Paper-5

Indian History-I
Ancient &Medieval Indian History, Paper code: BL--1005
 Syllabus
1. Survey of political History of Ancient India, concept of kinship and Republics
in Ancient India with special reference to Ramayan and Mahabharat period.
2. Rise and growth of Political ideas in Ancient India with special reference to
Kautilya, Manu, Shukra, Administration of Mauryas and Guptas.
3. (a)Concept of State and government in ancient India.
(b) Concept of Justice and Law in ancient India.
(c) Concept of Dand in ancient India
4. A Brief survey of the Political History of Medieval India, Administration of
Ala-ud-din Khilji, Shershah, Akbar, Shivaji and Raja Suraj Mal.
5. Society in Medieval India with special emphasis on the condition of women,
agrarian system, socio-economic problems in Medieval India e.g. Sati and
Untouchability.
 Books recommended
 Altekar, A S, State and Government in
Ancient India.
 Singh, Upinder , A History of Ancient
and Early Medieval India.
 Basham, A L, The Wonder that was
India.
 Mojumdar, R.C., Datta &
Raychaudhary, An Advanced History of
Books recommended

 Sharma, R.S., Some Aspects of the

Political Ideas and institutions in
Ancient India.
 Sharma, V.P., Political Ideas and
Institutions in Ancient India.
 Tripathi, R.S., A History of Ancient
India.
Understanding
History & its
Relevance vis-à-vis
Law
What is History?
 The English word ‘history’ comes
from Greek historia (inquiry or
investigation). History is a discipline
that inquires into the experiences of
the people who lived in the past.
 Earlier, Indian history was
divided into the Hindu, Muslim,
and British periods. However,
this classification is
 We can ask questions, for example, is
religious affiliations of the ruling elite
the best basis for labelling a period?
 In that case, why is the third period
described as the British and not
Christian period?
 From when can we start using
the term ‘Hindu’ in the context of
ancient India.
 How can it be applied to the
reigns of the many ancient
Indian kings who patronized
Buddhism and Jainism?
 Did the arrival of Muslim rulers
create a major rupture in the
fabric of Indian society,
especially when the reach of
these rulers- except at the
height of the Mughal empire- did
not extend over all or even the
most of the subcontinent.
 Because of these reasons,
religion-based periodization of
the Indian past have been
discarded.
Neutral Classification of History

 A more neutral classification into

the ancient, early medieval,
medieval, and modern periods
have been done.
 Ancient period– from the earliest
times to the 6th century CE.
 Early medieval– from 6th CE to
the 13th centuries.
 Medieval –13th to the 18th
centuries.
 Modern – 18th century to the
present.
 So, neutral classification shifts the
focus away from religious labels
towards a pattern of significant
socio-economic changes
Pre-history, Proto-history and
history
 The ancient times of the human
past can be further divided into
pre-history, proto-history and
history.
 Pre-history– enormously long
period before the invention of
writing and the study of that
period are known as prehistory.
 Proto-history– period between
pre-history and history when
writing is not yet developed but
other cultures have noted the
existence of pre-literate groups
in their own writings.
Pre-history, Proto-history and
history
 History- the part of the past that
comes after the invention of
writing, and the study of that
period.
 In the Indian subcontinent, the earliest
evidence of writing is associated with
the Harappan civilization.
 The Harappan script is mostly found
on seals and sealings.
Impact of invention of writing

 Writing marked a new stage in

new stage in human expression
and communication.
 It opened possibilities for storing
and transmitting ideas and
knowledge across distance and
time.
Impact of invention of writing
 The impact of language was
complex and varied.
 Rulers used writing to advertise
and exercise power.
 Merchants used it to record
business transactions.
 Impact of invention of writing
 Priests used to preserve religious
texts.
 Poets used it for their creative
expression.
 Generally speaking, the invention
of writing coincided with the
emergence of cities and states.
Impact of invention of writing

 However, the invention of

writing, did not mean the end of
oral transmission.
 The spoken word always held a
special significance in many
cultural traditions.
Impact of invention of writing

 The invention of writing is an

important watershed in the study of
the past also because written
evidence becomes available to the
historian.
 Along with, written sources,
archaeological sources are equally
important.
History and Law

History is the study of the past;

inquiry, investigation of the
past.

It is interpretation of
information. There is difference
between narration of events
and ‘history’.
History and Law

 According to E.H. Carr, history is

“unending dialogue between the
present and the past”.
 How is history and law related,
or for that matter any other
discipline, related to history?
History and Law

 To the legal community, history

is the very process of
understanding law in context.
 Without history, law is a set of
bare principles devoid of social
meaning and cultural
orientation.
History and Law

 It is significant to understand the

historical context in which laws take
form, develop and change according
to the needs of good governance.
Historiography
 History is not information that is
handed down unchanged from
generation to generation.
 Historical situations need to be
explained.
 The explanations draw on analyses
of evidence, provide generalizations
that derive from the logic of the
argument.
Historiography

 So, substantial changes in the

readings of early Indian history keep
happening, some arising out of new
data and many more from new
interpretations of the existing data.
Historiography

 It is important to start by asking how

histories of India came to be written, who
the historians were, why they were writing
and what were the intellectual and
ideological influences that shaped their
histories, in short, that which is now called
historiography.
Historiography

 It is important to keep in mind

that with new evidence and
fresh interpretations of existing
evidence, a new understanding
of the past can be achieved.
Interpretations

 For interpretations , reliable

evidence, analytical methods
and arguments drawing on logic
are required.
 so, interpretation is vital to
research and history. In fact,
interpretation is life-blood of
Interpretations

 Interpretations, frequently
derive from prevalent
intellectual modes and
familiarity with the context
encourages a sensitive
understanding of the past.
Interpretations

 With respect to the subject –

matter of history, we know it
covers everything that has
happened, either belonging to
world of nature or world of
human beings, men and women.
Interpretations

 Humans, being part of nature

and also radically different
from nature, in the sense
that we think, wish, plan,
hope.
Interpretations

 Our inner life finds expression in speech,

writing, gesture and action. Human
beings are doers of the history.
 Broadly speaking, history covers
everything. But for the purpose of
studying history, we have to restrict it to
subject of human past events.
Limitations of history
 When we say history covers all
events of past of the humankind,
we say it with some reservations.
 We know, not all past is
recoverable, study of history is
confined to that part of the past of
which evidence either survives or
can be reconstructed.
 So, in truth, history is study of
Limitations of history

 History is an attempt to discover the past

on the basis of fragmentary evidence.
 The crucial element is present evidence,
not the fact of past existence.
 This remains a important limitation.
Limitations of history

 The research conducted by historian

and evidence of the past into which
historian engages then becomes a social
process in which individuals are involved
as social beings.
Limitations of history

 So the past becomes intelligible only in light

of the present and present can be
understood only in terms of the past.
 So history serves dual purpose- it enables us
to understand the society of the past and it
helps in increasing our mastery over the
society of the present.
Purpose of doing history

 One can say that history helps us to

understand the society, its traditions, its
institutions, laws that we obey.

 The backward glance allows us to gain a

critical approach towards our own
civilization.
Purpose of doing history

 According to Will Durant, “A nation’s

past is like an individual’s memory; if
memory goes, sanity goes with it.”
What memory does for the
individual, similarly, history, the
social memory does for the
community.
Purpose of doing history

 History teaches us lessons of all

kind, be it personal or social. It
is broadest of studies,
embracing every aspect of life.
Historical Knowledge as Indirect
Knowledge

 Historical knowledge is
essentially an indirect
knowledge.
 The historian can never have a
direct knowledge of the past
Historical Knowledge as Indirect
Knowledge

 As R.G.Collinwood had put it, “The past

is never a given fact which historian can
comprehend empirically by perception.”
 The events that happened in the past
can be empirically known by the study
of the sources
Historical Knowledge as Indirect
Knowledge
 It is historians who study the sources
and give meaning to it.
 The historian, however, is not working in
a vacuum; historian tries to understand
the past only through the eyes of the
present.
 So, facts without their historian are
meaningless and dead and historian
without his facts is futile.
History as Inclusive Discipline

 History is a fascinating subject as it

happens to the meeting ground for
different disciplines.
 Everything has a history and therefore
history as a discipline covers
everything.
History as Inclusive Discipline

 We need to see history as an

inclusive, a mediating discipline.
 History, Economics, Sociology ,
Geography, Political science- all
have give and take relationship
Law and History

 It is impossible to
understand law and legal
trends of any period, without
learning and understanding
the history of that period.
Law and History
 First of all, what is Law?

 Simply put, law is the system of rules,

which any country, state, community
recognize as regulating the actions of its
members and which it may enforce by
imposition of penalties. Law regulates
the society.
Law and History

 Law is a “rule of life.” The well being

of humanity depends upon order and
progress, and order means stability of
social institutions which, if they are to
endure, must be based on the
supremacy of rational law.
Law and History

 First of all, what is Law? Simply put, law

is the system of rules, which any
country, state, community recognize as
regulating the actions of its members
and which it may enforce by imposition
of penalties. Law regulates the society.
Law and History

 The law that we read have not been

created over a night, there are
certain history behind all of them.
 In fact, the growth of rules in
society predates both courts and
the written laws. For thousands of
years, customary laws regulated the
societies.
Law and History

 we need to understand that law and

history do not work in isolation from
each other. Knowing history is a
must for law students.
 It does not matter which law we are
talking about, each and every law
has its own background history.