The Pasts of a Palaiyakarar: The Ethnohistory of a South Indian Little King History and Ethnohistory

That Hindu India has had a severely underdeveloped sense of history is a commonplace assumption. Unfavorable contrasts are made not only with the West, but with that most historical of Asian civilizations, China, and with the Islamic world. Traditional Indian "historiography," when it is r...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Journal of Asian studies Vol. 41; no. 4; p. 655
Main Author Dirks, Nicholas B
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Pittsburgh Duke University Press, NC & IL 01.08.1982
Subjects
Censuses
Ethnohistory
Genre
Historians
Historiography
Philosophy
Politics
Reference (Semantic)
Social structure
Studies
Traditions
United States > US
Chicago Illinois
India
Kolkata India
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Summary:That Hindu India has had a severely underdeveloped sense of history is a commonplace assumption. Unfavorable contrasts are made not only with the West, but with that most historical of Asian civilizations, China, and with the Islamic world. Traditional Indian "historiography," when it is referred to at all, is most often characterized as fabulous legend and religious myth, bearing no relation to the past succession of real events. Not only is there thought to be a paucity of chronicles to provide the political historian with definite dynastic details and other political facts, there is no philosophy or philosopher of history to allow one to even identify an...
ISSN:0021-9118
1752-0401