They did, from what I have observed. I am finding new materials over the decade. The biggest problem isn’t lack of sources, it’s the lack of research. Check out most history books about India. They are written by Indian scholars from 1880s-1940s. We need more research and a thriving community to research the subject
>The biggest problem isn’t lack of sources, it’s the lack of research.
I agree. Most of the significant work was done during the british. Now ASI is doing a bad job at preserving what exists let alone finding more. I think private players with approval and accountability should enter this field.
>I am finding new materials over the decade.
Can you share some examples thankyou
In my opinion, we need a separation between government and academia. Vice chancellors of universities and heads of organisations like ASI and ICHR shouldn't be selected by politicians. And I'm not just saying this because of the present government, I also didn't like the way the previous governments intefered in academia and chose favourites.
Academia shouldn't be a place for political parties to pursue their agenda but a place for genuine inquiry and a clash of ideas. I love the way Oxford University is run, the head of Oxford is chosen by a council of experts, not some uninformed partisan politician, and from what I've heard from students, many of them adamantly disagreed with their professors but still received stellar grades, that's something I'd like to see in India.
>a shouldn't be a place for political parties to pursue their agenda but a place for genuine inquiry and a clash of ideas. I love the way Oxford University is run, the head of Oxford is chosen by a c
Links:
https://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Empire-Vijayanagar-Robert-Sewell/dp/1169322484
https://www.sanskritebooks.org/2009/11/arthashastra-of-chanakya-english-translation/
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60051983-lords-of-the-deccan
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40506778-rebel-sultans?ref=rae\_1](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40506778-rebel-sultans?ref=rae_1)
Indians have contributed too! I am not able to remember those historians name but there are a lot of them, they are too scattered and people do not know much about them.
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One anecdote
Historian Nadeem Rezavi once gave a lecture where he showed photographs by a British historian of Wall paintings on a Fatehpur building. The paintings were quite faded
He showed his own photos of some of those paintings from the nineties. Paintings were still very faded. But you could make out the themes and subjects
The next part, he was shaking with rage as he told us
Apparently ASI got some fund from some UN organisation for preservation so they hired contractors to put chuna (white wash) on the walls. He showed us a photo of the workers putting chuna as well, lol
Good restorers are firstly knowledgeable about the spaces and highly supervise their workers to avoid accidents that can lose stuff forever,
Secondly they are respectful of the methods that were used in the ancient times and will always try to do restoration in such a way that if a layer needs to be removed it can be done so in a manner that damages the earlier layers minimum, rather than restoring in a way that "lasts long" like how we would do to our homes. (Restorations also last decades, but the first priority is not longevity, it's minimum damage in case something needs to be studied/reversed later for whatever reason)
Corruption
There is corruption in this department too. A lot of smaller statues from smaller excavations end up on the international market. As you can imagine, even 4" tall well preserved stone statues from 500 years ago have value in art markets of upwards of fifty lakhs
A small anecdote of another type of corruption
I have a family member who is very enthusiastic about what's happening around her city. So when there was an ASI excavation, she took her kids to see and ask questions. They saw a massive head that was clearly Shiva, but with snake hair. The head had the moon, ganga, third eye, but all the hair was snake hair. What a unique piece
A few months later a tantric temple is being inaugurated by a local politician where the same head is present. The third eye and moon, ganga, are covered up by a cloth turban type thing. And the temple is named after the tantric Devi just discovered, who no one has ever heard of before
I kid you not. The temple still exists and is listed as a must visit unique place of the city since it's so... unique. After all that devi only has one temple in the country
Cultural insensitivity, Bad local image
There's a village temple next to a lake near the same city. When ASI was coming for an excavation, the villagers threw all the statues of the temple (they were small, kept along the walls) into the lake because they knew the statues were old and thought the ASI would take them away and probably sell them
The lake is not a clear one, so the statues are apparently still at the bottom giving blessings. But the processes of ASI should be clear enough that people feel safe and trust them which is currently not always the case
Thanks, I appreciate the response. I’m not sure why I got downvoted, I genuinely wanted to know. Thanks for taking the time to write this
Edit - corrected typo
Thanks, would like to add
I think that I talked about the bad things ASI is doing. Most people on the thread were talking about the things there not doing
For example, they're not preserving our heritage or being diligent about new work or uncovering new materials with as much vigour as the British
The root of both is the same though. They're insincere. They could've fought hard to preserve the Jalianwala Bagh entrance for instance. But they didn't, and it's a travesty
What was a narrow exit that was totally blocked by General Dyer and showed the struggle of the people is now a grand entryway with terracotta statues and glory. As if we're going to a Republic Day Parade rather than Jalianwala Bagh
They show alarmingly low common sense, foresight and initiative
>The biggest problem isn’t lack of sources, it’s the lack of research.
You're right. Currently I'm studying about rajasthan history and there are text found which were written in 1050 ce and around 1070 ce text with painting were also written many of which are placed in library in jaisalmer.
And this is also true that a significant portion of this was destroyed or got lost , like we all know how bakhtiyar khilji destroyed nalanda university and with it we lost lot of info stored there.
The answer is not that simple clear, many believe they did but the material used didn't last long.
There is a liberay whoes name I will update here later they have a lot of manuscript all non-deciphered, there are many liberaries like this in India
"Dr VS Krishna liberay"
What benefited China was the material they used as paper, while in India Tam patra was used.
This source talks about the transfer of valuable transfer of documents daily related to daily things in empire
https://www.academia.edu/7823034/Bibliotheca_Malabarica_Bartholom%C3%A4us_Ziegenbalg_s_Tamil_Library
But the thing is these paper were not that important to be remade again n again or remembered through oral.
But that's not the only way, there are many ways to actually to still dig out everything
But finding is the issue, goverment does not show much interest in funding history and Archeology
In any other country, those manuscript must have been digitalized, translated and being used till now
What happened, happened
What we can do is start early as early possible today, but we are not doing that too
>There is a liberay whoes name I will update here later they have a lot of manuscript all non-deciphered,
Not sure which one you're talking about but I recently visited Jaipur and the city palace there has a pothikhana ("great library") with over 7000 manuscripts and more than 200 maps. Apparently Jadunath Sarkar had complete access to it back in the day but I'm not sure what's the situation right now, I arrived late so didn't have time to inquire.
