The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c13.5

c13.5

No plea for the self-evident need for scholarly objectivity can gainsay the fact that our view of the past does fulfill this necessary function of self-understanding and justification. But at the same time, there should be room for attention to the past irrespective of its possible uses or misuses in the present. This means the patient and sometimes fruitless task of listening to facts and documents for their own sake, without burdening them with our contemporary concerns. Not infrequently, they then appear of their own accord to be not all that remote from our problems.