01 | Prof.Michel Danino | Did premodern India have a sense of history? | 9 January 2017

A widespread scholarly and popular notion is that India has no sense of history. After examining India’s concept of itihāsa as reflected in texts of historical tradition (such as the two Epics and the Puranas), this lecture will dwell on epigraphic sources, ballads as representative of folk history, and a few known and lesser-known chronicles of historical value, such as the vamshavali tradition. It will also offer a glimpse of communities involved in keeping family records, sometimes over centuries. The overall picture will be that of a different concept of history, oralized, regionalized, often hero-centred and semi-mythologized, but still very much alive in the collective consciousness.

To know more about the speaker, please visit http://iks.iitgn.ac.in/michel-danino-...