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Keynote lecture delivered at SOAS South Asia Institute/Presidency University conference on
‘Heritage and History in South Asia’, celebrating the centenary of SOAS University of London.
Monday 5 September 2016
PAST CULTURES AS THE HERITAGE OF THE PRESENT
Romila Thapar
Heritage as we all know, is that which is inherited and can refer to objects, ideas or
practices. It was once assumed that heritage is what has been handed down to us by
our ancestors, neatly packaged, and which we pass on to our descendants, still
neatly packaged. Now we know that much repackaging is done and some contents
changed, but it still continues to be thought of as ancestral. This is because it has
become central to identity and to its legitimation.
Heritage is often associated with tradition. Whereas heritage is thought of as
rather static, tradition is a more active transmission. Hence it moulds our lives more
closely. Between them they are viewed as the still point of a turning world, except
that this is a myth, since they too turn and are not still. We prefer to think that these
have been passed down relatively unchanged. However, they mutate slowly in an
evolving process that makes the mutation less discernable. But the more we seek to
understand them the more we realize that each generation changes their content or
their meaning, sometimes marginally but often more substantially. The unchanged
label gives it a seeming continuity.
More recently it has been argued that both heritage and tradition are the interplay between what we believe existed in the past and our aspirations of the present.
Exploring this inter-play, and the ideas and forms it generates, leads to the concept
of heritage taking shape, or even that a part it is being invented to serve the needs of
the present. Much that is thought of as ancient is often found to be recent – the
claim to longevity legitimizing the invention. Historians therefore, are writing about
the invention of tradition.
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Heritage and history are quite obviously inter-dependent. This is so not just in
terms of history providing a chronology and context for heritage. Both these can
change. Chronology changes less frequently. But the context that forms the essential
historical understanding of heritage can change more dramatically. This happens
when new questions are asked and historians are constantly asking new questions.
Complex cultures emerge from a multiple inheritance and their inter-face is not
permanent.
There is also the problem of selecting items of heritage. Such choices alter the
self-perception of a society. The politics that determine such selections should be
evident but are often hidden. Sacred sites can be literally reshaped. Some Buddhist
chaityas were converted into Hindu temples and some Hindu temples into mosques.
Colonial policy had a major role in selecting the heritage of modern India. Political
intervention in identifying or evaluating heritage often continues under a different
guise. The political use of the past is an ancient practice, but in our times we
recognize it more easily.
Inheritance from the elite has a more visible presence and has tended to be
kept segregated according to caste and religion. As a contrast to this were the
cultures of the majority – the non-elite, that easily and happily overlapped with each
other if they wanted to, and borrowed without hesitation, particularly in religious
matters. This distinction and dichotomy is critical. The historical study of Indian
cultures by colonial scholarship and the colonial definition of heritage, focused on
elite culture. This was the subject of historical and cultural study. The rest was
treated as ethnography and kept separate. Such ethnographic studies as well as
literature in the regional languages, are now opening up non-elite cultures. It is not
that the study of these has become politically correct but there is a realization that
cultures do not exist in isolation. It is also not just a question of being aware of the
totality but of observing the juxtaposition and inter-face between the many, however
discrete this may be. To try and hear the dialogue between the elite and the non-elite
is essential to understanding either. We now speak of history from below therefore
the heritage that comes to us from the less privileged sections of society has also to
be recognized. If the definition of history changes so does that of heritage.
Heritage can be either tangible or intangible. The tangible being the more
obvious covers a range of objects - from seals, coins, and archaeological artifacts to
monuments and to cities such as Moenjo-daro, Hampi and Fatehpur Sikri. Commonly
associated with these are icons and paintings now treated as art objects. These are
either valued and placed in museums or vulgarized as commercial commodities.
Objects associated with ideas related to science will not be mainstream heritage until
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the history of science is integrated into what we generally refer to as history. Sites
can also change their meaning when used for purposes that differ from their initial
intention. The Jantar Mantar was a heritage site as a medieval period observatory
but is now better known as the location of political demonstrations - the Hyde Park of
Delhi.
