A Textbook of Historiography 500 BC to AD 2000 PDF

 A TEXTBOOK OF HISTORIOGRAPHY For our entire range of books please use search strings "Orient BlackSwan", "Universities Press India" and "Permanent Black" in store. A TEXTBOOK OF HISTORIOGRAPHY 500 BC to AD 2000...

 A TEXTBOOK OF HISTORIOGRAPHY For our entire range of books please use search strings "Orient BlackSwan", "Universities Press India" and "Permanent Black" in store. A TEXTBOOK OF HISTORIOGRAPHY 500 BC to AD 2000 E. SREEDHARAN A TEXTBOOK OF HISTORIOGRAPHY Orient Blackswan Private Limited Registered Office 3-6-752 Himayatnagar, Hyderabad 500 029 (A.P.), INDIA e-mail: [email protected] Other Offices Bengaluru, Bhopal, Chennai, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, New Delhi, Noida, Patna, Vijayawada © Orient Blackswan Private Limited 2004 First published 2004 Reprinted 2004 (twice), 2005, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018 eISBN 978-93-5287-577-1 e-edition: First Published 2019 ePUB Conversion: TEXTSOFT Solutions Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests write to the publisher. We might be standing on the threshold of an age in which history would be as important for the world as natural science had been between 1600 and 1900. R.G. COLLINGWOOD  Contents Cover Title Page Preface CHAPTER 1 I. PRELIMINARIES 1. History 2. Historiography 3. Preconditions of Historiography CHAPTER 2 I. GREEK HISTORIOGRAPHY 1. Historiography of Pre-classical Times 2. The Quasi-historical Nature of Pre-classical Compositions 3. The Difficulty of the Greeks 4. Influences behind Greek Historiography 5. Herodotus 6. Thucydides 7. Greek Historical Method and its Limitations 8. Greek Conception of the Nature of History and its Value II. HISTORIOGMPHY IN THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD 1. Influences behind Hellenistic Historiography 2. Polybius III. ROMAN HISTORIOGRAPHY 1 (a). Cato (b). The Historical Memoir 2. Livy 3. Tacitus 4. Graeco-Roman Historians after Tacitus 5. The Character of Graeco-Roman Historiography IV. ANCIENT CHINESE HISTORIOGRAPHY 1. Circumstances Favourable for the Growth of Historiography in Ancient China 2. Some Chinese Historians: Confucius; Szuma Ch’ien; Pan Ku; Szuma Kuang 3. A Critical Assessment of Chinese Historiography CHAPTER 3  I. MEDIEVAL CHRISTIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY 1. Decline of Historiography in the West 2. Growth of Christian Historical Consciousness 3. Eusebius of Caesaria and Paulus Orossius 4. St. Augustine 5. Gregory of Tours and the Venerable Bede 6. The Annal and the Chronicle 7. The Historiography of the Carolinnian Renaissance 8. The Crusades, Twelfth-Century Renaissance, and the Climax of Medieval Historiography 9. Assessment of Christian or Medieval European Historiography: Revolution in Historical Thinking; Characteristics of Christian Historiography; Strength of Christian Historiography; Weakness of Christian Historiography; Impact of Christian or Medieval European Historiography on European Historical Thought II. MEDIEVAL MUSLIM HISTORIOGRAPHY (WEST ASIAN TRADITION) 1. The Influences behind Islamic Historiography 2. The Islamic East 3. The Islamic West 4. Medieval Muslim Historians of the Crusades and of the Mongol Invasions 5. Medieval Muslim Literature on Geography and Travel 6. Ibn Khaldoun 7. Source Criticism in Islamic Historiography CHAPTER 4 I. THE IMPACT OF THE RENAISSANCE ON HISTORIOGRAPHY 1. The Renaissance: Its Meaning 2. The Impact of the Renaissance on Historiography 3. Renaissance Historians: Biondo; Bruni; Machiavelli; Guicciardini; Bodin; Bacon 4. Humanist Historiography: An Assessment II. THE IMPACT OF THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION: BACON AND DESCARTES 1. The Scientific Revolution 2. Transition to Modern Philosophy: Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes 3. The Impact of the Scientific Revolution on Historiography: Beneficial Effects and Inimical Effects 4. Cartesian Historiography III. VICO: THE NEW SCIENCE OF HISTORY 1. Anti-Cartesianism: Vico’s Theory of Knowledge 2. Vico’s Idea of History CHAPTER 5 I. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ENLIGHTENMENT AND ITS INFLUENCE ON HISTORIOGRAPHY 1. The Enlightenment  2. The Influence of the Enlightenment on Historiography: The Idea of Progress II. ENLIGHTENMENT HISTORIANS 1. Montesquieu 2. Voltaire 3. David Hume 4. William Robertson 5. Edward Gibbon 6. Drawbacks of Enlightenment Historiography 7. Merits of Enlightenment Historiography CHAPTER 6 THE ROMANTIC REACTION AGAINST RATIONALISM 1. Romanticism 2. Rousseau 3. Herder 4. Herder: Collingwood’s Critique 5. Impact of Romanticism on Historiography 6. Philosophy of History—Speculative and Critical 7. Hegel 8. Criticism of Hegel CHAPTER 7 I. ROMANTIC-NATIONALIST-LITERARY HISTORIOGRAPHY 1. Romanticism, Nationalism and Literature 2. The Romantic School—History as National Epic: Thierry and Michelet 3. History as Literature: Macaulay and Carlyle 4. Nationalist Historiography: Droysen, Sybel and Treitschke—Defects of Nationalist Historiography II. THE BERLIN REVOLUTION IN HISTORIOGRAPHY: NIEBUHR AND RANKE 1. The Weaknesses in the Study of History before Niebuhr and Ranke 2. Barthold Niebuhr and Leopold von Ranke 3. Ranke’s Important Works 4. Characteristic Features of Rankean History 5. Ranke’s Seminar 6. Ranke: An Assessment CHAPTER 8 POSITIVISM IN HISTORY: AUGUSTE COMTE, HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE AND KARL MARX 1. Positivism 2. The Philosophy of Auguste Comte 3. Henry Thomas Buckle 4. Positivism, an Assessment: The Influence of Positivism on Historiography  5. Karl Marx 6. The Impact of Marxism (Historical Materialism) on Historiography CHAPTER 9 THE TWENTIETH CENTURY I 1. Scientific History and the Skeptical Note 2. Nature, Function and Purpose of History: Bury and Trevelyan 3. Renewed Interest in Philosophy: Spengler and Toynbee; Criticism and Assessment of A Study of History 4. The Idealistic View of History: Croce and Collingwood CHAPTER 10 THE TWENTIETH CENTURY II PART I 1. Historical Relativism: Robinson, Beard and Becker 2. Economic History: Pirenne, Lefebvre, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Clapham and Tawney 3. Social History 4. Some Eminent Professional Historians: Mommsen, Maitland, Fisher, Namier, Meinecke and Trevelyan 5. Modern Empiricists: Clark, Elton, Taylor and Trevor-Roper 6. British Marxist Historians: Christopher Hill, E.H. Hobsbawm and E.P. Thompson PART II 1. Towards Total History: Lucien Febvre, Marc Bloch and the Annates School 2. Fernand Braudel 3. A Criticism of the Mediterranean 4. The Impact of Braudel’s Mediterranean: Chaunu, Ladurie, Le Goff, Mandrou and Keith Thomas 5. Structuralism in History 6. Antonio Gramsci CHAPTER 11 POSTMODERNIST CHALLENGE TO HISTORY What Is Postmodernism? POSTMODERNISM AND HISTORY PART I: THE PHILOSOPHICAL TURN 1. The Postmodern Critique of Enlightenment Humanism 2. Postmodern Arraignment of History 3. Michel Foucault 4. Characterestics of Foucault’s New Kind of History 5. Criticism and Assessment PART II: THE LINGUISTIC TURN 1. The Hermeneutic Method  2. Linguistic Theory behind Postmodern Ideas on History: Jacques Derrida PART III: POSTMODERNIST HISTORICAL THEORY versus CONVENTIONAL HISTORY 1. A Crisis of Self-confidence 2. Postmodernist Linguistic Theory and its Implications for History 3. Criticism of Postmodernist Historical Theory 4. The Impact of Postmodernism on Historiography CHAPTER 12 ANCIENT INDIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY 1. The Lack of Historical Sense 2. Explanation of the Absence of Historical Sense 3. The Problem of Chronology 4. Beginnings of the Indian Historical Tradition—(a) Gatha, Narasamsi, Akhyana, Itiurtta, Vamsa and Vamsanucharita; (b) The Purana and Itihasa (c) The Historicity of the Puranas 5. The Vamsa and Charita: Bana Bhatta, the Harshacharita, 6. Vakpatiraja, Padmagupta, Atula, Bilhana, Bhulokamalla and Jayanaka 7. Kalhana: Rajatarangini 8. Ancient Indian Historiography: An Appraisal CHAPTER 13 MEDIEVAL INDO-MUSLIM HISTORIOGRAPHY: I. THE SULTANATE PERIOD 1. General or Universal Histories of the Sultanate Period (1200–1526) 2. Particular Histories: Artistic Forms of History Writing: Nizami, Amir Khusrau and Isami; Manaquib or Fazail History: Afif; Didactic History: Zia ud-Din Barani 3. The Chief Features of Pre-Mughal Indo-Muslim Historiography II. THE MUGHAL PERIOD 1. Royal Autobiographers 2. Historiography during the Reign of Akbar: Tarikh-i-Alfi; Nizam ud-Din Ahmad; Badauni; Abul Fazal 3. Historiography from Jahangir to Aurangazeb 4. Historiography in India in the Eighteenth Century: Khafi Khan, Bhimsen, and Siyar U’l Mutakherin 5. Mughal Historiography: An Assessment CHAPTER 14 I. INDOLOGY AND THE RECOVERY OF INDIAN HISTORY 1. Paucity of Historical Literature on Ancient India 2. The Orientalist or Indological Recovery of Ancient Indian History 3 The Development of Indological Studies: Colebrooke and Max Muller; Prinsep and Cunningham 4. The Significance of Orientalist Recovery of Ancient Indian History  II. BRITISH IMPERIALIST (COLONIAL) HISTORIOGRAPHY ON INDIA 1. James Mill 2. Mountstuart Elphinstone 3. Persistence of the Mill Tradition: (a) Elliot and Dowson; (b) Ideas behind Late Nineteenth Century Imperialism 4. The British Imperialist Administrator-historians (1870–1940): (a) Popular Historians; (b) Philosophic Historians: James Fitzjames Stephens, Henry Maine, Tallboys Wheeler, Alfred Lyall, W.W. Hunter, Vincent Smith and W.H. Moreland 5. Imperialist Historiography: An Overview CHAPTER 15 I. INDIAN NATIONALIST HISTORIOGRAPHY 1. The Search for National Identity 2. Imperialist Attack on Indian Culture and Civilization 3. The Meaning, Nature and Content of Nationalist Historiography 4. Critical Assessment of Indian Nationalist Historiography II. SOME MODERN INDIAN HISTORIANS 1. R.G. Bhandarkar 2. Romesh Chandra Dutt 3. K.P. Jayaswal 4. Radha Kumud Mukherji 5. H.C. Raychaudhuri 6. G.S. Sardesai 7. Jadunath Sarkar 8. S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar 9. Shafaat Ahmad Khan 10. An Explanation of the Lack of Historical Works by Muslims on Medieval Muslim India; Muhammad Habib, K.M. Ashraf, Muhammad Nazim, Ishtiaq Husain Qureshi, Zahir ud-din Faruki and S.M. Jaffar; Modern Muslim Historiography on Medieval Muslim India: An Assessment 11. Surendranath Sen 12. Sardar K.M. Panikkar 13. K.A. Nilakanta Sastri 14. R.C. Majumdar CHAPTER 16 I. THE MARXIST PHASE 1. D.D. Kosambi 2. R.S. Sharma 3. Romila Thapar 4. Bipan Chandra 5. Irfan Habib 6. The Marxist Phase of Indian Historiography: An Assessment  II. SUBALTERN STUDIES A Historiography of Protest; The Nature of Subaltern Historiography; Some Examples of Subaltern Historiography; Assessment References Bibliography  Preface Historiography is a comparatively new area of historical study introduced at the graduate and postgraduate levels in several Indian universities. But confronted with the task of learning a new subject and taking an examination in it in a specified time, the student looks for support and guidance entirely to the teacher who, having to learn the subject and teach it in a manner intelligible and easily comprehensible to the student, finds himself in a position not very different from that of the student. The student seeks easy comprehension, clear and precise guidance, and immediate utility. To weave out of the several books recommended for study and reference, material which would meet the requirements of the syllabus as well as of the examination without sacrificing scholarliness is a problem which students and teachers cannot by themselves solve. The total lack of a dependable volume between whose covers they can find a sizeable part