Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (1200–1550 A.D.) c4.s1.t2.6

c4.s1.t2.6

A word may be added here as to the nature and value of a study such as the present one. It may be freely admitted that after the Industrial Revolution the life of the western people has become very rich in certain ways. It exhibits everywhere a new urge to strive, to change, to go forward, all of which makes a study of Modern European society so instructive and stimulating. The life of people in India, on the other hand, is still governed, to a considerable degree, by conditions not unlike those of Europe in mediaeval times. This has led some observers to believe that since the people of India show no development, they have no history; apparently they are the same—yesterday, today, and for ever¹. This observation gains additional force from the fact that the Indian chronicles and histories deal almost exclusively with kings and battles. Let us examine these important observations. The fact that people do not change in the East is only true with certain reservations. It should not be forgotten that in comparison with an industrial system, the rate of progress in an agricultural society is necessarily slow. The course of development of an agricultural civilization spreads over centuries and though its advancement is almost imperceptible, it is by no means uncertain. It becomes quicker by the impact of a new social force. At a certain stage, when civilization attains maturity, it exhausts the possibilities of development within the social framework and then begins to stagnate and to decay, or else enters on a new stage of progress. But meanwhile, it has elaborated all the social institutions as far as such elaboration is possible within the frame work of a social structure; in any case, it has carried the people to an advanced stage of culture. In India, an apparent want of change does not signify the poverty of Indian culture but only an advanced stage of maturity, and is worth a careful study on that account. During the period under review the Indian culture was pushed forward by just such a force as quickens the pace of an agricultural society. The other reflection, however, is of a very different import. Until lately history has suffered, at the hands of historians, old and new, both in Asia and Europe, from a rather isolated and narrow conception of its scope. The old eastern court chroniclers, in particular, confined themselves to kings and their battles, and thus turned history into ‘a mere record of butchery of men by their fellow men.’ But these barriers which restricted historical investigation are being slowly broken down. It is now coming to be universally recognised that nothing is ‘beneath the dignity’ of history's notice or outside the scope of its ken, and that all the doings and sufferings of mankind in every walk of life are proper subjects for a historian to investigate. Nay more; it is being asserted that unless historians do, as a matter of fact, take this extended and all comprehensive view of their functions, they are bound to present a distorted picture of whatever age they may profess to portray. ‘In short,’ observes Hearnshaw, ‘it is perceived that history is not an isolated subject of study, but is one of a group of kindred studies which together make up the general science of society.’¹ We can be indulgent to a court chronicler of an earlier date, who made his living by singing the praise of his patron, for not living up to the expectations of the science in the twentieth century.