The intangible heritage is that of ideas. It is expressed in the life of cultures –
in the performance of rituals, the observance of customary and kinship laws, social
and moral values, beliefs, and orally recorded music. This brings me to the highly
significant but somewhat in-between heritage, of books and inscriptions. They are
tangible objects, but what we derive from them is, as it were, at second remove. It is
information in the abstract to which we give a context. This introduces the centrality
of language and ideas as heritage.
History in a sense makes an object into heritage. We have to ask whose
heritage does it symbolize and how. Is it the tangible evidence of upper caste
activities or is it suggestive of the generally less tangible evidence of under-privileged
social groups. The latter have little wealth or occasion to commemorate themselves
with durable objects. Whereas Hinduism and Islam build temples and mosques of
great grandeur, there is so little that is tangible and that survives in material form to
remind us of the extensive reach of popular religious movements such as those of
the Nathapanthi and Sufi sects. Yet their religious ideas swept across northern India.
A further question that we have to ask is whether we can assume that what
we view as heritage was also viewed as such at all times and by everyone? But
heritage can undergo an uneven history of prominence or amnesia at various times.
This is interestingly demonstrated in the way the perception of personalities from the
past and especially rulers, changes. Let’s take the example of how Indians in the
past two thousand years have looked upon the Mauryan emperor Ashoka.
The memory of Ashoka has had a checkered history. In the dynastic lists
given in the Puranas, composed by brahmana authors, he is just a name in the
Mauryan king-list. Other brahmanical texts remain silent. But the Buddhist texts are
fulsome in praising him with somewhat exaggerated stories about his conversion to
and support of, Buddhism. Since there was little overt dialogue between the
Brahmana and the Shramana– the Buddhist and Jaina – Ashoka remained just a
name. Modern colonial scholarship initially investigated only the Brahmanical
tradition on pre-modern India, so Ashoka continued to be unknown.
But the link to Ashoka rose and fell in earlier times as well. His edicts
explaining his thoughts on ethical values were inscribed on rock surfaces and on
pillars located all over his empire, virtually the sub-continent. They were inscribed in
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the then used script, an early form of brahmi, and in the language of the time, Prakrit.
Unfortunately, scripts have a habit of changing their forms as do languages. It would
seem that after six hundred years, these edicts probably could not be read. A Gupta
king ordered an inscription to be inscribed on the same pillar in the changed brahmi
script, and in Sanskrit. This inscription eulogized the military conquests of
Samudragupta and of his uprooting of people. These were statements endorsing a
sentiment contrary to that propagated by Ashoka.
Was this done deliberately? Was it countering the message of the earlier
king? Or was the pillar the more important object of attraction? It was a magnificent
polished sandstone pillar with a sculpted capital, placed adjacent to a stupa and
therefore revered by many people. Was it seen as the appropriate object and
location for a statement in praise of Samudragupta’s conquests? Could the earlier
script still be read? Or, did the choice of the pillar arise, as I like to think, from a
vague historical consciousness that it appeared to be important as a record of and
from the past. Did the Gupta age think that engraving the new inscription on the
ancient pillar would gain for them some historical legitimacy, even six hundred years
later?
Much later the Ashokan pillars intrigued Firuz Shah Tughlaq. But no one
knew who had erected them nor could anyone read the script. Two were shifted and
installed in his capital in Delhi despite the immense problems of transportation. The
Mughals later were equally mystified by the pillars but attracted by the mystique. The
pillar that had the two major earlier inscriptions, had also by now acquired the
multiple graffiti of local rajas. This pillar was shifted to Allahabad and erected within
the fort. The emperor Jahangir ordered his genealogy to be engraved in Persian and
in the nastaliq script on the same pillar. As an object of heritage this pillar is perhaps
historically the most impressive in India. It was used during three millennia,
employing diverse scripts and languages, and stating royal attitudes towards
fundamental values. In the nineteenth century the central question was as to who
originally erected the pillar?