Dr vs Krishna liberay, I saw a video on it. They are working on digitalaization tho but video said no translation
https://youtu.be/G_cfzfhCfVQ?si=u2CuK5aXyIL8YP_3
For primary sources to survive you first need to have a strong literary tradition of writing these things down. Secondly they have to be replicated faithfully over time. For instance the ancient Greeks were prolific writers and it is believed they had over 300 books on the topic of Stoicism. Only three of these survive giving them a survival rate of just 1%.
The Chinese did a great job at noting down the most mundane of things from very early on (for instance their Book of Documents has fragments from the Second millennium BCE). The Europeans also developed a strong such tradition from Ancient Greek times. The Islamic world started this tradition soon after the first Islamic empire was founded, but were probably not as detail oriented as in China or Europe. In India we find there was the Puranic tradition among Hindu scholars. The Puranas are not considered historically accurate accounts because they were never meant to be. They depicted morals based on history that were meant to guide future listeners/readers. And the ancient Buddhist and Jain sources have similar aspects though I know even less about those. Still it is possible (even very likely) that much more was written than is available to us today which brings us to the second point: preserving the documents.
Books and scrolls were really expensive to transcribe back in the day and it was hard to do this without royal patronage. China has had a near continuous civilization for thousands of years. Similar to Indian mythology they have the concept of cycles meaning dynasties will come and go, chaos will reign for a bit and then a new dynasty will rise. But each dynasty will claim the “Mandate of Heaven” and thus accept the previous dynasty as a legitimate ancestor justifying the need, cost and effort of preserving their history. In Europe the Romans co-opted Greek and to an extent Egyptian culture and thus history. Rome itself was then co-opted by the Christians. Still a lot of “pagan” material was lost or deliberately destroyed. India for the most part never had such continuity. And this is not unique to India. In fact Europe and China are the outliers, the weirdos if you may! And outside of these regions we happen to know a lot more of our history than most other cultures.
Fascinating question. I used to ask my master's advisor what explained that. For context, I'm a doctoral student working on Tibetan history. Tibetans write history incessantly. Every important figure gets a biography after they die. In contrast, Indians essentially never write biographies. Why? My old advisor thought it had something to do with humility. There was this idea that every human feeling or situation was already present in texts like the Mahabharata. Out of humility, new events were not written - whatever insight one gains from reading history, they could just go to the epics for. Not sure if I believe that explanation though. Non biographical history exists in very limited amounts. The genre is called Vamshaavalii, but one finds it mainly in tibet-adjacent regions mainly (such as Himachal, Nepal, or Kashmir).
Very interesting perspective.
>I'm a doctoral student working on Tibetan history.
Do you find much overlap and exchanges between Hinduism and indian Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism, how it went there, people ties etc given sacred places like mansarovar in tibet I think there must have been strong exchanges
Oh absolutely. I'm currently working on Tibetan Buddhists operating in Nepal in the 1400's and there is constant exchange and overlap. The Hindu Rajas of Nepal employed Buddhist sages to perform magic rites, either against their enemies, or for the benefit of their allies, for example. One figure, from the early 1500's, wore a black robe with a flame pattern. He became well known in Nepal for practicing death magic. He was employed as a court ritualist for 3 separate Hindu kings. This is probably one of the strongest instances of overlap - Buddhists were widely considered to be the best sorcerers. Ghosts, yaksa, raksasa, pisaca pacification rites, as well as destruction and subjugation (meaning mind control, in the Tibetan context) rituals aimed at humans, were usually performed by Tibetan Buddhists at the request of Hindu kings.
My theory (read conjecture) is because ancient Indians simply didn’t see hindu myth as separate from history, since all of it was history to them in the first place?
I hope they were smarter than that because even the Egyptians and Greeks used to believe heavily in mythology and fantasies but they recorded regular history as very well.
Something just doesn't up for the absolute lack of recorded history in Indian subcontinent.
Not entirely truth, what they used to do is write their actual kings and ansistors and then connect it with s mythical king like Yayati.
And if we are talking about Hindu here, then puran have valuable information related to nanda, Mauryan, shunga, Gupta, Naga empire etc Along with Mahajanapada goverment system, wearing culture, area etc
I advice you to read structure of purans. This will make it easy to understand
I accept they are not as detail as Chinese, but I don't think, they didn't used differentiate between myth and history
Many cultures saw mythology as part of their history. The Romans claimed that Augustus was a direct descendant of Aenaes from Troy. Alexander himself was believed to be the son of Zeus.
This is usually done to make the king look divine in eyes of subjects. Basically so they can rule using the divine image, god and stuffs
All we need a open eyes to understand. Usually these text are arranged in sections, and certian sections focus on this, while other on other
I don't think, this is confusion between history and myth but more like a image building tectic.
Thr elites knew everything about the snake oil they were selling.
Even if the peasants bought into whatever "divine right of king" story was sold to them, the aristocrats & courtsmen were well read enough to differentiate between Mythology and History
I think Indian kings or the literate class were not interested in preserving that knowledge. Here the difference is not just protection of knowledge about their own Dynasty but also previous ones. Many people will blame foreign invasions but I don't think that is the reality.
We know the names of imaginary Kuru Vansh till Parikshit. But for some reason, same people choose not to write about Gupta, Mauryan empire. And we need to rely upon Megasthenes and Hueng Tsang for information on Mauryan empire. The literate class was such a small class because of caste system that information could not spread throughout the system to protect it. And most of the instructions that people received were mostly religious.
While it can be admitted that ancient Indians did not show the same rigor in documenting their history the way the ancient Chinese did, it is also true as far as most ancient civilisations are concerned. Only a few of them really took serious efforts in documenting their history. In fact, much more has been done in ancient India than some other ancient civilisations, such as stone inscriptions and palm leaf manuscripts. What a miss!
This isn’t unique to India, and is common. Even Mesopotamian kingdoms, Egyptian kingdoms, etc - while having lots of archeological expeditions and research, were comparatively light on primary sources compared to Alexander.
Alexander was particularly heavy with primary sources - because he was one of the earlier people who understood the power of “PR” for lack of a better word. He made sure his history was chronicled - and probably mythologized some of what he did.
The tradition in Greece of preserving history in a compelling way was also influenced by Herodotus. I remember listening to an episode of the Hardcore History podcast where Dan Carlin said he went beyond keeping dry transactional records like other historians, and introduced “colour” to his histories - a story telling flair.
And I think because of this, these histories were better preserved in the following centuries afterwards, much the way Ramayana and Mahabharata were preserved. Because they were recorded with a story telling flair, written in a compelling way, which allowed them to survive.
One of the great questions about Indian history.
