The consciousness of history, as an asset of life and as an expression of people does not seem important to us. History is the record of man’s relation to time, but the Hindu does not believe in time, and all our life, according to the Hindu’s vision is an illusion and something to be transcended.”
By history, they mean accurate dating of manuscripts, edicts and palimpsests of kings, where they recorded a message but left it undated, giving rise to dating controversies in Indian history. How much do you agree with this?
This is the typical example of defining something in a particular (and limited) way and thereby destroying its truth. If history is merely about the outer story of rulers and kings, generally documented by the paid court historians, then it is simply a narrative of action and events taking place on the outer material plane. It is somewhat like describing one’s own life with regard to merely outer events and achievements (or failures) while his aims, motives, the deeper psychological forces at play remain hidden. Such a history is very often a tool that easily fools people who see only the outer deeds and circumstances.
But India’s vision always saw and gave importance to the deeper forces at work, the forces and the ideas that move kings and commoners or a generation or even an era from behind the scenes. The seers of India saw and understood the great importance of these hidden forces and their greater, larger impact upon the society and more importantly, the forward march of mankind. Rest of the details were simply crust that drops away with time as the outer shell of the egg.
Look at some timelines, for example. The Puranas that document history, taking into account these inner occult realities, say that Sri Rama ruled the earth for 12000 years. Now, does it mean he lived as long, or that his influence continued so long. I could give several examples. Frankly, if history is simply a documentation of the lives of kings or the outer conditions of people, then it is not only uninteresting but also disconnected from what happened earlier and later. But the ‘occult history’ gives a much more complete account. We see a touch of it in Bankim Chandra’s famous novel Anand Math. The Indian mind was acutely aware of these layers through which events pass before crystallising outwardly. Hence, their historical accounts as provided in the Ramayana, Mahabharata, the Puranas are of this nature. They also took into account stories that passed around through generations by bards and others. It is a much more complex and complete history that the Indian seers wrote. Illusionism is a different subject needing another discussion. The gentleman, as indeed many Indians, doesn’t understand its intrinsic sense. In the historical sense, illusion doesn’t mean we don’t care about what happened or that nothing really happened. It means instead that there is constant change and everything passes away, and the human eyes see only a distorted fragment of the totality. But it is not synonymous with vanity since all these temporary events that pass away are yet leading humanity towards a great goal. It is that upon which we should focus even while assessing the full value of the event.
Affectionately
Alok Da
