Introduction

• One of the positive results of the British conquest and unification of India was the recovery of ancient Indian history using modern historiography.
• The Hindu had a vague consciousness of the antiquity of India’s culture, often exaggerating it, but lacked a genuine historical consciousness.
• The task of reconstructing India’s lost history was taken up by Orientalists or Indologists.
• In the absence of genuine historical texts, the reconstruction relied on literature and various archaeological finds, such as inscriptions, coins, monuments, and sculptures.

Influences behind Indological Quest

• Modern Indian historiography began with the writings of the scholar-administrators of the English East India Company.
• David Kopf suggests that these men were influenced by the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment.
• The Company servants, like William Jones and Henry Colebrooke, were products of the intellectual and cultural milieu of the time, similar to figures like Voltaire and Gibbon.
• The Orientalists subscribed to the Enlightenment view that differences among large human groups, such as between Europeans and Asians, are due to custom and culture, not nature.
• This view promoted historical and cultural relativism, which led to:
  • Sweet tolerance and high regard for non-European peoples.
  • A positive appreciation of non-European histories and cultures.
• Voltaire believed there was a widespread civilization in Mesopotamia and that India and China had invented many arts before Europe.
• The impact of the European Enlightenment was combined with the influence of European Romanticism, which gave non-European civilizations (like Egyptian, Chinese, Indian, Persian, and Arabic) an aura of sanctity and value.
• Romanticism fostered an interest in distant races, societies, civilizations, and historical epochs.
• The Orientalist interest in ancient India was a product of these influences.
• The establishment of British rule in India coincided with the rise of scientific historical reconstruction in Europe.
• The Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century introduced a critical attitude in the treatment of historical sources, which influenced the Enlightenment approach.