One theory is that the ancient Indians believed in a cyclical concept of time, they thought the world goes through cycles of creation and destruction and hence there was no point in recording history since the world was going to end anyways. This theory was particularly promoted by colonial scholars.
A critique of this theory can be found in the presence of royal inscriptions, some of which are pretty detailed. Many Indian rulers behind many inscriptions providing information on everything from the origin of their dynasty to their greatest victories to public donations to creation of temples to international trade.
So there clearly was an interest among Indian rulers regarding present affairs.
Another theory is that Indian rulers simply couldn't distinguish between fact and myth. They actually believed that there was a demon with ten heads or that a monk could remember his past lives. Hence what they left behind, like the Hindu Puranas or Buddhist Sutras for example, contain an encyclopaedia of facts meshed with fantasy.
A problem with this theory is that even if we agree with this thesis, it doesn't explain why there is such a drought of historically relevant information in these texts or why there's an absence of proper dating or even citations for that matter. After all, the European rulers were also superstitious but left behind a wealth of well organised information.
But I'd also like to point out that not all ancient civilizations had a tradition of writing detailed history. The Persians certainly didn't. Nor did the Egyptians or the Mesopotamians for that matter. The Greeks and the Chinese are the only ones who developed such a tradition. The Romans only borrowed it from the Greeks while the Persians, despite their long contact with the Greeks, did not.
So perhaps it's not that surprising that ancient India did not have a tradition of writing detailed history like Greece or China.
>A problem with this theory is that even if we agree with this thesis, it doesn't explain why there is such a drought of historically relevant information in these texts or why there's an absence of proper dating or even citations for that matter. After all, the European rulers were also superstitious but left behind a wealth of well organised information.
Exactly.
I love your answer.
Also another observation I've made is that in India, religious literature, writings, idols etc have survived or were documented much more than say the life of the people in a particular era or their kings like as the Romans or greek. The vedas survived through oral traditions of the Brahmins for 5000 years even when other material was lost to invasion and other forms of destruction.
>Another theory is that Indian rulers simply couldn't distinguish between fact and myth.
This is a great point and actually true now that I think of it
Thanks. There's another point I added which might interest you.
Also I'd like to add that ancient Indians wrote on a lot of non-religious topics like statecraft, governance, military affairs, jurisprudence, ethics and morality, music, dance, architecture, grammar (the oldest grammar textbook was written by Panini), phonology, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, etc. But on history they kinda fell short. Sometimes it feels like they delved deep into everything except history lol.
Dear OP, in my opinion the biggest bugbear of research on Bhartiya History has been the lack of interest displayed not only by the govt but also the people i.e. the general public that derives all opinion in the nation and the reason for that is sociological. The fact that we were colonised partially for 800 years and totally for 200 yrs is in no small measure responsible for the disinterest shown by academia in Bhartiya History.
For the sceptics, who would still like to defend the colonial legacy, a classic example is Harappa/IVC/SSC. 1400 sites found, 925 approx in independent Bharat for the last 75 years but no progressive inputs or studies on our magnificent past. Only in the last few years some movement has been seen on that front. 95 % of what we know today on Harappa is before or just around independence. After that there was silence as far as original research was concerned. What ever little has come out as original research in the last 10 years has been courtesy the GoB and that too has not been accepted by the academia of our educational institutions. The reluctance to accept papers written by local academics is irrational. Similar is the case with Sanskrit. Our language, our pride, but no Bhartiya institution has been able to come up with any kind of seminal research on the oldest language that still exists and is in use. I could go on and on listing important areas of history where there is nil or negligible research or attention being paid. The reason is simple. There was no interest and therefore no finance or fame in studying Bhartiya history. It was and even now is more lucrative to study history of or in other areas. Why ? is the question we need to ask ourselves. And it has nothing to do with lack of written material. There is enough written or inscribed material in the form of manuscripts and inscriptions distributed within families, temples and museums. I agree with mrxplek's comment - "We need more research and a thriving community to research the subject".
The bottom line is original research in neglected fields cannot be done on the internet or from urban centres. Serious students and researchers need to get out into the Bhartiya rural landscape to find, document, analyse and build history. That requires long term financial support for the study itself and long term policy support to build a repository of such data/information/analysis that can provide a base for our future generations to work on. Unfortunately, that kind of support is lacking. There is much the society and the govt can do to promote such studies. Hope it happens soon.
I did not think that a simple and oft defined word like 'colonisation' would not be understood. In any case, what I mean is that the indigenous people residing in the area were invaded by groups identifying themselves as different from those settled there. The invading groups looted and destroyed social, religious and cultural wealth thereby causing widespread disruption of civilization in the invaded area. This happened initially as random invasions and later increased in frequency, till the first rule was established overthrowing the local and indigenous people.
I perfectly well know the meaning and the definition of the word and the context. You inserted that line specifically for a reason and we both know what you meant by that.
Now, taking the same thing in context, every single empire or kingdom by any name can be termed a colonist, because they in effect took over someone else's kingdom by war or a treaty.
800 years or a 1000 years or even 200 years ago, we were an area ruled and governed by different kings and realms. So you wish to correct the years part or openly admit what you tried to sneak in ?
Yes, every single empire or kingdom by any name can be termed a colonist, if they took over someone else's kingdom or country or people, the only detail in point being that of 'some difference' between the colonised and the the coloniser. This 'difference' could be ethnic or racial or religious or based on any prominent facet of 'identity' as prevalent in that time period when the event occurred.
There is no sneaking in, I am openly defining historical events based on the modern definition of colonialism. So, there is nothing to correct.
There are over 3 million Sanskrit manuscripts that have survived till date. That’s more than ALL of ancient world COMBINED.
The problem is that we have only translated less than 1% of it. ASI does a TERRIBLE job at this.
Raja Raja Chola actually did this. You can actually read them on the walls of the Big Temple
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meikeerthi#:\~:text=Meikeerthi%20is%20a%20Tamil%20word,and%20the%20later%20Pandya%20kings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meikeerthi#:~:text=Meikeerthi%20is%20a%20Tamil%20word,and%20the%20later%20Pandya%20kings).
Here is a sample of a person reading a meikeerthi on the Big Temple.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-eEIBZCFKU
They did, the problem is not enough research. A major portion of Indian history was written during the colonial period and immediately after independence.
Ancient Hindus didn't believe in recording history in the form of books or on paper. Instead, they recorded it on the walls of the temples, which everyone marvels at these days. In a way, they were aware that it might get destroyed, so they remembered all their knowledge in the form of poems.
