The Eighteenth Century in India: Its Economy and the Role of the Marathas, the Jats, the

Sikhs and the Afghans by Satish Chandra; Three Views of Europe from Nineteenth Century
Bengal by Tapan Raychaudhuri; The Mauryas Revisited by Romila Thapar
Review by: Frank F. Conlon
Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 114, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1994), pp. 137-138
Published by: American Oriental Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/605001 .
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 Brief Reviews of Books
in this country." Her diagnosis is accurate, although one could
point to numerous other factors as well. Dr. Holbrook is one of
the few American scholars working to correct the situation-
through her teaching, her translations of classical and modern
texts, and several symposia she has organized. She has pio-
neered (at Ohio State University) a series of conferences, un-
der the general title of "The 'Other'Turkey." These gatherings
have generated a number of first-rate scholarly papers from
highly promising graduate students at U.S. universities.
The Turkish Studies Association Bulletin has recognized
the value of these papers and has devoted to them substantial
portions of two of its issues. The topics range from "Er
Toshtiik" of the Kirghiz tradition to "Midnight Express";
from new Uzbek literature to one of Turkey's most popular
novels ("(allkusu"); from the Bosnian literary narrative to a
19th-century Ottoman novel. Judging by these essays I
feel optimistic about the future of American scholarship in
the field of Turkish literature.
Carel Bertram's essay on perception of place in Ottoman
Bosnia, written in 1990, sounds melancholy in 1992, when
many of the places whose names are cited lie in ruins. In his
analysis of a novel by Namik Kemal (d. 1888), John M. Cro-
foot raises significant questions concerning the sui generis as-
pects of late Ottoman culture and its communicative system in
its interaction with acquisitions from the West. Gniil Erhan
tackles U.S. stereotypes in regard to Turks, mainly in the con-
text of the issue of Bulgarian Turkish refugees and the film
"Midnight Express"-a discussion based on currently fashion-
able theories of "Self and the Other." The analyses of two
modern novels in two essays-by Tracy M. Lord and Siiha
Oguzertem-demonstrate the rich possibilities of cultural
evaluation inherent in critical scrutiny of fiction which has
been grossly neglected until now by most American and Turk-
ish scholars.
Sibel Erol's and Daryo Mizrahi's essays on two other (ear-
lier) novels show how fiction can be explored in enlightening
ways to gain insight into the psychological characteristics and
moral values of Turkish culture. The two articles on Central
Asian literature, by Caroline G. Sawyer, on the "Er Tishtiik"
segment of the monumental Manas Epic of the Kirghiz, and
by Russel L. Zanca, on new stirrings in Uzbek literature,are
valuable additions to the nascent scholarshiprelating to Central
Asian literature.
"Consciously or not," says Victoria Holbrook in her brief
introduction, "we invent the future of our field." One feels
compelled, however, to issue an avuncular caveat: Ottoman
literature in particular, and modern Turkish literature, to a
lesser degree, have cultural characteristics that will require
new methodologies, aesthetic criteria, and critical approaches.
It is not sufficient or even right to confine these studies to mo-
dalities and methodologies current in Europe and America.
We must develop our own critical theories and subject Turk-
ish literature (as well as the literature of the Islamic world) to
137
analysis on the basis of evaluative strategies geared to its own
cultural imperatives.
TALAT SAIT HALMAN
NEW YORKUNIVERSITY
The Eighteenth Century in India: Its Economy and the Role of
the Marathas, the Jats, the Sikhs and the Afghans. By
SATISHCHANDRA. Sakharam Ganesh Deuskar Lectures on
Indian History, 1982. Calcutta: K. P. BAGCHI FORCENTRE
FOR STUDIES IN SOCIAL SCIENCES, 1986. Pp. ii + 40.
Three Views of Europe from Nineteenth Century Bengal. By
TAPANRAYCHAUDHURI. Sakharam Ganesh Deuskar Lectures
on Indian History, 1981. Calcutta: K. P. BAGCHI FORCENTRE
FOR STUDIES IN SOCIAL SCIENCES, 1987. Pp. ii + 43.
The Mauryas Revisited. By ROMILA THAPAR. SakharamGanesh
Deuskar Lectures o n Indian History, 1984. Calcutta: K. P.
BAGCHI FOR CENTRE FOR STUDIES IN SOCIAL SCIENCES, 1987.
Pp. iii + 61.
SakharamGanesh Deuskar (1869-1912), a Bihar-born Ma-
harashtrianwho spent most of his life in Bengal, excelled as a
teacher and writer in both Marathi and Bengali. An active
public worker, his blending of rural roots and urban experi-
ence, of the language and cultures of two regions and of patri-
otic skepticism regarding the fruits of colonial rule, made him
emblematic of the transformationsof Indian society produced
by the nationalist movement. In his memory the Centre for
Studies in Social Sciences inaugurated a lecture series on In-
dian history in which leading Indian historians introduce re-
cent research or revisit and revise established subjects.
In his survey of eighteenth century India, Satish Chandra
questions the, by now discredited, convention that it was a
time of decay and decline. Rather, in an examination of ambi-
tious regional powers pressing forward on all sides, he per-
ceives two in two distinct strands of economic and political
development, one within the Mughal successor states where
Mughal institutions survived in a transformed condition, and
the other in the newly established Maratha, Jat, Afghan and
Sikh dominations, where they did not.
