Romila Thapar

Imagined Religious Communities? Ancient History and the Modern Search for a Hindu Identity

My choice of subject for this lecture arose from what I think might have been a matter of some interest to Kingsley Martin; as also from my own concern that the interplay between the past and contemporary times requires a continuing dialogue between historians working on these periods. Such a dialogue is perhaps more pertinent to post-colonial societies where the colonial experience changed the framework of the comprehension of the past from what had existed earlier: a disjuncture which is of more than mere historiographical interest. And where political ideologies appropriate this comprehension and seek justification from the pre-colonial past, there, the historians comment on this process is called for. Among the more visible strands in the political ideology of contemporary India is the growth and acceptance of what are called communal ideologies. ‘Communal’, as many in this audience are aware, in the Indian context has a specific meaning and primarily perceives Indian society as constituted of a number of religious communities. Communalism in the Indian sense therefore is a consciousness which draws on a supposed religious identity and uses this as the basis for an ideology. It then demands political allegiance to a religious community and supports a programme of political action designed to further the interests of that religious community. Such an ideology is of recent origin but uses history to justify the notion that the community (as defined in recent history) and therefore the communal identity have existed since the early past.

Perceiving the Forest: Early India

to the ksetra. These could be opposing concepts contrasting the habitat of the ascetic and the renouncer on the one hand, and the established settlement reflecting attempts at a regularly ordered social system, on the other. Or, in some cases, they could be seen as a continuum. The grama (which would fall under the category of ‘settlement’) was not static, and could include a mobile village or migrating cattlekeepers, the emphasis in both being on large numbers of people and domestic animals. The dichotomy as well as the complementarity between the forest and the settlement has often been commented upon. Sontheimer was interested in the application of this duality to historical processes, especially to the construction of religious articulations such as the parallels between tribal fertility cults and Tantricism or the Devi cults, as also in the relationship of this duality to pastoralism.1 His study of pastoral activities led him to suggest a link between the forest and the settlement, and to attempt to understand the influences on the responses of the ksetra or griima to the vana or arat:lya. This dichotomy between the vana and the grcima evolved in early times when the village constituted the settlement. With the emergence of urban centres, and particularly in the early centuries A.D., there was also a growing dichotomy between the grama and the nagara-the village and the town respectively. At the same time, vana and aranya had an ecology different from that of the settlement, and would have included the desert and the semi-arid pastoral regions as well. Another dichotomy, discussed in the context of ecology and medical knowledge, was that of

The householder and the renouncer in the Brahmanical and Buddhist traditions

In the discussion on the four asramas as theoretical preconditions to the concept of purusartha there has been a tendency to treat the asramas as chronos-free, floating as it were in historical space. The theory has been analysed and its structure viewed essentially from the perspective of belief systems and rituals in a broadly Brahmanical context. It might, however, prove rewarding to consider that the theory has a historical specificity and to view it as an ideology which is pertinent to and is interlinked with a historical situation; that the theory was elaborately formulated long after the idea of asramas was first articulated and in its practice also, historical changes are very noticeable; and that these changes were evident particularly in the institutions which accompanied the theory. Such an analysis requires that the asrama theory be seen not as an iso-

Genealogical Patterns as Perceptions of the Past

was regarded as fanciful concoction is now being treated more seriously.’ Genealogies claim to be records of succession in the past although their preservation or even invention can derive from the social institutions of the present for which they provide Iegitimising mechanisms. They are rarely, if ever, faithful records of the past reality but they can be memories of social relations. As such they are not records of individuals but of groups and generally those ranked high Succession therefore also relates to transfer of property and status. They change over time and are rearranged if need be, therearrangement being in accordance with the requirements of later times. They may or may not record actual migration, fission or assimilation but ~ where they do so, they incorporate such changes in a genealogical pattern. Myth and history in such perceptions of the past, merges, as doe the present into the past. 2

Book Review: Aruna Pariti, Genealogy, Time and Identity

Aruna Pariti, Genealogy, Time and Identity, Primus Books, Delhi, 2015, xiii + 338 pp., 1395.

Book Reviews : UMA CHAKRAVARTI, The Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1987

The use of the early Buddhist texts for the reconstruction of social history has in the past produced many valuable studies, the interest stemming largely from the fact that the Buddhist texts often present a perspective on ancient Indian society which differs from that of the Brahmanical texts. The author states that yet another work on the subject is required because ’... certain broad generalisations regarding the close association between Buddhism and specific social groups have to be tested mainly because the conclusions have not been founded on any rigorous analysis of the sources available for Buddhist society’ (p. 12). This does appear to be a rather cavalier dismissal of the work of Rhys Davids and others, which demon-

Book Reviews : JOACHIM DEPPERT ed., India and the West (South Asian Studies No. XV), New Delhi, 1983

The book is a selection from a larger number of papers read at a seminar organised by the South Asia Institute of Heidelberg University and Max Mueller Bhavan in 1982. It is dedicated to the memory of Herman Goetz. It is argued that Goetz had emphasised the need to examine the context of the general history of civilisation when looking at art history, and had also emphasised the need for Indological studies to be correlated with a study of the mutual influence of the cultures to the west of India. Hence, perhaps, the rather vague title of the book and the extensive range of themes covered within it.

The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan

List of tables and figures Preface 1. Archaeology in South Asia Part I. Constituent Elements: 2. Prehistoric environments 3. The earliest South Asians 4. Hunter-gatherers and nomadic pastoralists 5. The first agricultural communities Part II. Indus Urbanism: 6. The early Indus period 7. The mature Indus civilization - I 8. The mature Indus civilization - II Part III. The Legacy of the Indus Civilization: 9. The aftermath of the Indus civilization in the Indus and Ganges systems 10. The aftermath of the Indus civilization in Peninsular India 11. The arrival of Indo-Aryan speaking people and the spread of the Indo-Aryan languages 12. The Iron Age and the emergence of classical Indian civilization 13. Subcontinental unity and regional diversity Select general bibliography Index.

Book Reviews: N. N. Bhattacharya, Ancient Indian Rituals and their Social Contexts, Manohar Book Service, Delhi, 1975, Pp. xi+184, Rs 40

more widespread rites involving the upanayaraa (initiation of the twice-born), menstrual rites and cults and rituals of fertility. In another chapter he examines the rites performed at Divali and Hoii in the context of symbols of death and ressurection. He concludes with a detailed discussion on the Dharma cult as one among what he calls, &dquo;the proletarian cults&dquo; of Bengal. The Vedic ceremonies which he examines are those of the asvamedha (the horse sacrifice), rajasuya (consecration of the king) and the vajapeya (generally taken to be a rejuvenation ritual). They have as a common factor, an association with kingship. Bhattacharya argues that kingship was unknown to the age of the Rgve~da .and developed later, as is described in the later Vedic literature in which the ceremonies figure prominently. It is difficult to state categorically that the references to raja in the Rgveda are to tribal chiefs and

Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas

First published by the Clarendon Press in 1961, this work is based largely on the edicts of Asoka, whose policies are analyzed against the background of Mauryan civilization during the third and fourth centuries BC - one of the most important periods of Indian civilization. The author offers an interpretation of Asokas connection with Buddhism and shows how he was able to make use of a general movement of social and spiritual change for the political and moral integration of his Empire. This edition contains an additional map showing sites discovered since 1961, a revised bibliography, a new index, and an extensive afterword where the author discusses additions to scholarship in this area since the books first publication.