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Abstract
Sacred biographical narratives from India evince a concern with history, with inserting their sacred figures into the timelines of states and empires. The state and politics, alongside financial records, has long been the primary content of the historical archive, of recording significant events so they would stand through time. Religion is, of course, another primary subject of preserved narrative, but its mode of recollection, at least in the modern West, has often been set in opposition to historical narrative. My aim in this essay is to show that we can find historical ‘texture’ in various genres of narrative in South Asia before the modern period not only in what we might call ‘secular’ materials – chronicles, court documents and so on – but in materials whose genre is within what we have come to identify as religious, in this case, hagiography.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Anne Murphy for her editorial work, critical advice, and scholarly vision in guiding this project. I would also like to thank Sumit Guha, Indrani Chatterjee, Jack Hawley, Ramnarayan Rawat, Lisa Mitchell and Sunila Kale for help in developing this article and its argument.
Notes
1 Smith (Citation2000, 14–16).
2 Smith (Citation2000, 14–16).
3 See History and Theory, Theme Issue 45 (December 2006), especially pages 10–26 and 80–92.
4 There are many studies, generally in the realm of post-colonial historiography and anthropology, that have engaged this position. For two good examples, see Chakrabarty Citation(2000) and Dirks Citation(1990).
5 Hegel (Citation1944[1830], 162).
6 For exemplary treatments of this issue in premodern India, see Pollock (Citation1989, Citation1990); Aktor Citation(1999); Perrett Citation(1999); Sharma Citation(2003). Compare: Rao, Shulman, and Subrahmanyam Citation(2003); Inden, Walters, and Ali Citation(2000), especially the chapter by Ali.
7 Hegel (Citation1944[1830], 2).
8 Mill (Citation1858, 47).
9 See Novetzke Citation(2006).
10 Lal (Citation2003, 14).
11 Rao, Shulman, and Subrahmanyam (Citation2003, 252).
12 Rao, Shulman, and Subrahmanyam (Citation2003, xi.).
13 Guha (Citation1988, 46), with my gloss of hool as ‘rebellion’, which may more correctly be translated as ‘sudden attack’. This essay originally appeared in Guha Citation(1983).
14 See Novetzke Citation(2006); see also Novetzke and Patton Citation(2007).
15 Dirks (Citation1993, 58).
16 McLeod (Citation1975, 22).
17 Smith (Citation2000, 16).
18 Tulpule (Citation1979, 335).
19 For example, for Bynum, see Bynum Citation(1987); for Spiegel, see Spiegel Citation(1997); for Weinstein and Bell, see Weinstein and Bell Citation(1982); for Heffernan, see Heffernan Citation(1988).
20 Coon Citation(1997).
21 Rao, Shulman, and Subrahmanyam (Citation2003, 1–24).
22 Bellah Citation(1967).
23 For a fuller understanding of the relationship between Sikhism and the bhagats and their songs, see Singh Citation(2003).
24 Callewaert and Lath Citation(1989).
25 Chaturvedi Citation(1951).
26 Sant Namdev (1921, Dir. Phalke); Namace Mahima (1937, Dir. Apte); Patitapavan (1955, D. K. Films); Sant Namdev (1949, Dir. Talpade); Sant Namdev (1991, Dir. Pethkar).
27 Guru Granth Sahib, Rag Bhairav, song 10 (pages 1165–6), my translation here and elsewhere.
28 Ibid., verse 22.
29 Lorenzen Citation(1996).
30 Verse 27.
31 I should point out that looting Pandharpur was not particularly a ‘Muslim’ thing to do. Krishnadevaraya in 1521 looted the Vitthal temple as well, taking the image of Vitthal into the Vijayanagar kingdom. See Davis Citation(1993).
32 See Fenech Citation(2001).