PREFACE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INTRODUCTION 1. Early Social Formations: A Historiographic Review 2. Sem... more PREFACE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INTRODUCTION 1. Early Social Formations: A Historiographic Review 2. Semiotics of Ancient Tamil Poetics: A Historiographic Consideration 3. Forms of Production and Forces of Change in Ancient Tamil Society 4. Early Iron Age Economy: Problems of Agrarian Expansion in Tamilakam 5. From Clan and Lineage to Hereditary Occupations and Caste in the Tamil Macro Region 6. Towards a New Discourse: Discursive Processes in Early South India 7. Tribes, Forest, and Social Formation in Early South India 8. Writing, Literacy and Social Formations in the Tamil South 9. Spread of Writing in the Tamil South and its Social Implications 10. Transition of Social Formation from Ancient to Early Medieval in the Tamil South 11. Historical Antecedents of the State Formation in the Deep South 12. Aspects of the Reservoir System of Irrigation in the Pandya Country 13. Pre-historic Life in Southern Western Ghats: Interpreting Rock-art 14. Aspects of Great Transformation in Ancient Kerala 15. The Formation of Caste Society in Kerala: Historical Antecedents 16. Temples as Sites of Social and Religious Interaction 17. The Course of Social Historiography of Kerala Index
The book is a critical rethinking of the nature of the classical eastern Mediterranean exchange r... more The book is a critical rethinking of the nature of the classical eastern Mediterranean exchange relations with the coasts of the Indian sub-continent. It examines in the light of the extant source material and theoretical insights whether the expression 'Indo - Roman trade' is tenable. The book characterizing the nature of contemporary exchanges in detail, maintains that the expression, 'Indo-Roman trade' is inappropriate. It starts off with the theoretical premise that the term 'trade' if applies uniformly to all kinds of transactions in time and place, will lead to many anachronistic correlations, causations and generalisations about the nature of early forms of exchange. An important factor is that contemporary Mediterranean exchange of goods from the eastern world was a combination of multiple forms of exchange in which trade was just one and confined to Rome. The management of this ensemble was a heavily collaborative, extensively networked, document based, enterprise, with precise notions of weights, measures, rates of rent, interest, price and profit accounted in terms of money. It had necessitated a stratified society, aristocracy, state system and the entailing political economy of demand for luxury goods from far off lands. The book dismisses the claims in the South Indian historiography for the early historic Tamil Chieftains to have conducted overseas commerce, on the ground that such institutional and structural pre-requisites were absent in the social formations of contemporary Peninsular India. It was not possible for the merchant bodies to conduct independent overseas trade for there was no naval technology in the sub-continent efficient enough to conduct cross-oceanic voyages. There was no need for it either. Available in OSO:
It is an attempt to reconsider in the light of the extant sources including the latest archaeolog... more It is an attempt to reconsider in the light of the extant sources including the latest archaeological findings in India, Red Sea coast and Egypt, some of the long sustained assumptions about the Indian role in the classical eastern Mediterranean transmarine commerce. Perusing the political economy of the early Mediterranean exchange relations with the southern West Coast, the paper seeks to argue that the expression, ‘Indo-Roman trade’ popularized by Indian historiography is a misnomer, for what had happened was literally Roman trade with the East having India little or no role in it. Some Tamils might have accompanied the traders in the Arab or Mediterranean ships, probably as merchant middlemen, suppliers of trade goods and providers of other services on board. Even if we assume that Tamil chiefs had some role in shipping merchandises at least up to the Red Sea coast, the question of various capability pre-requisites for arranging agents, managers, and intermediaries for the rest of jobs including stay till the next Monsoon Wind, would remain, because such capabilities were unlikely in a chiefdom level polity. Further, the classical Mediterranean trade by nature was too systematized, extensively networked, document based, and monetized to have been compatible to contemporary Tamil chiefdoms of redistributive economy, reciprocity and politics of plunder.
This chapter discusses the Greek and Hellenic history of thoughts and ideas. It is followed by a ... more This chapter discusses the Greek and Hellenic history of thoughts and ideas. It is followed by a discussion of the Arab Muslim engagement with the classical Greek and Hellenic knowledge by way of translation, interpretation, and academic extension. Drawing the broad contours of the Arab epistemology, the section shows how the Arab scholars retained, improved upon, and carried forward the Greek scholarship in different fields, enabling Europe to trigger the Renaissance movement. It includes a review in recognition of the medieval Catholic scholars’ contribution to the growth of new knowledge in mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, and philosophy, which also had a role in the intellectual preparation for the onset of Renaissance in Europe.
