While there was no historical awareness in pre-modern India in the modern sense of history, many genealogies of medieval kings (including the Bhosales of Maharashtra) begin with the coronation of Yudhishthira, and so they are treating the epic and puranic lists as historical in their own understanding of history.

Madhav Deshpande


On Sun, Jul 13, 2014 at 11:22 AM, Bijlert, V.A. van <v.a.van.bijlert@vu.nl> wrote:
Do you know of any other source in the nineteenth and early twentieth century that Hindu propagandists could have used? Is there any early pre-modern or even pre-islamic discussion in Indian thought about the Mahabharata and Ramayana as accurate depictions of historical facts?

Dr. Victor A. van Bijlert

Associate professor Religious Studies

Department of Philosophy of Religion and Comparative Study of Religions

Faculty of Theology, VU University

De Boelelaan 1105, NL-1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands

v.a.van.bijlert@vu.nl

+31613184203

From: Howard Resnick [hr@ivs.edu]
Sent: Sunday, July 13, 2014 1:49 PM
To: Bijlert, V.A. van
Cc: Indology List
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Interview with the new ICHR Chairman

Can we really attribute to modern Christian influence the Hindu belief in Mahabharata and Ramayana as sacred history, apart from the many other meanings of the texts?


On Jul 13, 2014, at 7:43 AM, Bijlert, V.A. van <v.a.van.bijlert@vu.nl> wrote:

It seems to me there is a task for hermeneutics rather than pure philological indology. We are dealing with rather simplistic views of what the Mahabharata and Ramayana (and other puranas as well?) represent. The idea that these texts are historical seems to derive from the rather fundamentalist evangelical christian view of the Bible as containing undiluted historical truth. Hindus since the nineteenth century were confronted with this view propounded by missionaries and as a reaction claimed that their own Sanskrit texts were also historical. In christian hermeneutics and Biblical philology as indeed in theology such simplistic historical views have long been discarded. But apparently not so among some Hindus with regard to epics and the puranas.
Victor van Bijlert

 

Dr. Victor A. van Bijlert
Associate professor Religious Studies
Department of Philosophy of Religion and Comparative Study of Religions
Faculty of Theology, VU University
De Boelelaan 1105, NL-1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
_______________________________________________
INDOLOGY mailing list
INDOLOGY@list.indology.info
http://listinfo.indology.info


_______________________________________________
INDOLOGY mailing list
INDOLOGY@list.indology.info
http://listinfo.indology.info



--
Madhav M. Deshpande
Professor of Sanskrit and Linguistics
Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
202 South Thayer Street, Suite 6111
The University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1608, USA