historians-from-india

"Are the Tales of , said to be translated by Colonel Dow, genuine, or not? They certainly are. The original work is called the , or . Colonel Dow has not translated above one third part of it. The avidity with which the English translation and French retranslation have been bought up, might encourage some ingenious orientalist to give the remainder of these tales an European dress."

"In days of yore, there reigned in the extenfive and populous empire of Hindoostan, emblematic of Paradise, a Sovereign who, like the universe-illuming Sun, comprised the world within the beams of his dominion; and who, by the rays of the lamp of his impartial justice, enlightened the gloom of the earth."

"The lady, on hearing this melody, like the nightingale, having expanded the wings of curiosity in search of this flower of the garden of beauty, drew the veil of purity from the face of her condition, and deviating from the centre of innocence, ran heedless into the four quarters of guilt. In order to attain the means of gratifying her wishes, she requested help from the favourite attendants on the carpet of her confidence. As this affair, on account of the negligence of agents, did not receive speedy conclusion, and the season of desire was extended to intolerable length, the fire of love (having blazed from the grate of her heart,) charmed her, like the moth, into the flame of impatience."

"Love is a precious gem, which, like the rays of the sun, to shut up in the obscurity of secrecy, is out of the circle of possibility."

"if European scholars and historians are truthfully interested in the pursuit of knowledge, they will learn Marathi and read my books."

"Historians like Sarkar, Dr Romesh Chandra Majumdar, Vishwanath Kashinath Rajwade, Raghubir Singh, Hemchandra Raychaudhuri, Kashi Prasad Jayaswal, Devadatta Ramakrishna Bhandarkar, Govind Sakharam Sardesai and several contemporaries of theirs, many of whom shone in brilliance even under colonial rule, are in my view exemplars of what fact-based, dispassionate historians are."

"The refined Marathi in which the literature of the past seven or eight centuries is written has become the object of love equally to all the Marathas inhabiting the various districts of Maharashtra and the various (Indian) states such as Baroda, Indore, Gwalior, Bundelkhand, Tanjore, Gooty, Bellary and others. T here is no wonder that the cultured language in which gifted writers like Mukundraj, Dnyaneshwar, Suryajyotishi, Ekanath, Tukaram, Ramdas, Moropant, and Chiplunkar wrote their works, should be respected alike by people of all districts and of all communities. A provincial language is coextensive with the boundaries of the province and the communal dialect with the community, but the literary language used in writing and speech is meant for the entire Maharashtra. Small peculiarities of provincial minor dialects and the puerile corruptions met with in communal brogue, pale into insignificance in the royal court of the literary language and the only one pure mother tongue of the Marathas becomes the object of pride, wonder and spontaneous affection to all the people in the country. The pride which the Marathas feel for their language is not vain. No language in the world can equal Marathi in respect of abundance of its vocabulary. Moreover, the fact that many gifted and great writers have clothed their sublime, grave, romantic and charming thoughts in this language has only led to the gradual growth of affection, in ever increasing measure in the people of Maharashtra for this language."

"Marathi is today the language of a conquered people which is why it is neglected so thoroughly. Had it been the language of a ruling and independent nation, it would have been carefully studied even by Westerners and the fame of Marathi writers would have spread on the continent of Europe."

"Historians like Sarkar, Dr Romesh Chandra Majumdar, Vishwanath Kashinath Rajwade, Raghubir Singh, Hemchandra Raychaudhuri, Kashi Prasad Jayaswal, Devadatta Ramakrishna Bhandarkar, Govind Sakharam Sardesai and several contemporaries of theirs, many of whom shone in brilliance even under colonial rule, are in my view exemplars of what fact-based, dispassionate historians are."

"The Vikramkhol inscription supplies a link [in] the passage of letter-forms from the Mohenjodaro script to Brahmi."

"Historians like Sarkar, Dr Romesh Chandra Majumdar, Vishwanath Kashinath Rajwade, Raghubir Singh, Hemchandra Raychaudhuri, Kashi Prasad Jayaswal, Devadatta Ramakrishna Bhandarkar, Govind Sakharam Sardesai and several contemporaries of theirs, many of whom shone in brilliance even under colonial rule, are in my view exemplars of what fact-based, dispassionate historians are."

