Romila Thapar
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 267594 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Romila Thapar |
| PRENOMES | Romila |
| SOBRENOME | Thapar |
| ASSINATURA | THAPAR R |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Jawaharlal Nehru University |
| VERIFICADO | Não |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 60 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 221 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 60 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1960 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2021 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
Migrants in the Creation of Cultures
Migrations have had a role in forming the economies and cultures of practically all countries. Their nature and effects must be studied objectively. In her lecture delivered in October 2020 in memory of Professor Satish Chandra, Professor Romila Thapar discusses the nature and effects of three migrations, distant from each other in time, viz. the Aryan, (second millennium BC), the Kuṣāṇa (early centuries AD) and Arab (tenth century onward). These…
Revisiting Max Weber's Religion of India
Weber's study of the religion of India, includes his views on the state in India and caste. The discussion is based as expected, on the information and readings of these themes by colonial administrators of the nineteenth century and by scholars, largely European, who had worked on India during the same period. Using these writings as sources, Weber attempted to apply his thesis from European history on the link between the Protestant ethic and t…
Talking History
Talking History records a series of conversations that centre on the writing of history, and especially early Indian history, as evident in the works of Romila Thapar. She has focused on the study of early India but is also interested in the link between the past and the present. Whereas she recognizes the importance of analysing texts of ancient India for information on early history, which she does in her various studies of the past, she is als…
Talking history
Lineage and Kingship
In speaking about her initial work on the Mauryan king Ashoka, Romila Thapar discusses the juxtaposition between the ethical and the political in Indian history. In exploring the meaning of Buddhism for those times she argues for a notion of dissent being implicit in such philosophies that later came to be grouped together as the Shramana dharma in opposition to the Brahmana dharma . The aim of renouncers was to propagate and adopt an alternate k…
The Historian and the Epic
The discussion in this section focuses on how a historian, who is a rationalist and follows a chronological sequence of events in history, analyses the assumptions of epic literature where historicity is of little consequence. Thapar explains that it is not necessary to prove that the events described in the epics are historically accurate, but clarifies that the historian can derive an understanding of the kind of societies represented in the ep…
Banning Books
Additional informationNotes on contributorsRomila ThaparRomila Thapar is a Professor Emeritus in History at Jawaharlal Nehru Univeristy, New Delhi
The Past Before Us
The claim, often made, that India—uniquely among civilizations—lacks historical writing distracts us from a more pertinent question, according to Romila Thapar: how to recognize the historical sense of societies whose past is recorded in ways very different from European conventions. In The Past Before Us, a distinguished scholar of ancient India guides us through a panoramic survey of the historical traditions of North India. Thapar reveals a de…
Past Before Us
The Decline of the Mauryas
This chapter traces the history of the decline of the Mauryas and investigates the reasons behind the collapse of the Mauryan dynasty. One of the more obvious reasons for the decline was the succession of weak kings after Aśoka Maurya. A further and immediate cause was the partition of the empire into two, the eastern part under Daśaratha and the western part under Kunāla. This chapter suggests that the causes of the decline of the Mauryas must i…
The Later Mauryas
This chapter focuses on the Mauryan rulers that followed Aśoka Maurya. It explains that the years after the death of Aśoka saw the end of the Mauryan dynasty as a political force in India. While the Mauryan rulers continued to rule for another half-century, the dynasty collapsed completely in the early part of the second century BC. and gave way to the Śungas. After the death of Aśoka around 233–232 BC., the empire was divided into the western an…
Aśoka and the Decline of the Mauryas
This volume is about the history of the decline of the Mauryan dynasty in ancient India and the reign of Aśoka Maurya. It describes the sources of information for this study and Aśoka's early life, and his accession to the throne. It discusses the social and economic activity, internal administration, and foreign relations in Mauryan India and evaluates the role of Aśoka's policy of Dhamma in bringing social order. It highlights the weaknesses of…
Inscriptions as Historical Writing in Early India
This chapter discusses the development of inscriptions as historical writing in early India, covering the period from third century bc to sixth century ad. The earliest deciphered inscriptions are the edicts of the Mauryan emperor Aśoka dating to the third century bc. These edicts as royal proclamations are in three languages—Prākrit, Greek, and Aramaic—and in four scripts: brāhmī, kharoṣţhī, Greek, and Aramaic.
