Textures of Time: Writing History in South India 1600-1800 Hardcover - 2002

From the publisher

Along with the clock and the railroad, did the British colonists bring the questionable gift of history to India? Is it true that historical consciousness did not exist in India before its conquest by the British at the end of the nineteenth century, and that the more pristine South India in particular was blessed with an organic, holistic, untainted, child-like temporality? Generations of Western writers have claimed this to be true: that Southern Indians in pre-colonial times were indifferent to historical fact, and approached their past unsystematically at best, through myth, legend, and story. Nearly a thousand years ago, the great scholar Al-Biruni complained that, unfortunately, the Hindus do not pay much attention to the historical order of things. They are very careless in relating the chronological succession of kings, and when pressed for information...invariably take to tale-telling. Until now this has been the received wisdom of the West, repeated with little variation by post-colonial historians. Textures of Time sets out not merely to disprove that idea, but to demonstrate through a brilliant blend of storytelling and scholarship the complex forms of history that we