D. D. Kosambi History and Society

D. D. KOSAMBI ON HISTORY AND SOCIETY PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY UNIVERSITY OF BOMBAY, BOMBAY PREFACE Man is not an island entire unto himself nor can any discipline of the sciences or social sciences be said to be so - definitely not the discipline of history. Historical studies and works of historians have contributed greatly to the enrichment of scientific knowledge and temper, and the world of history has also grown with and profited from the writings in other branches of the social sciences and developments in scientific research. Though not a professional historian in the traditional sense, D. D. Kosambi cre- ated ripples in the so-called tranquil world of scholarship and left an everlasting impact on the craft of historians, both at the level of ideologi- cal position and that of the methodology of historical reconstruction. This aspect of D. D. Kosambi s contribution to the problems of historical interpretation has been the basis for the selection of these articles and for giving them the present grouping. There have been significant developments in the methodology and approaches to history, resulting in new perspectives and giving new meaning to history in the last four decades in India. Political history continued to dominate historical writings, though few significant works appeared on social history in the forties, such as Social and Rural Economy of North- ern India by A. N. Bose (1942-45); Studies in Indian Social Polity by B. N. Dutt (1944), and India from Primitive Communism to Slavery by S. A. Dange (1949). It was however with Kosambi’s An Introduction to the study of Indian History (1956), that historians focussed their attention more keenly on modes of production at a given level of development to understand the relations of production - economic, social and political. While keeping his approach firmly within the Marxist tradition of social analysis, Kosambi developed a new approach and introduced new perspectives to the un- derstanding of Indian History - a fundamental change both in content and methodology. It was through his rejection of the mechanical application of Historical Materialism that Kosambi saved his contemporary Marxist scholars from becoming a prey to vulgar Marxism. He explained through his researches that Indian society had a series of parallel forms qualitatively dif- ferent from their western counterparts and thus did not need to be classified necessarily into the classical modes of production. The slavery of the Graeco- Roman type was absent by and large in India and Indian feudalism differed greatly from the West European type. Indian variants of slavery and feudalism have provided a conceptual framework for the study of ancient and medieval historical realities in recent times. It is in this respect that we call Kosambi the pioneer of new history in India. Outlining the intricate evolution of social development, Kosambi takes the social group in-the framework of which the individual acts and reacts, and not the individual as an autonomous unit, separate and counterposed to society, as the starting point for the analysis of historical processes. Subscrib- ing to historical materialism, he explains this process in terms of physics.”Individual molecules of water may move in any direction, with al- most any speed,” he writes, “but the river as a whole shows directed motion in spite of eddies. So also for the aggregates of living matter. In human society the net behaviour group smooths out the vagaries of individual action.” For him the subject matter of history was the working masses- the producers of surplus, and the projection of the flow of life of ordinary people. His approach to the study of society was scientific and his methodology was un- conventional. Contrary to Marx’s earlier views, Kosambi established that In- dian society also had its own history and its own stages of development and made social change the basis of periodisation of Indian history. Many of his generalisations have been questioned by Marxist and non-Marxist historians alike, but his works continue to inspire the researchers engaged in the study of Indian society (societies). Outstanding works on the socio-economic history of ancient and medieval India by eminent scholars like R. S. Sharma, Irfan Habib, Romila Thapar, B. N. S. Yadav and D. P. Chattopadhyaya have appeared in the last two decades. A large number of scholars are engaged in extensive researches using the new tools - integrating literary and archaeological data, field work in philology, making use of social anthropology, so- ciology, statistical analysis and econometric history. Communalism in historical writings has existed in one way or an- other, but it has acquired new dimensions in the post-independence era in the form of a combination of communal and chauvinistic interpretations of the past encouraged by political forces whose existence depends upon the perpetuation of divisive ideology. This continues to be a serious threat to scientific or analytical approach to history. Glorification of the past to the extent of absurdity; antedating the events and archaeological findings to the remotest point in history; finding the presence of all ideas and philoso- phies in the ancient period; extending Indian influences in all the realms of science and literature in the world context; denying or ignoring of the cultural, intellectual, socientific and technological ideas received from other countries; and projection of the medieval period of Indian history as an era of decadence, full of communal conflicts, are the hallmark of communal historiography, Kosambi had this kind of historiography in his mind when he attacked the first three volumes of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s The History and Culture of the Indian People in his review article, ‘What constitutes Indian History’? It may not be without interest that the editors of the series made their works conspicuous by omiting such well known works as those of A, N. Bose, B. N. Dutt and D. D. Kosambi in their bibliography. The institution of the D. D. Kosambi Memorial Lectures in an at- tempt to continue the dialogue among those interested in historical problems. The publication of D. D. KOSAMBI ON HISTORY AND SOCIETY : PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION on the occasion of the first series of the Memorial Lectures by Professor IrfanHabib : Looking at our past, is a tribute by the Department of History to Kosambi’s scientific intervention in the field of Indian historiography. A. J. Syed Department of History University of Bombay February 1985 IN PLACE OF AN INTRODUCTION KOSAMBI ON HIS PHILOSOPHY* The question ‘Why solve problem?’ is psychological. It is as necessary for some as breathing. Why scientific problems, not theology, or literary effort, or some form of artistic expression? Many practising scientists never work out the answer consciously. Those lands where the leading intellectuals specu- lated exclusively upon religious philosophy and theology remained ignorant, backward and were progressively enslaved (like India) in spite of a millennial culture. No advance was possible out of this decay without modern techniques of production, towards which the intellectuals’ main contribution was through science. There is a depper relationship: Science is the cognition of necessity; freedom is the recognition of necessity. By finding out why a certain thing happens, we turn it to our advantage rather than be ruled helplessly by the event. Science is also the history of science. What is essential is absorbed into /he general body of human knowledge, to become technique. No scientist doubts Newton’s towering achievement; virtually no scientist ever reads Newton in the original. A good undergraduate commands decidedly more physics and mathematics than was known to Newton, but which could not have developed without Newton’s researches. This cumulative effect links science to the technology of mechanised production (where ma- chine saves immense labour by accumulating previous labour) to give science its matchless social power in contrast to art and literature with their direct personal appeal. Archimedes, Newton and Gauss form a chain wherein each link is connected in some way to the preceding; the discoveries of the latter would not have been possible without the earlier. Shakespeare does not imply the pre-existence of Aeschylus or of Kalidasa; each of these three has an independant status. For that very reason, drama has advanced far less from the Greeks to the present day than has mathematics or science in general. Even the anonymous statues of Egypt and Greece or the first Chinese bronzes show a command of technique, material and of art forms that make them masterpieces; but the art is not linked to production as such, *EXTRACTS FROM ‘ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNOWN’ BY D. D. KOSAMBI, IN K. S. MURTHY AND K. R. RAO (ED), CURRENT TRENDS IN INDIAN PHILOSOPHY, BOM- BAY, 1972, PP 152-67. hence not cumulative. The artist survives to the extent that his name remains attached to some work that people of later ages can appreciate. The scientist, even when his name be forgotten, or his work buried under the wrong tombstone, has only to make some original contribution, however small, to be able to feel with more truth than the poet, “I shall not wholly die; The greater part of me will escape Libitina”. The most bitter theological questions were argued out with the sword; for science, we have the pragmatic test, experiment, which is more civilized except when some well-paid pseudo-scientist wishes to ‘experiment’ with thermo-nuclear weapons or bacterial warfare. Freud had taught men to take an honest look at their own minds. H.G. Wells showed in his Outline of History how much the professional an-nalistic historian had to learn, though Spengler’s Untergang des Abendlandes made it extremely unlikely that the historian would learn it.

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