Humanism in the Era of Globalization
The History Debate and School Textbooks in India
Journal Article The History Debate and School Textbooks in India: a Personal Memoir Get access Romila Thapar Romila Thapar Romila Thapar is Emeritus Professor of History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and specializes in the early history of India. Among her publications the one of most interest to the general reader is, Early India: From the Origins to the Thirteenth Century (2002). Search for other works by this author on: Oxford …
Secularism, History, and Contemporary Politics in India
The Mauryan empire in early India
Journal Article The Mauryan empire in early India Get access Romila Thapar Romila Thapar Jawaharlal Nehru University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Historical Research, Volume 79, Issue 205, August 2006, Pages 287–305, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2281.2006.00394.x Published: 21 July 2006
Politics and the rewriting of history in India
Perceiving the Forest
La quête d'une tradition historique l'inde ancienne
Les 18eet 19esiècles en Europe ont constitué une période où l'histoire s'est affirmée en tant que discipline. On argumenta que chaque discipline avait une histoire, dont la compréhension était un des moyens de systématiser le savoir. C'est pourquoi, inévitablement, dans la rencontre coloniale entre l'Europe et l'Asie, il y eut une quête des histoires indigènes qui fourniraient un mode de compréhension de ces cultures nouvelles et différentes. Cep…
Time as a Metaphor of History: Early India
Romila Thapar examines the link between time and history through the use of cyclic and linear concepts of time. While the former occurs in a cosmological context, the latter of found in familiar historical forms. The author argues for the existence of historical consciousness in early India, on the evidence of early texts.
Time as a metaphor of history
Historical Time
This chapter discusses the use of eras as well as dating by regnal years, which gained currency simultaneously in astronomy and cosmology. The use of regnal years as marker go back to the earliest historical inscriptions, the edicts of the Mauryan emperor Aśoka, issued in the third century BC. At the functional level, regnal years introduced more precise dating in official documents. More importantly, it helped separate cosmological time reckonin…
Communalism and the writing of Indian history
Cultural Pasts
This volume presents a collection of papers and lectures by one of India's foremost historians on a range of subjects pertaining to early Indian history. Published in various journals, their collective publication should make these writings more accessible to Professor Thapar's many readers.
Imagined Religious Communities? Ancient History and the Modern Search for a Hindu Identity
My choice of subject for this lecture arose from what I think might have been a matter of some interest to Kingsley Martin; as also from my own concern that the interplay between the past and contemporary times requires a continuing dialogue between historians working on these periods. Such a dialogue is perhaps more pertinent to post-colonial societies where the colonial experience changed the framework of the comprehension of the past from what…
The Theory of Aryan Race and India
The invention of an Aryan race in nineteenth century Europe was to have, as we all know, far-reaching consequences on world history. Its application to European societies culminated in the ideology of Nazi Germany. Another sequel was that it became foundational to the interpretation of early Indian history and there have been attempts at a literal application of the theory to Indian society. Some European scholars now describe it as a nineteenth …
Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas
Aśoka and the Decline of the Mauryas
This volume is about the history of the decline of the Mauryan dynasty in ancient India and the reign of Aśoka Maurya. It describes the sources of information for this study and Aśoka's early life, and his accession to the throne. It discusses the social and economic activity, internal administration, and foreign relations in Mauryan India and evaluates the role of Aśoka's policy of Dhamma in bringing social order. It highlights the weaknesses of…
The Image of the Barbarian in Early India
The concept of the barbarian in early India arises out of the curious situation of the arrival of Indo-Aryan-speaking nomadic pastoralists in northern India who came into contact with the indigenous population (possibly the remnants of the urban civilization of the Indus) and regarded them as barbarians. The earliest distinction made by the Aryan speakers was a linguistic distinction and, to a smaller extent, a physical distinction. The Indo-Arya…
Communalism and the Historical Legacy
Black gold
(1992). Black gold: South Asia and the roman maritime trade. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies: Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 1-27
Perceiving the Forest
The Tyranny of Labels
The Political Abuse of History
The householder and the renouncer in the Brahmanical and Buddhist traditions
