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Getting to know the past better
By Romila Thapar
(cntd)
Historian Romila Thapar
An important area of interest has been the
history of religion in India, and what I mean by this is not just the
reading of texts and the familiarity with the teaching of the major
teachers, but the historical treatment of religion which is quite different
and significant to the study of history. Sects and texts and teachings have
a focus and have an interface with society. They do not exist in a vacuum
because they have an audience, and they relate to that audience. The
historian then has to discover why is it that religious texts change or are
modified or whatever because of their interface with an audience. Why is it
that the Bhakti movements, for example, focusing on the devotion of a
worshipper to his deity, were movements that also had dialogue with a number
of
Sufi traditions later on? Why did these movements become visible and
articulate in different parts of the subcontinent at different times. There
were historical reasons for this and the historian has to place religious
movements, in their broader historical context, a placement that may not
always please the religious orthodoxy.
Who were the people that supported these sects and these religions? We must
know which strata of society they came from. One of the interesting aspects
of the Bhakti tradition is that very often such movements began with
ordinary people at the lower levels of society. But when they acquired
popularity and an impressive following, then rulers also became their
patrons, and this patronage brought them a wide support. Royal patronage
could be motivated by a religious urge, but because it came from royalty it
also had a political edge. The social function of religion and religious
texts becomes a major issue in the study of both social and political
history, as well as the history of religion.
The other aspect of patronage is that most established and formal religions
manifest their patronage in the form of monuments. They have monuments by
which they are identified: the Buddhists have stupas, and viharas; the
Hindus have temples; the Muslims have mosques; the Christians have churches.
And what we are concerned with is how did these monuments come into
existence? Who financed them? Who were the patrons? Why was it necessary to
patronize these enormous religious edifices? Was it just to glorify a
particular religion or were they making other statements? Such monuments
have in the past been studied primarily as an expression of religious
sentiment. Now they are also being studied as symbols of the state where the
patron is the ruler; and they are symbols of wealth, because they could not
have been built without a very substantial outlay of wealth. Therefore, they
are making statements which are more than just religious statements.
Social history has focused on caste now seen as more flexible and mobile
than it had been before as well as the adoption of characteristic features
of what can be seen as caste in the other religions known to the
sub-continent. An interesting aspect of caste mobility has been the study of
dynasties in the periods from about the 9th to 10th century onwards, where
frequently those that claimed aristocratic status came from rather obscure
backgrounds. One is then interested to see the methods they employ by which
they change their status; they claim to be of higher status and frequently
they actually establish that higher status, although people around the area
knew that they came from rather obscure origins. This process of social
change - upward social mobility or people moving up in social status - has
its own interest because the process goes back to early society and can be
traced, with greater or lesser intensity, in every century.
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