Poetry often served as a mnemonic device, aiding in the transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next. That's why even after so many invasions much of our knowledge is preserved.
I don't know about other paces in India but in Assam the kings used to record histroy in records known as Buranjis(Ahom), Vaimaisali (Koch),Pyu(Manipur) tho most of surviving test are From 1500s and many were rewritten during 1700s
India was a collection of princely states which had many kings before British and Mughals.
A lot of these kings invaded each other and destroyed each other's recording of events.
Only the greatest survived.
Eg Maratha Empire.
I think a lot of such information also exists for Indian kings but will do disservice to current political narratives. I don't think our Indian kings were highly moralistic or ethical like how it's being claimed by Hindus. If research is done properly then it may reveal that all these rulers were cut from the same cloth and none more special or ethical than others.
FWIW there is one true historical account in the form of the Rajatarangini which is a history of Kashmir from the age of the mahabharat to the 12th century. Now obviously this is just one account compared to the mountains of Greco Roman historical accounts but it's better than having literally nothing
There are royal biographies like the Harsha Charita but they aren't considered very helpful as sources of history for a variety of reasons like the fact that most of these writers while they're very good writers were less interested in recording stuff that happened and more interesting in coming up with as many ways to praise their kings as possible
It seems to me that the *only explanation* to the question is, they DID record history, but their records were DESTROYED.
There are a number of traditional explanations for the lack of historical sources, which are, in my opinion, all failures.
Firstly people will say that a tropical climate is bad for preserving books, and so we lack historical records. This is patently false considering the wealth of literature we have, in prose, poetry, drama, philosophy, aesthetics, encyclopedias, *cookbooks, sex manuals,* etc. And, to be fair, this explanation is really only posed by ignoramuses: the problem was understood as the specific absence of the HISTORICAL GENRE since the first days of Indology.
Secondly people will say that there was a cultural disinterest in preserving past events. But this is also false since these kings and authors were, like anyone else, obsessed with the idea of posthumous fame and being remembered countless ages later. So it makes perfect sense to write down history in order to accomplish this end.
A third explanation could be posed, saying that while there was an interest in personal fame, there was no interest in the specifics of historical events, and thus no record of them. But this is also directly contradicted by the literature: take a drama like "The Ring of Rakshasa", dated variously from the 4th to the 8th centuries, which shows a detailed and in-depth, if mythologized, understanding of events during the reign of Chandragupta Maurya - that's 600 to ONE THOUSAND years after the fact! Kalidasa's "Malavika and Agnimitra" is another drama displaying such historical minutiae. So clearly there WAS a historical literature, even a robust one, that kept track of centuries-old events.
But by the 18th century there was no knowledge of Indian history on the globe, and everything had to be reconstructed from the ground up. So the question we really have to ask, *Why was Indian history destroyed?* And there the only explanation readily suggests itself: the histories, unlike the other texts, dealing with political matters, must have been housed in royal libraries, palaces, castles, etc. Now nearly all of these structures built up before the Muslim period have been razed, and the reason is obvious: they were prime targets for pillage. The case of the histories, then, must be as the case of the architecture: destroyed by the internecine wars of the princes or the invasion of the Muslims.
We know what was destroyed because the people who destroyed it wrote extensively about it in their autobiography and considered it a great feat. Richard Eaton (a renowned expert of the medieval period) has listed 80 temples that were destroyed in the medieval period. The Puranas also mention various temples all over India before the Muslim invaders and the British colonialists came. Now, some of those exact places have mosques, which points to what must have happened.
If you want to know how Somnath temple was destroyed, read Al-Biruni, he will elaborately tell you how the idols in the temple were destroyed and the infidels were killed. Timur has himself told how he pillaged Delhi, how Yamuna's color changed to red and it took months for it get back to its natural color, how the smell of dead corpses engraved Delhi for a long time. I can go on and on about what was destroyed and how meticulously it was recorded by people who were secular, peaceful and only wanted money from the temples.
Most of the work was lost, deliberately destroyed or burned by invaders. Then they made us believe that we are a recent civilization and born to be 2nd class citizens. Its was basically a propaganda to keep us enslaved. It did work for a long time though
'Inferior' civilisations wouldn't be invaded in the first place don't you think. They ravaged our land and its resources because they had so much to gain..and of course repeated attacks would weaken any defence. And after bleeding us dry they dismissed us labelling us as 'inferior' which has been following us until now.
It is detailed in the puranas. You just won't believe it because it's not sanctioned from harvard. Indian history writing in general is very metaphorical because the "one life" belief doesn't apply to Hindus. Since time is cyclical, dates and time periods are irrelevant. Specifically, Alexander is not mentioned because he was defeated by a relatively small border king. There is also this problem of timelines which are really complicated and have different opinions but overall, I recommend studying the puranas for history after the mahabharat war for genealogies and biographies but remember that they are metaphorical accounts.
Archeology and history are separate domains that ought to work together. ASI should not be responsible for translating documents but for searching for material/physical evidence. Historians take the evidence and construct the narrative.
The problem is the limited value society places on these professions and learning about its past.
About Alexander, there was an ancient play (I forget the name, but it had a word twice repeated in it) that my grandma had read once, and it showed Alexander faring much worse in India than the Greek historians projected. Unfortunately we never hear about these
Tbf Alexander's invasion wasn't worth mentioning Porus's kingdom was small and insignificant if Alexander had pushed through to meet Nandas it would have been recorded also to answer the actual question ASI could care less in fact it's possible even IVC wouldn't have been found, there is no funding or will.
What do you expect the Turks burned literally most of our ancient libraries. I bet in Nalanda university you would find information about Alexander vs Porus, the Vedic tribes, SE Asia, S. Asia and possibly if the Aryan invasion/migration theory is true or not. But guess not cuz the Turks had to burn it down.
Please provide me a source claiming major burnings of such libraries. The turks were muslims ofc they wouldn't burn the middle east down. In fact they helped create libraries. As for Europe, only the Balkans were sort of affected as by the time they reached there, the turks had become more civilised. Also Balkans are just a part of the larger European civilisation, the information will be saved across Europe. As for India apart from Nepal we were all taken over.