As the zone of longest British intrusion, Bengal received the
greatest arrayof influences and attentionsfrom its colonial mas-
ters. In turn, as Tapan Raychaudhuripoints out, Bengalis devel-
oped a fascination for and a sophisticated perception of the
"West." He offers three nineteenth-centuryBengali visions of
Europe throughan examination of writings of Bankim Chandra
Chatterji, Bhudev Mukhopadhyay and Swami Vivekananda,
138 Journal of the American Oriental Society 114.1 (1994)
each of whom "contributedpowerfully to the stock of intellec-
tual ideas" (p. 40) of Bengal. Raychaudhuri'sviews have been
more fully developed in his subsequent Europe Reconsidered:
Perceptions of the West in Nineteenth Century Bengal (Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1988).
Romila Thapar, in the first of two separate lectures, invokes
recent comparative historical discussions of ancient empires to
ask whether the Mauryanstate was an empire. While the Maur-
yas did rule a large territoryand govern people of differentcul-
tures, Thaparnotes the absence of economic restructuringor of
emergence of a metropolitanstate. The second lecture reevalu-
ates Megasthanes'Indica as a source for Indian history through
a reexaminationof the so-called "seven castes" reportedin that
text. Thaparreviews the ideological-historiographicalcontext of
Hellenistic thoughtto suggest how Megasthanes'and other simi-
lar texts might be read for an understandingof ancient India.
FRANK
F. CONLON
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
A Concise History of Indo-Pakistan. By S. F. MAHMUD. Kara-
chi: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS,1988. Pp. xvii + 315. $10.95.
It has become something of a cliche to observe that history
is a contested subject, the outlines and content of which are in
constant flux. In recent years significant reinterpretationsof and
orientations toward South Asian history and culture have ap-
peared in the subcontinent, the most prominent example being
the emerging "subaltern" school emphasizing both "history
from below" and challenging conventional historiographical
wisdom. Readers of South Asian history in the West have be-
come accustomed to discovering South Asian scholars who are
distinguished by both intellectual acuity and ideological agility.
One might be tempted to assume that the contestatory natureof
the "new" South Asian history symbolized a pervasive intellec-
tual ferment in the practice of history in the subcontinent. One
might be tempted to assume that. One might be wrong.
The second edition of S. F. Mahmud'sA Concise History of
Indo-Pakistan illustrates the substantial gulf between the ex-
quisite dynamic frontiers of historical revision and the every-
day production of those truly subaltern subcontinental
academics, the history lecturers and instructors who preside
over undergraduate instruction in India and Pakistan. Mah-
mud's history is a model of what passes in Pakistan colleges
and schools for conventional wisdom in the teaching of sub-
continental history. In a sense it would be ephemeral to schol-
ars' concerns were it not for its obvious influence in shaping
the historical consciousness of a new generation of Pakistanis.
Written in clear, simple English, the book is divided into
three major segments under the rubrics employed by Vincent
A. Smith and earlier British historians, "Hindu period," "Mus-
lim period," and "British period." The principal focus is on
political history and appears to reflect the current syllabi of
educational examinations in Pakistan. The outlines of the
Two-Nation theory form an interpretive foundation, though
without unnecessarily belittling the non-Muslim majority of
the subcontinent. Treatment of partition in 1947 reflects views
unlikely to be shared by many Indians. Colonial rule is sur-
veyed in generous terms; e.g., "the British gave us a plain and
flexible Urdu prose" (p. 255), or "most of what is rational in
our political and social services is due to these foreign rulers"
(p. 256). The book concludes with paragraphson recent days
in Pakistan-perhaps reflecting the Zia era when it was pro-
duced-which regret that "most young men have wayward
tendencies,... flaunt radical views" and do not realize that
"mere table-thumping or dogmatic preaching are perhaps not
the only remedy" (p. 300). All scholars take note.
F. F. C.
Sargitasiromani: A Medieval Handbook of Indian Music.
Edited and translated by EMMIE TENIJENHUIS. Brill's Indo-
logical Library, vol. 5. Leiden: E. J. BRILL,1992. Pp. ix +
620. $143.
This is a big, beautiful, and expensive book with a wealth
of detailed information on ancient and medieval Indian musi-
cal science as understood in the early fifteenth century A.D.
The Sahgitasiromani (Crest-jewel of Music) was commis-
sioned by Sultan Malika Sulata Sahi, whose capital was at
Kada (50 km west of Allahabad). A team of scholars was as-
sembled and instructed to compose an intelligible synthesis of
the musical learning recorded in the treatises that the Sultan
had collected for them. This library included both the
Natyasdstra and Sahgitaratnakara, as well as a large number
of other treatises written from the twelfth to the fourteenth
centuries; interestingly, it also seems to have included the
cryptic Gitalarhkdra,although the short section on grama fails
to render any more intelligible that text's enigmatic exposition
of the ga-grdma. The committee completed its labors in the
year 1428.
This volume consists of an extensive English introduction
(74 pages), followed by the Sanskrit text (in transliteration)
and an English translationon facing pages, and concludes with
annotations to the translation, bibliography, and an extensive
index. This is not a critical edition, and te Nijenhuis' Sanskrit
text is largely based on a manuscript (no. 16785) preserved at