The Significance of Literature in Writing History

To study  the significance of literature in writing history I would firstly like to reject the British notion which claimed that literary consiousness was idea which was firstly brought in India by the britisher. The source of history in pre colonial time was seen as myths, imaginary like fairly tales but the Ithihasa purna and kharif which belong to a pre colonial period as very important sources of history.

To understand why colonial historian have  rejected the idea of India to have a history writing tradition. We  first need to understand that Pre-colonial India as a deeply multilingual society with multiple tradition of knowledge and of literary production conducted in specific languages and the ‘vernaculars’. But what the first tradition of histories of north India literatures, written during the colonial and nationalist period s did they deeply involved in cry stalling communities around language and cultural identity and rewrote literary history in term of separate single language tradition as the competitive teleological histories. 

The first problem faced by the nineteenth and early twentieth century works on ‘Hindi’ and ‘Urdu’ linguistic and literary history and in the debates that suffused the era their composition was that of language definition. The issue of language definition was first recognized as a ‘problem’ by colonial linguist and the suggestion they put forward often carry the stamp of official authority either became commonplace or provoked long lasting debate and resentment. The problem centered on the oblivious difference in script and vocabulary in what seemed to be the same language and also on the uncertainty surrounding the correct name go language. At present, Hindi and Urdu literary histories are trapped in competing historical narratives that do not allow a common history to emerge.