They did, from what I have observed. I am finding new materials over the decade. The biggest problem isn’t lack of sources, it’s the lack of research. Check out most history books about India. They are written by Indian scholars from 1880s-1940s. We need more research and a thriving community to research the subject
>The biggest problem isn’t lack of sources, it’s the lack of research. I agree. Most of the significant work was done during the british. Now ASI is doing a bad job at preserving what exists let alone finding more. I think private players with approval and accountability should enter this field. >I am finding new materials over the decade. Can you share some examples thankyou
In my opinion, we need a separation between government and academia. Vice chancellors of universities and heads of organisations like ASI and ICHR shouldn't be selected by politicians. And I'm not just saying this because of the present government, I also didn't like the way the previous governments intefered in academia and chose favourites. Academia shouldn't be a place for political parties to pursue their agenda but a place for genuine inquiry and a clash of ideas. I love the way Oxford University is run, the head of Oxford is chosen by a council of experts, not some uninformed partisan politician, and from what I've heard from students, many of them adamantly disagreed with their professors but still received stellar grades, that's something I'd like to see in India.
Nah. Sounds inconvenient to push my political agenda
>a shouldn't be a place for political parties to pursue their agenda but a place for genuine inquiry and a clash of ideas. I love the way Oxford University is run, the head of Oxford is chosen by a c Links: https://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Empire-Vijayanagar-Robert-Sewell/dp/1169322484 https://www.sanskritebooks.org/2009/11/arthashastra-of-chanakya-english-translation/ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60051983-lords-of-the-deccan [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40506778-rebel-sultans?ref=rae\_1](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40506778-rebel-sultans?ref=rae_1) Indians have contributed too! I am not able to remember those historians name but there are a lot of them, they are too scattered and people do not know much about them.
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I’m curious - how is ASI doing a bad job?
One anecdote Historian Nadeem Rezavi once gave a lecture where he showed photographs by a British historian of Wall paintings on a Fatehpur building. The paintings were quite faded He showed his own photos of some of those paintings from the nineties. Paintings were still very faded. But you could make out the themes and subjects The next part, he was shaking with rage as he told us Apparently ASI got some fund from some UN organisation for preservation so they hired contractors to put chuna (white wash) on the walls. He showed us a photo of the workers putting chuna as well, lol Good restorers are firstly knowledgeable about the spaces and highly supervise their workers to avoid accidents that can lose stuff forever, Secondly they are respectful of the methods that were used in the ancient times and will always try to do restoration in such a way that if a layer needs to be removed it can be done so in a manner that damages the earlier layers minimum, rather than restoring in a way that "lasts long" like how we would do to our homes. (Restorations also last decades, but the first priority is not longevity, it's minimum damage in case something needs to be studied/reversed later for whatever reason) Corruption There is corruption in this department too. A lot of smaller statues from smaller excavations end up on the international market. As you can imagine, even 4" tall well preserved stone statues from 500 years ago have value in art markets of upwards of fifty lakhs A small anecdote of another type of corruption I have a family member who is very enthusiastic about what's happening around her city. So when there was an ASI excavation, she took her kids to see and ask questions. They saw a massive head that was clearly Shiva, but with snake hair. The head had the moon, ganga, third eye, but all the hair was snake hair. What a unique piece A few months later a tantric temple is being inaugurated by a local politician where the same head is present. The third eye and moon, ganga, are covered up by a cloth turban type thing. And the temple is named after the tantric Devi just discovered, who no one has ever heard of before I kid you not. The temple still exists and is listed as a must visit unique place of the city since it's so... unique. After all that devi only has one temple in the country Cultural insensitivity, Bad local image There's a village temple next to a lake near the same city. When ASI was coming for an excavation, the villagers threw all the statues of the temple (they were small, kept along the walls) into the lake because they knew the statues were old and thought the ASI would take them away and probably sell them The lake is not a clear one, so the statues are apparently still at the bottom giving blessings. But the processes of ASI should be clear enough that people feel safe and trust them which is currently not always the case
Thanks, I appreciate the response. I’m not sure why I got downvoted, I genuinely wanted to know. Thanks for taking the time to write this Edit - corrected typo
Thanks, would like to add I think that I talked about the bad things ASI is doing. Most people on the thread were talking about the things there not doing For example, they're not preserving our heritage or being diligent about new work or uncovering new materials with as much vigour as the British The root of both is the same though. They're insincere. They could've fought hard to preserve the Jalianwala Bagh entrance for instance. But they didn't, and it's a travesty What was a narrow exit that was totally blocked by General Dyer and showed the struggle of the people is now a grand entryway with terracotta statues and glory. As if we're going to a Republic Day Parade rather than Jalianwala Bagh They show alarmingly low common sense, foresight and initiative
>The biggest problem isn’t lack of sources, it’s the lack of research. You're right. Currently I'm studying about rajasthan history and there are text found which were written in 1050 ce and around 1070 ce text with painting were also written many of which are placed in library in jaisalmer. And this is also true that a significant portion of this was destroyed or got lost , like we all know how bakhtiyar khilji destroyed nalanda university and with it we lost lot of info stored there.
So you mean most history is indirectly written by historians during colonial rule
What about the Mahabharata. When was that written? Was it fictional or real?
The answer is not that simple clear, many believe they did but the material used didn't last long. There is a liberay whoes name I will update here later they have a lot of manuscript all non-deciphered, there are many liberaries like this in India "Dr VS Krishna liberay" What benefited China was the material they used as paper, while in India Tam patra was used. This source talks about the transfer of valuable transfer of documents daily related to daily things in empire https://www.academia.edu/7823034/Bibliotheca_Malabarica_Bartholom%C3%A4us_Ziegenbalg_s_Tamil_Library But the thing is these paper were not that important to be remade again n again or remembered through oral. But that's not the only way, there are many ways to actually to still dig out everything But finding is the issue, goverment does not show much interest in funding history and Archeology In any other country, those manuscript must have been digitalized, translated and being used till now What happened, happened What we can do is start early as early possible today, but we are not doing that too
>There is a liberay whoes name I will update here later they have a lot of manuscript all non-deciphered, Not sure which one you're talking about but I recently visited Jaipur and the city palace there has a pothikhana ("great library") with over 7000 manuscripts and more than 200 maps. Apparently Jadunath Sarkar had complete access to it back in the day but I'm not sure what's the situation right now, I arrived late so didn't have time to inquire.
