
Author Thapar, Romila, author.
ISBN 9780674726512
DOI https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674726512
Published Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2013]
Copyright ©2013
Language English
Language Note In English.
Description 1 online resource (784 p.) : 7 maps
Other Standard Identifiers 10.4159/harvard.9780674726512 doi
Call Number DS483.65 .T53 2013eb
Dewey Decimal Classification 934.0072
Summary The claim, often made, that India-uniquely among civilizations-lacks historical writing distracts us from a more pertinent question, according to Romila Thapar: how to recognize the historical sense of societies whose past is recorded in ways very different from European conventions. In The Past Before Us, a distinguished scholar of ancient India guides us through a panoramic survey of the historical traditions of North India. Thapar reveals a deep and sophisticated consciousness of history embedded in the diverse body of classical Indian literature. The history recorded in such texts as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata is less concerned with authenticating persons and events than with presenting a picture of traditions striving to retain legitimacy and continuity amid social change. Spanning an epoch of nearly twenty-five hundred years, from 1000 BCE to 1400 CE, Thapar delineates three distinct historical traditions: an Itihasa-Purana tradition of Brahman authors; a tradition composed mainly by Buddhist and Jaina scholars; and a popular bardic tradition. The Vedic corpus, the epics, the Buddhist canon and monastic chronicles, inscriptions, regional accounts, and royal biographies and dramas are all scrutinized afresh-not as sources to be mined for factual data but as genres that disclose how Indians of ancient times represented their own past to themselves.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics text file PDF
Source of Description Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 03. Jan 2023)
Added Author Thapar, Romila, contributor.
In E-BOOK GESAMTPAKET / COMPLETE PACKAGE 2013
E-BOOK PACKAGE HISTORY, POLITICAL SCIENCE, SOCIOLOGY 2013
E-BOOK PAKET GESCHICHTE, POLITIKWISS., SOZIOLOGIE 2013
HUP eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013 (Canada)
Harvard University Press eBook Package Backlist 2000-2013
Available in Other Form print 9780674725232
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Frontmatter
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
PART I The Search for a Historical Tradition
1 Searching for Early Indian Historical Writing
2 Towards Historical Traditions
PART II The Embedded Tradition
3 Fragmentary Narratives from the Vedas
4 The Mahābhārata
5 The Rāmāyaṇa
PART III Interlude: The Emerging Historical Tradition
6 Genealogies in the Making of a Historical Tradition: The Vaṃśānucarita of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa
7 Early Inscriptions as Historical Statements (Up to c. the Sixth Century ad)
8 History as Literature: The Plays of Viśākhadatta
PART IV Alternative Histories
9 The Buddhist Tradition: Monks as Historians
10 The Monastic Chronicles of Sri Lanka
11 Buddhist Biographies
PART V The Historical Tradition Externalized
12 Historical Biographies: The Harṣacarita and the Rāmacarita
13 Biographies as Histories
14 Inscriptions as Official Histories-and the Voice of the Bard
15 Vaṃśāvalīs Chronicles of Place and Person-The Rājataraṅgiṇī
16 The Chamba Vaṃśāvalī
17 The Prabandha-cintāmaṇi
18 Therefore Looking Back and Looking Forward
Bibliography
Index

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