of their reading material in historiography has resulted in anomalies sometimes seen at their worst in the kind of the questions set and answers given at examinations. In the circumstances a textbook should be considered an important element in the study of the subject, be it only an initiation into it. Textbook writing is a job where neither the topic nor the period can be properly delimited. But there can be little doubt that its bade task is to provide a solid minimum of reliable information on the subject concerned, to present a balanced view of competing ideas, and not to back some thesis to the detriment of others. The present venture is a critical survey of the development of historiography from 500 BC to AD 2000. Its content is the irreducible minimum of what I think to be essential for a classroom textbook which by expectation should include everything but not so much as to make it unmanageably bulky. I have followed in the main the postgnduate historiography syllabi of some Indian universities. To this, however, significant additions have been made to make the account more comprehensive, exhaustive and up-to- date of post- Second World War developments in history writing - generally labeled ‘structuralist’ and ‘postmodernist’ - and also to give relatively full coverage to ancient, medieval and modern Indian historiography. Even as such it is only a sketchy outline of the long evolution, the slow development, of history writing and of the changing attitudes towards it during the 2500 years from Herodotus to our own ‘postmodernist’ days. I have taken care to stress the philosophical, religious, scientific, ideological and linguistic influences bearing on this evolution and to indicate the development of historical criticism - methodology — and the ever-widening scope of the subject itself. Yet I feel I have only furnished something in the nature of a map situating a number of leading figures and movements in their appropriate places in the historiographical landscape. The book is one of transmission, not of creation. It does not carry any central thesis. Nor is it one of original method, scholarship or interpretation. A textbook of historiography critically surveying the development of the subject from beginning to end and constrained by the dictates of syllabi can scarcely be original, particularly in the Indian context. The material of the many different parts of the present work has been excerpted from many different works and abridged or summarized or paraphrased or quoted. Chopping the material and cutting it and piecing the parts together have all been a problem. The cuts and seams - the cobbling marks - may well tell the manner in which the material has been processed and absorbed into the fabric of the text. I wish to thank the many friends and erstwhile colleagues without whose help the book would have been much more difficult to prepare. I record my gratitude to E.V. Ramakrishnan and Dr. Thankkappan Nair in Calcutta, Principal S. Somasekharan Nair of the Law Academy, Trivandrum, Principal Madhavan Nair of the Sanskrit College, Trivandrum, Dr. Rajan Gurukkal, Professors K.K. Kusuman, P. Vijayakumar, T.P. Sankaran Kutty Nair, Salim Balakrishnan, Ajayakumar, Gopakumar, Dr. A. Ubaid, M.M. Sacheendran and P. Govinda Pillai for making available books and material of crucial importance. Prof. Vishnu Narayanan Nambudiri helped me with his translation into English of two slokas - one on itihayi and the other on purana - from their Sanskrit original while the late Dr. Bernard Fenn rendered many a term from French and German into English. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Dr. M.P. Sreekumaran Nair not only for his valuable suggestions but also for reading my account of European historiography in typescript. I would especially like to thank Dr. S. Ramachandran Nair who patiently helped me prepare a list of references to each of the sixteen chapters of the book as also a bibliography and to S. Vinayakumar and K. Gopalakrishnan, Professors of English, who, amidst countless cares, went through the entire thousand-page manuscript correcting it all the way. Again, in providing the information support required for the preparation of this volume and in its computer typesetting the Centre for South Indian Studies rendered all kinds of help which it is difficult to list separately. I am deeply indebted to C. Mukundan, a marine scientist in retirement, whose encompassing interest extended to preparing in free hand drawing a good number of the pictures included in the book. I wish to place on record the invaluable help so ungrudgingly rendered by the staff of the Kerala University Library, the C.D.S. Library and the British Council Library, Trivandrum. Since the help I have received from the academic community cannot be requited in any way, I shall only keep it in grateful remembrance. And, finally, I am deeply indebted to my wife, Sathya, for her cooperation, forbearance and quiet encouragement. E. SREEDARAN August 2003  1 PRELIMINARIES 1. History The English word ‘history’ is derived from the Greek word istoria meaning inquiry, research, exploration or information. In a broad sense history is a systematic account of the origin and development of humankind, a record of the unique events and movements in its life. It is an attempt to recapture however imperfectly, that which is, in a sense, lost forever. History is the result of the interplay of man with his environment and with his fellowmen. Man has always expressed himself in terms of certain basic needs such as food, clothing and shelter, social and political organization, knowledge of his environment and transmission of such knowledge, self-expression, and religious and philosophical beliefs. Such activities together make up the universal culture pattern.1 When men come to share the same institutions and ways of life they may be said to possess the same ‘culture’. Fundamental differences between groups are essentially differences in their cultures. Cultures do not remain wholly static or isolated, but change over periods of time and interact with other cultures. Cultures interact both in peace and war. When a people come to have a highly complex cultural pattern resting upon an intricate social organization and exerting wide control over nature, they may be said to have achieved what is called ‘civilization’.2 Civilization in all its varied aspects constitutes the subject matter of history. Such a cultural approach to history would make it a biography of civilization. History is the living past of man. It is the attempt made by man through centuries to reconstruct, describe and interpret his own past. In modern times, particularly from the period of Niebuhr and Ranke, it has come to mean the attempt to reconstruct the past in “a scholarly fashion, sticking to certain definite rules of establishing fact, interpreting evidence, dealing with source material, etc.”3 2. Historiography Historiography literally means the art of writing history. It is the history of history, or the history of historical writings. Historiography tells the story of the successive stages of the evolution or development of historical writings. It has come to include the evolution of the ideas and techniques associated with the writing of history, and the changing attitudes towards the nature of history itself. Ultimately it comprises the study of the development of man’s sense for the past.4 There have been differences in the nature and quality as well as the quantity of historical literature in the different ages and among different peoples. These differences have generally reflected changes in social life and beliefs and the presence or absence of a sense of history. The spirit that moved the Greek and Roman historians was different from that which inspired the Christian historians of the Middle Ages. The historical writings of the Italian Renaissance, particularly that of Machiavelli, represented a harsh reaction ’to religious influence in history writing. The reaction reached its climax in the historians of the Enlightenment—Voltaire, Gibbon, Hume and Robertson. The pace of change has been greater ever since as the study of the past has increasingly come under the influence of manifold ideas. Historiography, as a special branch of history, traces these changes through the centuries. While history proper is the historian’s reconstruction of the past, historiography, says Arthur Marwick, is really the history of historical thought—it is not only the theory or practice of history. It began with the early compositions of advanced literate peoples like the Greeks and the Chinese of ancient times when, however, the absence of a system of chronology and method of criticism made the historian’s task extremely difficult and uncertain. From those crude beginnings history writing has made tremendous strides towards complex and sophisticated developments in our own times. A unique branch of history, the study of historiography, says Marwick, is of particular value to researchers and professionals, a preliminary to any important historical endeavor, but of only remote concern to the general reader. By holding up models of how history has been written through the centuries, it guides the research scholar and the professional historian. 3. Preconditions of Historiography Records History is the historian’s reconstruction of the past. The principal materials of reconstruction at the disposal of the historian are records or remains that the past has left behind. They serve him as evidence of the facts that he establishes. The records are of a rich variety—buildings, inscriptions, medals, coins, edicts, chronicles, travelogues, decrees, treaties, official correspondence, private letters and diaries. It is through the study of such history-as-records that the historian gains knowledge of history-as-events. History deals with evidence. Hence the dictum ‘No records, no history.’ Critical Method Because history deals with evidence, the material that the past leaves behind as records has to be used with great care for the simple reason that they may not be wholly authentic or genuine. Far from completely trusting his sources the historian should presume that all data are doubtful unless otherwise proved. There have been instances of spurious documents like the Donation of Constantine passing as authentic for centuries. The historian should aim at presenting as true a picture of the past as possible. The technique evolved to arrive at the truth of past events is called historical method. This method is largely analytical, consisting of external and internal criticism. External criticism or critical scholarship determines the authorship, the place, and the time of a document. Such information is crucial in determining the value of a document. Internal or interpretative or higher criticism finds out whether the contents of a document can be accepted as true or not. External and internal criticism together pronounce the verdict on the authenticity or veracity of facts as presented in the records. From the time of Niebuhr and Ranke, the German historians of the nineteenth century, historical method has been developed to a level where the possibility of error in arriving at the truth of a past event has been brought down to the minimum. Indeed, J.B. Bury in his inaugural lecture at Cambridge declared history to be a science ‘no less and no more’. But it is to be admitted that the subjective element in history makes such an ideal impossible to realize. Historical Sense A keen sense of the past, i.e., historical sense, has not been uniformly present among the different peoples of the world, and at different times. Ancient Greece and Rome as well as Judaism and Christianity have bequeathed to the European a strong sense of history. Ancient Chinese and medieval Muslim schools of history have been central elements in their civilizations. In comparison, the historical sense of the Hindus of the ancient and medieval times was negligible. But ‘historical sense’ means much more. Like history, the other social sciences, whether sociology, anthropology, political science or economics, study man in society and they do deal with the problem of change. But, writes Arthur Marwick, the characteristic which marks history out from these other disciplines is a specific concern with the element of change through time...the social scientist looks for the common factors, the regular patterns, discernible in man’s activities in society; the historian looks at the way societies differ from each other at different points in time, how through time societies change and develop.5 It is his basic concern with change through time that makes it absolutely necessary for the historian to know when exactly the events which he describes took place. To narrate, analyze and interpret events, he must know the order of their occurrence.  2 I. GREEK HISTORIOGRAPHY 1. Historiography of Pre-classical Times Herbert Butterfield distinguishes mainly three types of compositions in the pre-classical times in the West that may be said to contain historical information of some kind: ballads and epics, annals commemorating rulers, and the Hebrew scriptures.1 Ballads and Epics Amongst animals man alone recollects his past experience and stores it in memory. But a society, unlike an individual, cannot have an organic memory. A primitive society’s knowledge of its own past was only through tales told among its members of its own experience. Such tales, when repeated, became the tradition of the tribe and were turned into local ballads. Oral transmission of such ballads over long periods led to alteration of the material by addition of legend matter. Some of the ballads came to be organized into an epic, such as Gilgamesh of the ancient Babylonians or Iliad of the Greeks. Transmitted through professional storytellers or minstrels, the ballad and the epic, though not history as we define it now, served to stimulate an interest in the past and provided a narrative technique. Annals of Rulers and Dynastic Lists Another kind of historical composition in the pre-classical times are the annals produced for the rulers of great empires such as the Egyptian, Hittite and Assyrian. Engraved on the walls of palaces and temples, these annals tell us of the various activities of the monarchs but are chiefly about their military successes. Such annals represented history of the commemorative kind. The Hittite annals were perhaps the most distinguished among them. A more authenticated kind of history are the dynastic lists of the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians. While commemorative records are liable to be exaggerated, dynastic lists are far less liable to be so distorted. In the list of the first Babylonian empire the years would be named after some event—one event for each year. Such ‘date-lists’ may be reckoned as the ancient forerunner of the medieval chronicle. Again, the handsome and impressive reliefs of the ancient Assyrians provide excellent examples of illustrative history. Hebrew Scriptures Like all primitive tribes, the ancient Hebrews had for centuries told tales, sung songs, and related popular legends to their children. In this way, at least from the time of David (c. 1000 BC) there seems to have been a continuous oral tradition in which some clear division can be made between legend and history. This tradition forms the basis of the books of the Old Testament, the scripture of the ancient Hebrews. Though not primarily composed for historical purposes, they nevertheless contain an immense amount of historical information. Of the 39 books of the Hebrew scripture, 17 are manifestly historical, and the five major and twelve minor prophets are largely so. The ancient Hebrews were the first to produce anything like a national history, and attempting to describe the history of mankind from what they thought to be the ‘Creation’, they were also the first to conceive of the idea of universal history. 2. The Quasi-historical Nature of Pre-classical Compositions: Theocratic History and Myth Can these compositions – the ballads and the epics, the annals and the dynastic lists, and the Hebrew scriptures – be regarded as history? R.G. Collingwood contends that all true history should partake of four characteristics.2 The first of these is that history is a science. Science consists in discovering things which we do not know, for example, the cause of cancer, the chemical composition of the sun, etc. In this sense history is a science, for it begins notwith the collection of known facts but with efforts to discover them, e.g., the origin of the parliament in England, or the origin of the caste system in India. The second characteristic of history is that it is humanistic. Every science has an object. The object of the science of history is to find out actions of human beings that have been done in the past. The third is that every science has an inquiry procedure. History proceeds by the interpretation of evidence in the form of documents. And the fourth characterestic is that every human endeavor has a purpose behind it. The purpose of history is human self-knowledge. The value of history is that it teaches us what man has done, and thus what man is. “History is,” as Droysen has put it, “Humanity’s knowledge of itself.”3 Collingwood thinks that true history as he defines it did not exist four thousand years ago, say, for example, among the Sumerians. Taking the example of an official inscription of the Sumerians dated c. 2500 BC, he contends that the facts recorded, though in certain ways resemble history, do not constitute history, because the recorded facts lack the character of science as they do not attempt to answer questions. Also, the facts recorded are not about human actions, but those of the gods. The method used is unhistorical, for there is no interpretation of evidence. And lastly, the record cannot be qualified as historical in respect of its use or value, since it is not meant for man’s knowledge of man, but man’s knowledge of the gods. “The ancient Sumerians,” concludes Collingwood, “left behind them nothing at all that we should call history. If they had such a thing as a historical consciousness, they have left no record of it”4 The facts recorded in the document, he says, might be called quasi-history, as they resemble history by making statements about the past. History of this kind is theocratic history. There is another kind of quasi-history, namely myth, of which too we find examples in Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Chinese and Indian literatures. Myth is not concerned with human actions at all. It is in the nature of theogony, of which the Babylonian Poem on the Creation is a good example. Thus viewed, pre-classical compositions like ballads and epics, annals and dynastic lists, and the Hebrew scriptures belong to one of the two types of quasi-history, that is, theocratic history or myth. Collingwood writes that these two types dominated the whole of the Near East until the rise of Greece. The Moabite stone of the ninth century BC, a perfect document of theocratic history, shows that little change had taken place during that long interval. 3. The Difficulty of the Greeks All historical writing in the West rests on the foundations laid by Herodotus and Thucydides whose works marked the decisive transition from theocratic history and myth to a genuine historical literature. Their achievements stand in great relief against the background of two great constraints with which they began. The first of these was an almost complete ignorance of the history that lay behind them, and the second was an anti-historical metaphysics. The classical Greeks had behind them – behind Homer – a brilliant civilization which we call Mycenaen. But they had little knowledge of it. Of Greek history since the Trojan War they knew hardly anything and they were astonishingly late in producing any documents at all. The Jewish writer Josephus, in the first century AD, taunted the Greeks for these defects.5 Moreover, as Collingwood shows,6 ancient Greek thought as a whole was uncongenial to the growth of historical thought, for it was based on a rigorously anti-historical metaphysics. History is a science dealing with human actions in the past; human actions in the past belong to a world of change, a world where things come to be and cease to be. Such things, according to the prevalent Greek metaphysical view, ought not to be knowable, and therefore history should be impossible. An object of genuine knowledge must be determinate, permanent and have a character of its own. This substantialism was anti-historical. Things which are transient do not have the above qualities. Since human actions in the past belong to a world of change, there cannot be anything of permanent value in them for the mind to grasp. True knowledge must hold good not only here and now, but always and everywhere, and history cannot partake of this character. 4. Influences behind Greek Historiography A Period of Intellectual Transition The sixth century BC was an epoch of intellectual transition in Greece. One great development was the growth of prose by the side of poetry, and with this development the Greek mind began to be more reflective and less imaginative. The new intellectual attitude acted as a check on the imaginative treatment found in poetic thought. Geography and chronology slowly became distinct and the first philosophy and science appeared. Ionia’s Predominance In this intellectual transition Ionia led the rest of Greece. Ionia was the home of the Iliad and it became the home of Greek prose, philosophy and science. There the scientific mentality, already developed, also applied itself to history. Development of an Ethnographical Literature Geographically, Ionia was the meeting place of all the eastern Mediterranean civilizations. Greek historical writing developed to a considerable degree out of the attempt to describe and understand neighboring peoples like the Lydians and the imperial Persians. As a result of their overseas trade and travel, especially under the Persian empire, the Ionians developed an ethnographical literature. Logographers In trying to know about neighboring peoples, the Greeks recognized the importance of first-hand inquiry, which is the root meaning of history. Writers in this style, known as the ‘logographers’, produced in simple prose the oral traditions and legends relating to the origin of towns, peoples, princes, temples, etc. Of the logographers, the more important were Hecataeus, Hellanicus, Charon and Dionysius. The logographers mark the transition from myth to history. Their subject was local history, their source of information local myths. Yet they excluded from these myths what was too incredible. Hecataeus omitted in his Genealogies stories which he thought to be ridiculous. The narrative compositions of the logographers, in part recited publicly on festive occasions, were designed to give artistic pleasure to the hearers. Narrative history is the oldest species of history, one destined to last, for narration of past events is the unchangeable essence of history. Narration meets the enduring need for preserving the memory of historical events. Logography developed in the fifth century BC into full-fledged history in the works of Herodotus and Thucydides. Stimulus of Wars Wars have always acted as a stimulus to history writing. Hecataeus and Herodotus were stirred by the Graeco- Persian conflicts (499–479 BC), and later, in the same century, Thucydides was moved by the Peloponnesian war (431–404 BC). War, down to our own times, has been a stimulus to the writing of history. 