From Dasarajna to Kuruksetra- Making of a Historical Tradition

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Is it true that ancient Indians had no sense of history? The book begins with this question and points out how the ways of perceiving the past could be culture specific and how the concept of 'historical traditions' can be useful in studying the various ways of memorizing and representing the past, even if those ways do not necessarily correspond to the methodology of the Occidental discipline called 'History: Ancient India had several historical traditions, and the book focuses on one of them, the itihasa. It also shows how the Mahabharata is the best illustration of this tradition and how a historical study of the contents of the text, using comparison with and corroboration from other contemporary sources and traditions, may help us restore the text in its original context in the bardic historical tradition about the Later Vedic Kurus. Is the Mahabharata then an authentic history? This book does not claim so. However, it shows how the text had originated as a critical reflection on a great period of transition, how it dealt with the conflicting philosophies of the transitional period, how it propounded its thesis by creating new kinds of heroes such as Yudhisthira and Krşņa, and how the text was reworked when it was canonized by the brahmaņas.

Romila Thapar

I have read Kanad Sinha's book From Dasarajna to Kurukşetra: Making of a Historical Tradition with considerable interest as it presents an ex- tension of our understanding of the texts he uses as sources. His pro- posed reconstruction of events is suggestive of fresh ways of envisaging this segment of the past. It is a significant departure from most studies reconstructing the history of the second and first millennia BCE as his focus is on the question of how the sources reflect what we today refer to as either history, historical consciousness, or historical tradition. His purpose is not in proving whether or not the various persons described and the events narrated were historical and did actually exist and happen. This is what is often spoken of when the question of the historicity of the Mahabharata, for instance, is raised. His is a far more probing question, namely, how the Mahabharata reflects society at given moments of historical time. The issue is not whether the epic encapsulates reliable his- tory but rather what it tells us about how people in the past viewed what they regarded as their past. We need to take this view seriously; although not necessarily as reliable history but as how at a certain time a certain society perceived what it constructed as its past. An important distinction is therefore made between history as we understand it today and historical traditions as they have been understood in earlier times. The distinction applies to many early societies.

These views of the past, as found in the text, took many centuries to evolve. Then, at a certain point, they were taken as given. This is normal with the many reflections brought to bear on constructions of the past. In this the form and purpose of the composition had a role. The epic form is characterized as being open. A single poet or bard may originally have composed a long narrative poem, but often the related compositions of others are stitched into it-what we now call interpolations

This book has developed out of my PhD thesis. Therefore, it cannot begin without the acknowledgement that it would not be anywhere without the care and guidance of my supervisor Prof. Kunal Chakrabarti, who had been a pillar of support and my go-to person over the past decade. He was the first person to listen to the initial draft of my PhD proposal, and, till the submission, his suggestions and guidance have been invaluable in shaping up this thesis as well as several aspects of my life. I am extremely grateful to Prof. Kumkum Roy for guiding me in preparing my historiography, and sections of this book grew out of two seminar papers I had done with her. At every stage of my research, I have benefitted from the feedback and comments of Prof. Ranabir Chakravarti regarding academics, literature, and beyond. I am thankful to Prof. Vijaya Ramaswamy for introducing me to the idea of reading devotion as dissent and for her thoughtful insights about shaping up my research proposal; I mourn her untimely demise before this book materialized. Dr. Supriya Varma had kindly guided me through the reports of the excavations at Hastinapur and Atranjikhera. Many of my teachers at the Centre for Historical Studies, including Profs R. Mahalakshmi, Aditya Mukherjee, Janaki Nair, Neeladri Bhattacharya, Rajat Datta, Najaf Haider, Indivar Kamtekar, and Heeraman Tiwari, have been ready to help always, and I have gained a lot from their valuable comments in the formal setting of seminars and conferences as well as in informal discussions. Prof. Romila Thapar, whose writings had oriented me towards the methodological approach adopted in this thesis, has always been kind enough to offer her comments and lead me towards new research questions; she most graciously agreed to write the foreword for this book. As she is introducing the book, any further attempt on my part to introduce it will be redundant.

The preface, therefore, could end here, but that would have been an unfair and incomplete story. After all, a PhD thesis turned into a book is not only about the work done over a few years but also about the culmination of a long journey.