The chapter traces the non-European roots of specialized knowledge production in the ancient time... more The chapter traces the non-European roots of specialized knowledge production in the ancient times as illustrated by the civilizations of the Indian and the Chinese regions. Examining the archaeology and ethno-archaeology of remains of the civilizations in the valleys of the Indus and Yellow rivers, we try and capture the earliest knowledge in crafts production technology such as architecture, metallurgy, lapidary, and ceramics. Orally transmitted Vedic knowledge, eschatology, metaphysics, grammar, phonetics, astronomy, the post-Vedic systems of thought, Ayurvedic knowledge, architecture, nature of metallurgical texts, the Indian and Chinese textual traditions, and epistemological traces constitute other contents of the chapter. This chapter underscores the early India’s methodologically distinct aphoristic structure of stating truth as astute observations generalized as self-validated principles, the logic of which corresponds to that of mathematical equations or formulas. It discusses the history of mathematical astronomy. A distinct epistemic shift is explicit in India’s astronomy of fourteenth to sixteenth centuries CE. Mādhava of Sangamagrāma (c. 1340–1425 CE) in Kerala marks the beginnings of this shift through his path-breaking mathematical advances in conceptualizing infinite series. The chapter ends with a concise discussion of the Chinese history of knowledge systems across the material cultures
Page 1. The Kosambi Effect: A Hermeneutic Turn That Shook Indian Historiography RAJ AN GURUKKAL K... more Page 1. The Kosambi Effect: A Hermeneutic Turn That Shook Indian Historiography RAJ AN GURUKKAL Kosambi was a scientist who talked about the past with the politics of intimacy with the present. This paper identifies the "Kosambi effect" and its various constituents. ...
Forest landscapes of the southern western Ghats, India
Sustainable use of forest resources can be effectively addressed if the spatio-temporal patterns ... more Sustainable use of forest resources can be effectively addressed if the spatio-temporal patterns of human actions are understood at the landscape level. Here human ecological enquiry is adopted in place of the conventional socio-economic survey for facilitating a precise understanding of the spatial patterns of the human presence in forest landscape. Human ecological approach is more comprehensive as it addresses the human factor within the larger context of ecological relations. Here, practi..
Forest landscapes of the southern western Ghats, India, 2007
Conservation of terrestrial biodiversity is intimately related to the effective management of for... more Conservation of terrestrial biodiversity is intimately related to the effective management of forest landscapes. Causes (or constraints) of biodiversity loss may be direct or indirect. Direct constraints are human activities that impair the immediate structural-functional components of forest landscapes, while the indirect constraints fuel a chain of processes culminating in the habitat loss. Growing list of rare, endangered and threatened species indicates constraints felt in the implementat..
Forest landscapes of the southern western Ghats, India, 2007
Value based management zones are defined on the basis of conservation importance of species, habi... more Value based management zones are defined on the basis of conservation importance of species, habitats and ecosystem components such as soil and water and economic resources of human survival. Based on this criterion, three zones viz. biodiversity conservation zone, resource zone (includes bamboo, reed, NWFP and teak) and, soil and water conservation zones we are identified and delineated. Strategies to manage these zones are suggested to integrate various stakeholders’ interests with an empha..
The tropical forests, apart from sustaining a rich assortment of biological diversity, contribute... more The tropical forests, apart from sustaining a rich assortment of biological diversity, contribute substantially towards the wellbeing of the local communities by providing a source of income, employment, food and vital ingredients to their farming systems. In developing countries, the issue of poverty and gender equity revolves largely around forest habitats. At the global level, forests are important in order to counter climate change and soil erosion. Over a period of time, due to the use a..
Origins of the resource perception on the forests may be traced back to premodern period, but an ... more Origins of the resource perception on the forests may be traced back to premodern period, but an intensive scheme of forest management for explicit extractive use is a modern phenomenon. Our current imaginations of the forests are not free from the legacy left behind by the colonial forestry. In recent years ideas of forest have been reconfigured as less resource oriented. However, a closer examination of the terminologies of this genre of rhetoric, for instance biodiversity, would reveal ele..