5. Herodotus (c. 484–430 BC) The historical genius of Herodotus and Thucydides triumphed over two apparently insurmountable difficulties, namely, the absence of records, and an anti-historical philosophy which held history to be a hopeless endeavor. Herodotus was born in an exalted family in Halicarnassus about 484 BC. His uncle’s adventures earned him an exile at the age of thirty-two. The future historian profitably spent his undeserved exile in far-reaching travels. These took him to Phoenicia, Egypt, Cyrene, Susa, and finally to the Greek city-states on the Black Sea. Writes Will Durant: Wherever he went he observed and inquired with the eye of a scientist and the curiosity of a child; and when in 447, he settled down in Athens, he was armed with a rich assortment of notes concerning the geography, history, and manners of the Mediterranean states. With these notes and a little plagiarizing of Hecataeus and other predecessors, he composed the most famous of all historical works, recording the life and history of Egypt, the Near East and Greece from their legendary origins to the close of the Persian war.7 Theme and Content The man known as the ‘Father of History’ announces in his introduction that the purpose of his Histories was to preserve for future generations the great deeds of the Greeks and the Barbarians (Persians), and lay bare the causes for which they waged war. Written in nine parts, each of which is dedicated to one of the nine muses, the work has for its main theme the Graeco-Persian conflict which comes to its epic end at Salamis in 480 BC. But Herodotus also brought into his narrative interesting descriptions of the customs, dress, manners, morals and beliefs of some twenty- fourdifferent peoples of the eastern Mediterranean. The immense framework of the book makes it, in a limited sense, a universal history. Method Herodotus’s method was to write of far-off events reported to him at second or third hand. With curiosity and keen powers of observation he tried to know how things happened. He looked for rational explanations, showing the influence of climate and geographical factors. But he was liable to impute important events to trivial incidental causes, the influence of women, and purely personal factors. His belief in supernatural influences led him to introduce into his narrative dreams, oracles, visions and divine warnings of approaching evil. His childlike curiosity sometimes led to childlike credulity. Indeed, Strabo wrote that there was “much non-sense in Herodotus.”8 He thought that—the semen of Ethiopians was black; Egyptian cats jumped into fire; Danubians got drunk on mere smells; the priestess of Athena at Pedasus grew a mighty beard; Nebuchadnezzar was a woman; and that the Alps were a river! But he wrote in self-defence, “I am under obligation to tell what is reported, but I am not obliged to believe it; and let this hold for every narrative in this history.”9 Style Herodotus is patriotic in the treatment of fellow Greeks but he justly gives both sides of most political disputes and testifies to the heroism, honour and chivalry of the Persians. The father of history is also the father of prose composition and, as a narrator, he has never been surpassed. He wrote in a style which was at once loose, easygoing, romantic and fascinating, satisfying men’s need for entertainment, for marvellous stories. And writing in terms of personalities rather than processes, he presented excellent portrayals of character. Assessment Whatever his faults, Herodotus was the first to have sought a perspective of man in time. Cicero called him the ‘Father of History’, and Lucian, like most of the ancients, ranked him above Thucydides.10 Shotwell describes him as die ‘Homer of the Persian Wars’. H.E. Barnes looks upon him as “the first writer to imply that the task of the historian is to reconstruct the whole past life of man and was one of the most absorbing story-tellers in the entire course of historical writing.”11 Collingwood credits Herodotus with the creation of scientific history. He puts Herodotus to all the four tests of modern historiography and finds him wanting only in not basing his narrative on rational evidence and interpretation. It was Herodotus who created real history. By skilful questioning he made it possible to obtain scientific knowledge of past human actions which had been thought to be impossible. “It is the use of this word (‘history’), and its implications, that make Herodotus the father of history. The conversion of legend-writing into the science of history... was a fifth century invention, and Herodotus was the man who invented it. 12 6. Thucydides (c. 460–396 BC) Born to an Athenian father and Thracian mother, Thucydides received all the education that Athens could give. In 430 BC he suffered from the plague but death spared him for history. When the Peloponnesian war broke out, he kept a record of it from day to day. In 424 BC he was chosen as one of the two generals to command a naval expedition to Thrace, but a military failure earned him an exile from Athens. This misfortune proved fortunate for history, for Thucydides spent the next twenty years of his life in travel especially in the Peloponnessus. The oligarchic revolution of 404 BC ended his exile, and he returned to Athens. He died – some say by murder – about 396 BC leaving unfinished his History of the Peloponnesian War. Theme and Content As a young man Thucydides had heard Herodotus’s public readings of his History of the Persian Wars in Athens. Unlike Herodotus who ranged from age to age and place to place, Thucydides confined himself to the narrower scope of the Peloponnesian war, forcing his story into a rigid chronological framework of seasons—the ‘summer and winter’ system. The History of the Peloponnesian War comprises eight books, the eighth book ending abruptly in the middle of a campaign in 411 BC. Thucydides wrote to furnish information for future historians and guidance for future statesmanship. He wrote for “those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future which, in the course of human affairs, must resemble the past.”13 The honest and severe Thucydides meant his work “not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.”14 Since in his view human nature and human behavior would be forever the same, he held that similar situations and problems recur, so lessons of one period would be useful in another. Method The aim of writing an accurate and trustworthy account called for a rigid method. Unlike the credulous Herodotus, Thucydides subjected his sources to a rigorously scientific methodology and proceeded upon the clearest data. Believing that the historical process was a rational process uninfluenced by supernatural or extra-human agencies, he refused to trust the oracles and ran full tilt at myths and legends, marvels and miracles. He wrote as an eyewitness of most of the events of the war which he described. Herodotus may be the father of history, but Thucydides’s conscientious accuracy and truthfulness make him “the father of scientific method in history”.15 And though recognizing the role of exceptional individuals in history, Thucydides leaned rather towards impersonal recording, and the consideration of causes, developments and results. Yet he compromised with truth and accuracy when he put elegant speeches – and this quite often – into the mouths of his characters. It was a means of explaining and vivifying personalities, ideas and events. Thucydides frankly admits that such orations are largely imaginary, but he claims that each speech represents the substance of an address actually given at the time. Style Thucydides’s impressive impartiality is an example to future historians. He recounts the story of Athens and Sparta of his time with fairness to both sides. His desire to impart exact knowledge of the past conditioned his language and style as his scientific method and devotion to truth would not permit romance and exaggeration. However, this style is terse and vivid, sometimes rising to a dramatic power. Intending his History as a guide of conduct particularly useful to men in power and authority, Thucydides illumined his pages with many moral maxims. Some of these inform us that nemesis follows upon good fortune; that love often lures men to destruction; and that might does not make right. Assessment The strictly rational basis of Thucydides’s historical thinking had important consequences for modern historical thought. The analytical depth which this ancient Athenian historian brought to historiography had an abiding influence. He wished to know not merely the what but the how and why of the historical process, while Herodotus had confined in the main to the first of these inquiries. Thucydides wanted to probe deeper, discover the motives and explain the processes behind human action. Influenced by the science of the time, he tried to apply the principles and methods of Hippocratic medicine to politics, so that everything could be covered by rational explanation. Analytical power enabled him to separate the deeper causes from the immediate occasion of an event and to proceed to general conclusions, as for instance when he analysed the relationship between wealth and power, or the remorseless logic behind Athenian imperialism. To Thucydides history is an organic process; it is the study of events that are connected with one another in a rational, systematic and permanent order. The belief reminds us of what in the twentieth century would be labeled historicism. Again, he was the first to employ what modern historical methodology calls constructive reasoning. When positive sources of information failed, Thucydides applied Anaxagoras’s method of inverse reasoning, i.e., arguing backwards in a regressive fashion from the known to the unknown to locate the probable cause or causes of an event. J.B. Bury rates Thucydides’s work as the most decisive step taken by a single man towards making history what it is today. To David Hume the first page of Thucydides was the beginning of all true history. But Will Durant finds fault with him for his absorption in war to the exclusion of culture. Yet he concludes: Here at least is an historical method, a reverence for truth, an acuteness of observation, an impartiality of judgement, a passing splendour of language and fascination of style, a mind both sharp and profound, whose truthless realism is a tonic to our naturally romantic souls. Here are no legends, no myths, and no miracles.16  Collingwood compares the two great Greek pioneer historians. Three of the four characteristics of genuine history which we see in Herodotus reappear in the preface of Thucydides; but the latter definitely steals a march over the father of history by explicitly stating that history bases all its conclusions on rational evidence. But the greatness of Herodotus, Collingwood affirms, stands out in the sharpest relief when he is set against the anti-historical substantialistic tendency of Greek thought which held that only what is unchanging can be an object of true knowledge. The genius of Herodotus triumphed over this substantialistic tendency by showing that, by skilful questioning, it was possible to attain dependable knowledge of past human actions. The British philosopher-critic goes on to show that there is a difference between the scientific attitudes of the two fifth-century giants, a difference reflected even in their styles. The “easy, spontaneous, and convincing” style of Herodotus gives way to the “harsh, artificial, and repellent” style of Thucydides. The latter style, Collingwood attributes, to a “bad conscience.”17 The dominant influence on Thucydides was that of Hippocratic medicine. Hippocrates was not only the father of medicine, he was also the father of psychology and Thucydides, his spiritual child, is the father of psychological history. Now, Collingwood affirms, psychological history is not history at all, but natural science of a special kind. The chief function of history is to narrate events and facts of the past, but the chief purpose of psychological history is to affirm psychological laws. A psychological law is not an event, nor even a complex of events—it is an unchanging rule which governs the relation between events. Herodotus was primarily interested in the events themselves; Thucydides was more interested in the laws according to which they happen, laws which are eternal and unchanging.18 Collingwood cites as evidence for such a conclusion the speeches that Thucydides puts into the mouths of his characters. He asks: “Is it not historically speaking, an outrage to make all these very different characters talk in one and the same fashion...?”19 The style betrays a lack of interest in the question what those different characters actually said on particular occasions. The speeches themselves are imaginary – they are Thucydidean reconstructions of the speakers’ motives and intentions – a bad convention for a historian to establish. 