"Shortly before the foreign invasions began from the 11th century onwards, the Hindu body politique was fast losing the two invaluable qualities of colonisation and proselytisation so indispensable for the self-preservation and continuance of a race or people and its culture. On the other hand, the new foreign invaders who were of Muslim religion were aggressive proselytisers, with the consequence that instead of Muslims being converted to Hinduism, many Hindus became Muhammadans. Hindu Society was now on its trial. Nevertheless, it wonderfully began to tide over this crisis by reclaiming most of the Hindus that were being converted to Muhammadanism. Śud'dhi movement in India began, not recently with the Arya Samajists re-converting the Muhammadan Malkana Rajputs, but in the tenth century."

"Historians like Sarkar, Dr Romesh Chandra Majumdar, Vishwanath Kashinath Rajwade, Raghubir Singh, Hemchandra Raychaudhuri, Kashi Prasad Jayaswal, Devadatta Ramakrishna Bhandarkar, Govind Sakharam Sardesai and several contemporaries of theirs, many of whom shone in brilliance even under colonial rule, are in my view exemplars of what fact-based, dispassionate historians are."

"The author does not claim for the period from Parikshit to Bimbisara the same degree of authenticity as for the age of the Mauryas , the Satavahanas and the Guptas . The absence of trustworthy contemporary dynastic records makes it preposterous to put forward such a proposition. In regard to the early period it has been his principal endeavour to show that the huge fabric of sacerdotal and rhapsodic legends is not based solely on the mythical fancy of mendacious priests and story- telling Diaskeuasts ; that bardic tales sometimes conceal kernels of sober facts..."

"With the rise to prominence of the sangh parivar, an interesting new alliance emerged in the 1980s. Right-wing (at times neo-fascist) European writers had long railed against the migration of Muslims to that continent as ‘guest workers’. Their rabid Islamophobia was at times paired with an ostensible admiration for Hinduism, or at least for certain of its ersatz manifestations."

"So, practically every word in Subrahmanyam’s evaluation is malicious and untrue. […] All it demonstrates is the bullying rhetoric so common in the debate between the scientific and the secularist school of history."

"The opinions of best researchers in the matter of the age of the Ṛgveda differed not by a few centuries but by a few thousands of years."

"Now it is clear that the presumption of 200 years for each of the literary epochs in the birth of the Veda is purely arbitrary... it was strangely forgotten on how weak a footing the prevailing view actually stood...” (Ketkar 1987:272)"

"It would also be perfectly right to say that Alexander did not conquer India, that is Bharat, the present Union of India, which will be very much in keeping with the well-known silence of Indian sources about Alexander."

"Europe will have rendered back to modern India that kindly help and brotherly service which India rendered to Europe in ancient days - in religion , science and civilization."

"A press report on a recent anthropological survey led by Kumar Suresh Singh explains: “English anthropologists contended that the upper castes of India belonged to the Caucasian race and the rest drew their origin from Australoid types. The survey has revealed this to be a myth. ‘Biologically and linguistically, we are very mixed’, says Suresh Singh (…) The report says that the people of India have more genes in common, and also share a large number of morphological traits. ‘There is much greater homogenization in terms of morphological and genetic traits at the regional level’, says the report. For example, the Brahmins of Tamil Nadu (esp. Iyengars) share more traits with non-Brahmins in the state than with fellow Brahmins in western or northern India. (…) The sons-of-the-soil theory also stands demolished. The Anthropological Survey of India has found no community in India that can’t remember having migrated from some other part of the country.”"

"The oldest works now available in Dravidian languages were obviously written long after their contact with Aryan culture , and can afford no clear guidance to the pre- Aryan state of Dravidian culture."

"Literature is in other countries the bed-rock of history, in India it is often a snare."

"There does not exist a single line of Tamil literature written before the Tamils came into contact with, and let us add accepted with genuine appreciation, the Indo-Aryan culture of North Indian origin."

"However it might be ... [regarding the original homeland], both those who advocate the theory that the Aryans came from outside India . . . and those who dispute the foreign theory and believe the Aryans to be autochthons are of the same opinion [that Punjab was the abode of the Rgveda" (Sastri and Srinivasat Chari 1971, 2; )"

"The oldest works now available in Dravidian were written long after their contact with Aryan culture and can afford no clear guidance to the pre- Aryan state of Dravidian culture."

