A History of Indian Literature v3.c35.s7.4

v3.c35.s7.4

Huen-Tsiang affirms that during the time he was here in every Indian city there were annals. Till to-day the Rajputs, Banias and Mewatis have annals that are carefully preserved by Bhāṭas². The Indians have genealogical tables in a form that is unknown in the West. In any case important persons, village-chiefs and even ordinary farmers can produce a family-tree that establishes the widely branched out relationships, often going back to two or three centuries, and is of great importance for settling questions relating to inheritance. Each monastery (maṭha) carefully maintains the order of succession of its principal teachers. A taste for history is proved also by monastic historical works of the Buddhists and the Jainas, who in chronicles and biographies adhere to the life of their saints and the history of their religious communities and have handed them down historically to the extent they have been capable of³. Taste for history is lastly seen also in numerous inscriptions of all the centuries beginning from the time of Aśoka, that are available to us, and in any case they show that the Indians too possessed a taste for associating the present with the past and the future, and thereby they traced the history of their kings in genealogies going back to the most possible extent and that they inscribed the deeds of their patrons for information of coming generations on stone-pillars and rocks, in temples and caves and on copper plates for future ages.