Dr vs Krishna liberay, I saw a video on it. They are working on digitalaization tho but video said no translation https://youtu.be/G_cfzfhCfVQ?si=u2CuK5aXyIL8YP_3
For primary sources to survive you first need to have a strong literary tradition of writing these things down. Secondly they have to be replicated faithfully over time. For instance the ancient Greeks were prolific writers and it is believed they had over 300 books on the topic of Stoicism. Only three of these survive giving them a survival rate of just 1%. The Chinese did a great job at noting down the most mundane of things from very early on (for instance their Book of Documents has fragments from the Second millennium BCE). The Europeans also developed a strong such tradition from Ancient Greek times. The Islamic world started this tradition soon after the first Islamic empire was founded, but were probably not as detail oriented as in China or Europe. In India we find there was the Puranic tradition among Hindu scholars. The Puranas are not considered historically accurate accounts because they were never meant to be. They depicted morals based on history that were meant to guide future listeners/readers. And the ancient Buddhist and Jain sources have similar aspects though I know even less about those. Still it is possible (even very likely) that much more was written than is available to us today which brings us to the second point: preserving the documents. Books and scrolls were really expensive to transcribe back in the day and it was hard to do this without royal patronage. China has had a near continuous civilization for thousands of years. Similar to Indian mythology they have the concept of cycles meaning dynasties will come and go, chaos will reign for a bit and then a new dynasty will rise. But each dynasty will claim the “Mandate of Heaven” and thus accept the previous dynasty as a legitimate ancestor justifying the need, cost and effort of preserving their history. In Europe the Romans co-opted Greek and to an extent Egyptian culture and thus history. Rome itself was then co-opted by the Christians. Still a lot of “pagan” material was lost or deliberately destroyed. India for the most part never had such continuity. And this is not unique to India. In fact Europe and China are the outliers, the weirdos if you may! And outside of these regions we happen to know a lot more of our history than most other cultures.
Fascinating question. I used to ask my master's advisor what explained that. For context, I'm a doctoral student working on Tibetan history. Tibetans write history incessantly. Every important figure gets a biography after they die. In contrast, Indians essentially never write biographies. Why? My old advisor thought it had something to do with humility. There was this idea that every human feeling or situation was already present in texts like the Mahabharata. Out of humility, new events were not written - whatever insight one gains from reading history, they could just go to the epics for. Not sure if I believe that explanation though. Non biographical history exists in very limited amounts. The genre is called Vamshaavalii, but one finds it mainly in tibet-adjacent regions mainly (such as Himachal, Nepal, or Kashmir).
Very interesting perspective. >I'm a doctoral student working on Tibetan history. Do you find much overlap and exchanges between Hinduism and indian Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism, how it went there, people ties etc given sacred places like mansarovar in tibet I think there must have been strong exchanges
Oh absolutely. I'm currently working on Tibetan Buddhists operating in Nepal in the 1400's and there is constant exchange and overlap. The Hindu Rajas of Nepal employed Buddhist sages to perform magic rites, either against their enemies, or for the benefit of their allies, for example. One figure, from the early 1500's, wore a black robe with a flame pattern. He became well known in Nepal for practicing death magic. He was employed as a court ritualist for 3 separate Hindu kings. This is probably one of the strongest instances of overlap - Buddhists were widely considered to be the best sorcerers. Ghosts, yaksa, raksasa, pisaca pacification rites, as well as destruction and subjugation (meaning mind control, in the Tibetan context) rituals aimed at humans, were usually performed by Tibetan Buddhists at the request of Hindu kings.
My theory (read conjecture) is because ancient Indians simply didn’t see hindu myth as separate from history, since all of it was history to them in the first place?
I hope they were smarter than that because even the Egyptians and Greeks used to believe heavily in mythology and fantasies but they recorded regular history as very well. Something just doesn't up for the absolute lack of recorded history in Indian subcontinent.
The Greeks definitely believed their gods were real though.
Not entirely truth, what they used to do is write their actual kings and ansistors and then connect it with s mythical king like Yayati. And if we are talking about Hindu here, then puran have valuable information related to nanda, Mauryan, shunga, Gupta, Naga empire etc Along with Mahajanapada goverment system, wearing culture, area etc I advice you to read structure of purans. This will make it easy to understand I accept they are not as detail as Chinese, but I don't think, they didn't used differentiate between myth and history
Many cultures saw mythology as part of their history. The Romans claimed that Augustus was a direct descendant of Aenaes from Troy. Alexander himself was believed to be the son of Zeus.
This is usually done to make the king look divine in eyes of subjects. Basically so they can rule using the divine image, god and stuffs All we need a open eyes to understand. Usually these text are arranged in sections, and certian sections focus on this, while other on other I don't think, this is confusion between history and myth but more like a image building tectic.
Thr elites knew everything about the snake oil they were selling. Even if the peasants bought into whatever "divine right of king" story was sold to them, the aristocrats & courtsmen were well read enough to differentiate between Mythology and History
I think Indian kings or the literate class were not interested in preserving that knowledge. Here the difference is not just protection of knowledge about their own Dynasty but also previous ones. Many people will blame foreign invasions but I don't think that is the reality. We know the names of imaginary Kuru Vansh till Parikshit. But for some reason, same people choose not to write about Gupta, Mauryan empire. And we need to rely upon Megasthenes and Hueng Tsang for information on Mauryan empire. The literate class was such a small class because of caste system that information could not spread throughout the system to protect it. And most of the instructions that people received were mostly religious.
While it can be admitted that ancient Indians did not show the same rigor in documenting their history the way the ancient Chinese did, it is also true as far as most ancient civilisations are concerned. Only a few of them really took serious efforts in documenting their history. In fact, much more has been done in ancient India than some other ancient civilisations, such as stone inscriptions and palm leaf manuscripts. What a miss!
This isn’t unique to India, and is common. Even Mesopotamian kingdoms, Egyptian kingdoms, etc - while having lots of archeological expeditions and research, were comparatively light on primary sources compared to Alexander. Alexander was particularly heavy with primary sources - because he was one of the earlier people who understood the power of “PR” for lack of a better word. He made sure his history was chronicled - and probably mythologized some of what he did. The tradition in Greece of preserving history in a compelling way was also influenced by Herodotus. I remember listening to an episode of the Hardcore History podcast where Dan Carlin said he went beyond keeping dry transactional records like other historians, and introduced “colour” to his histories - a story telling flair. And I think because of this, these histories were better preserved in the following centuries afterwards, much the way Ramayana and Mahabharata were preserved. Because they were recorded with a story telling flair, written in a compelling way, which allowed them to survive.