PREFACE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INTRODUCTION 1. Early Social Formations: A Historiographic Review 2. Sem... more PREFACE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INTRODUCTION 1. Early Social Formations: A Historiographic Review 2. Semiotics of Ancient Tamil Poetics: A Historiographic Consideration 3. Forms of Production and Forces of Change in Ancient Tamil Society 4. Early Iron Age Economy: Problems of Agrarian Expansion in Tamilakam 5. From Clan and Lineage to Hereditary Occupations and Caste in the Tamil Macro Region 6. Towards a New Discourse: Discursive Processes in Early South India 7. Tribes, Forest, and Social Formation in Early South India 8. Writing, Literacy and Social Formations in the Tamil South 9. Spread of Writing in the Tamil South and its Social Implications 10. Transition of Social Formation from Ancient to Early Medieval in the Tamil South 11. Historical Antecedents of the State Formation in the Deep South 12. Aspects of the Reservoir System of Irrigation in the Pandya Country 13. Pre-historic Life in Southern Western Ghats: Interpreting Rock-art 14. Aspects of Great Transformation in Ancient Kerala 15. The Formation of Caste Society in Kerala: Historical Antecedents 16. Temples as Sites of Social and Religious Interaction 17. The Course of Social Historiography of Kerala Index
The book is a critical rethinking of the nature of the classical eastern Mediterranean exchange r... more The book is a critical rethinking of the nature of the classical eastern Mediterranean exchange relations with the coasts of the Indian sub-continent. It examines in the light of the extant source material and theoretical insights whether the expression 'Indo - Roman trade' is tenable. The book characterizing the nature of contemporary exchanges in detail, maintains that the expression, 'Indo-Roman trade' is inappropriate. It starts off with the theoretical premise that the term 'trade' if applies uniformly to all kinds of transactions in time and place, will lead to many anachronistic correlations, causations and generalisations about the nature of early forms of exchange. An important factor is that contemporary Mediterranean exchange of goods from the eastern world was a combination of multiple forms of exchange in which trade was just one and confined to Rome. The management of this ensemble was a heavily collaborative, extensively networked, document based, enterprise, with precise notions of weights, measures, rates of rent, interest, price and profit accounted in terms of money. It had necessitated a stratified society, aristocracy, state system and the entailing political economy of demand for luxury goods from far off lands. The book dismisses the claims in the South Indian historiography for the early historic Tamil Chieftains to have conducted overseas commerce, on the ground that such institutional and structural pre-requisites were absent in the social formations of contemporary Peninsular India. It was not possible for the merchant bodies to conduct independent overseas trade for there was no naval technology in the sub-continent efficient enough to conduct cross-oceanic voyages. There was no need for it either. Available in OSO:
It is an attempt to reconsider in the light of the extant sources including the latest archaeolog... more It is an attempt to reconsider in the light of the extant sources including the latest archaeological findings in India, Red Sea coast and Egypt, some of the long sustained assumptions about the Indian role in the classical eastern Mediterranean transmarine commerce. Perusing the political economy of the early Mediterranean exchange relations with the southern West Coast, the paper seeks to argue that the expression, ‘Indo-Roman trade’ popularized by Indian historiography is a misnomer, for what had happened was literally Roman trade with the East having India little or no role in it. Some Tamils might have accompanied the traders in the Arab or Mediterranean ships, probably as merchant middlemen, suppliers of trade goods and providers of other services on board. Even if we assume that Tamil chiefs had some role in shipping merchandises at least up to the Red Sea coast, the question of various capability pre-requisites for arranging agents, managers, and intermediaries for the rest of jobs including stay till the next Monsoon Wind, would remain, because such capabilities were unlikely in a chiefdom level polity. Further, the classical Mediterranean trade by nature was too systematized, extensively networked, document based, and monetized to have been compatible to contemporary Tamil chiefdoms of redistributive economy, reciprocity and politics of plunder.
This chapter discusses the Greek and Hellenic history of thoughts and ideas. It is followed by a ... more This chapter discusses the Greek and Hellenic history of thoughts and ideas. It is followed by a discussion of the Arab Muslim engagement with the classical Greek and Hellenic knowledge by way of translation, interpretation, and academic extension. Drawing the broad contours of the Arab epistemology, the section shows how the Arab scholars retained, improved upon, and carried forward the Greek scholarship in different fields, enabling Europe to trigger the Renaissance movement. It includes a review in recognition of the medieval Catholic scholars’ contribution to the growth of new knowledge in mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, and philosophy, which also had a role in the intellectual preparation for the onset of Renaissance in Europe.
