 |
|
|
Item Details
| Title:
|
THE PAST BEFORE US
HISTORICAL TRADITIONS OF EARLY NORTH INDIA |
| By: |
Romila Thapar |
| Format: |
Hardback |
| List price:
|
£60.95 |
| Our price: |
£48.76 |
| Discount: |
|
| You save:
|
£12.19 |
|
|
|
|
|
| ISBN 10: |
0674725239 |
| ISBN 13: |
9780674725232 |
| Availability: |
Usually dispatched within 1-3 weeks.
 Delivery
rates
|
| Stock: |
Currently 0 available |
| Publisher: |
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS |
| Pub. date: |
4 November, 2013 |
| Pages: |
736 |
| Description: |
The claim that India uniquely lacks historical writing distracts us from a more pertinent question: how to recognize the historical sense of societies whose past is recorded in ways very different from European conventions. The author, distinguished scholar of ancient India, provides a panoramic survey of historical traditions in North India. |
| Synopsis: |
The claim, often made, that India--uniquely among civilizations--lacks historical writing distracts us from a more pertinent question, according to Romila Thapar: how to recognize the historical sense of societies whose past is recorded in ways very different from European conventions. In The Past Before Us, a distinguished scholar of ancient India guides us through a panoramic survey of the historical traditions of North India. Thapar reveals a deep and sophisticated consciousness of history embedded in the diverse body of classical Indian literature.The history recorded in such texts as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata is less concerned with authenticating persons and events than with presenting a picture of traditions striving to retain legitimacy and continuity amid social change. Spanning an epoch of nearly twenty-five hundred years, from 1000 BCE to 1400 CE, Thapar delineates three distinct historical traditions: an Itihasa-Purana tradition of Brahman authors; a tradition composed mainly by Buddhist and Jaina scholars; and a popular bardic tradition. The Vedic corpus, the epics, the Buddhist canon and monastic chronicles, inscriptions, regional accounts, and royal biographies and dramas are all scrutinized afresh--not as sources to be mined for factual data but as genres that disclose how Indians of ancient times represented their own past to themselves. |
| Illustrations: |
maps |
| Publication: |
US |
| Imprint: |
Harvard University Press |
| Returns: |
Returnable |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
No Cheese, Please!
A fun picture book for children with food allergies - full of friendship and super-cute characters!Little Mo the mouse is having a birthday party.
|
My Brother Is a Superhero
Luke is massively annoyed about this, but when Zack is kidnapped by his arch-nemesis, Luke and his friends have only five days to find him and save the world...
|
|
|
|
|