7. Greek Historical Method and its Limitations20 To Herodotus and Thucydides historical sources meant the reports of facts given by eyewitnesses, and historical method consisted in eliciting these narratives. The two historians must have thoroughly cross-questioned the witnesses, as in a court of law, for the ascertainment of the facts. Collingwood attests that this method of using the testimony of eyewitness accounts for the extraordinary solidity and consistency of the narratives of Herodotus and Thucyides. But he points out that this method, the only available one then, had three limitations. 1. It imposed on its users a shortness of perspective. Eyewitness accounts could not go beyond living memory. The method tied its users on a tether whose length was the length of living memory. For this reason what Herodotus or Thucydides tell us of things beyond living memory – say, about the sixth century BC –cannot be relied upon as scientific, because their sources and method could not reach remote periods of the past. But this was not a failure. The significant achievement of fifth century Greek historiography was to have definitely brought the recent past, if not the remote past, within the scope of scientific history. Scientific history had been invented. 2. The second limitation in the method was that it precluded the historian from choosing his subject. The only things he could write about were the events which had happened within living memory. The comic irony of the situation is well brought out by Collingwood when he says that “instead of the historian choosing his subject, the subject chooses the historian....”21 The historian was not a historian in the true sense of the term; he was “only the autobiographer of his generation.”22 3. The ancient Greek historical method made it impossible to criticize, improve upon, or rewrite a history once written. If any given history is the autobiography of a generation, the evidence on which it is based will have perished. It is impossible also for such a work to be absorbed into a larger whole, “because it is like a work of art, something having the uniqueness and individuality of a statue or a poem.”23 An ancient Greek historical work could only be complete in itself, incapable of being incorporated into a larger whole, say, a universal history. 8. Greek Conception of the Nature of History and its Value24 Sensitivity Collingwood observes that there was in the Greek attitude towards life and knowledge an important pro-historical element which qualified the anti-historical tendency of Greek metaphysics. The Greeks lived at a time when history was moving with extraordinary rapidity and in a country where earthquakes and erosion changed the face of the land with unusual violence. These spectacles of incessant change gave to Greek thought “a peculiar sensitiveness to history”.25 The Greeks knew that it must have been such changes in the past that had brought the present into existence. Though Greek thought was engaged in the pursuit of the eternal, it had a vivid sense of the temporal.  Cyclic View The ancient Greeks further thought that changes in human life – in history – itself followed a certain rhythm. Herbert Butterfield writes that they conceived of history as involving great progress upto a certain point and then decline or collapse. They thought that there must have been many such swings up and down, so that civilization repeatedly had to start over again and again almost from the beginning. For this reason Greek philosophy easily ran to a cyclic view of history. The cyclic view is ‘anti-historical’ as it held that history somewhat repeated itself. The Greeks lacked the Jewish feeling that the whole creation is moving to some great end, as well as the modern feeling that time itself is generative of progress.26 Pragmatic and Humanistic View From the cyclic view, perhaps, the ancient Greeks conceived their pragmatic value of history. In the pragmatic view history is a repository of instances or lessons which are likely to be useful in the present and the future because history sufficiently repeated itself. Anything that repeats can be roughly foreseen (e.g., a tragedy) and guarded against. For this reason, historical knowledge, though only empirical semi-knowledge or ‘opinion’ not comparable to scientific knowledge, had, for the Greeks, a definite value for human life. History of notable events would serve as a basis for prognostic judgements, not demonstrable as in science, but probable, laying down not what will happen but what is likely to happen.27 Such a conception of history, affirms Collingwood, is not deterministic but humanistic—the Greeks regarded the course of history as flexible and open to salutary modification by the well- instructed human will. Nothing that happens is inevitable. The Greeks had a lively and indeed a naive sense of the power of man to control his own destiny, and thought of this power as limited only by the limitation of his knowledge. This view of man as capable of moulding his own destiny is humanistic, not deterministic.28 II. HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD 1. Influences behind Hellenistic Historiography The Hellenistic period in history roughly covers the two hundred years between the conquests of Alexander and the Roman conquest of Egypt. Collingwood attests that during this period Greek historiography overcame three of its limitations.29 The first of these was that the Greeks slowly shed their cultural particularism, i.e., the parochial outlook based on the linguistic and cultural distinction between the Greek and the Barbarian. Greek culture spread over the empire Alexander’s arms had won, and many cities like Alexandria, Pergamum, Antioch and Rhodes became great centres of Greek civilization. It was found that the Barbarians could become Greeks by learning the Greek language and adopting Greek manners and customs. Alexander and ten thousand of his soldiers took Asiatic wives; thirty thousand Persian boys were to be taught the Greek language and Macedonian military tactics. The Greeks, too, took to some Asiatic ways, the conqueror himself setting the pace in adopting oriental dress, customs and manners. The contact of the Greeks with the non-Greeks in the Hellenistic period resulted in cultural fusion. The second was that through the conquests of Alexander, the Greeks shed their city-state particularism. Greek thought had, with Alexander’s phalanxes, set out to conquer the world. The ‘world’ became something more than a geographical expression; it became a historical expression as well. The whole empire of Alexander – from the Adriatic to the Indus and from the Danube to the Sahara – now shared a single history, that of the Greek world. The idea of the whole world as a single historical unit, says Collingwood, is a typically Stoic idea, and Stoicism was a typical product of the Hellenistic period. Greek historical consciousness reflected the above changes. The old conception of history as the history of one particular social unit or city at a particular time changed and developed into a world view with a corresponding amplification in time. It was Hellenism, affirms Collingwood, that created the idea of oecumenical or universal history. The third limitation that Greek historiography overcame in the Hellenistic period was in the matter of method. A world history could not be written on the strength of testimony of eyewitnesses, dictated by the limits of human memory. A new method was sought, namely, compilation, for which materials were to be drawn from ‘authorities’, i.e., from previous historians who had already written histories of particular societies at particular times. Collingwood calls this the “scissors-and-paste”30 historical method which as a method is indeed far inferior to the fifth century Socratic method of cross-questioning eyewitness data. It now became possible to write a new kind of history of any size, if the historian could collect materials and weld the information into a unified history. This new kind of history is fully demonstrated in Polybius.  2. Polybius (c. 208–126 BC) Polybius was the greatest of the Hellenistic historians, and the only Greek fit to make a triad with Herodotus and Thucydides.31 His immense Histories is the story of the expansion of Rome to a world power. Theme and Content Like all historians, Polybius has a story to tell. The period between 219 and 167 BC saw great changes in the Mediterranean world when Rome conquered and brought that world under its sway. Polybius ascribed this spreading power of Rome to Roman character, “the natural result of discipline gained in the stern school of difficulty and danger....”32 He conceived his work on a grand scale and proposed to tell the story of the whole Mediterranean world from 221 to 146 BC which in effect covered the period of the expansion and constitutional development of Rome. Since Rome had become the centre of political history then, he gave his book unity by making Rome the focus of its events. Of the forty books into which Polybius divided his Histories, five have been preserved, and substantial fragments of the rest have been rescued. The language is degenerate Greek and the style so dull and lacking in literary taste that “No one,” said Dionysius of Halicarnassus, “ever read him (Polybius) through.”33 Qualifications Not many could have written history from a more varied and rich background of education, travel and experience than Polybius. He insists that history should be written by those who have seen – or have directly consulted others who have seen – the events to be described. The historian should be a man of affairs, versed in statesmanship, politics and war; otherwise, he will never understand the behavior of states or the course of history. The historian should have geographical knowledge, and Polybius speaks with pride of his own travels in search of data, documents and geographical veracity. Personal investigation, he stresses, is the very cornerstone of history. Our historian himself gathered data from