The chapter traces the non-European roots of specialized knowledge production in the ancient time... more The chapter traces the non-European roots of specialized knowledge production in the ancient times as illustrated by the civilizations of the Indian and the Chinese regions. Examining the archaeology and ethno-archaeology of remains of the civilizations in the valleys of the Indus and Yellow rivers, we try and capture the earliest knowledge in crafts production technology such as architecture, metallurgy, lapidary, and ceramics. Orally transmitted Vedic knowledge, eschatology, metaphysics, grammar, phonetics, astronomy, the post-Vedic systems of thought, Ayurvedic knowledge, architecture, nature of metallurgical texts, the Indian and Chinese textual traditions, and epistemological traces constitute other contents of the chapter. This chapter underscores the early India’s methodologically distinct aphoristic structure of stating truth as astute observations generalized as self-validated principles, the logic of which corresponds to that of mathematical equations or formulas. It discusses the history of mathematical astronomy. A distinct epistemic shift is explicit in India’s astronomy of fourteenth to sixteenth centuries CE. Mādhava of Sangamagrāma (c. 1340–1425 CE) in Kerala marks the beginnings of this shift through his path-breaking mathematical advances in conceptualizing infinite series. The chapter ends with a concise discussion of the Chinese history of knowledge systems across the material cultures
Page 1. The Kosambi Effect: A Hermeneutic Turn That Shook Indian Historiography RAJ AN GURUKKAL K... more Page 1. The Kosambi Effect: A Hermeneutic Turn That Shook Indian Historiography RAJ AN GURUKKAL Kosambi was a scientist who talked about the past with the politics of intimacy with the present. This paper identifies the "Kosambi effect" and its various constituents. ...
Forest landscapes of the southern western Ghats, India
Sustainable use of forest resources can be effectively addressed if the spatio-temporal patterns ... more Sustainable use of forest resources can be effectively addressed if the spatio-temporal patterns of human actions are understood at the landscape level. Here human ecological enquiry is adopted in place of the conventional socio-economic survey for facilitating a precise understanding of the spatial patterns of the human presence in forest landscape. Human ecological approach is more comprehensive as it addresses the human factor within the larger context of ecological relations. Here, practi..
Forest landscapes of the southern western Ghats, India, 2007
Conservation of terrestrial biodiversity is intimately related to the effective management of for... more Conservation of terrestrial biodiversity is intimately related to the effective management of forest landscapes. Causes (or constraints) of biodiversity loss may be direct or indirect. Direct constraints are human activities that impair the immediate structural-functional components of forest landscapes, while the indirect constraints fuel a chain of processes culminating in the habitat loss. Growing list of rare, endangered and threatened species indicates constraints felt in the implementat..
Forest landscapes of the southern western Ghats, India, 2007
Value based management zones are defined on the basis of conservation importance of species, habi... more Value based management zones are defined on the basis of conservation importance of species, habitats and ecosystem components such as soil and water and economic resources of human survival. Based on this criterion, three zones viz. biodiversity conservation zone, resource zone (includes bamboo, reed, NWFP and teak) and, soil and water conservation zones we are identified and delineated. Strategies to manage these zones are suggested to integrate various stakeholders’ interests with an empha..
The tropical forests, apart from sustaining a rich assortment of biological diversity, contribute... more The tropical forests, apart from sustaining a rich assortment of biological diversity, contribute substantially towards the wellbeing of the local communities by providing a source of income, employment, food and vital ingredients to their farming systems. In developing countries, the issue of poverty and gender equity revolves largely around forest habitats. At the global level, forests are important in order to counter climate change and soil erosion. Over a period of time, due to the use a..
Origins of the resource perception on the forests may be traced back to premodern period, but an ... more Origins of the resource perception on the forests may be traced back to premodern period, but an intensive scheme of forest management for explicit extractive use is a modern phenomenon. Our current imaginations of the forests are not free from the legacy left behind by the colonial forestry. In recent years ideas of forest have been reconfigured as less resource oriented. However, a closer examination of the terminologies of this genre of rhetoric, for instance biodiversity, would reveal ele..
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