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AN INTRODUCTION
TO THE STUDY OF INDIAN HISTORY
D. D. KOSAMBI
PREFACE TO THE
REVISED EDITION
IN the revision, I had expected to learn a great
deal more than has actually been possible from reviews by professional
historians. The paramount importance of field work in the study of
Indian history seems altogether to have escaped their attention. Such
work in the field falls into three inter-related classes : archaeology,
anthropology, and philology. All three need some preliminary knowledge
of local conditions, the ability to master local dialects, and to gain the
confidence of tribesmen as well as peasants. In all field work, it is
necessary to develop a technique and critical method during the course
of the investigation itself. Fitting observations into rigid, preconceived
moulds is ruinous. The technique of asking the right questions in the
proper way cannot be taught nor mastered except in the field.
Whatever transport is used to reach any given locality, the actual
fjeld work can only be done on foot.
Field archaeology differs from site archaeology in ,that the amount
of digging is negligible, but the ground covered extensive. The one
indispensable tool is a stout staff with a chisel ferrule for prying artifacts
out of the surface, used as a measuring and sighting rod, &c ; it serves also
to discourage the more ambitious village dogs and the occasional
marauder. The collection of surface finds, tracing of ancient routes, and
collation with local cults, myths, and legends is a main task. Digging in
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PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION
carefully chosen spots may be a consequence, and will then give the
greatest amount of information at minimuhi expense. The actual
technique developed by O. G. S. Crawford for England in his fine
book Archaeology in the Field cannot be transferred to Indian
territory.
Similarly, the standard patterns of sociological inquiry and of
the Enquete Lingudstique cannot be utilized here without considerable
and constantly shifting modifications. Many of us dream of a mobile base
completely equipped with cameras and dark room, tape-recorders,
anthroponaetric and blood-group laboratory and the like. Properly
handled; there is ntf reason why this should not produce excellent
results. In general, however, a fancy outfit without some other
ostensible and attractive purpose (say a travelling medical unit) serves
only to defeat the field worker’s aim by exciting cupidity or suspicion,
and eliciting copious misinformation.
On the other hand, there is no substitute for work in the field for
the restoration of pre-literate history. This extends to all historical
periods for any country like India where written sources are so meagre
and defective while local variations are indescribably numerous.
D. D. KOSAMBI
Poona
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
THIS book does not pretend to be a history of India. It is merely a modern
approach to the study of Indian history, written in the hope that readers may be
impelled to study that history for themselves. or at least be enabled to look at the
country with greater sympathy and understanding. To this end, the examples
given have been intensive rather than extensive, from my own (necessarily
restricted) experience and reading. They are the simplest examples, such as
anyone could derive from honest field-work, though each of them illustrates
some general point. Better illustrations may undoubtedly be found by the reader
from the lives and manners of his own neighbours, and the remains of antiquity in
his particular locality. Going over to the common people is not easy work.
Psychological barriers raised by many generations of the grimmest poverty and
exploitation are strengthened by the heat, dust or mud, and unhygienic
conditions. But, properly done, the task can nevertheless be exhilarating even for
one whose patience has worn thin and whose joints have stiffened painfully with
age. Such field-work has to be performed with critical insight, taking nothing for
granted, or on faith, but without the attitude of superiority, sentimental reformism,
or spurious leadership which prevents most of us from learning anything except
from bad textbooks.
The subtle mystic philosophies, tortuous religions, ornate literature,
monuments teeming with intricate sculpture, and delicate music of India all
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PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
delicate music of India all derive from the same historical pro-cess that
produced the famished apathy of the villager, senseless opportunism and
termite greed of the ‘cultured’ strata, sullen un-coordinated discontent
among the workers, the general demoralisation, misery, squalor, and
degrading superstition. The one is a result of the other, the one is the
expression of the other. The most primitive implements produced
1
“a
meagre surplus which was expropriated by a correspondingly archaic
social mechanism. This maintained a few in that cultured leisure which
they took as a mark of their innate superiority to the vast majority living
in degradation. It is necessary to grasp this in order to appreciate the
fact that history is not a sequence of ha^Jiazard events but is made by
human beings in the satisfaction of their daily needs. To be more attractive,
history must reflect man’s progress at satisfying his needs in cooperation
with all his fellow men, not the success of a few at satisfying them at the
expense of most of their fellow men. The supposed achievements of
other countries have been paid for by their down-at-heel ‘ragged-
trousered philanthropists’. In India, their counterparts have not achieved
so much as trousers or shoes for themselves.
To maintain that history has always been made by such
backward, ignorant, common people, and that they, not the high priest,
glittering autocrat, war-lord, financier, or demagogue, must shape it
better in future, seems presumptuous formalism. Nevertheless, it is true.
The proper stady of history in a class society means analysis of
the,differences between the interests of the classes on top and of the
rest “of the people; it means consideration of the extent to which an
emergent class had something new to contribute during its rise to
power, and of the stage where it turned (or will turn) to reaction in
order to preserve its vested interests.
Some readers will insist that man does not live by bread alone,
that history and society both depend upon the individual’s mastery of
his eternal soul, that materialism destroys all human values.
Unfortunately, man cannot exist without bread or the equivalent, which
is necessary to keep the soul (if he can afford one) in his body. An aggregate
of human beings constitutes a society when, and only when, the people
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
xiii
are in some way interrelated. The essential gelation is not kinship, but
much wider; namely, that developed through production and mutual
exchange of commodities. The particular society is characterized by what
it regards as necessary; who gathers or produces the things, by what
implements ; who lives off the production of others, and by what right,
divine or legal — cults and laws are social byproducts ; who owns the
tools, the land, sometimes the body and soul of the producer; who
controls the disposal of the surplus, and regulates quantity and form
of the supply. Society is held together by bonds of production. Far from
destroying human values, materialism shows how they are related to
contemporary social conditions, and to the prevalent concept of value.
Like value, language itsdf (without which the idealist cannot even conceive
of his soul) arose from material exchange relations which led to the
exchange of ideas. The philosophic individual cannot reshape a
mechanised world nearer to heart’s desire by the “eternal” ideologies
developed over two thousand years ago in a bullock-cart country.
The class that rules India today, the paramount power, is the Indian
bourgeoisie. This class has some peculiar characteristics, due
primarily to the course of history. The Indian bourgeoisie is technically
backward. Its production (and mentality) is overwhelmingly that of a
petty bourgeoisie as yet. A glance from the air at the hopelessly inadequate
communication system over the interminable spread of roadless
villages suffices to prove this. Its government has a unique position
as by far the greatest owner of capital assets, and a monopolist wherever
it chooses to be. This seemingly absolute power is under compulsion of
reconciling the real needs of the country, and its professed socialist
goal, with the rapacity of both petty-bourgeois and tycoon sections
of the ruling class. Finally,” this class came to power too late, in a world
where the international bourgeois failure and crisis had already
manifested itself. An eleventh chapter commenting on these points and
their probable effect on future historical developments had reluctantly to
be deleted.
Official figures give the following daily food requirements per
Indian adult, in ounces (bracketed figures give the quantity actually
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