Historiography

History glossary

Also called: Historical writing · Topic: Studying Indian History: Sources, Dating and Historiography · NCERT: Beyond NCERT

Meaning

Historiography (also called historical writing) is the study of how history is written. It asks who investigates the past, what sources and methods they use, how that past is spread, and with what intention. It also traces how the reading of the same evidence changes over time.

It matters because the history we read is never the past itself. It is someone's interpretation of the past. UPSC tests this through questions on how famous interpretations were made and later overturned, such as the Harappan "invasion" story and the use of inscriptions.

Explanation

Why history is always an interpretation

  • E.H. Carr called history an "unending dialogue between the present and the past". Each generation asks the past new questions.
  • "Every society aspires to a past that explains how it came into being." Such a past often draws on the present and is used to justify it.
  • Different groups claim different pasts
  • A king, a priest, a peasant and a trader would each tell the same period differently.

  • So no single account of the past is natural or simply "given".

  • Romila Thapar's four questions for any source (source criticism, which means testing a source before trusting it): 1. Whose past is the source talking about? 2. Who wrote it? 3. Why and how do they want to take over (appropriate) the past? 4. How authentic is their version?

  • Sources answer only the questions historians put to them. Change the question and the same source tells a new story.

Main schools of Indian historical writing

  • Colonial historiography
  • James Mill's History of British India (1817) split India's past into Hindu, Muslim and British periods. The split followed the religion of the rulers and ignored how society actually changed.

  • Colonial officers also built the basic tools of research. Colin Mackenzie collected over 8,000 inscriptions in the 1810s. James Prinsep read Brahmi in 1838. Alexander Cunningham led the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).

  • Nationalist historiography

  • In the early 20th century, nationalist historians wrote to give Indians pride in their past during the freedom struggle.

  • Thapar notes that they also exaggerated the glory of the past.

  • Marxist historiography

  • It looked at economic change, modes of production and social classes. D.D. Kosambi is a leading name.

  • Subaltern Studies (from the 1980s)

  • It wrote "history from below", meaning the past of peasants, tribals, workers and others left out of official records.

  • The broad shift in focus (study note)

  • Late 19th to early 20th century: histories of kings and dynasties.
  • Mid-20th century: economic change and new social groups.
  • Recent decades: marginalised groups. This pushed historians to re-read old sources with new methods.

How interpretations changed: the Harappan case study

  • Text-first archaeology
  • Cunningham, first Director-General of the ASI, located sites using the travel routes of Chinese Buddhist pilgrims (4th–7th centuries CE).
  • Harappa fitted no pilgrim route. He was given a Harappan seal (noted 1875) but could not place it, because he assumed Indian history began with the Ganga-valley cities.

  • His starting idea decided what he could and could not see.

  • A discovery changes the timeline

  • Daya Ram Sahni dug at Harappa (1921) and R.D. Banerji at Mohenjodaro (from 1922).

  • In 1924 John Marshall announced a new civilisation. S.N. Roy wrote that "Marshall left India three thousand years older than he had found her".

  • Method shapes evidence

  • Marshall dug in horizontal units and ignored stratigraphy (reading the layers of soil, where the lowest layer is the oldest). Because of this, the context of many finds was lost forever.

  • Mortimer Wheeler (Director-General from 1944) brought in stratigraphic digging.

  • An interpretation overturned

  • In 1947 Wheeler linked the Rigvedic word pur (fort) and Indra's title puramdara (destroyer of forts) to Harappa's walls. He wrote: "On circumstantial evidence, Indra stands accused."

  • In 1964 George Dales, in "The Mythical Massacre at Mohenjodaro", showed this was wrong. The Deadman Lane skeletons came from different periods. There was no destruction layer, no burning, no armoured warriors and no last defence of the citadel.

  • Labels borrowed from elsewhere

  • Early archaeologists called unusual finds religious: "mother goddess", "priest-king" (a Mesopotamian label) and "proto-Shiva".

  • The "proto-Shiva" reading goes beyond the earliest text. In the Rigveda, Rudra is neither Pashupati nor a yogi.

  • The newest turn: DNA

  • Ancient DNA from Rakhigarhi (Shinde et al., Cell, 2019) is presented by the NCERT as showing that the Harappans were indigenous, and as ruling out large-scale "Aryan" migration.
  • This is the textbook's position on a debate that is still open. The same chapter says the Harappan–Vedic link needs more research.

Limits of sources and what they show

  • Inscriptions speak for the person who paid for them
  • Ashoka's edict expressing anguish over Kalinga is not found in Orissa, the land he conquered. The ruler controlled the message.

