Feel welcome to attend our lecture by Prof. Muzaffar Alam on India’s ancient past in Persian historiography.

In recent years in some modern historical writings a wide variety of Ancient India’s rich literary traditions have been identified as diverse genres of historiography. Within these genres have then been located/ listed genealogies, biographies, chronicles, and also the great Sanskrit epics which were translated into Persian in the Mughal era. Some historians have thus reread several texts in order to recover them as histories. Prof. Muzaffar Alam’s presentation sets out in the same spirit upon a similar line of inquiry, but from a different angle, presenting a survey of premodern Persian chronicles in order to ascertain how Persian historiographers have read, interpreted, and reinterpreted the ancient Indian past. We will notice that while some discard, dismiss, forget, or ignore India’s ancient past, some others are explicitly invested in recovering it in order to present an integrated long-durée history of Hindūstān.

Please register by sending an email to d.farhosh-vanloon@uu.nl.

Date: Wednesday 2 November 2022, 15-17 (drinks afterwards)

Click here for the programme.