Interpretations of Ancient Indian History
Despite the stereotypes of unchanging and her unhistorical religions and peoples, the historical writing on ancient India goes back for more than two centuries and exhibits an instructive series of changes in interpretation. The historical writings produced by European scholars, beginning in the eighteenth century, were formulated in terms of the ideological attitudes then dominant in Europe, and naturally these were significantly different from …
The History Debate and School Textbooks in India
Journal Article The History Debate and School Textbooks in India: a Personal Memoir Get access Romila Thapar Romila Thapar Romila Thapar is Emeritus Professor of History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and specializes in the early history of India. Among her publications the one of most interest to the general reader is, Early India: From the Origins to the Thirteenth Century (2002). Search for other works by this author on: Oxford …
The Mauryan empire in early India
Journal Article The Mauryan empire in early India Get access Romila Thapar Romila Thapar Jawaharlal Nehru University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Historical Research, Volume 79, Issue 205, August 2006, Pages 287–305, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2281.2006.00394.x Published: 21 July 2006
Religion and the Social Order
Ideology and the interpretation of early Indian history
It is sometimes said that the interpretations of the ancient periods of history have little historiographical interest, since they refer to times too distant for an ideological concern to have much meaning for contemporary society, and that the sparseness of the evidence does not provide much margin for ideological debate. This view would not, however, be valid for the interpretation of early Indian history, where both the colonial experience and…
Genealogical Patterns as Perceptions of the Past
Cultural Transaction and Early India
A VARIETY of beliefs about our past have simmered over the last couple of hundred years. Some among them have come to be accepted as part of our cultural tradition and have been accorded the status of tradition. It may be argued that this happens when societies are searching for identity and the pronouncements of historians, particularly of cultural historians, come to be accepted as axioms. It becomes necessary therefore for historians to pause …
Magic, Reason and Experience
Aśoka and the Decline of the Mauryas
Revisiting Max Weber's Religion of India
Weber's study of the religion of India, includes his views on the state in India and caste. The discussion is based as expected, on the information and readings of these themes by colonial administrators of the nineteenth century and by scholars, largely European, who had worked on India during the same period. Using these writings as sources, Weber attempted to apply his thesis from European history on the link between the Protestant ethic and t…
Banning Books
Additional informationNotes on contributorsRomila ThaparRomila Thapar is a Professor Emeritus in History at Jawaharlal Nehru Univeristy, New Delhi
La quête d'une tradition historique l'inde ancienne
Les 18eet 19esiècles en Europe ont constitué une période où l'histoire s'est affirmée en tant que discipline. On argumenta que chaque discipline avait une histoire, dont la compréhension était un des moyens de systématiser le savoir. C'est pourquoi, inévitablement, dans la rencontre coloniale entre l'Europe et l'Asie, il y eut une quête des histoires indigènes qui fourniraient un mode de compréhension de ces cultures nouvelles et différentes. Cep…
Human Ecology in India Some Historical Perspectives
Before the spread of extensive settled cultivation, the Indian subcontinent would have been inhabited by territorial hunter–gatherers and shifting cultivators with cultural traditions of prudent resource use. The disruption of closed material cycles by export of agricultural produce to centres of non-agricultural population would have weakened these traditions. Indeed, the fire-based sacrificial ritual and extensive agricultural settlements might…
Rama-Legends and Rama Reliefs in Indonesia
The work, first established in 1925 in german[Der indische kulturkreis einzeldarstellungen], has been considered a classic, but has not been easily accessible to the english reading public The publication of the english translation will open up many new vistas of exploration. The author's concern was not restricted to the archaeological features of this group of temples, but went further into the interpretation and indentification of the historic…
Aśoka and Buddhism
Journal Article AŚOKA AND BUDDHISM Get access Romila Thapar Romila Thapar School of Oriental and African StudiesLondon Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 18, Issue 1, November 1960, Pages 43–51, https://doi.org/10.1093/past/18.1.43 Published: 01 November 1960
Aśoka and the Decline of the Mauryas
Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas
Interpretations of Ancient Indian History