"Mitra (1822-91) is famous for his publications on Orissan antiquities (1875, 1880), Bodh Gaya (1878) and a two-volume collection of essays (1881) dealing with different aspects of material life in ancient India. In his Odisha volumes he strongly advocated the independent origin of Indian stone architecture and earned the wrath of James Fergusson, the most established architectural historian of India of that time. In the volume on Bodh Gaya he argued for the existence of true arch in an early context in the Mahabodhi temple, and among his essays on the ancient Indian material life he cited copious data on beef- eating and the practice of spirituous drinking in ancient India."

"To judge of the past from the present, let us take the English nation in India. It has held India for a longer period than the Greeks did Bactria from the time of Alexander to that of As'oka, but yet it has produced no appreciable effect on the architecture of its neighbours. The Bhutanese and the Sikimites have not yet borrowed a single English moulding. The Nepalese, under the administration of Sir Jung Bahadur, are not a whit behind-hand of As ́oka and his people; Sir Jung went to Europe, which As'oka never did; still there is no change perceptible in Nepalese architecture indicative of a European amalgamation. The Kashmiris and the Afghans have proved equally conservative, and so have the Burmese. But to turn from their neighbours to the people of Hindustan : these have had intimate intercourse with Europeans now for over three hundred years, and enjoyed the blessings of English rule for over a century, and yet they have not produced a single temple built in the Saxon, or any other European style. Thus the conclusion we are called upon to accept is that what has not been accomplished by the intimate intercourse of three centuries, and the absolute sovereignty of a century, in these days of railways, and electric telegraphs, and mass education, was effected by the Greeks two thousand years ago simply by living as distant neighbours for eighty years or so."

"The theory of large-scale invasion by Aryans is now discounted as there is no evidence to support it."

"The most interesting is the discovery of bones of horse from the Kayatha levels and a terracotta figurine of a mare. It is the domesticate species (Equus caballus), which takes back the antiquity of the steed in India to the latter half of the third millennium BC. The presence of horse at Kayatha in all the chalcolithic levels assumes great significance in the light of the controversy about the horse."

"In view of Stein’s statement which had led us to believe that nothing very ancient would be found in the region, it was a great thrill for us when even on the first and second days of our exploration we found sites with unmistakable affinities with the culture of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. And a few subsequent days’ work convinced us that the Sarasvatī valley had been really a commingling of many rivers, not only geographically, but culturally... ‘the valleys of the Sarasvatī and the Drishadvatī must be regarded as very rich indeed in archaeological remains’."

"Whether the Aryans should be regarded as the authors of the Painted Grey Ware or not has been a matter of dispute. While most Indian scholars have held that they were, others have doubted it. It is not necessary to reconsider the matter here in detail, and it would suffice to emphasize that the geographical horizon of the later Aryans is cotenninous with that of the Ware; there is also a remarkable chronological proximity between the dates of the beginning of the Ware and the later Vedic age, which no critical scholar would place before the start of the first millennium B.C. There can, therefore, be no reasonable doubt in ascribing the Ware to the later Aryans."

"[Ghosh is critiqued for his] utter subjugation to the framework of writing offered by Wheeler... [and for his] remarkable unwillingness to break out of the frame of thought which controlled research on ancient India in the pre-independent India period.... [He chose to] abide by the dictates of colonial Indology without showing any inclination to break out of their shackles."

"In India the ... true horse is reported from the Neolithic levels at Kodekal [dist. Gulbarga of Karnataka] and Hallur [dist. Raichur of Karnataka] and the late Harappa levels at Mohenjo-daro (Sewell and Guha, 1931) and Ropar and at Harappa, Lothal and numerous other sites. … Recently bones of Equus caballus have also been reported from the proto-Harappa site of Malvan in Gujarat."

"But Sarkar is also being a ventriloquist here. The deliberate mixing of his authorial voice with that of the Maratha envoy produces a cultivated ambiguity, but the two types of patriotism can be analytically separated. The Maratha envoy’s anguish would not have been tied in any way to a modern sense of, or a desire for, the nation. But then again, we would also be aware of the ambiguity of the word nation that allowed Sarkar to thus mix up sentiments belonging to very different historical periods. He would say of the “Jat state” during the “prudent reigns of Badan Singh and Suraj Mal” that its prospects of enjoying “a period of peaceful recuperation and progress” were destroyed by factors internal to the community: “A nation’s greatest enemy is within, not without.” Similarly, “internal quarrels and lack of statesmanship and even of intelligent self-interest among their leaders …so often ruined the national cause of the Marathas.”"