The inscriptions of Ashoka were an enigma although James Prinsep had
deciphered the script in 1837. The problem was identifying the ruler who referred to
himself in the inscriptions as, devanampiya-piyadassi raja / the beloved of the gods –
the gracious king. No king-list had any such name. But in the late nineteenth century
the Ceylon Chronicles, the Dipavamsa and the Mahavamsa were read, and they
related the history of the king Ashoka of the Mauryan dynasty who had taken these
titles. This was confirmed in 1915 when an inscription was discovered authored by
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devanampiya-piyadassi raja asoka. The author of these inscriptions was Ashoka
Maurya. This ended any lingering doubts.
In the twentieth century when the contents of the edicts became known,
Ashoka was applauded as an exemplary ruler by reputed authors such as HG Wells
for his propagation of ethical values. He became an icon in the Indian national
movement for independence, associated with a message of tolerance and nonviolence. The wheel of law, taken from his pillar capital was placed on the Indian
national flag. For Nehru he was something of an exemplar.
But now again Ashoka faces the threat of exile. A century ago, a historian
had argued that Ashoka’s policy of non-violence had weakened the Mauryan empire
and opened it up to invasion by the Indo-Greeks, Shakas and Kushanas. Other
historians demonstrated that this theory was untenable. But in today’s sabre-rattling
world, some politicians have revived the argument. The Hindu Right-wing is
accusing Ashoka of having weakened the sub-continental empire, by preaching nonviolence to the point where it was unable to defend itself against subsequent foreign
invasions. Will Ashoka again be set aside?
I have tried to suggest that items of heritage be they icons or Ashokan
pillars, or the ideas in the Ashokan edicts, have no permanency as heritage. They
can be appropriated or banished, depending on what may be viewed as their
usefulness to contemporary times. This tends to be determined by those who set the
political and cultural agendas of society.
Turning to a different aspect of heritage, I would like to draw attention to the
varying perceptions that different groups have to the same category of heritage. My
example is the attitude to relics of the dead. Although it is assumed that most Indians
cremate their dead, nevertheless the rituals and relics of the dead, have been treated
in a variety of ways.
In pre-historic times we have evidence of bones subsequent to death being
buried in urns and graves. This continues to the Indus Civilization. This was strikingly
different from contemporary Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations in that there is
an absence of vast, richly decorated tombs. The Harappans buried their dead in
graves, basically in simple pits together with a few small objects. Physical attention to
the dead was not significant to Harappan religion.
Graves of any kind among items of heritage provide an immediate proximity
to the past. May I digress a little and quote my experience. I took some training in
field archaeology in order to understand the technical terms used in archaeological
reports. I was attached to a team at the site of Kalibangan, a Harappan city in
northern Rajasthan. I was initially required to excavate a grave in the cemetery area.
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After I had gone down two feet or so I began to notice some ceramic objects barely
visible beneath the soil. So I dug with immense care and soon a bowl took shape. I
drew it out gently, and held it in my hands. My thought was that the last time
someone had held this bowl, was four thousand years ago. It’s a strange feeling to
be literally so close to the past through an artifact. This can also be an aspect of
heritage.
But to return to relics. The subsequent culture of the Vedas advocates
cremation. They mention burial but associate it often with those who were not of the
Vedic culture. For the brahmana death was polluting therefore cremation was
preferred to burial. Nevertheless some ashes and relics after cremation were
collected and ritually immersed in rivers. Death implied rebirth, in the theory of karma
and samsara. All souls are reborn unless they have achieved liberation from rebirth.
One’s actions in this life determine one’s future birth. This was said to be the
theodicy of Hinduism. Yet the extensive Megalithic culture contemporary with the
Vedas, and well-established across central India and the peninsula, focused on the
grave. This enclosed human relics and was furnished with a few assorted objects.
