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Textures of Time

Writing History in South India 1600–1800

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Summary

Everyone has a past: the question is what one does with it. If earlier scholars are to be believed, South Indian society before colonial rule showed an indifference to its past - or approached the past through myth, legend and phantasmagoria. This book sets out not merely to disprove this idea, but to demonstrate the complex forms of historiography produced in South India between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries. It argues that the usual division between Indo-Persian and vernacular historiography is artificial. It demonstrates the existence of a group of literati (karanams), who passed with ease from Telugu and Tamil, to Marathi and Persian.

Through a careful reading of and extensive translations from the relevant texts, this book thus sets out to shake some of deepest-rooted prejudices in the received wisdom on medieval and early modern India. Along with the clock and the railroad, did the British colonists bring the questionable gift of history to India? Is it true that historical consciousness did not exist in India before its conquest by the British at the end of the nineteenth century, and that the more pristine South India in particular was blessed with an organic, holistic, untainted, child-like temporality? Generations of Western writers have claimed this to be true: that Southern Indians in pre-colonial times were indifferent to historical fact, and approached their past unsystematically at best, through myth, legend, and story. Nearly a thousand years ago, the great scholar Al-Biruni complained that, "unfortunately, the Hindus do not pay much attention to the historical order of things. They are very careless in relating the chronological succession of kings, and when pressed for information...invariably take to tale-telling." Until now this has been the received wisdom of the West, repeated with little variation by post-colonial historians. Textures of Time sets out not merely to disprove that idea, but to demonstrate through a brilliant blend of storytelling and scholarship the complex forms of history that were produced in South India between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Through a nuanced reading of the rich language of folk epic, courtly poetry, and prose narratives, the authors reveal the divide between fact and fiction in South Indian writings and make a clear case for the existence of historical narrative in pre-colonial India. Employing a careful reading of and extensive translations from the relevant texts, the book thus sets out to shake some of the deepest-rooted prejudices that exist in the received wisdom on late medieval and early modern India. 

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Rs. 550 + Shipping

Author: Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman, Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Year: 2006
Price: Rs. 550
Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 312
Dimensions: 216 mm x 140 mm
Publisher: Permanent Black
ISBN 13: 9788178240237

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Author Information & Reviews History

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