While still lamenting C-bag’s philistine ways, I was thinking of the answer to the question of “What do historians do?” and it struck me that I know so little about the process of how history is compiled. At the time, I had filed in my mental cupboard somewhere the wish to come back and learn about that process. My curiosity was finally addressed by Charles Allen’s Ashoka.
For someone who now holds such a prominent place in the pantheon of our past rulers, Ashoka was relatively unknown in our mainstream culture till nearly the beginning of the 19th century. Ashoka describes the painstaking incremental process of fitting together discoveries that eventually converged into the view we now have of that complex emperor. This book is as much about Ashoka as the historical process. For me it was fascinating how multi-disciplinary in nature History really is; numismatics, archaeology, theology, linguistics, all come to the fore. Above all, I found the palaeography of Pali to be the most remarkable aspect of the unlocking of Ashoka’s story. As we developed our understanding of Pali (along with the deciphering of the Brahmi script and the Prakrit language) our picture of Ashoka and his ideas kept getting richer. There were all sorts of personalities that played a part; travellers from China, kings of Sri Lanka, monks of Tibet. Above all, our white masters took time out between all the exploitation for the pursuit of knowledge about a foreign country. I’m really grateful they did that.
In a country as big as ours I’m certain there are still pieces of the jigsaw waiting to add details to the stories we know. Think about it; millennia of unbroken civilisation! Every inch of our current land most have a story or dozen to tell. That brings me to the tweet I mentioned at the top of the post. I’m just not sure enough of us are interested in unearthing them, or if enough of our kids even know it is an option to be a historian, and even when they do, if there are avenues to pursue that vocation. We’re all too busy trying to get into IITs or sweating it out in B-schools turning ourselves into anonymous generalists. I do hope that once we get into higher income brackets as a nation we’ll find the inspiration to devote a greater proportion of our resources in learning more about our incredible past.
In a country as big as ours I’m certain there are still pieces of the jigsaw waiting to add details to the stories we know. Think about it; millennia of unbroken civilisation! Every inch of our current land most have a story or dozen to tell. That brings me to the tweet I mentioned at the top of the post. I’m just not sure enough of us are interested in unearthing them, or if enough of our kids even know it is an option to be a historian, and even when they do, if there are avenues to pursue that vocation. We’re all too busy trying to get into IITs or sweating it out in B-schools turning ourselves into anonymous generalists. I do hope that once we get into higher income brackets as a nation we’ll find the inspiration to devote a greater proportion of our resources in learning more about our incredible past.
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