Difference between Hindu Itihasa and Western History
Ramayana and Mahabharata, is Hindu Itihasa and as soon as we hear the word itihasa we translate it into history. As soon as the word history comes in our mind then the question arises when exactly did the events in these epics really happen. People then start debating about dating these events. This sort of a debate is an indication of how we do not understand our own tradition.
Many of you guys have been asking me about dates of Mahabharata and Ramayana. We all love our epics and so it is understandable that we feel curious to know when did these events actually happen. A lot of people have used textual and astronomical evidence to predict the dates of these events, unfortunately archeological evidence does not match with them. Although we do know that there was OCP and PGW cultures present in Ganga Vindhya area from 8000BC onwards, since this area is still highly populated, archeological evidence is scanty for this culture. Therefore archaeologically the only thing we can conclude right now is that a lot of the pieces of the puzzle are still missing and more investigation is needed to confirm the dates.
If you were to ask me as to when do I think these events happened? I put my belief in the dates mentioned in the texts. In my previous article on the Yugas, I explained how Satya Yuga runs from around 14000–9000BC, Treta Yuga from around 9000–5500, Dvapar Yuga from 5500–3000 and Kali Yuga follows after 3000BC. Since it is said that Ramayana happened in the Treta yuga, so I believe that the events of Ramayana happened sometime around 9000–5500BC, while Mahabharata happened around 3000BC when Dvapar Yuga ended. As more information comes in front of me I will change my opinion.
Here I would like to introduce the most important thing for which I wrote this article. You see this tendency of accurately dating the events of our itihasa is the result of a change in our outlook towards our history after the arrival of foreign invaders. Generally when itihasa is translated into English, we call it history. But itihasa is not history in the truest sense. There is difference, which arises due to the difference in worldview of Indian tradition and western tradition.
All the western religions which includes Judaism, Christianity and Islam are history centric. They are based on books where a lot of history is mentioned. The teachings of different prophets are mentioned under a historical context. People are told to behave a certain way because God through these prophets asked them to. So proving the existence of these historical figures become important. As an example if you somehow prove that Jesus never existed in history then all the teachings of Christianity is void, because of there was no Christ then bible is not the statement of God, but something just created by the priests.
Now compare this with Hinduism, where we have two types of texts Shruti and Smriti. A clear distinction is made that Shruti is context independent while Smriti is contest dependent. By doing this we free Hinduism from history centrism. We already accept that some of our texts are true at all times and at all places, while other apply only to certain time and certain place. This removal of history centrism means that it is not very critical for Hinduism to really prove when a certain event happened. Rather what is more important is the lesson that we learn from our history. This is the major difference between itihasa and history. While history cares more about cataloging the exact event, itihasa is more about what did you learn from history
Itihasa is a Sanskrit non-translatable word for which there is no counterpart in English. Itihasa is basically an account of history taught in a way, which provides you a moral lesson rather than absolute facts. Some people then say that we should call it mythology, but that will be diluting the value of our epics, why? because people call star wars and lord of the rings as also mythology, but we know that these are pure works of fiction. No such event actually happened, while some events must have happened in Indian history, which is the seed from, which these great epics sprouted out. Therefore itihasa is also not mythology. Itihasa is itihasa!
Understand, India is a society, which follows a religion whose teachings are date-less (Sanatana Dharma). The teachings of Islam and Christianity are like Smritis, which are context dependent, while our teachings are context independent. Even if you prove that no such person as Shree Rama or Shree Krishna or Buddha or Mahavira existed, the teachings of the Sanatana Dharma will still apply, this does not apply to the Messianic religions. So in Hinduism it was never very important to data all the events pertaining to our religion very accurately. What was more important was the need to preserve the lesson we learned from it. So when the people raise this concern that how do we know that Ram or Krishna even existed or not, they miss the point. They fail to understand the core of Indian thought. It doesn’t matter if Ram or Krishna existed or not, what matters is the ideal that he presents to us. As long as we are all striving to reach that ideal, Ram exists. We are all Ram in potential state trying to manifest him.
Originally published at https://stoicsadhu.com on February 10, 2020.