The site of the grave was invariably impressive, marked by enormous monolithic
stones. These were brought undressed from a distance, then cut and shaped, and
placed in various formations. The grave for these societies was not just an object but
a significant statement of belief and way of life. Grave furnishings are generally
unconnected with rebirth since they are intended to ease life after death.
The Buddhists cremated their dead. In special cases, the relics were kept
after cremation and buried in the base of stupas. The relics were worshipped, a
reversal of the brahmanical attitude. Such reversals are expected among those who
consciously opposed Brahmanical orthodoxy as did the Buddhists, Jainas and a few
others. They came to be called nastikas, non-believers. Yet those brahmanas who
became serious ascetics and took to samnyasa, asceticism, were not cremated but
buried and that too in a sitting position. They maintained a difference even in death.
Among those of other castes that were memorialized were the ones who
died defending the village in a local battle or more often from cattle raiders, who
raided frequently in some areas. The defenders were commemorated in memorials
called hero-stones. These were slabs of stone with various symbols: the sun and the
moon were signs of eternity; there were some markers of the hero’s religion; he is
shown being taken to heaven to live permanently among the apsaras / the celestial
maidens, for such heroes do not suffer rebirth; and the memorial also depicted him in
action. The more elaborate hero-stones carry an inscription giving details. Just
occasionally such a hero morphs into a deity, as is thought to have happened in the
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case of the god Vitthala as an incarnation of Vishnu, a vastly popular deity in
Maharashtra.
The sati-stones of a similar form commemorate a woman having become a
sati, when she immolated herself on the funeral pyre of her husband. When satis
were deified and worshipped, these stones were placed either in a temple or in its
vicinity. Significantly in neither case are these objects of heritage described in the
Brahmanical social codes. Later in time, in the early second millennium AD a new
category of temple was quietly added to the repertoire of temple forms. This category
has not been widely discussed. It was referred to as the svarga-arohana prasada –
literally, the temple of the ascension to heaven. These were elaborate structures or a
part of a larger temple, and some had grave chambers for relics. They were built for
royalty. Was the idea perhaps adapted from the Buddhist memorials?
Islam resorted to burial. But more importantly for those that could afford it,
elaborately decorated tombs and mausoleums were introduced. Individuals were
being extolled through commemorating their death. In the Indian context were they
also touching base with the Buddhist stupas, and the ascension-to-heaven temples?
These became spectacular items of heritage. Possibly their success in encapsulating
dynastic history with artistic brilliance might have influenced others to build their
somewhat quieter versions of the same. I am referring to the chhatris, the memorials
of Rajput rulers. The memorialization of death takes many forms that mutate with
historical change. Some can be celebrating the rise of lesser social groups, others
announcing the arrival of new peoples. The architecture of these chhatris has
received attention. However, what has not been sufficiently recognized is that they
also symbolize the close relationship between Rajputs and Mughals. The
memorialization of death takes many forms that mutate with historical change. Some
can be celebrating the powerful in society, some the rise of lesser social groups, and
others announcing the arrival of new peoples.
This range of attitudes to the relics of the dead clearly indicates the many
strata of social and cultural layering. The link is often to the presence of dominant
groups although subordinate groups may also feature. Who belongs to which can
change over time as do the cultures they patronize. A single dominant pattern is
neither uniform nor eternal. Until recent times the upper levels of society were in a
better position to leave markers and records of their culture. Reading between the
lines has been one way of trying to ferret out the culture of those of lesser status who
have left no easily recognizable records. Archaeology of settlements provides some
information. Any culture is of course better understood if one can follow its
interactions with the rest of society.
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Cultures change within themselves in the course of evolving, but change
also comes from external factors. The imprint of ecology, or the technological
innovations introducing social and economic change can be crucial to the directions
taken by a society. Contact with new people is usually explained through the political
dynamics of conquest that introduces some new patterns of living. The perennial
question is how victors look upon the vanquished and vice versa. But far more
significant to the creation of cultures are the after-math of invasions in the form of
trade and migration with long-lasting defining features.
