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AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF INDIAN HISTORY D. D. KOSAMBI PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION IN the revision, I had expected to learn a great deal more than has actually been possible from reviews by professional historians. The paramount importance of field work in the study of Indian history seems altogether to have escaped their attention. Such work in the field falls into three inter-related classes : archaeology, anthropology, and philology. All three need some preliminary knowledge of local conditions, the ability to master local dialects, and to gain the confidence of tribesmen as well as peasants. In all field work, it is necessary to develop a technique and critical method during the course of the investigation itself. Fitting observations into rigid, preconceived moulds is ruinous. The technique of asking the right questions in the proper way cannot be taught nor mastered except in the field. Whatever transport is used to reach any given locality, the actual fjeld work can only be done on foot. Field archaeology differs from site archaeology in ,that the amount of digging is negligible, but the ground covered extensive. The one indispensable tool is a stout staff with a chisel ferrule for prying artifacts out of the surface, used as a measuring and sighting rod, &c ; it serves also to discourage the more ambitious village dogs and the occasional marauder. The collection of surface finds, tracing of ancient routes, and collation with local cults, myths, and legends is a main task. Digging in X PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION carefully chosen spots may be a consequence, and will then give the greatest amount of information at minimuhi expense. The actual technique developed by O. G. S. Crawford for England in his fine book Archaeology in the Field cannot be transferred to Indian territory. Similarly, the standard patterns of sociological inquiry and of the Enquete Lingudstique cannot be utilized here without considerable and constantly shifting modifications. Many of us dream of a mobile base completely equipped with cameras and dark room, tape-recorders, anthroponaetric and blood-group laboratory and the like. Properly handled; there is ntf reason why this should not produce excellent results. In general, however, a fancy outfit without some other ostensible and attractive purpose (say a travelling medical unit) serves only to defeat the field worker’s aim by exciting cupidity or suspicion, and eliciting copious misinformation. On the other hand, there is no substitute for work in the field for the restoration of pre-literate history. This extends to all historical periods for any country like India where written sources are so meagre and defective while local variations are indescribably numerous. D. D. KOSAMBI Poona PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION THIS book does not pretend to be a history of India. It is merely a modern approach to the study of Indian history, written in the hope that readers may be impelled to study that history for themselves. or at least be enabled to look at the country with greater sympathy and understanding. To this end, the examples given have been intensive rather than extensive, from my own (necessarily restricted) experience and reading. They are the simplest examples, such as anyone could derive from honest field-work, though each of them illustrates some general point. Better illustrations may undoubtedly be found by the reader from the lives and manners of his own neighbours, and the remains of antiquity in his particular locality. Going over to the common people is not easy work. Psychological barriers raised by many generations of the grimmest poverty and exploitation are strengthened by the heat, dust or mud, and unhygienic conditions. But, properly done, the task can nevertheless be exhilarating even for one whose patience has worn thin and whose joints have stiffened painfully with age. Such field-work has to be performed with critical insight, taking nothing for granted, or on faith, but without the attitude of superiority, sentimental reformism, or spurious leadership which prevents most of us from learning anything except from bad textbooks. The subtle mystic philosophies, tortuous religions, ornate literature, monuments teeming with intricate sculpture, and delicate music of India all xii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION delicate music of India all derive from the same historical pro-cess that produced the famished apathy of the villager, senseless opportunism and termite greed of the ‘cultured’ strata, sullen un-coordinated discontent among the workers, the general demoralisation, misery, squalor, and degrading superstition. The one is a result of the other, the one is the expression of the other. The most primitive implements produced1 “a meagre surplus which was expropriated by a correspondingly archaic social mechanism. This maintained a few in that cultured leisure which they took as a mark of their innate superiority to the vast majority living in degradation. It is necessary to grasp this in order to appreciate the fact that history is not a sequence of ha^Jiazard events but is made by human beings in the satisfaction of their daily needs. To be more attractive, history must reflect man’s progress at satisfying his needs in cooperation with all his fellow men, not the success of a few at satisfying them at the expense of most of their fellow men. The supposed achievements of other countries have been paid for by their down-at-heel ‘ragged- trousered philanthropists’. In India, their counterparts have not achieved so much as trousers or shoes for themselves. To maintain that history has always been made by such backward, ignorant, common people, and that they, not the high priest, glittering autocrat, war-lord, financier, or demagogue, must shape it better in future, seems presumptuous formalism. Nevertheless, it is true. The proper stady of history in a class society means analysis of the,differences between the interests of the classes on top and of the rest “of the people; it means consideration of the extent to which an emergent class had something new to contribute during its rise to power, and of the stage where it turned (or will turn) to reaction in order to preserve its vested interests. Some readers will insist that man does not live by bread alone, that history and society both depend upon the individual’s mastery of his eternal soul, that materialism destroys all human values. Unfortunately, man cannot exist without bread or the equivalent, which is necessary to keep the soul (if he can afford one) in his body. An aggregate of human beings constitutes a society when, and only when, the people PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION xiii are in some way interrelated. The essential gelation is not kinship, but much wider; namely, that developed through production and mutual exchange of commodities. The particular society is characterized by what it regards as necessary; who gathers or produces the things, by what implements ; who lives off the production of others, and by what right, divine or legal — cults and laws are social byproducts ; who owns the tools, the land, sometimes the body and soul of the producer; who controls the disposal of the surplus, and regulates quantity and form of the supply. Society is held together by bonds of production. Far from destroying human values, materialism shows how they are related to contemporary social conditions, and to the prevalent concept of value. Like value, language itsdf (without which the idealist cannot even conceive of his soul) arose from material exchange relations which led to the exchange of ideas. The philosophic individual cannot reshape a mechanised world nearer to heart’s desire by the “eternal” ideologies developed over two thousand years ago in a bullock-cart country. The class that rules India today, the paramount power, is the Indian bourgeoisie. This class has some peculiar characteristics, due primarily to the course of history. The Indian bourgeoisie is technically backward. Its production (and mentality) is overwhelmingly that of a petty bourgeoisie as yet. A glance from the air at the hopelessly inadequate communication system over the interminable spread of roadless villages suffices to prove this. Its government has a unique position as by far the greatest owner of capital assets, and a monopolist wherever it chooses to be. This seemingly absolute power is under compulsion of reconciling the real needs of the country, and its professed socialist goal, with the rapacity of both petty-bourgeois and tycoon sections of the ruling class. Finally,” this class came to power too late, in a world where the international bourgeois failure and crisis had already manifested itself. An eleventh chapter commenting on these points and their probable effect on future historical developments had reluctantly to be deleted. Official figures give the following daily food requirements per Indian adult, in ounces (bracketed figures give the quantity actually Xiv PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION available) ; Cereals 14(13.71); pulses 3(2.1); milk 10(5.5); fruits 31(1.5); vegetables 10(1.3); sugar 2(1.6); fish and meat 3(0.3); eggs (number) 1 (-); vegetable oils and ghee 2(1). (INDIA 1954, p. 295; 1955 p. .413; not found in 1956.) Recent official declarations state that Indian food consumption continues to decline. This grim tale of a diet so miserably deficient in every single particular is made still more tragic by the fact that it is a.rare Indian who can afford to buy even the food assigned to him by the statistical averages. The question is, whether this situation of a, populace doomed to hunger and disease is permanent, or whether Indian society is about to rid itself of such basic evils. How long can any country remain a democracy with this little sustenance for the average man ? The answer has to be worked out by correct thinking, for which the study of history is quite indispensable.

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