  • Inscriptions record grand, one-time events. They rarely record farming or everyday joys and sorrows.

  • D.C. Sircar's claim is not enough on its own

  • Sircar said no part of Indian life is missing from inscriptions.

  • The NCERT's verdict is that epigraphy alone cannot give a full political and economic history.

  • Archaeological finds are accidental, not typical

  • Only broken things were thrown away. Valuables survived only if they were lost or hidden.

  • The outcome

  • By the early 20th century, the outline of dynastic history was settled. Historians then turned to context, meaning the links between political, economic and social change.

Time, place and evidence

  • Period: historiography is a method used for all periods, from prehistory to modern India. Modern Indian historiography began under colonial rule (19th century) and has kept changing since 1947.
  • Key people:
  • Colin Mackenzie: 1810s inscriptions collection
  • James Prinsep: an East India Company mint officer who deciphered Brahmi (1838) and Kharosthi
  • Alexander Cunningham
  • Daya Ram Sahni and R.D. Banerji
  • John Marshall
  • Mortimer Wheeler
  • George Dales
  • D.C. Sircar
  • Vasant Shinde

  • Romila Thapar

  • Places: Harappa and Mohenjodaro (now in Pakistan). After Partition, Indian digs moved to Kalibangan, Lothal, Dholavira and Rakhigarhi (Hisar, Haryana).

  • Evidence whose reading has been debated:
  • The routes of Chinese Buddhist pilgrims
  • The Rigveda (c. 1500–1000 BCE)
  • Ashoka's inscriptions (titles devanampiya piyadassi)
  • Bilingual Indo-Greek coins
  • The Deadman Lane skeletons (1925)
  • Harappan seals

  • Rakhigarhi ancient DNA (2019)

  • Works and series: Epigraphia Carnatica (1886), Epigraphia Indica (1888), and D.C. Sircar's Indian Epigraphy and Epigraphical Glossary (1965–66).

Don't confuse with

  • History: history is the study of the past itself. Historiography is the study of how that history was written: by whom, with what sources and for what purpose.
  • Epigraphy / palaeography: epigraphy is the study of inscriptions, and palaeography dates writing by the style of its letters. Both handle one type of source. Historiography looks at how all sources are used and interpreted.
  • Stratigraphy: stratigraphy is a digging method that dates finds by soil layers (Wheeler's method, not Marshall's). It is a tool of archaeology, not a study of how history is written.
  • Subaltern Studies: this is one school within historiography (history from below, from the 1980s). It is not the whole field.

Prelims Hooks

  • "Indra stands accused" (invasion theory): Mortimer Wheeler, 1947. Disproved by George Dales, "The Mythical Massacre at Mohenjodaro", 1964.
  • Stratigraphic digging: Wheeler. Marshall dug in horizontal units and ignored layers. (Trap: "stratigraphy was Marshall's method" is FALSE.)
  • Alexander Cunningham, first Director-General of the ASI, worked text-first, using the routes of Chinese Buddhist pilgrims. He could not place a Harappan seal (1875).
  • "Marshall left India three thousand years older than he had found her": S.N. Roy, on the 1924 announcement.
  • The three-period split into Hindu, Muslim and British India comes from James Mill's History of British India.
  • Order of focus in Indian historical writing: kings and dynasties → economy and social groups → marginalised groups.

Mains Points

  • Interpretation can be reversed when evidence is re-examined.
  • Wheeler's "Aryan invasion" massacre was disproved by Dales.
  • The labels "priest-king" and "mother goddess" came from outside India. The "proto-Shiva" reading goes beyond the Rigveda.
  • The Rakhigarhi DNA claim is the NCERT's present framing, not settled scholarship.

  • All of this shows that historical knowledge is provisional and depends on method.

  • Sources carry their authors' bias.

  • Ashoka's Kalinga edict is missing from Orissa. Inscriptions leave out daily life. Sircar's claim about inscriptions overstates their value.

  • Thapar's questions (whose past, who wrote it, why, how authentic) should be applied to every school, whether colonial, nationalist, Marxist or any other.

  • Continuity and change in Indian historiography.

  • Colonial scholars built the tools (the ASI, decipherment) but also brought biases (Mill's religious periods, Cunningham's text-first method).
  • Nationalists restored pride but exaggerated the glory of the past.
  • Marxist and subaltern historians widened history to include economy and marginalised people.
  • History should explain how society evolved, not supply statements for present-day political use.

Read more