Short and selective

It is an indication of the prevalent academic mindset that an eminent medieval historian has written a book on prehistoric archaeology. Though presented with clarity, Prehistory achieves brevity at the cost of accuracy and wider coverage, says NAYANJOT LAHIRI.

IN the early 1980s, as an M.A. student of the Department of History at Delhi University, I used to frequently hear my archaeology teacher holding forth on the marginal position of archaeology in India, not the least because it was generally treated as a sideshow of history.

Over the years, the truth of that opinion has often struck me as, for instance, when I look at the state of higher education in Delhi. In this city, where I have lived and taught for most of my life, there are several universities, but not one of them has cared to create a department of archaeology. The subject is generally taught as part of history courses.

Irfan Habib's book Prehistory, once again, has reminded me of my teacher's assessment. Professor Habib is one of our best-known historians of medieval India. He has now written a book on prehistory, which forms the first volume in a projected ``People's History of India''. His work has been supported by a ``generous grant'' from the Madhya Pradesh State Textbook Corporation.

That a State textbook corporation agreed to support such a project - a book on prehistoric archaeology written by a renowned scholar of medieval India - can be explained in, at least, two different ways. Either such institutions imagine that there are no archaeologists who can write this kind of books - a possibility that one hopes can be rejected outright. Or they believe that archaeology is only an extension of history and thus, a text book-like treatise on prehistory can be written by any historian. To his credit, Habib has read and digested archaeological literature ranging from older works like D.P. Agrawal's The Archaeology of India, (1982) to Dilip Chakrabarti's India: An Archaeological History, (1999). The absence, though, of the late H.D. Sankalia in the Bibliographic Notes is glaring.

It is the equivalent of writing a book on medieval India without referring to the work of Irfan Habib. Sankalia provided pioneering leadership in opening out subcontinental palaeolithic research in post- independence India. He was also the author of The Prehistory and Protohistory of India and Pakistan.

The canvas of Habib's book stretches from geological formation processes, going back to 140 million years, to India's early food producing cultures, some of which are dated to around circa 1400 BC. The author's understanding of prehistory is presented with the clarity that is the hallmark of his work.

He highlights the manner in which, from the beginning of hominid existence, there have been movements into India.

In fact, the prehistoric ancestors of all Indians originally came, in a variety of ways, from Africa. To me, this underlines the futility of the whole debate on whether ``We'' are ``indigenous'' or ``foreign''.

The explanation of complex terms is also praiseworthy as is his exposition of a variety of geographical issues. I have especially enjoyed his elucidation of the importance of the presence of the same species of dolphins in the Indus and the Ganga. Apparently, this ``could only happen if one major tributary of either had shifted from the Ganga to the Indus or vice versa, within the last million years.'' World prehistory finds a place here as well. The themes that are covered range from the evolution of the human species to Gordon Childe's notion of a ``neolithic revolution''. All of this is presented in about 70 pages or so.

Brevity, however, has been achieved at the cost of accuracy and adequate coverage. Here, I can only cite one example of Habib's unsure grip on the subject.

It relates to his assessment of the character of advanced hunting-gathering and foraging communities of the Holocene epoch, many of which are known by the technical designation of ``mesolithic''. His understanding of such cultures is that they represent a transitional stage between the retreat of the last glacial epoch and the introduction of farming.

However, many specialised hunter-gatherers refused to be ``transitional''. They continued to make their presence felt much after the beginning of agriculture in their respective regions. For example, groups that occupied Bagor in Rajasthan and Langhnaj in Gujarat were closely interacting with those in the sites of the Indus Civilisation.

In the case of Langhnaj, we know about such contact, because objects never produced by the hunter- gatherers who lived there - Harappan disc beads, a pure copper knife and black and red pottery which is similar to that of Gujarat Harappan settlements - have been found there. Hunter gatherers, in turn, must have provided articles of use and/or services to Harappan inhabitants. For instance, they may have supplied some food items to the Harappans who were known to consume a variety of wild animals and plants.

Such relationships of exchange between hunter-gatherers and agricultural societies can be seen at different points of time and their significance is lost if Holocene hunting-gathering is treated just as a humble interlude. Instead, it would have been more useful to see it as a development that parallels agriculture, since, for a long time, this form of subsistence continued to be as viable as farming.

Habib's Prehistory is best described as a very short and selective summary of a very extensive and exciting period of India's human past.

Prehistory, Irfan Habib, sponsored by Aligarh Historians' Society, Tulika, hardback, p.76, Rs. 160.

Nayanjot Lahiri is the author of The Archaeology of Indian Trade Routes and has edited The Decline and Fall of the Indus Civilisation.

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