the study of inscriptions and documents. Trying to make his history as accurate as possible he subjected his sources to critical examination and quoted texts of several documents. Causal Element Polybius elaborates the causal element in history to great lengths. A “bare statement of an occurrence,” he says, “is interesting indeed, but not instructive; but when this is supplemented by a statement of cause, the study of history becomes fruitful.”34 He distinguishes between the historical causes of wars and their occasions or pretexts. Cause, in general, he argues, has nothing mysterious and divine about it. Cause is natural and should be studied in a positive manner. Though he subscribes to the Stoic theology of a divine providence, he is too much of a realist and rationalist to give credence to stories of supernatural intervention. Yet he does not exclude the fortuitous in human affairs, but regards chance or the operation of the unexpected as part of the very constitution of history.35 Although he recognizes the occasional efficacy of great men, in general he resolved to lay bare the factual and impersonal chain of cause and effect. Polybius’s discussion of the guiding principles of history writing is worthy of the greatest theorists of history. How to Study History Polybius thought that the best method of studying history is that which sees the life of a nation as an organic unity and weaves the story of each part into the life history of the whole. He felt that studying isolated histories is like looking at the dissevered limbs of a dead animal.36 A comprehensive account of human development can be obtained only from the study of universal history. Cyclic Succession and the Mixed Constitution Though not the originator of the idea of cyclic succession in history or that of a mixed constitution, Polybius was inclined to view political history as a repetitious cycle of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, with their corresponding corrupt forms of despotism, oligarchy and mob rule. The best escape from this cycle seemed to this admirer of Roman institutions to be through a ‘mixed’ constitution like that of Lycurgus or Rome. Polybius saw in the Roman constitution the great virtue of a simultaneous expression of the monarchical, aristocratic and democratic elements of government. It was from this point of view that he wrote the record of his times. History as Educator By insisting that history should be written by men of affairs versed in the actual processes of war and government, Polybius was only stressing the didactic and pragmatic character and value of the subject. Like Dionysius of Halicarnassus, he reiterates that history is philosophy teaching by example. The subject is described as a lantern of understanding held up to the present and the future, a subject which alone will mature our judgement and prepare us to take right views. “There is no more ready corrective of conduct than knowledge of the past,” and “the soundest education and training for a life of active politics is the study of history.” 37 Assessment Polybius is ‘the historians’ historian’. Here is how Will Durant in the twentieth century estimates that historian of the second century BC:...historians will long continue to study him (Polybius) because he was one of the greatest theorists and practitioners of historiography; because he dared to take a wide view and write a ‘universal history’; and because, above all, he understood that mere facts are worthless except through their interpretation, and that the past has no value except as our roots and illumination.38 Collingwood sees in the conquest of the Mediterranean world by Rome and Polybius’s treatment of it, important consequences for historiography.39 It is to the ancient Romans, says he, that we owe the conception of history both as oecumenical and national—the unification of the world under the leadership of a people moved by a corporate spirit. Polybius begins his story at a point more than 150 years before the time of writing. With this larger conception of the field of history comes a more precise conception of history itself. Polybius uses the word istoria not in its original sense meaning any kind of inquiry but in its modern sense of history: it is now conceived as a special type of research needing a special name of its own. He advances the claim of this new science to universal study for its own sake, and thinks of himself as the first person to conceive of history as a form of thought having universal value. But the way he expresses this value is in consonance with the anti-historical substantialistic tendency of the Greeks. The value of history is not theoretical or scientific, but practical. History for Polybius is worth studying not because it is scientifically true but because it is a school and training ground for political life. It is only the study of history that equips men to take right views without involving them in actual danger; yet Polybius did not think that such study would enable men to avoid the mistakes of their predecessors and surpass them in worldly success. The study of history can lead to an inner success, a victory not over circumstances but over the self. What we learn from the tragedies of history’s heroes is not to avoid such tragedies in our own lives, but to bear them bravely when fortune brings them. The idea of fortune bulks large in this conception of history and imports into it a new element of determinism. Fate is the master of man. III. ROMAN HISTORIOGRAPHY The early Romans had a somewhat special feeling of piety towards the past promoted by traditional devotion of the aristocratic families to their ancestors. Their early records were annalistic in form and flavored by religious and superstitious practices. Also, the Romans were more practical than the Greeks and their genius was more adapted to history than to philosophy. Yet, Roman historiography owed its origin to Greek influence. 1 (a). Cato (234–149 BC) The Origines of Cato the Elder or Cato the Censor revolutionized Roman historiography. The work, written in seven books and carried down to the last year of the author’s life (149 BC), is lost for the most part. J.W. Thompson writes that judging from what has come down to us, the Origines must have been one of the most instructive and interesting histories ever written, a work whose loss is a literary calamity.40 In his introduction, Cato discusses the nature and value of education and the place of history in that education. He was profoundly convinced of the didactic purpose of history as inculcating patriotism, teaching morals, and shaping the character of the young. Accordingly the Origines abounded in moral reflections and wise sayings so much that the Distichs of Cato, a series of pungent quotations from his writings, was widely circulated after his death. Cato’s work contained a vast amount of information of an ethnographic, topographic and economic nature. Books III and IV are remarkable surveys of the tribes of Italy dealing with anthropology, geography, custom and law, language, institutions, religion, culture and civilization. Thompson notes another peculiarity of the Origines as absolutely characteristic of Cato. A downright plebeian, he held that Rome’s battles were won by common soldiers and that it was unjust to give the glory to the generals. In an age redolent with the deeds of great men, Cato, throughout his entire work, does not mention any man by name. The one proper name that occurs in the Origines is that of an elephant in the Roman army, named Surus, who behaved so valiantly in battle against the Carthaginians that Cato condescended to mention him! 1 (b). The Historical Memoir The Latin historical memoir appeared during the last century of the Roman republic. This genre of history had as its motive political vindication, the writers, mostly soldiers and statesmen, seeking to defend their policies. Sempronius Asellio wrote his fourteen books in the time of Sulla, between 90 and 80 BC. Asellio wanted to know the how and why of events as well as their results. But he too adhered to the tradition that history should inculcate morals and teach patriotism. Sulla wrote his memoir in twenty books, all of which are lost. Plutarch in the second century AD used Sulla’s books. Cornelius Sisenna wrote a memoir in twenty-three books which in effect was a history of the Social war (90–88 BC) and the Civil war between Sulla and Marius. Two brilliant memoir writers – nay, historians – were Sallust and Julius Caesar. Sallust’s (86–34 BC) two remarkable works are Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jugurthine War. While the first is a partisan pamphlet, the second, according to J.W. Thompson, is matchless history. Caius Julius Caesar’s (100 BC) Commentaries on the Gallic War in seven books, and Commentaries on the Civil War in three books are political propaganda designed to influence public opinion in his favor. Thompson warns the reader against being deceived by Caesar’s apparent truthfulness. 2. Livy (59 BC–AD 17) With Octavian’s victory at Actium in 31 BC the temple of Janus was closed. Virgil began the composition of the Aeneid in 29 BC; and in the same year, Titus Livy began to write his History of Rome. Both the poet and the historian were inspired by a conviction of the greatness and grandeur of Rome, and both believed that a new and golden age had dawned. Theme and Content “Rome’s historian,” says Taine, “has no history.”41 Livy was born in Padua, came to Rome, devoted himself to rhetoric an philosophy, and gave the last forty-six years of his life to the writing of the great history. The History of Rome was panned and completed on a majestic scale. But of the 142 books only thirty-five survive; as these fill six volumes, we may judge the magnitude of the whole. Indeed, its colossal dimension made it impossible for libraries to possess it. Livy traced Rome’s history from the city’s foundation to his own times (753 BC–AD 9). What Livy wrote was, in effect, a history of the city of Rome, or, at most, of Italy. Its contents are in the main the Punic, the Social, and the Civil wars. There are only brief references to the Roman constitution, financial questions and economic conditions. Roman literature finds no mention at all. Livy like all Roman historians, set before him a moral purpose. History, he believed, should inculcate morals, teach civic virtues, and promote patriotism. In an eloquent preface he deplores the immorality, luxury and effeminacy of the age. He would set forth through history the virtues that had made Rome great. “Polybius,” comments Will Durant, “had ascribed Rome’s triumph to its form of government; Livy would make it a corollary of the Roman character.”42 No wonder, Augustus forgave the book’s republican sentiments and heroes, for its religious and moral tone accorded well with the emperor’s policies. He took Livy into friendship and encouraged him as a prose Virgil.43 Method For his sources, Livy must have had all the Roman historians before him. Polybius he paraphrases for pages, not a ways giving credit. For the period 753 to 391 BC there were no documents but only legends which, he says, are difficult to distinguish from history. He tries to escape the difficulty by writing frequently: “I neither affirm nor deny”; “I hesitate...”; and “It is not the price of labour to investigate.”44 So great is his respect for religion that he accepts any superstition and fills his pages with omens, portents and oracles. He rarely consults original documents or monuments; he is no critical or scientific scholar who would probe, synthesize or organize his material in any systematic way. There is no inquiry into conditions, causes and processes. Livy’s History is an eloquent literary panorama of historical personages and episodes. Added to these defects of method and approach are his patriotic and patrician prejudices which could often distort the narrative in favour of Rome and her aristocratic class. Style Livy’s historical epic was a masterpiece of Augustan prose His readers did not look for critical history and forgot all his inaccuracies and bias. They remembered only his story and the style, “the vigour of his characterisations, the brilliance and power of his descriptions, the majestic march of his prose.”45 Through the centuries it has continued to invite readers, and shaped their conception of Rome’s history and character. Assessment Collingwood notes that while Polybius had depended on the ‘scissors and paste’ method only for the introductory phases of his work, the immensity of the History of Rome forced Livy to construct the whole body of his work by that method. Livy is clear that history is humanistic and that the historian’s task is to paint the actions of men. He makes no claims to original research or original method, but says Collingwood, the Roman historian, like Herodotus, has been wrongly charged with the grossest credulity. He tries to be critical but methodical criticism had not been invented. Fables he repeated with a caution but when he comes to the foundation of Rome he accepts the tradition as he found it What is outstanding in Livy is the literary quality which none has denied these 1900 years.  