What is इतिहास (Itihāsa)?

Traditional Indian History is Much More Useful

So, what does the Sanskrit word Itihāsa even mean. Its meaning is rather simple and can be broken down as:

इति ह आस (iti ha āsa) which loosely translates to “It happened like that.”

Modern history is mostly concerned with historiography and historicity, and the objective is to usually find out what has happened in the past. There are several primary sources which give us glimpses and evidence of happenings. Besides written works there are inscriptional sources in metal and stone which include carvings. These pieces of epigraphic evidence also let us know about certain time periods.

However, most historians are prejudiced by bias, agenda, and unfortunately for the most part lack of knowledge. This manifests in a distorted version of historical events primarily because of the historians ego combined with the lack of acceptance of scientific evidences. Since, these historians were never really taught the scientific method or any of the sciences, they don’t appear to understand the simple concept that new information tends to change old theories, especially if the evidence backs it.

Hence, distorted historical narratives really isn’t all their fault. It’s a mixture of ineptitude and lack of knowledge. Unfortunately, educational institutions such as universities propagate this ineptitude as the students learn from the same people.

Because of the advancement of several sciences such as archaeology, palaeontology, palaeo-botany, hydro-morphology of water bodies, human and animal anatomy, archaeo-astronomy, genetics and several other hard sciences, it is easy to corroborate or dismiss certain incidents taught as history - especially in the mainstream narratives.

All it takes is a scientific and curious mind (even of a child) to ask a simple question like, “If Euclid and Pythagoras were born more than 2000 years after the great pyramid was constructed, how did they do it so accurately? The Egyptians would have had to have knowledge of Arithmetic and Geometry - especially triangles and squares, right?”

This particular line of inquiry, unfortunately is lacking in children these days primarily due to discouragement of questioning - because of the way the school system is designed, but that’s a topic for another day.

When we ask such questions, we are seeking scientific validations of information that is simply given to us. Just because some famous historian wrote it, doesn’t mean it’s accurate. This is the approach that has advanced science to where it is today. Preventing inquiry is what hampers science (which we do tend to see a lot in several fields where unbiased research simply isn’t possible.)

Back on to the important topic of itihāsa or “Traditional Indian History”

There’s a shloka by Kalidāsa in Raghuvaṃśam that describes its purpose beautifully. It goes like this:

धर्मार्थकाममोक्षाणाम् उपदेश समन्वितम् |
dharmārthakāmamokṣāṇām upadeśa samanvitam
पूर्ववृत्तं कथायुक्तम् इतिहासं प्रचक्षते ||
pūrvavṛttaṃ kathāyuktam itihāsaṃ pracakṣate

We’ll get back to this after some things are explained.

In sanātana dharma, there are 4 āśramas (phases of life) namely:

1. ब्रह्मचर्य (brahmacarya) - Student life. The primary objective is learning.

2. गृहस्थ (gṛhastha) - Married life. The objective is to procreate and give new beings to this world. At the same time it is also the phase where earning an income is encouraged as this particular āśrama provides sustenance for the other three.

3. वानप्रस्थ (vānaprastha) - Preparation for retirement and renunciation. This is also where you become a distributor of knowledge which may continue on to the next phase.

4. सन्यास (sanyāsa) - Renunciation.

These definitions are loose as they are deeper and more descriptive but for the purpose of what we’re trying to explain here, it’s sufficient. There is another thread which are the 4 puruṣārtha (पुरुषार्थ) which loosely translates to objectives of existence.

These are:

1. धर्म (dharma) - This is your primary purpose. Your reason for being.

2. अर्थ (artha) - This is the art of building wealth for yourself, your family, your community and beyond.

3. काम (kāma) - This is on having desires. Without desire, there can be no karma (action).

4. मोक्ष (mokṣa) - Loosely translates to liberation or solution.

All 4 āśramas have all 4 puruṣārthas but they will mean different things at different phases of life to you as a person. Think of it like a 4 x 4 matrix.

The purpose of itihāsa is to be a guide for you all the way from childhood to the late parts of life.

Now, we’ll break it down:

धर्मार्थकाममोक्षाणाम्
dharmārthakāmamokṣāṇām

For dharma, artha, kāma, and mokṣa (to be as a guide for these puruṣārthas)

उपदेश समन्वितम्
upadeśa samanvitam

With guidance and advice built-in for the above

पूर्ववृत्तं
pūrvavṛttaṃ

Describing events that have happened in the past

कथायुक्तम्
kathāyuktam

Told in the form of a story (including story embellishments, dramatizations and aggrandizations to make it interesting)

इतिहासं प्रचक्षते
itihāsaṃ pracakṣate

Is termed as itihāsa.

As far as we know, there are only two itihāsas. These are रामायणम् (Rāmāyaṇam) and महाभारतम् (Mahābhāratam). For the moment we’re ignoring the Purānas which also have a chronology (We’ll touch on those another time).

Let’s take Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa as an example.

It’s the shorter of the two, relatively speaking, but it’s still a very long story at 24,000 shlokas. Have you ever wondered why it’s so long?

Why are there so many stories intertwined into the main story. It takes several digressions and there are layers upon layers of stories.

There are explanations of town planning, logic, governance, architecture, justice, geography, spirituality, equality, women empowerment, military strategy, friendship, familial relationships and so much more in it all from the perspective of an ideal to strive towards. This is all besides mere historicity and historiography.

The goal is multi-fold. To not only be educational, but to also be interesting so the information is delivered in a story format. The story format psychologically is the most powerful and memorable format to deliver information in.

Why go through so much painstaking effort to make it interesting and educational?

The modern versions of history are merely events told in the most boring possible way with historians adding their own interpretations. Often they reduce these to binaries with an oft repeated western lens of class divisions. The real world is far more complex than simplistic binaries and has always been more interesting than the versions “trained” historians put out.

They do this despite the fact that, it’s not even possible to write about Indian history beyond a certain point, without deep knowledge of Sanskrit and often of the local language not just now, but the contemporary geographical versions of the times. Hardly any of the historians have ever tried to learn this knowledge.

In the meantime a pseudo-science by the name of linguistics has also taken birth and produced all sorts of theories despite the fact that the direction of oral transmissions cannot be determined. Only a best guess with some weightages can be assigned. But, it has never been done without bias.

When you look at their works, you notice these historians usually have a ton of references and citations. But, when a deep investigation is done, you realize they’re merely creating a circle of internal references without even touching available primary sources. Essentially it is intellectual dishonesty in the name of scholarship. Unfortunately, a ton of work of highly acclaimed scholars is in fact dustbin worthy.

The reason I’m telling you all this is I’ll be writing about the history of India that is Bhārat (भारत्), but the approach will be attempted from a the perspective of itihāsa instead of mere history in the westernized sense.

The primary target for this effort is children.

Because of the ineptitude of the educationists, the useless imposed Prussian education system via the Brits which never changed, the governments in charge of these, the propagandist historians, today’s children have a disconnection from their very rich cultural roots.

They don’t realize their own potential.

They don’t know that they come from the birthplace of Science, Mathematics, Grammar, Spirituality, Technology, Conservation, Agriculture, Medicine, Surgery, Economics, Navigation and so much more.

They don’t realize that not only do they come from the ‘cradle of education’, it’s also the place where Sciences, Maths, Arts, Theatre advanced so much, there’s no other ancient culture that can hold a candle to the vast corpus produced in Bhārat.

They don’t know that just in Sanskrit, despite the massive library destructions there’s still pessimistically 4+ Million manuscripts left over which can optimistically touch 40+ Million, in every conceivable subject you can think of.

They don’t know that they’ve been even taught an inaccurate history of science and math, and sadly there isn’t a single department in the country that actually assesses these and/or presents historically correct versions. The task is usually again given to the unsuitable humanities departments when it should in fact be done by qualified technical people when it comes to Mathematics and several of the Sciences.

They don’t know that the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is a British era inept organization that is still parroting lines from the west instead of doing any original research. So many sites have languished because of their apathy. New discoveries in Sinauli and Bhirrana show full chariots and planned cities dating from 7000 to 10,000 years ago in India.

Despite the evidences against any migrations via several multi-disciplinary hard sciences and despite new evidences cropping up of indigenous progressions of the populace, children are still taught the mythical Aryan invasion theory.

Therefore, what I write will not be in the format of these inept historians, but rather attempt to write in a story format, with an objective.

For the most part, I have references but I won’t care to mention or provide them if they don’t add any value to the narrative. Sometimes, I may add them in if I think they’re useful for folks who want to do more research.

This is an attempt at re-looking at interesting events in Indian history from an indigenous lens and from an itihāsa perspective.

I hope that sets the stage for what is brewing.

You are free to think of all of this as purely fiction and perhaps may even benefit from that thought process. Do keep that in mind before you decide on subscribing.