I agree with you on the source of 19th and 20th century influences on Hindu propagandists and their theories of shastric historicity. Prior to this, faithful Vaishnavas, for example, did not have “scientific” historiography on their radar as they do in modern times. Thus the notion that itihasa is indeed history developed in other ways in pre-modern times. 

I will cite merely one example, Madhva’s Mahabharata-tatparya-nirnaya (13c), in which he states (2.3-4) that the Mahabharata text available to him is rife with corruption — interpolations, extrapolations, and transpositions of text. Yet he accepts the basic Mahabharata story as real history, in all its supernatural abundance.

Best,
Howard

On 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
+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
+31613184203
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