Author: Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya
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Publisher: Permanent Black
Year: 2011
Language: English
Pages: 283
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8178241439
Description
It shows the profound impact of colonialism on the study of India’s early past, the new methods and premises introduced into India by colonial studies, and the variety of departures from traditional, pre-colonial modes of history-writing. It goes on the show that post-Independence historiography has brough a fresh set of problems to the fore: such as the integration of archaeology with narratives of early Indian history; of the trajectories of social change and social formation; of the historical position of ideology and its shifts; and of the ways of communicating knowledge of a past which is now increasingly under non-academic fundamentalist onslaughts.
With its diverse parts connected by strong threads of interest in the changing nature of history-writing on early India, this new book on the methodological changes that confront the historian of pre-colonial India will consolidate Professor Chattopadhyaya’s reputation as one of the foremost thinkers in his area of ancient and early medieval history.
Contents
Preface
INTRODUCTORY
The Study of Early India
ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORICAL ISSUES
Indian Archaeology and the Epic Traditions
Transition to the Early Historical Phase in the Deccan: A Note
Geographical Perspectives, Culture Change and Linkages:
Some Reflections of Early Punjab
Urban Centres in Early Bengal: Archaeological Perspectives
TEXTS AND HISTORICAL ISSUES
The City in Early India: Perspective from Texts
Autonomous Spaces and the Authority of the State:
The Contradiction and Its Resolution in Theory and Practice in Early India
Historical Context of the Early Medieval Temples of North India
Reappearance of the Goddess or the Brahmanical Mode of Appropriation: Some Early Epigraphic Evidence Bearing on Goddess Cults
Others, or the Others? Varieties of Difference in Indian Society at the Turn of the First Millennium and Their Historiographical Implications
HISTORIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY AS COMMUNICATION
Trends of Research on Ancient Indian Economic History
State and Economy in North India: Fourth Century to Twelfth Century
Cultural Plurality, Contending Memories and Concerns of Comparative History: Historiography and Pedagogy in Contemporary India