[Reader-list] Representations of the Past in Early North India: Golden Jubilee Lecture by Romila Thapar

[Praveen Rai]

Centre for the Study of Developing Societies

invites you to a Golden Jubilee Lecture



*Representations of the Past in Early North India*

by* Romila Thapar*



*Shahid Amin* will Chair

Wednesday, 5 March 2014, 7 pm

CSDS Seminar Hall,

29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054





Societies remember their pasts in diverse ways and their representations
take various forms. Among them some reflect historical consciousness, some
are historical traditions and some constitute historical writing. Colonial
scholarship when considering genres that referred to the past in India,
dismissed them as a-historical, barring one-the Rajatarangini. Today,
historians generally concede that societies in early times did have some
genres that their authors treated as historical. Early India has a range of
such.  Analyses of these, and the juxtaposition of such analyses with how
historians currently interpret these sources, may be an insightful
exercise. The setting out of these genres will be attempted in the lecture.



*Romila Thapar* is Professor Emeritus of History at the Jawaharlal Nehru
University in New Delhi, having researched and written on early Indian
History, and on its historiography, both of current times and of the past.
She has been General President of the Indian History Congress and is a
Fellow of the British Academy.  She was awarded the prestigious 2008 Kluge
Prize (the American Nobel) for Lifetime Achievement in the Study of
Humanity.



Her publications include *Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas ; A History
of India, Vol.I ; Ancient Indian Social History-Some Interpretations ; From
Lineage to State ; Sakuntala : Texts, Readings, Histories ; Cultural Pasts
; Early India ; Somanatha ;* and *The Past Before Us : Historical
Traditions of Early North India ; *and a book for children, *Indian Tales.*



*Shahid Amin* is Professor of History at the University of Delhi.


Praveen Rai
Academic Secretary
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29, Rajpur Road
Delhi - 110054
Phone: 91-11-23942199
Fax: 91-11-23943450
www.csds.in