Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T05:50:25.419Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

History in Poetry: Nabinchandra Sen's Palashir Yuddha and the Question of Truth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2007

Rosinka Chaudhuri
Get access

Abstract

History, it seems, has to attain a degree of scientificity, resident in the truth-value of its narrative, before it can be called history, as distinguished from the purely literary or political. Invoking the work of Jacques Rancière and Hayden White, this essay investigates the manner in which history becomes a science through a detour that gives speech a regime of truth. It does this by exploring the nineteenth-century relationship of history to poetry and to truth in the context of the emerging discipline of history in Bengal. The question is discussed in relation to a patriotic poem, Palashir Yuddha (1875), accused of ahistoricality, as well as to a defense made by Bengal's first professional historian, Jadunath Sarkar, against a similar charge in the context of Bankimchandra Chatterjee's historical novels. That the relationship of creativity to history is a continuing preoccupation for the historian is finally explored through Ranajit Guha's invocation of Tagore in History at the Limit of World-History (2002).

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 66 , Issue 4 , November 2007 , pp. 897 - 918
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Bandyopadhyay, Rakhaldas. 1914. Pashaner Katha: A Historical Romance [The Stone's Story: A Historical Romance]. Calcutta: Bengal Medical Library; New ed., Calcutta: Ghosh-Dastidar, 1990.Google Scholar
de Certeau, Michel. 1988. The Writing of History. Trans. Conley, Tom. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Bankimchandra. 1880. Banglar Itihas Sambandhe Koyekti Katha [A Few Words on the History of Bengal]. In Bankim Rachanabali [Collected works of Bankim], vol. II, ed. Bagal, Jogeschandra. Calcutta: Sahitya Sansad, 1998.Google Scholar
Chaudhuri, Rosinka. 2005. “Hemchandra's Bharat Sangeet (1870) and the Politics of Poetry: A Pre-History of Hindu Nationalism in Bengal?” Indian Economic and Social History Review 42 (2): 213–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dutt, Toru. 1879. Le Journal de Mademoiselle D'Arvers. New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2005.Google Scholar
Dutta, Bhabatosh. 1978. Haraprasad Sastri O Banglar Itihas [Haraprasad Sastri and Bengal's History]. Calcutta: Sanyal Prakashan.Google Scholar
Guha, Ranajit. 2002. History at the Limit of World-History. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Guha-Thakurta, Tapati. 2004. Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guha-Thakurta, Tapati. 1992. The Making of a New “Indian” Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gupta, Atul Chandra, ed. 1958. Studies in the Bengal Renaissance. Calcutta: National Council of Education.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. 1975a. Aesthetics. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. 1975. Lectures on the Philosophy of World-History. Trans. Nisbet, H. B.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maitreya, Akshaykumar. 1898. Sirajuddaula. Calcutta: Dey's Publishing, 2006.Google Scholar
Maitreya, Akshaykumar. 1904. Mir Qasim. Calcutta: Puthipatra, 2004.Google Scholar
Mitra, Satishchandra. 1965. Jashore-Khulnar Itihas [The History of Jashore-Khulna]. Vol. 2. Calcutta: Dasgupta.Google Scholar
Rancière, Jacques. 1994. The Names of History: On the Poetics of Knowledge. Trans. Melehy, Hassan. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Rao, Velcheru Narayana, Shulman, David and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. 2001. Textures of Time: Writing History in South India, 1600–1800. New Delhi: Permanent Black.Google Scholar
Sarkar, Jadunath. 1939. Historical introduction to Bankimchandra Chatterjee's Anandamath. Ed. Brojendranath Bandyopadhyay and Sajanikanta Das. Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat.Google Scholar
Sastri, Haraprasad. 1919. Bener Meye [Merchant's Daughter]. In Haraprasad Sastri Rachana Sangraha [Collected Works of Haraprasad Sastri], ed. Chaudhury, Satyajit et al. Calcutta: West Bengal State Book Board, 1980.Google Scholar
Sen, Nabinchandra. 1908. “Amaar Jiban” [My Life]. In Nabinchandra Rachanabali [Collected Works of Nabinchandra], vol. 1, ed. Das, Sajanikanta. Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, 1985.Google Scholar
Tagore, Rabindranath. 1898. “Sirajuddaula.” In Itihas, by Tagore, Rabindranath. Calcutta: Viswabharati, 1988.Google Scholar
Trilling, Lionel, and Bloom, Harold. 1973. The Oxford Anthology of English Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
White, Hayden. 1987. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar