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Reviews
| India: The Definitive History, by D. R. SarDesai. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2008. 512 pages. $55.00, paper.
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| Damodar R. SarDesai, Professor Emeritus, Department of History, University of California-Los Angeles, has made the bold claim of presenting the definitive history of India, one of the most ancient and complex civilizations in the world. SarDesai's grand title and claim notwithstanding, the book falls woefully short of its stated aim for three main reasons—its factual errors, its omission of several important Indian dynasties and their contributions, and in its interpretation of Indian history. |
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The factual errors begin right from the very start. On page 2, the author mentions that the name "India" is derived from the Greek word Indos, from Hapta Hindu in Greek, which is the Greek equivalent of the Rigvedic-Sanskrit term Saptasindhava for the land watered by the river Sindhu/Indus and its tributaries. However, Hapta Hindu is in fact Persian (and not Greek as claimed by the author) and first appears in the Avesta, a near-contemporary of the Rigveda. In being transferred to the Greeks from the Persians, the "h" sound in Hindu (the Persian equivalent of Sindhu), was dropped and emerged in the still corrupted form Indos. Moving on, the author greatly exaggerates the antiquity of the Indus Valley Civilization by tracing its origins around 6000–5000 BCE, and further claims that its urban culture flourished from 2600–1300 BCE. He also makes an unconvincing case for this civilization to be dubbed the Indus-Saraswati Civilization. Most scholars trace the beginnings of this civilization to mid-fourth millennium BCE and date the end of its high urban culture around 1900 BCE. After giving an additional six centuries to the urban Indus Valley Civilization, the author then makes an emphatic claim for the autochthonous origins of the highly controversial Aryans of Indian history. Again he is less than convincing here for he does not engage the Harvard Sanskritist Michael Witzel, the leading proponent of the non-Indian origins of the Aryans. In fact, Witzel does not even merit a footnote in SarDesai's analysis. |
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Later, on page 68, SarDesai mentions that Alexander the Great was called Sikandar in the Indian annals. Interestingly, Indian historical sources are silent on Alexander's Indian campaign, and view him as one of the many nameless conquerors/raiders of this part of India. Alexander was introduced to the Indians only after the advent of Islam in the subcontinent, and by his Islamic name, Sikandar. Speaking of the "Indianization" of the invaders of India—Greeks, Parthians, Scythians, and Kushanas—between 200 BCE and 200 CE, the author mentions that all of them accepted Hinduism and Vedic culture (p. 77). What he fails to mention is that Buddhism was as popular (if not more) among these foreign peoples who were Indianized. In fact, the Indianized Greeks and the Kushanas are believed to have played an important role in the transmission of Buddhism and Buddhist ideas outside India. Finally, there is an inadequate account of the decline of Buddhism in India itself (pp. 59–60). While this remains an under-researched issue of Indian history, there is some evidence of violent Brahminical assault on Buddhism in India (Gail Omvedt, Buddhism in India: Challenging Brahmanism and Caste); however, the author makes no mention of this in his study. Among other significant omissions in SarDesai's account is the absence of any significant account of the Chola dynasty of southern India and its important contributions to Indian art. Similarly, the Rashtrakutas merit only a few cursory statements while the Gurjara-Pratiharas are absent from the author's account. |
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The author provides very little understanding of the new process of state formation in the Indian subcontinent with the advent of Islamic political power. The administrative procedures of the Delhi Sultans and the Mughals, including iqta (territorial assignments) and muqti (frequent transfers of land holders) systems were also copied in a modified version by the Hindu polities like the Vijaynagar Empire in the south. The author fails to mention this in his section on Vijaynagar administration (pp. 152–153). Most controversially, the author claims the existence of ample written evidence confirming the destruction of "several thousand" Hindu temples all over India by India's Muslim rulers and/or their subordinates (or their conversion into mosques, p. 375). Interestingly, the author cites the noted historian Richard Eaton to make this claim. However, he cites Eaton's study on the Sufis of Bijapur here. This is not Eaton's noted study on temple destruction in pre-modern India. Eaton's essay on temple destruction and Indo-Muslim states in his book Essays on Islam and Indian History identifies only "eighty instances of temple desecration whose historicity appears reasonably certain." |
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Finally, it is not clear why the author spends one entire chapter on independent India's foreign policy but only two pages (pp. 95–96) on the transmission of India's culture to Southeast Asia during the first millennium and the early centuries of the second millennium CE. The absence of a significant treatment of India's historical interaction with Southeast Asia from this study is all the more surprising given that SarDesai is also a historian of Southeast Asia. Similarly, SarDesai's study lacks any detailed description of India's historical interaction with, and the transmission of Buddhism to China. Curiously for a work on history, contemporary foreign policy is highlighted at the expense of India's significant historical relations with foreign lands. |
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One leaves SarDesai's book wondering if a civilization that allows for multiple paths to the ultimate reality can ever have a definitive history! |
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| Indiana University-Bloomington. |
Manjeet S Pardesi |
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