"It is true, as some modern historians have complained, that (Jadunath) Sarkar’s patriotic voice—the voice of “the true son of India”—is sometimes hard to distinguish from other kinds of patriotism that may have been actually present in the eighteenth century. Thus, when Mirza Muhammad Shafi, a mir bakshi (army minister) to the emperor and “the last fighting army chief of the empire”, was slain through “the blackest treachery” by Muhammad Beg Hamadani, a Mughalia sardar (chief), on 23 September 1783, Sarkar has the Maratha envoy “aptly describing” the situation: “Muhammad Shafi is dead. All Hindustan is lying bare. No sword for fighting is left in India.”"

"The project of Subaltern Studies would have been unthinkable without the vibrant tradition of Marxist historiography in India."

"The Aryas do not refer to any foreign country as their original home, do not refer to themselves as coming from beyond India, do not name any place in India after the names of places in their original land as conquerors and colonizers always do, but speak of themselves exactly as sons of the soil would do. If they had been foreign invaders, it would have been humanly impossible for all memory of such invasion to have been utterly obliterated from memory in such a short time as represents the differences between the Vedic and Avestan dialects. (79-80)"

"One solitary word anasa applied to the Dasyu has been quoted by ... Max Muller . . . among numerous writers, to prove that the Dasyus were a flat nosed people, and that, therefore, by contrast, the Aryas were straight-nosed. Indian commentators have explained this word to mean an-asa, mouthless, devoid of fair speech. . . . to hang such a weight of inference as the invasion and conquest of India by the straight nosed Aryans on the solitary word anasa does certainly seem not a very reasonable procedure. (6) The only other trace of racial reference in the Vedic hymns is the occurrence of two words, one krishna in seven passages and the other asikini in two passages. One of the meanings of these two words is "black," but in all the passages, the words have been interpreted as referring to black demons, black clouds, a demon whose name was Krishna, or the powers of darkness. Hence to take this as evidence to prove that the invading Aryans were fair-complexioned as they referred to their demon foes or perhaps human enemies as black is again to stretch many points in behalf of a preconceived theory. (6-7) The word . . . Arya occurs about 33 times [in the Rgveda]. . . . the word Dasa occurs about 50 times and Dasyu about 70 times. . . . The word Arya occurs 22 times in hymns to Indra and six times in hymns to Agni, and Ddsa 50 times in hymns to Indra and twice in hymns to Agni, and Dasyu 50 times in hymns to Indra and 9 times in hymns to Agni. The constant association of these words with Indra clearly proves that Arya meant a worshipper of Indra (and Agni). . . . The Aryas offered oblations to Indra. . . . The Dasyus or Dasas were those who were opposed to the Indra Agni cult and are explicitly described thus in those passages where human Dasyus are clearly meant. They are avtata without (the Arya) rites, anyavrata of different rites, ayajavdna, non-sacrificers, abrahma without prayers, also not having Brahmana priests, anrichah without Riks, brahmadvisha, haters of prayers to Brahmanas, and anindra without Indra, despisers of Indra. They pour no milky draughts, they heat no cauldron. They give no gifts to the Brahmana. . . . Their worship was but enchantment, sorcery, unlike the sacred law of fire-worship, wiles and magic. In all this we hear but the echo of a war of rite with rite, cult with cult and not one of race with race."

"As the historian P. T. Srinivasan Iyengar pertinently noted in 1926, A careful study of the Vedas...reveals the fact that Vedic culture is so redolent of the Indian soil and of the Indian atmosphere that the idea of the non-Indian origin of that culture is absurd."

"The Ganga’s southward drift was arrested only when it nudged into the Vindhyas near Chunar. It is the only place in the plains where a hill commands such a view over the river, making Chunar fort a coveted strategic location"

"If Sher Shah had lived longer, it is possible that we would not remember the Mughal rule as anything more than one more Central Asian raid."

"Not many people realize that India is host to one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world. It is believed that the earliest Jews came to India to trade in the time of King Solomon but, after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 AD, many refugees settled in Kerala. St. Thomas the Apostle is said to have landed in Muzaris at around this time and lived amongst the community."

