Not a pretty picture

Words WORTH

An illustrated cultural history aims wide, and misses.

What can one say about a cultural history of India that ends with the words "The Union and State Governments are increasingly aware of the role of literature in society and do what they can to encourage good writing, both directly and through the National and State Academies and Book Trusts"?

True, that's an unfair and unrepresentative extract, but it says something about the conception of the whole. The issue is of critical importance in a book with such a grand purpose, edited by such a fine scholar as A L Basham, but composed of a jumble of essays on various subjects by notable academics and practitioners, arranged in rough chronological order. These words are from the last essay, titled "Modern Literature" and composed by Krishna Kripalani, a former Secretary of the Sahitya Akademi, no surprise.

What is cultural history? I see it as a freewheeling little sister of history. Through it, borrowing techniques from anthropology, a modern can learn about, and attempt to enter, the minds of past people through their cultural production (art, music, literature, traditions and rituals, science). If he is successful, he can in this way backlight the events and processes which are commonly thought to constitute the real "history" of a people or place, throwing them into more revealing relief. Appropriately, an equivalent of the term in French is histoire des mentalites.

Cultural history also invites, even demands, a narrative approach. This is because of the tremendous gymnastic control required of the author, who must remain aware of the vast range of cultural production while drawing from it non-contradictory, mutually reinforcing inferences to give direction to and substantiate his argument. A degree of impressionism "" broad sweeps across a broad canvas, a judicious use of anecdote "" is inevitable and enriching but, handled well, does not compromise even a subtle argument. This is why, it seems to me, cultural history is best done by one person rather than a group, even such a distinguished one.

Basham himself is a wonderful writer and clear thinker of the old school, author of the well-known The Wonder that was India (first published in1954), staple reading for Indian history undergraduates. A slim collection of his writings on The Origins and Development of Classical Hinduism, published posthumously, is a superb work, and good enough for bedtime reading without being in the least oversimplified. Whatever Basham has written in this book of cultural history (the introduction and something on Hinduism) is good, and gives a sense of movement across a common historical front. He holds on to the big picture, where most other contributors, with the partial exceptions of Romila Thapar, Percival Spear and a few others, are not quite able to. Chapter after chapter thus gets the survey treatment, which then fails to integrate into a portrait of Indian culture.

Nevertheless, having absorbed the whole, the reader will not come away poorer or more confused. The thousands of memes, cultural fragments, floating about in our minds will receive some sort of contextualisation "" begin to fall into place, in other words "" and this is a great service.

This book's prose content dates from 1975, but Oxford University Press has now done this illustrated version "for younger readers", parents and teachers. The result is something written for adults but illustrated textbook-style. It doesn't work.

The illustrations are a disappointment. The title of the first chapter, for example, is "The Indus Civilization", but the sketch next to it is of Buddha's head. The chapter on miniature paintings has two illustrations, neither of which is a miniature painting. One is a photo of the Golden Temple; the other is an old-fashioned map of Aurangzeb's empire. In a photo of two bands of Khajuraho sculpture, figures in the top row are decapitated.

Rare is the apt juxtaposition. The images are scattered about as if merely to prettify the product, not add to its value. The drawings are inexpert and not scaled to the page; many are merely redrawn from photographs. Typos offend the eye on nearly every page (whoever heard of a Pali cannon?), diacriticals are missing, as are an index, bibliography, list of illustrations and perhaps a timeline. Basham would not have been proud of this book.

We must wait a while longer for a true cultural historian for India "" someone like Daniel J Boorstin or Gore Vidal "" a scholarly polymath and polyglot with a deadly grip on the facts, a robust imagination, and a touch of madness or inspiration.

---

The Illustrated Cultural History of India
Editor A L Basham
Publisher OUP
PRICE Rs 345
PAGES 301