MYSORE: Historiography in the State is plagued by erosion of standards in research, gradual destruction and disappearance of archaeological, epigraphic and documentary evidence related to the history and culture of the State.

The poor documentation of the history of the State and the inability of scholars to produce an update on Rashtrakutas after Altekar's work published almost 45 years ago are other issues that demand attention. The failure of scholars to tap linguistic material to throw light on the history of the State also needs to be looked into.

Interacting with The Hindu on the sidelines of the 16th session of the Karnataka History Congress here, A. Sundara, scholar and retired Professor of Ancient History, Karnatak University, dwelt at length on some of the issues related to historiography.

Destruction of material

He noted that what is really a matter of concern is the destruction of source material — be it archaeological or documentary evidence.

"Despite measures being taken by the Centre and the State Government, the people implementing development projects and construction work are ignorant. Even people at large are not aware of the cultural heritage of their respective areas. Hence, there is a need to retrieve material and preserve them for research," he said.

Commenting on another challenge facing historiography, Dr. Sundara, who was also the Director of the Archaeology Department, said the standard of research has declined in recent years. Though new generation scholars are enthusiastic and hard working, they are unaware of methodologies, he added.

On the issue of plagiarism in history research, Dr. Sundara said the system should be blamed to an extent as the universities in the State do not check if a topic has been taken up for research elsewhere. He called for greater coordination and networking among history departments of various universities to minimise duplication of efforts and plagiarism.

On the comprehensive history of the State, Dr. Sundara said the current practice is to give disproportionate importance to big dynasties on which there is exhaustive material — as with the Chalukyas and the Rashtrakutas — but little importance to smaller dynasties owing to lack of historical evidence. No efforts are being made to study the available corpus of literary, archaeological or epigraphic evidence. So, our efforts should be directed at unearthing new material on smaller dynasties. In this context, Dr. Sundara pointed out that Hampi Kannada University has inaugurated a trend with a multi-volume history on Karnataka. But subsequent editions should be an improvement on it.

A view endorsed by N.S. Rangaraju of the Department of Ancient History and Archaeology, University of Mysore. He suggested that a syndicate of scholars should take up a project on the comprehensive history of the State on the lines of the History and Culture of Indian People edited by the late R.C. Majumdar and published by the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. However, he pointed out that the new trend in historiography in the State is to focus on micro-aspects such as socio-economic and culture aspects of a society at a particular span of time or subaltern culture, including folklore and literature of the tribal people. The greater challenge is to synthesise this body of scholarly works into a single whole.

Shadaksharaiah, General Secretary, Karnataka History Congress, admitted that the challenge of producing a comprehensive history of the State has been the agenda of the congress in many of its earlier sessions.

But given the sectarian tendency and the focus on subaltern studies since the 1970s, the need to produce the comprehensive history of the State may not be relevant today.

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