Perceptions of Time,Cultural Boundaries and ‘Region’ in Early Indian Texts

Abstract

Historiographical positions have hitherto suggested that historical regions be objectively encapsulated solely as entities of political control or, as regions with their present-day linguistic boundaries. This article takes an in-depth look at the way notions of time, history, space, boundaries and identities evolved in the early Indian textual traditions that impinged on how regions were continually in the process of making. Critical to the argument is the unveiling of theoretical underpinnings of the sources that modern historians use to reconstruct ancient historical regions, states and territories. Next, it highlights the boundaries of socio-cultural regions, as specified in the dominant literary tradition, to conclude that an inherent fluidity was manifested especially in the reckoning regions of exclusion.

Stable definition of regions was, however, entwined in data emerging out of regional inscriptions that elaborated primarily on socio-economic mechanisms of control. In this case study, the early textual traditions culturally interlinked a locality and region to its large whole, whereas specific data from inscriptions projected more concrete realities of boundary, space and time. Conflict between the two modes of perceiving and documenting the past has to be reckoned with, so as not to project our modern concerns of ‘country’, ‘region’ and ‘history’ into the past.