ABSTRACT
History as it has evolved in recent times is linked to the legitimation of nation-states. In pre-modem times there were perceptions of the past and reflections of historical consciousness. These took the form of chronicles and annals and occasionally narratives of selected events, as for instance a campaign. There were some histories of specific institutions such as a dynasty, or a religious institution or a religious sect, differentiated from other texts by some emphasis on chronology and sequential narrative, an emphasis which in Europe increased with the propagation of the Renaissance sense of the past. I Such texts were sought in India by the early Orientalist scholars, the officers of the East India company working in Bengal and Madras, and it became a search for a history of India. Failing to find these histories, the scholars were convinced that there was an absence of historical consciousness in India and that they therefore, would have to rediscover the Indian past. In their reconstruction of this past, the premises were the current intellectual preconceptions of Europe. 2
The supposed absence of history was attributed, among other things, to the cyclic concept of time which was an important theme in the texts initially used in the rediscovery of the Indian past, particularly the Manu Dharma Siistra and the Pur&).as. Neither of these, nor brahmanical eschatology, was thought to provide evidence of linear time which was believed to be necessary to the writing ofhistory.3 Other civilizations, such as that of the Greeks, also had a cyclic concept, but comparisons with these were not in order. 4 Linear time and the eschatology which began with the Garden of Eden and ended with Judgement Day was seen as essentially Judeo-Christian and therefore also absent in the Greek past. However it was thought that this did not prevent the Greeks from developing a sense of history. In other cases cyclic time was not only viewed as characteristic of non-monotheistic religions but also came to be used as a device to exclude such societies as ahistorical.
