History & Beyond

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These four books are on seemingly discrete and different aspects of early Indian history, yet they are interconnected. Historiography links many facets, concerned as it is with interpretations of the past. In recent years historical interpretation has drawn on other disciplines and this is evident in Interpreting Early India. The subject is history, but the discussions in this work move beyond history to provide a glimpse of explorations of new historical territories relating to early India. Time, it is argued in Time as a Metaphor of History, is an essential component of a historical perspective. Societies have varying forms of time, depending on function and perceptions. Conventional attempts to assign these particular forms of time–either cyclical or linear–have now been questioned. The most meaningful understanding of time and history is to view time at the intersection of the cyclic and the linear within the same society. Cultural Transaction suggests alternative ways of assessing the early Indian tradition. Using more recent concepts of culture and tradition, it distances itself from the static notion of fixed traditions and exclusive high cultures. From Lineage to State discusses the history of north India from about 1000 to 400 BC. Moving away from conventional treatments of this period, it attempts to locate the processes of state formation and social configuration. The evidence, both literary and archaeological, is linked, using a comparative framework, with studies of similar societies from other sources in order to suggest a multi-faceted reconstruction of this history.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Romila Thapar

Romila Thapar was born in India in 1931 and comes from a Punjabi family, spending her early years in various parts of India. She took her first degree from Punjab University and her doctorate from London University. She was appointed to a Readership at Delhi University and subsequently to the Chair in Ancient Indian History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, where she is now Emeritus Professor in History. Romila Thapar is also an Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and has been Visiting Professor at Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania as well as the College de France in Paris. In 1983 she was elected General President of the Indian History Congress and in 1999 a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. Among her publications are Ashoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, Ancient Indian Social History: Some Interpretations, From Lineage to State, History and Beyond, Sakuntala: Texts, Readings, Histories and Cultural Pasts: Essays on Indian History as well the children's book Indian Tales.