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What China and India Once Were: The Pasts the May Shape the Global Future
Ed, Sheldon Pollock and Benjamin Elman
New York: Columbia University Press
2018.
Sheldon Pollock has waded into far too many controversies in India, and I must say that his interventions have served no purpose whatsoever except to distract people from the seminal contribution he made to the study of Indian Literary Culture and History in his Language of the Gods in the World of Men. Unfortunately, Sheldon Pollock has become a highly divisive public figure and his broadsides against India and its politics are not his primary call for attention. He is a distinguished scholar and the book edited by him and Benjamin Elman are important interventions in the study of the histories and pasts of China and India.
China and India share a common historical trajectory. Both were highly sophisticated civilizations with a long tradition of scholarship: Mandarin in the case of China and Sanskrit in the case of India. Both were victims of foreign conquest and both civilizations had to deal with questions of political legitimacy, administrative control, protecting the frontiers. While China realized quite early that the Steppes of Central Asia posed a considerable challenge to the stability of the Middle Kingdom and constructed the Great Wall as a physical barrier against invasion, Indian rulers unfortunately had no such wisdom. India was easy to invade as the path to the Gangetic Plain was open to any invader who crossed the Hindu Kush Mountains. China dealt with its perennial problem of devastating floods by constructing the Grand Canal which connected the Yellow River with the Yangtze River, running across China for a length of more than 1800 kilometers. Remarkably this waterway was completed as early as the Tang Period , in the 9th century. Significantly, the new capital Beijing was now accessible to the grain growing areas of southern and central China. Indian dynasties hardly encouraged any construction of comparable social utility and value. The Mughals the contemporaries of the Ching and earlier the Ming were content building tombs and the Timurid rulers though blessed with both curiosity and insight did not attempt anything quite so spectacular. Obviously, there are historical reasons for the difference.
The book reviewed herein looks at a variety of cultural practices from a comparative perspective. Flora and Fauna and its social value in China and India form an interesting part of the first chapter. The elephant became extinct in China fairly early in its history. whereas in India it flourishes until this day. Though none of the rulers seem to have had a conscious conservation policy, India attitudes towards nature was far more reverential than in China. Long distance trade was encouraged at least till the end of the Ming Era. In India, the long coast line spawned a range of communities which specialized in long distance trade: the Kutchi merchants and the Chettiyars come to ones mind immediately.
The advent of modernity both in India and China are beset with both conceptual and historiographical issues. The periodization derived from western perceptions defy smooth transition both in the case of India and China. It is now recognized that both these Asian giants are now re-entering the Global Economy and if Sheldon Pollock is to be believed on their own terms. China has completely transformed its economy while India still struggles with the age old issues of caste hierarchies social problems and of course poverty. China has succeeded in areas in which India has failed miserably. The One Party system seems to have helped China and India's raucous rowdy democracy has been a drag on the energies of the nation. Perhaps the time has come to rethink the developmental paradifms embraced by these two Nations.
One point on which the book is extremely insightful is the History and its uses in both these countries. China developed a strong tradition of writing Local and Dynastic History from the early Han Dynasty. In India, Historiography did not make much headway until the arrival of the Turks who brought with them their own models of Historical texts. Perhaps the lack of critical thought except in the speculative areas of Linguistics and Philosophy may have inhibited the development of Historical ideas in India.
This is a good book and policy makers interested in India and China must read it.
What China and India Once Were: The Pasts the May Shape the Global Future
Ed, Sheldon Pollock and Benjamin Elman
New York: Columbia University Press
2018.
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Sheldon Pollock has waded into far too many controversies in India, and I must say that his interventions have served no purpose whatsoever except to distract people from the seminal contribution he made to the study of Indian Literary Culture and History in his Language of the Gods in the World of Men. Unfortunately, Sheldon Pollock has become a highly divisive public figure and his broadsides against India and its politics are not his primary call for attention. He is a distinguished scholar and the book edited by him and Benjamin Elman are important interventions in the study of the histories and pasts of China and India.
China and India share a common historical trajectory. Both were highly sophisticated civilizations with a long tradition of scholarship: Mandarin in the case of China and Sanskrit in the case of India. Both were victims of foreign conquest and both civilizations had to deal with questions of political legitimacy, administrative control, protecting the frontiers. While China realized quite early that the Steppes of Central Asia posed a considerable challenge to the stability of the Middle Kingdom and constructed the Great Wall as a physical barrier against invasion, Indian rulers unfortunately had no such wisdom. India was easy to invade as the path to the Gangetic Plain was open to any invader who crossed the Hindu Kush Mountains. China dealt with its perennial problem of devastating floods by constructing the Grand Canal which connected the Yellow River with the Yangtze River, running across China for a length of more than 1800 kilometers. Remarkably this waterway was completed as early as the Tang Period , in the 9th century. Significantly, the new capital Beijing was now accessible to the grain growing areas of southern and central China. Indian dynasties hardly encouraged any construction of comparable social utility and value. The Mughals the contemporaries of the Ching and earlier the Ming were content building tombs and the Timurid rulers though blessed with both curiosity and insight did not attempt anything quite so spectacular. Obviously, there are historical reasons for the difference.
The book reviewed herein looks at a variety of cultural practices from a comparative perspective. Flora and Fauna and its social value in China and India form an interesting part of the first chapter. The elephant became extinct in China fairly early in its history. whereas in India it flourishes until this day. Though none of the rulers seem to have had a conscious conservation policy, India attitudes towards nature was far more reverential than in China. Long distance trade was encouraged at least till the end of the Ming Era. In India, the long coast line spawned a range of communities which specialized in long distance trade: the Kutchi merchants and the Chettiyars come to ones mind immediately.
The advent of modernity both in India and China are beset with both conceptual and historiographical issues. The periodization derived from western perceptions defy smooth transition both in the case of India and China. It is now recognized that both these Asian giants are now re-entering the Global Economy and if Sheldon Pollock is to be believed on their own terms. China has completely transformed its economy while India still struggles with the age old issues of caste hierarchies social problems and of course poverty. China has succeeded in areas in which India has failed miserably. The One Party system seems to have helped China and India's raucous rowdy democracy has been a drag on the energies of the nation. Perhaps the time has come to rethink the developmental paradifms embraced by these two Nations.
One point on which the book is extremely insightful is the History and its uses in both these countries. China developed a strong tradition of writing Local and Dynastic History from the early Han Dynasty. In India, Historiography did not make much headway until the arrival of the Turks who brought with them their own models of Historical texts. Perhaps the lack of critical thought except in the speculative areas of Linguistics and Philosophy may have inhibited the development of Historical ideas in India.
This is a good book and policy makers interested in India and China must read it.
