Question

Analyse the elements examined by historians on Mahabharata as text.

Examine the elements analysed by the historians on the text of Mahabharata.

Answer 1

1. Historians often use textual traditions or content of text to understand the processes. Some texts lay down. Norms of social behaviour; others describe and occasionally comment on a wide range of social situations and practices.
2. They can also catch a glimpse of some social actors from the inscriptions. As each text and inscription was written from the perspective of specific social categories, we need to keep in mind who composed what and for whom and when (the authors, the time and period).
3. They also need to consider the language used, and the ways in which the text circulated. Used carefully, texts allow us to piece together attitudes and practices that shaped social histories.
4. Two things became apparent: there were several common elements in the Sanskrit versions of the story, evident in manuscripts found all over the subcontinent, also evident were enormous regional variations in the ways in which the text had been transmitted over the centuries. These variations were documented in footnotes and appendices to the main text.
5. The understanding of these processes is derived primarily from texts written in Sanskrit.
6. When issues of social history were explored for the first time by historians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they tended to take these texts at face value – believing that everything that was laid down in these texts was practised. Subsequently, scholars began. studying other traditions, from works in Pali, Prakrit and Tamil.
7. These studies indicated that the ideas contained in normative Sanskrit texts were overall recognised as authoritative and important. These elements were considered by historians while examining the text for reconstructing the social histories.