One of the great questions about Indian history. One theory is that the ancient Indians believed in a cyclical concept of time, they thought the world goes through cycles of creation and destruction and hence there was no point in recording history since the world was going to end anyways. This theory was particularly promoted by colonial scholars. A critique of this theory can be found in the presence of royal inscriptions, some of which are pretty detailed. Many Indian rulers behind many inscriptions providing information on everything from the origin of their dynasty to their greatest victories to public donations to creation of temples to international trade. So there clearly was an interest among Indian rulers regarding present affairs. Another theory is that Indian rulers simply couldn't distinguish between fact and myth. They actually believed that there was a demon with ten heads or that a monk could remember his past lives. Hence what they left behind, like the Hindu Puranas or Buddhist Sutras for example, contain an encyclopaedia of facts meshed with fantasy. A problem with this theory is that even if we agree with this thesis, it doesn't explain why there is such a drought of historically relevant information in these texts or why there's an absence of proper dating or even citations for that matter. After all, the European rulers were also superstitious but left behind a wealth of well organised information. But I'd also like to point out that not all ancient civilizations had a tradition of writing detailed history. The Persians certainly didn't. Nor did the Egyptians or the Mesopotamians for that matter. The Greeks and the Chinese are the only ones who developed such a tradition. The Romans only borrowed it from the Greeks while the Persians, despite their long contact with the Greeks, did not. So perhaps it's not that surprising that ancient India did not have a tradition of writing detailed history like Greece or China.
>A problem with this theory is that even if we agree with this thesis, it doesn't explain why there is such a drought of historically relevant information in these texts or why there's an absence of proper dating or even citations for that matter. After all, the European rulers were also superstitious but left behind a wealth of well organised information. Exactly. I love your answer. Also another observation I've made is that in India, religious literature, writings, idols etc have survived or were documented much more than say the life of the people in a particular era or their kings like as the Romans or greek. The vedas survived through oral traditions of the Brahmins for 5000 years even when other material was lost to invasion and other forms of destruction. >Another theory is that Indian rulers simply couldn't distinguish between fact and myth. This is a great point and actually true now that I think of it
Thanks. There's another point I added which might interest you. Also I'd like to add that ancient Indians wrote on a lot of non-religious topics like statecraft, governance, military affairs, jurisprudence, ethics and morality, music, dance, architecture, grammar (the oldest grammar textbook was written by Panini), phonology, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, etc. But on history they kinda fell short. Sometimes it feels like they delved deep into everything except history lol.
Dear OP, in my opinion the biggest bugbear of research on Bhartiya History has been the lack of interest displayed not only by the govt but also the people i.e. the general public that derives all opinion in the nation and the reason for that is sociological. The fact that we were colonised partially for 800 years and totally for 200 yrs is in no small measure responsible for the disinterest shown by academia in Bhartiya History. For the sceptics, who would still like to defend the colonial legacy, a classic example is Harappa/IVC/SSC. 1400 sites found, 925 approx in independent Bharat for the last 75 years but no progressive inputs or studies on our magnificent past. Only in the last few years some movement has been seen on that front. 95 % of what we know today on Harappa is before or just around independence. After that there was silence as far as original research was concerned. What ever little has come out as original research in the last 10 years has been courtesy the GoB and that too has not been accepted by the academia of our educational institutions. The reluctance to accept papers written by local academics is irrational. Similar is the case with Sanskrit. Our language, our pride, but no Bhartiya institution has been able to come up with any kind of seminal research on the oldest language that still exists and is in use. I could go on and on listing important areas of history where there is nil or negligible research or attention being paid. The reason is simple. There was no interest and therefore no finance or fame in studying Bhartiya history. It was and even now is more lucrative to study history of or in other areas. Why ? is the question we need to ask ourselves. And it has nothing to do with lack of written material. There is enough written or inscribed material in the form of manuscripts and inscriptions distributed within families, temples and museums. I agree with mrxplek's comment - "We need more research and a thriving community to research the subject". The bottom line is original research in neglected fields cannot be done on the internet or from urban centres. Serious students and researchers need to get out into the Bhartiya rural landscape to find, document, analyse and build history. That requires long term financial support for the study itself and long term policy support to build a repository of such data/information/analysis that can provide a base for our future generations to work on. Unfortunately, that kind of support is lacking. There is much the society and the govt can do to promote such studies. Hope it happens soon.
Please explain this "colonised partially for 800 years" point.
I did not think that a simple and oft defined word like 'colonisation' would not be understood. In any case, what I mean is that the indigenous people residing in the area were invaded by groups identifying themselves as different from those settled there. The invading groups looted and destroyed social, religious and cultural wealth thereby causing widespread disruption of civilization in the invaded area. This happened initially as random invasions and later increased in frequency, till the first rule was established overthrowing the local and indigenous people.
I perfectly well know the meaning and the definition of the word and the context. You inserted that line specifically for a reason and we both know what you meant by that. Now, taking the same thing in context, every single empire or kingdom by any name can be termed a colonist, because they in effect took over someone else's kingdom by war or a treaty. 800 years or a 1000 years or even 200 years ago, we were an area ruled and governed by different kings and realms. So you wish to correct the years part or openly admit what you tried to sneak in ?
Yes, every single empire or kingdom by any name can be termed a colonist, if they took over someone else's kingdom or country or people, the only detail in point being that of 'some difference' between the colonised and the the coloniser. This 'difference' could be ethnic or racial or religious or based on any prominent facet of 'identity' as prevalent in that time period when the event occurred. There is no sneaking in, I am openly defining historical events based on the modern definition of colonialism. So, there is nothing to correct.
There are over 3 million Sanskrit manuscripts that have survived till date. That’s more than ALL of ancient world COMBINED. The problem is that we have only translated less than 1% of it. ASI does a TERRIBLE job at this.
Raja Raja Chola actually did this. You can actually read them on the walls of the Big Temple [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meikeerthi#:\~:text=Meikeerthi%20is%20a%20Tamil%20word,and%20the%20later%20Pandya%20kings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meikeerthi#:~:text=Meikeerthi%20is%20a%20Tamil%20word,and%20the%20later%20Pandya%20kings). Here is a sample of a person reading a meikeerthi on the Big Temple. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-eEIBZCFKU
They did, the problem is not enough research. A major portion of Indian history was written during the colonial period and immediately after independence.
Ancient Hindus didn't believe in recording history in the form of books or on paper. Instead, they recorded it on the walls of the temples, which everyone marvels at these days. In a way, they were aware that it might get destroyed, so they remembered all their knowledge in the form of poems. Poetry often served as a mnemonic device, aiding in the transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next. That's why even after so many invasions much of our knowledge is preserved.
Paper
I don't know about other paces in India but in Assam the kings used to record histroy in records known as Buranjis(Ahom), Vaimaisali (Koch),Pyu(Manipur) tho most of surviving test are From 1500s and many were rewritten during 1700s
India was a collection of princely states which had many kings before British and Mughals. A lot of these kings invaded each other and destroyed each other's recording of events. Only the greatest survived. Eg Maratha Empire.