An illustration of this can perhaps be seen at the turn of the Christian era in
Northwest India with the coming of Greco- Bactrian Hellenistic forms that gave us
Gandhara art. We think of Alexander’s campaign taking Hellenistic culture to midAsia. A few new forms took root and gave shape to items of local culture. But
interestingly the major cultural impact of the campaign in India was that it opened up
even closer contact between Achaemenid Persia and Mauryan India. This led to
increased familiarity between the cultures of the two empires. The Hellenistic forms –
the Greek export variety – came in the subsequent period coinciding with a greater
amalgam of the Hellenistic and the local, as is demonstrated in Gandhara art with its
vast spread across the area.
The Buddha in sculptured form has its own story involving many facets of
heritage. There was a marked aesthetic difference between the image of the Buddha
as an assumed portrait in Gandhara in North-west India, as compared to Mathura in
the Doab, or further south in Amaravati. The difference was only too visible and led
to sharp debates among art-historians of the past century. For those who believed in
the Greek miracle as the gene of all that can be called civilized, Gandhara art was
the pinnacle of the Indian aesthetic. Then came the nationalist reaction that
dismissed it as hybrid, and alien to the Indian aesthetic. Although not central to the
debate any longer, this difference finds an echo even in some contemporary
discussion.
And the story does not end there. The Buddha image was sculpted again
later in South-east Asia, at Borobudur in Indonesia and in Cambodia. In a different
direction, it traversed Central Asia and went from Dun Huang to Lung-men in China.
Such long distance travels of the idea of an icon raises problems in our
contemporary world about the nationality of the icon – if icons can have nationalities.
Is it Indian, Indonesian or Chinese or whatever. The question raised presumes the
need to define which aspect of the icon should be attributed to which culture? In
effect this is a modern problem. It is an icon of the Buddha and for many centuries
has been looked upon as just that.
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Contacts between South Asia and South-east Asia and Central Asia were
initiated through trade but were linked to language and religion. Diverse parts of the
one traded with diverse parts of the other. This is reflected in the styles of art and
architecture especially in surviving temples. Together with the traders travelled
brahmanas and Buddhists as well as builders of structures in the style of their
homeland.
The present disjuncture was the result of colonialism. South-east Asia was
divided up between the European powers that colonized the area, each reading the
local culture in a different way. Earlier contacts were discontinued and the research
that emerged focused on the local region. The connection between what came from
where, needs to be discovered, explored and examined if the history of contacts is to
be known.
In the history of rediscovery some new aspects of the two termini of cultures
may surface. We already have an example of the diverse versions of the Ramakatha, the story of Rama. They provide insights into both the original culture and the
host culture as well as the nature of the link between them. This enables an
understanding of the cultural inter-face involved in the process.
North-west India in the early second millennium AD, was host to Turkish,
Afghan and Persian migrants from Central and Western Asia who came with new
cultural items. We tend to explain all this as the result of invasions and leave it at
that. But the flip side of invasions is that they facilitate trade and migrations, although
there are more peaceful ways of encouraging these activities. They inevitably
introduce cultural changes. This time round it was not the style of sculpture that
changed but other aspects such as adapting languages to new thoughts that came
into use together with religious beliefs and practices.
My reference is less to the coming of formal Islam, on which so much has
been written, and more to the creative and informal side of the infusion – the Sufis
and such like. Attached to their teaching was the evolution of the language that
carried the exposition of their ideas. When new ideas enter the indigenous language
there is an induction of new words, or else a new meaning is given to existing words.