Censorship Irritated by the republican sentiments of the historians and other writers, Emperor Augustus clamped down a censorship The suppression, begun in 31 BC, lasted long after Augustus’s death—till AD 96. Writes J.W. Thompson: All kinds of literature suffered in this sharp transition from indulgence to severity, but history the most; with politics and the emperors. Accordingly all history had to be written with prudence and much of it had to be written. with flattery.46 A Roman History, by Velleius Paterculus extending down to AD 30, thus flattered the powers that be. The abrupt end of the work may have been due to the execution of its author. Tacitus disdained and scorned such measures. 3. Tacitus (c. AD 53—120) Cornelius Tacitus, the greatest name in Roman historiography, was born about AD 55 and died about AD 120. An aristocrat by birth character and education, he was trained in oratory and destined for the law—particulars which powerfully influenced the character of his work and method of exposition. He was a man of affairs who served the Roman government in various capacities. Works We must pass over the lesser, works of Tacitus like the Dialogues on Orators, Agricola and de Germania and come to the two great ones—the Histories and the Annals. The Histories, which was the first to appear, is an account of the Roman empetots ftom Galba to the death if Domitian (AD 68 to 96). It is a history of he Flavian dynasty. Of the original fourteen or probably twelve ‘books’ of the Histories, only four and a half remain. The Annals carry the story further back and record the history of the emperors of the Julian house: Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero (AD 14–68). Of an original sixteen or eighteen of the Annals, twelve books survive. Sources unci Method Tacitus’s sources consisted of other histories, speeches, letters, Acta Diurna, Acta Senatus and the traditions of old families. These sources he often cites, and sometimes critically examines. He is cautiously ambiguous on matters of faith and he rejects most astrologers, auguries, portents and miracles though he is not above accepting some of them. Again, as in the case of Livy, Tacitus’ s moral purpose obscures much historical truth. Inimical to historical veracity, too, is his method of exposition. Comparable to that of an orator in the Roman courts this method often turns the narrative into direct discourse putting the historian’s own words into the mouths of interlocutors. The history that Tacitus wrote is to be read with extreme caution. Theme and Content Tacitus held a rather moral view of the function of history. The chief duty of the historian, according to him, is to judge the actions of men, preserve from oblivion the deeds of good men, and hold up evil men for posterity’s condemnation. To him the Roman emperors whom he indicted were all evil men. Here is Durant’s eloquent comment: It is a strange conception which turns history into a Last Judgement and the historian into a God. So conceived, history is a sermon – ethics teaching by horrible examples – and falls, as Tacitus assumed, under the rubric of rhetoric It is easy for indignation to be eloquent but hard for it to be fair, no moralist should write history.47 Tacitus’s moral indignation results in two defects—narrowness of scope and partiality. The surviving books of the and the Annals would make the reader wonder whether Tacitus wrote the history of the Roman empire or the Histories city of Rome. Tacitus’s narrowness of view accounts for his failure to produce the larger history of the empire and of imperial policy, and the inability to perceive the excellent administration and growing prosperity of the provinces under the imperial monsters whom he indicts. He has no idea of economic influences upon political events, no interest in the life and industry of the people, the flow of trade, the condition of science, the status of women, the vicissitudes of belief, the achievements of poetry, philosophy or art. Apart from striking personalities and events; forces, causes, ideas and processes have no place in his narrative.48 Equally grievous is Tacitus’s pronounced partiality. Flagrantly biased in favour of the senatorial opposition, his primary interest is to indict the emperors. Butterfield informs us: In his bitterness, he (Tacitus) painted some of these emperors as worse than modern scholars would regard them, worse than would be suggested by the facts that he himself adduced; and sometimes where he recognized their good deeds he connected even these with malignant motives.49  J.W. Thompson writes that modern scholarship has vindicated the emperors Tiberius and Claudius whom Tacitus has pictured as human monsters. Style But with all such faults as a historian, few writers are more worth reading than Tacitus. There is nothing in all historical literature to compare with the clear living portraits that he paints. Few could match the splendor of his style, at once pithy, epigrammatic and ironic. This splendour of style is wedded to an abundance of ideas. No Roman author except Horace is so eminently quotable as Tacitus. Here are some examples: In war every commander claims the credit of victory, but none admits the blame for defeat. No hatred is so bitter as that of near relations. The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. Tyrants merely procure infamy for themselves and glory for their victims.50 Assessment J.W. Thompson writes: A masterly analytic power, especially of psychology and character, combined with irony of superlative degree and a trenchant style made Tacitus what he is: one to be read as a great writer—Macaulay for example—is yet read, as a literary genius, but not as an historian. As to historical fidelity Tacitus must be read with infinite caution.51 Collingwood observes that all of Tacitus’s defects as a historian flowed from talking over the current pragmatic view of the purpose of history.52 Tacitus was a rhetorician and not a serious thinker who would think out philosophically the fundamental problem of his enterprise. This defect led him to distort history systematically by representing it as essentially a clash of characters, the exaggeratedly good with the exaggeratedly bad. They are spectacles of virtue or vice. Nor can Tacitus be praised, says Collingwood, for character-drawing as is often done. This is because the principle on which he draws character is fundamentally vicious; the way he draws character is an outrage on historical truth. The Stoic and Epicurean philosophies make him believe the actions of a historical figure as originating only from his personal character; he forgets that a man’s action may be determined partly by his environment, and only in part by his character. Tacitus’s psychological-didactic approach, instead of being an enrichment of historical method was really an impoverishment, and indicated a declining standard of historical honesty. “As a contributor to historical literature,” Collingwood concludes, “Tacitus is a gigantic figure; but it is permissible to wonder whether he was an historian at all.”53 “Livy and Tacitus,” observes the same critic, “stand side by side as the two great monuments to the barrenness of Roman historical thought.”54 4. Graeco-Roman Historians after Tacitus After Tacitus there was a marked decline in Greek and Roman historiography first typified by Suetonius. Appian (c. AD 116–170), a contemporary of Plutarch and a Greek native of Alexandria, wrote the voluminous Roman History in twenty books, covering the history of the Roman republic and the empire down to his own times. Half the work has perished. Appian’s method consisted in grouping events by nations so that his Roman History is a series of separate monographs. J.W. Thompson notes that Appian is indifferent to chronology, gives no indication of his sources and lacks critical ability. Yet, writes that critic, Appian’s work has great value in that it enables us to check other historians of the same events, and particularly to know the administration, law and institutions of Rome. Fronto (c. AD 100–170), the author of De bello Parthico and Principia Historiae, was a native of Africa. The most valuable of his writings are his Letters written to Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. Flavio Arrian (c. AD 95–175), like Plutarch and Appian was a Romanized Greek. In AD 126 he had the good fortune to meet the Emperor Hadrian who was so impressed with him that he persuaded the historian to enter the government service. Arrianwrote many works all of which except his masterpiece, Anabasis of Alexander the Great, have been lost. To Thompson Arrian’s work is distinguished for sedulous regard for truth, critical handling of materials, wide geographical knowledge, understanding of military technique and administrative questions, besides a sympathetic appreciation of his subject. The account of the last days and death of Alexander the Great was one of the moving descriptions of history.55 The Roman History of Dio Cassius (c. AD 155–235 ) originally consisted of eighty books and covered the whole field of Rome’s history down to AD 235. But many books are lost, though summaries of some have been made. We have Dio’s own work for the period only from 69 BC to AD 53, i.e., from Pompey to Claudius. Thompson observes that Dio largely follows the offer Roman historians in his rhetoric, moralizing and biographical methods. Anecdotes abound and epigrammatic sayings are quoted. One such is Augustus’s famous boast: ‘I found Rome of clay, I leave it to you of marble.’ Errors are numerous one of which makes the Nile rise in Mount Atlas! Aurelius Victor (c. AD 325) was the author of Caesars and the Epitome. Eutropius’s History of Rome in ten parts had many qualities which made it a favourite book even in the Middle Ages. Another historian of merit was Ammianus Marcellinus (c. AD 330–401 ). Of his Roman History, only Books 14–31, covering the years AD 352–378, are extant. A man of intellectual honesty, Ammianus made careful and complete use of his sources. Giving information of various kinds, it is as a historian of culture that he is most valuable. Like all Roman historians he was a moralist exalting the old-fashioned virtues and denouncing current vices. With Ammianus, Latin and pagan historiography came to an end. “The libraries were closed for ever,” wrote Ammianus. Universal History If the concept of universal history had its origin in the enormous conquests of Alexander, it became an established form of historiography in the first century BC. It was the combined result of Rome’s world empire and the influence of the Stoic idea of the brotherhood of man. Trogus Pompeius, a contemporary of Livy, attempted to write a universal history, the Historiae Philippicae, in forty-four books. Symbolizing the concept of universal history cherished by the Stoics, Pompeius declared that the inhabitants of the Roman empire were all one People, the world was a wider Rome, and history had a right to be interested in the achievements of every people Another universal history was the Bibliotheca Universalis of Diodorus of Sicily, written in the reign of Augustus. To Diodorus universal historians who record the common affairs the inhabited world are ministers of divine providence. An immense work the Bibliotheca comprises forty books of which only the first five and fragments of rest survive. It spans the history of the Mediterranean world and the Middle East from mythical origins to Caesar’s conquest of Gaul. J.W. Thompson calls the Bibliotheca a mine of information on many ancient Greek historians who are otherwise unknown. Nicholas of Damascus coming to Rome and winning the regard of Augustus, wrote, among other works, a great Universal History in one hundred and forty-four books. Of this, however, only a few fragments remain. History as Biography: Plutarch (AD 46–126) The influence of great men upon history is a subject discussed throughout the centuries and the biographical method of historical interpretation is certainly an attractively popular method of presentation. Biographies of antiquity, unlike their modern counterparts, were intimately associated with the history of a country or culture. Nicholas of Damascus, mentioned earlier, had written a Life of Caesar, a Life of Augustus, and his own Autobiography. Suetonius’s (c. AD 75–160) Lives of the Twelve Emperors from Caesar to Domitian brought into style the writing of history in the form of biography. Cornelius Nepos’ Lives of Great Captains and Diogenes Laertes’s Lives of the Philosophers were other works of the kind. Such biographies, like all history in ancient times, were inclined to moralize and set patterns to be imitated. This vogue for biography reached its climax in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives one of the world’s classics. Travelling in Asia Minor, Egypt and Italy Plutarch resided in Rome during the Flavian rule and devoted himself to research in the libraries and archives of the imperial city. Shortly before the death of Domitian in AD 96 he returned to his native Chaeoronea where he lived until a ripe old age, much honoured by his fellow citizens. One of the most prolific writers of antiquity, Plutarch’s extant works are forty-eight biographies and seventy-eight treatises or dialogues. In the Parallel Lives by which he is known to mankind, he compared great Romans with great Greeks, as a stimulus to virtue and heroism in his readers. Plutarch is to be regarded as more of a moralist than a historian. He warns us in his ‘Alexander’ – a chapter in Parallel Lives – that he is more interested in character than in history. Plutarch’s book has been a stimulus to heroism and a pasture to writers of all kinds, including historians. 5. The Character of Graeco-Roman Historiography:56 Humanism and Substantialism Humanism Collingwood observes that classical or Graeco-Roman historiography had firmly grasped one of the four characteristics of history—that history should be humanistic. Graeco-Roman historiography is a narrative of man’s deeds, man’s purposes, man’s successes and failures. Though it admits divine agency into the deeds of men, the function of that agency is strictly limited. The will of the gods rarely manifests. Such a position meant that the cause of all historical events must be sought in the personalities of human agents. The philosophical idea underlying it was the belief in the ability of the human will to choose and pursue its own ends. This implied that whatever happens in history happens as a direct result of human will; man became entirely responsible for his own actions.  Substantialism If humanism was the chief merit of Graeco-Roman historiography, its chief defect was substantialism. A substantialistic metaphysics implies a theory of knowledge according to which only that which is unchanging is knowable. But what is unchanging is not historical; it is the transitory event that is historical. The substance from whose nature an event proceeds is nothing to the historian. For Herodotus events were important in themselves and knowable by themselves. But in Thucydides such a historical point of view got dimmed by substantialism. For Thucydides the events are important chiefly for the light they throw on eternal and substantial entities of which they are mere accidents. Collingwood says that the stream of historical thought which flowed so freely in Heredotus thus began to freeze up, a process which continued until, by the time of Livy, history was frozen solid. Collingwood gives two examples of how the influence of substantialism appears in the two great Roman historians. First, in Livy: In writing a history of Rome, Livy did not trace or describe the process, the steps, by which Rome became what it came to be. Rome appears on the stage of history as a goddess or a ready-made heroine whose action Livy described. Rome is a substance, changeless and eternal. There is no origin, no development. In the very first years of its being, Rome had such institutions as augury, the legion, the senate, and so forth, and it was assumed that they remained thereafter unchanged. The origin of Rome, as Livy described it, was a kind of miraculous leap into existence of the city, full-fledged and complete as it existed at a later date. It is in the substantialistic and non-historical sense that Rome is still called, as Livy thought it to be, ‘the eternal city’. Secondly, in Tacitus: The same substantialism operated in Tacitus’s portrayal of historical personages. When Tacitus describes the way in which the character of a man like Tiberius broke down beneath the strain of empire, he presents the process not as a change in the structure of a personality, but as revelation of features in it which had hitherto been hypocritically concealed. It is not simply out of spite that Tacitus so misrepresents facts. It is because the idea of development in a character, an idea so familiar to us, is to him a metaphysical impossibility. A good man cannot become bad. Graeco-Roman historiography, Collingwood concludes, can never show how anything comes into existence; all the agencies that appear on the stage of history have to be assumed ready-made before history begins. The nemesis of this substantialistic attitude was historical skepticism: What was the use of history? Since it did not have a substantialistic validity, it could not have a substantialistic value—a value in itself; it could only have a pragmatic value. IV. ANCIENT CHINESE HISTORIOGRAPHY One achievement of the eighteenth century European Enlightenment was the intellectual discovery of China. Indeed, Chinese life and civilization so much caught the imagination of the Europeans that Francois Quesnay, the physiocrat, elevated China to a model of Europe in rationality, good government, and good taste. 1. Circumstances Favorable for the Growth of Historiography in Ancient China A significant element in the Chinese civilization, unlike the Indian, is its abiding taste for history. China has been called “the paradise of historians”.57 Chinese historical tradition is unparalleled in its length, in its internal consistency, prestige, and the bulk of its literary output.58 Chinese historiography developed independent of all outside influence. Certain circumstances did much to shape the Chinese mentality and dispose it towards the practice of history.59 First, from very early times the recording of past events was regarded as important for writing itself seems to have been thought by the Chinese as a way of communicating with the divine order. Every temple had its archivist who looked after such documents as the registers, family trees, records of contracts, and decisions of the oracles. Princely houses similarly kept officials whose duty it was to draw up treaties, record edicts, draft documents, divine and decide the day for making a journey, holding a ceremony or beginning a war. From an early date these archivist- astrologers – whether in the temples or in the princely courts – recorded events, too. The archivist-astrologer acquired great influence at the imperial court and acted as secretary to the emperor or went as his emissary on diplomatic missions. Secondly, there was in ancient China a growing movement which we may label ‘rationalist’, which brought incidental support to history by insisting on the ‘immortality’ that men might secure in the memory of future ages.60 During the period from the fifth to the third century BC, known as the period of the Warring (or Contending) States (403–221 BC), this movement culminated in a brilliant flowering of culture which brought philosophical thought to its climax. This greatly helped history, for in China philosophy was neither cosmological theory nor metaphysical speculation; it meant the kind of wisdom that is necessary for the conduct of life, particularly the conduct of government. It resorted not to deductive reasoning, but to the exploitation of historical examples. Again, after Szuma Ch’ien, the specialized role of the historiographer became recognized as part of the Chinese civil service. Under the T’ung dynasty from the early seventh century there emerged a history office which was an organ of the government, and history became an important subject in the civil service examinations. Such, in brief, were the factors which made history the most popular and respectable form of literature in China. 2. Some Chinese Historians Confucius (c. 551–478 BC) The Chinese would claim a history reaching back to 3000 BC, but anything going further back than 776 BC cannot be treated as trustworthy. Confucius particularly stressed the importance of history in promoting reverence for the past and respect for the examples set by ancestors. The three subjects which formed the curriculum for his pupils were history, poetry and the rules of propriety. He left behind him, apparently written and edited by his own hand, the Five Ching or Canonical Books which are deemed to constitute the surviving textual reflection of the golden age. Two of these books – the fourth and the fifth – are historical works. The fourth, the Ch’un Ch’ieu or Spring and Autumn Annals, is a brief chronicle of the reigns of twelve dukes of Confucius’s own state of Lu from 722–484 BC. The Annals was also a guide to moral conduct. In the fifth, the Shu-Ching or Book of History or Book of Documents – which is a collection of royal speeches, edicts, memorials, feudal documents, etc – the great teacher sought to edify and inspire his pupils with the most important and elevating events of the early reigns. That was the period, thought Confucius, when China had been unified and civilized by heroic and unselfish heroes like the good king Yao who ruled for a hundred years. But Confucius cannot be regarded as so much an historian giving us an impartial account of times past