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Sifting fact and fable in literary texts

Special Correspondent

Historians debate their use as a source of history

KANNUR: Can historians use literary texts as a source of history in the way they use archaeological sources for reconstructing the past?

The question was debated at a session on the history of history writing organised by the Aligarh Historians’ Society at the Indian History Congress conference on the Kannur University’s Mangattuparamba campus here on Monday.

The session discussed various topics, such as ‘historicality’ of literature and historiographic consideration of ancient Tamil poetics.

In his introductory speech, Irfan Habib, historian, said the history of a society might not be the history perceived today. The study of literary texts as a source for historical studies involved the problem of historical approach as to how historians should interpret historical facts, he said. Post-modernists did not distinguish between facts and discourse.

According to Prof. Habib, discourse and truth could not be separated and there could be many truths according to one’s convenience and perception. There was never a consensus on history.

‘Identify difference’

Romila Thapar, historian, observed that ancient literary texts could be partially historical and partially poetic. The historians should recognise which part of the text was ‘kavya’ (poem) and which was history. Stating that historiography was a very difficult subject, she said the distinction between the past and the present should be understood in terms of the present drawing ideas from the past and trying to use them for the present. Historians should ask how a society viewed itself and its own past.

In his paper on “Historicality in literature,” Ganapathy Subbiah of Santhinikethan said that historians’ apathy to literature as a source of history was matched in inverse proportion by the importance that they attached to archaeological sources such as inscriptions, coins and monuments for reconstructing the story of the past. The trustworthiness of archaeological sources was held so high by them that these sources were taken to display ‘facts’ from the past, while the literary texts were perceived to contain more fable than fact.

He suggested that there be a conscientious effort to listen to the voices of the past lying unheard in the vast literary wealth.

Rajan Gurukkal, Vice-Chancellor, Mahatma Gandhi University, in his paper on “Semiotics of ancient Tamil poetics: a historiographic consideration,” said a large body of ancient Tamil heroic poems broadly belonging to the oral tradition had plenty of proof for the fundamental semiotic relationships of ancient Dravidians to ecotypes of their subsistence and survival. He said his focus was the intertextuality of the Tamil heroic poems and contemporary socio-cultural practices.

Champakalaxmi, Sabyasachi Bhattacharya and Kesavan Veluthat were among those who participated.

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