"Aurobindo’s change of direction may seem inexplicable, but his writings explain his reasons. He seems to have come to the conclusion that he had already accomplished his role as India’s Mazzini by triggering the flame of nationalism. It was now a matter of time before the British were forced to leave. However, he also felt that there was a more important civilizational battle that India would have to fight, which would prove much harder than just gaining political freedom. After centuries under foreign rule, Indians had come to see their own culture from the perspective of those who had conquered them. Many members of the Indian elite had imbibed the idea that sacred texts such as the Vedas and the Upanishads were just superstition—like Aurobindo’s father, they had come to believe modernization meant Westernization. One could argue that this shows incredible foresight, as more than a century later, seven and a half decades after gaining political freedom, this remains a matter of hot debate in contemporary India. He felt that it was his duty to rediscover the true core of Indian civilization and present it to Indians and the wider world. With this in mind, Sri Aurobindo dived deep into the Rig Veda, the most ancient and revered of Hindu texts."

"“Indian history is not what we have been taught to believe” and that people are led to feel that the Indian had “no agency in world history”.“To change the narrative of who Indians were historically, see, one of the things I’ve been trying to do and not just through this project, I’ve been writing these history books, is to show that Indian history is not what we have been taught to believe”, he said. “That it’s not the case that Indians were somehow a passive people sitting in India waiting for conquerors to come and give us civilisation and that we have no agency. This is not a history at all”, Sanyal added. “A very little bit of digging into our own history will show us that this is not our history. We have a history. We’ve got a rambunctious history of adventurers and mercenaries and doing all kinds of interesting things”, he said. “One of the things we did was very early on, long before even the Phoenicians, who are famous mariners of history, we were sailing during Harappan times to the Middle East. The seals were found in Mesopotamia”, he said. “We had a port at Lothal and Dholavira and all of these places. But even later, it continues. And that’s why they were sailing out to Indonesia. They were sailing all the way through to Korea”, he said. “In fact, Korean history actually begins with the marriage of a local prince to a princess from Ayodhya”. He added that the legacy of such connections endures to this generation. “The Macaulay mindset is not really about Macaulay the person. What it really is about is this psychological idea that we have imbibed into our nervous system, almost, that we are somehow functioning because civilisation was given to us by other people and that we have never had agency”, he said. “So, okay, the Mughals came and built the Taj Mahal. That’s fine. You know, the British can come and do something, but we should not do anything. So now this is imbued into us in a very fundamental way”, Sanyal said. He added that this attitude continues to shape public discourse even today. “It showed through, for example, when we wanted to build a new Parliament”, he said, underlining how deeply rooted the mindset remains in contemporary thinking."

"The term ‘majoritarianism’ is used in India as a convenient way to demonise Hindus without any reference to first principles."

"Hindu religion, philosophy and social structure are nothing but the records of a glorious and instructive struggle of the human mind to free itself from limitations that become meaning less in the course of time, and to attain to more and more glorious heights that are revealed by man's ever expanding vision. There is no doubt that Hinduism will become once more a great world force, the moment this consciousness becomes a part and parcel of the modem Hindu mind and begins to mold and influence its activities in the different spheres of life.""

"Every Afghãn, who took part in the campaign, obtained as booty one or two gold images. Kãlã Pahãr destroyed the temple of Jagannãth in Puri which contained 700 idols made of gold, the biggest of which weighed 30 mãns."

"Sikandar himself marched on Friday, the 6th Ramzan AH 906 (AD March, 1501), upon Dhulpur (Dholpur); but Raja Manikdeo, placing a garrison in the fort, retreated to Gwalior. This detachment however, being unable to defend it, and abandoning the fort by night, it fell into the hands of the Muhammadan army. Sikandar on entering the fort, fell down on his knees, and returned thanks to God, and celebrated his victory. The whole army was employed in plundering and the groves which spread shade for seven kos around Bayana were tom up from the roots'..."

"After a long time, in AH 400, Allah' conferred the honour of sultanate on Sultan Mahmud Ghazi, son of Subuktigin' Nine men from among the Afghan chiefs' took to his court and joined his servants' The Sultan' gave to each one of them enamelled daggers and swords, horses of good breed and robes of special quality and, taking them with him, he set out with the intention of conquering Hindustan and Somnat....'Rai Daishalim whom some historians have pronounced as Dabshalim or Dabshalam was the great ruler of that country. The Sultan inflicted a smashing defeat on that Raja, demolished and desecrated the idol temples there, and devastated that land of the infidels."