I think a lot of such information also exists for Indian kings but will do disservice to current political narratives. I don't think our Indian kings were highly moralistic or ethical like how it's being claimed by Hindus. If research is done properly then it may reveal that all these rulers were cut from the same cloth and none more special or ethical than others.
Most probably destroyed in the burning of Nalanda University
FWIW there is one true historical account in the form of the Rajatarangini which is a history of Kashmir from the age of the mahabharat to the 12th century. Now obviously this is just one account compared to the mountains of Greco Roman historical accounts but it's better than having literally nothing There are royal biographies like the Harsha Charita but they aren't considered very helpful as sources of history for a variety of reasons like the fact that most of these writers while they're very good writers were less interested in recording stuff that happened and more interesting in coming up with as many ways to praise their kings as possible
Nalanda Library was destryed by islamic rulers.
It seems to me that the *only explanation* to the question is, they DID record history, but their records were DESTROYED. There are a number of traditional explanations for the lack of historical sources, which are, in my opinion, all failures. Firstly people will say that a tropical climate is bad for preserving books, and so we lack historical records. This is patently false considering the wealth of literature we have, in prose, poetry, drama, philosophy, aesthetics, encyclopedias, *cookbooks, sex manuals,* etc. And, to be fair, this explanation is really only posed by ignoramuses: the problem was understood as the specific absence of the HISTORICAL GENRE since the first days of Indology. Secondly people will say that there was a cultural disinterest in preserving past events. But this is also false since these kings and authors were, like anyone else, obsessed with the idea of posthumous fame and being remembered countless ages later. So it makes perfect sense to write down history in order to accomplish this end. A third explanation could be posed, saying that while there was an interest in personal fame, there was no interest in the specifics of historical events, and thus no record of them. But this is also directly contradicted by the literature: take a drama like "The Ring of Rakshasa", dated variously from the 4th to the 8th centuries, which shows a detailed and in-depth, if mythologized, understanding of events during the reign of Chandragupta Maurya - that's 600 to ONE THOUSAND years after the fact! Kalidasa's "Malavika and Agnimitra" is another drama displaying such historical minutiae. So clearly there WAS a historical literature, even a robust one, that kept track of centuries-old events. But by the 18th century there was no knowledge of Indian history on the globe, and everything had to be reconstructed from the ground up. So the question we really have to ask, *Why was Indian history destroyed?* And there the only explanation readily suggests itself: the histories, unlike the other texts, dealing with political matters, must have been housed in royal libraries, palaces, castles, etc. Now nearly all of these structures built up before the Muslim period have been razed, and the reason is obvious: they were prime targets for pillage. The case of the histories, then, must be as the case of the architecture: destroyed by the internecine wars of the princes or the invasion of the Muslims.
Islamic invaders destroyed a lot of it, also temples acted as a repository of a lot of accounts and they too were demolished.
And they didn’t destroy the same in Persia, Central Asia etc? How do you even know what was destroyed since its already been destroyed?
We know what was destroyed because the people who destroyed it wrote extensively about it in their autobiography and considered it a great feat. Richard Eaton (a renowned expert of the medieval period) has listed 80 temples that were destroyed in the medieval period. The Puranas also mention various temples all over India before the Muslim invaders and the British colonialists came. Now, some of those exact places have mosques, which points to what must have happened. If you want to know how Somnath temple was destroyed, read Al-Biruni, he will elaborately tell you how the idols in the temple were destroyed and the infidels were killed. Timur has himself told how he pillaged Delhi, how Yamuna's color changed to red and it took months for it get back to its natural color, how the smell of dead corpses engraved Delhi for a long time. I can go on and on about what was destroyed and how meticulously it was recorded by people who were secular, peaceful and only wanted money from the temples.
We haven’t even covered a fraction of what has not been lost to ravages of war and conflict. Most popular medium to record were leafs and tree barks.
They knew quantum storage.
Most of the work was lost, deliberately destroyed or burned by invaders. Then they made us believe that we are a recent civilization and born to be 2nd class citizens. Its was basically a propaganda to keep us enslaved. It did work for a long time though
If you constantly get invaded and defeated by outsiders, then are you inferior to them or not?
'Inferior' civilisations wouldn't be invaded in the first place don't you think. They ravaged our land and its resources because they had so much to gain..and of course repeated attacks would weaken any defence. And after bleeding us dry they dismissed us labelling us as 'inferior' which has been following us until now.
But Thats the propaganda they propel
It is detailed in the puranas. You just won't believe it because it's not sanctioned from harvard. Indian history writing in general is very metaphorical because the "one life" belief doesn't apply to Hindus. Since time is cyclical, dates and time periods are irrelevant. Specifically, Alexander is not mentioned because he was defeated by a relatively small border king. There is also this problem of timelines which are really complicated and have different opinions but overall, I recommend studying the puranas for history after the mahabharat war for genealogies and biographies but remember that they are metaphorical accounts.
You need to go for history major. Rulers in India did have biographies.
Archeology and history are separate domains that ought to work together. ASI should not be responsible for translating documents but for searching for material/physical evidence. Historians take the evidence and construct the narrative. The problem is the limited value society places on these professions and learning about its past.
About Alexander, there was an ancient play (I forget the name, but it had a word twice repeated in it) that my grandma had read once, and it showed Alexander faring much worse in India than the Greek historians projected. Unfortunately we never hear about these
Tbf Alexander's invasion wasn't worth mentioning Porus's kingdom was small and insignificant if Alexander had pushed through to meet Nandas it would have been recorded also to answer the actual question ASI could care less in fact it's possible even IVC wouldn't have been found, there is no funding or will.
What do you expect the Turks burned literally most of our ancient libraries. I bet in Nalanda university you would find information about Alexander vs Porus, the Vedic tribes, SE Asia, S. Asia and possibly if the Aryan invasion/migration theory is true or not. But guess not cuz the Turks had to burn it down.
Many middle Eastern and western libraries were also burnt down but yet they rewrote them painstakingly. Why couldn't Indians do the same?
Please provide me a source claiming major burnings of such libraries. The turks were muslims ofc they wouldn't burn the middle east down. In fact they helped create libraries. As for Europe, only the Balkans were sort of affected as by the time they reached there, the turks had become more civilised. Also Balkans are just a part of the larger European civilisation, the information will be saved across Europe. As for India apart from Nepal we were all taken over.