A new word for God – rab – entered the Punjabi language. Derived from Arabic it had
common currency among all the religions using Punjabi. Poets and teachers of the
likes of Guru Nanak, Bulleh Shah, Waris Shah and others composed primarily, not in
Persian or Sanskrit, but in this commonly spoken language, popularizing a new
idiom. This extended to other cultural aspects, with language articulating these ideas.
As a form of heritage language reflects the ideas that have shaped it, but it also
mutates over time.
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Language and religion have been used in the past to create fixed
structures called civilizations. West Asia was home to Arabic and Islam, South Asia
to Sanskrit and Hinduism. The structures were distinct and segregated, creating their
singular and unique worlds. History and heritage were conditioned by the study of
civilizations. Slowly history revealed that the structures were porous and interdependent. Manifestations of their arts, literature, philosophy and sciences revealed
that they happily took from each other. Their uniqueness lay perhaps more in how
they reformulated knowledge from other civilizations and advanced it, rather than in
isolated discoveries. The combination of trade and language, the exchange of goods
and ideas, points to a dramatic departure from the concept of self-sufficient
civilizations.
Let me illustrate this with a significant item of heritage that has not been
properly acknowledged. I refer to the astrolabe. This was a navigational tool central
to traversing the Indian Ocean. It emerged out of the intersection of what might be
called Eurasian knowledge. Mathematicians and astronomers from locations across
Asia and in the eastern Mediterranean, exchanged information, calculations, the
experience of experiments and everything that goes into the making of knowledge.
The same category of object, central to the heritage of many cultures is therefore
inscribed in the languages of the cultures that used it locally. Understanding the
context of the astrolabe is one of the keys to understanding medieval history.
Presumably when the importance of the history of science to history is conceded, this
kind of heritage will receive greater appreciation.
This is when we recognize that our concept of civilization is more complex
than we have assumed. We have allotted neat compartments to civilizations but
there is now some rethinking about this model. Civilization has been defined by at
least three basic components – territory, language and religion. Territories were
demarcated. India referred to the territory of British India. The language and religion
were those of the elite – Sanskrit and Hinduism. But even these few components are
problematic, leave alone the ones that I haven’t mentioned. Do civilizations have
frontiers and if so where do we place them? Do we include parts of South-east Asia
or of Central Asia when speaking of Indian civilization, where both the languages and
the religions from India became, for a sizeable period, essential parts of the host
cultures? Or should we concern ourselves with seeing these as ways of diversifying
a civilization and allowing it a virtually autonomous articulation?
Should civilization be viewed from the heartland as we like to do – in this
instance the middle Ganges plain or North-western India or the Tamil region? But
heartlands are known to shift. Cartographic boundaries enclose and isolate lands.
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But the view from the rim, the frontier zones, is always more expansive, looking both
inwards as well as outwards. We rush to apply labels of indigenous and foreign to
various peoples, but we don’t stop to ask whether they were seen as such in past
times, or whether they also saw themselves as belonging to these categories.
Did the rulers of Cambodia when they appropriated the Ramayana and the
Mahabharata, think of these as alien culture? Indian religions travelled to distant
places over many centuries. Why was it that Buddhism caught the fancy of those
living in central and east Asia, especially at a time when it was declining in India ?
The concept of civilization does raise some problems. Heritage when associated
with civilization is not static. We should perhaps investigate what has been replaced
or discarded in this believed-to-be-unchanging continuity.
Let me conclude by leaving you with some questions that need discussion.
I have tried to show that heritage and history are closely intertwined. We think
heritage is permanent but it need not be. The interpretation of heritage is open to
change. New ways of looking at the one, makes an impact on the other. Fuller
evidence of either would inevitably alter the emphases of our perceptions. Where
heritage is invented we need to know why and how. Since we select our heritage are
we aware of its context and why we are selecting it? And further, the even more
pertinent question, who is doing the selecting? What is the nature of the claims that
are being made and the legitimacy that is being sought by recourse to both heritage
and history? This might reveal an even more complex network of heritage links with
history and their meaning, more complex than we are currently aware of.
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