Despite the stereotypes of unchanging and her unhistorical religions and peoples, the historical writing on ancient India goes back for more than two centuries and exhibits an instructive series of changes in interpretation. The historical writings produced by European scholars, beginning in the eighteenth century, were formulated in terms of the ideological attitudes then dominant in Europe, and naturally these were significantly different from …
The Image of the Barbarian in Early India
The concept of the barbarian in early India arises out of the curious situation of the arrival of Indo-Aryan-speaking nomadic pastoralists in northern India who came into contact with the indigenous population (possibly the remnants of the urban civilization of the Indus) and regarded them as barbarians. The earliest distinction made by the Aryan speakers was a linguistic distinction and, to a smaller extent, a physical distinction. The Indo-Arya…
(A Possible Identification of Meluhha, Dilmun and Makan*)
1 A POSSIBLE IDENTIFICATION OF MELUHHA, DILMUN AND MAKAN*) BY ROMILA THAPAR (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)1) The identifications of Dilmun, Meluhha and Makan have been subject to considerable controversy. Recently however some consen- sus seems to have developed. Meluhha, it has been forcefully argued by Leemans in more than one place, was probably the western sea-board *) [Up to now, the relations between Mesopotamia and the countries …
A Possible Identification of Meluhha, Dilmun and Makan
Clearing the Mists of Antiquity
Magic, Reason and Experience
Magic, Reason and Experience
Dissent and Protest in the Early Indian Tradition
For many decades now it has been maintained that Indian civilization has shown an adsence of dissent and protest. This has become so axiomatic on the Indian past that those who have occasionally questioned it have been labelled as anti-Indian. Such a view stems from a nationalistic over-simplification of Indian society as a vision of harmonious social relations in a land of plenty. Superimposed on this were the preconceptions of idealist philosop…
The householder and the renouncer in the Brahmanical and Buddhist traditions
Ideology and the interpretation of early Indian history
It is sometimes said that the interpretations of the ancient periods of history have little historiographical interest, since they refer to times too distant for an ideological concern to have much meaning for contemporary society, and that the sparseness of the evidence does not provide much margin for ideological debate. This view would not, however, be valid for the interpretation of early Indian history, where both the colonial experience and…
The Dravidian Hypothesis for the Identification of Meluhha, Dilmun and Makan
Où va l'histoire
Milenarismo, religión y sociedad en la India antigua
The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan
Légitimation politique et filiation
La légitimation par le recours aux mythes d'origine et aux généalogies est un fait couramment observé dans l'accession au pouvoir des familles régnantes. Dans le sous-continent indien on le remarque tout particulièrement à partir de la fin du premier millénaire de notre ère. Nous voudrions tenter ici de décrire et d'analyser ce processus. Quand surviennent des changements historiques importants, une procédure de légitimation s'impose, qui requier…
A Response to Professor A.M. Shah
From Lineage to State
Cultural Transaction and Early India
A VARIETY of beliefs about our past have simmered over the last couple of hundred years. Some among them have come to be accepted as part of our cultural tradition and have been accorded the status of tradition. It may be argued that this happens when societies are searching for identity and the pronouncements of historians, particularly of cultural historians, come to be accepted as axioms. It becomes necessary therefore for historians to pause …
Religion and the Social Order
Imagined Religious Communities? Ancient History and the Modern Search for a Hindu Identity
My choice of subject for this lecture arose from what I think might have been a matter of some interest to Kingsley Martin; as also from my own concern that the interplay between the past and contemporary times requires a continuing dialogue between historians working on these periods. Such a dialogue is perhaps more pertinent to post-colonial societies where the colonial experience changed the framework of the comprehension of the past from what…
Human Ecology in India Some Historical Perspectives
Before the spread of extensive settled cultivation, the Indian subcontinent would have been inhabited by territorial hunter–gatherers and shifting cultivators with cultural traditions of prudent resource use. The disruption of closed material cycles by export of agricultural produce to centres of non-agricultural population would have weakened these traditions. Indeed, the fire-based sacrificial ritual and extensive agricultural settlements might…
Human Ecology in India Some Historical Perspectives
History (38 obras) · Political science (27 obras) · Law (19 obras) · Philosophy (18 obras) · Ancient history (17 obras) · Politics (16 obras) · Sociology (16 obras) · Geography (15 obras) · History (15 obras) · Indian and Buddhist Studies (15 obras)