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Title: | Agriculturists and the People of the Jungle: Reading Early Indian Texts |
Authors: | Basant, Prabhat Kumar |
Keywords: | The Neolithic Revolution Slash and burn cultivation Burning of the Khandava forest The Arthashastra The Mahabharata Jatakas Kadambari |
Issue Date: | 2015 |
Publisher: | Vidyasagar University , Midnapore , West Bengal , India |
Series/Report no.: | Vidyasagar University Journal of History;2014-2015 |
Abstract: | Historians of early India have understood the transition from hunting-gathering to agriculture as a dramatic transformation that brought in its wake urbanism and state. Jungles are believed to have been destroyed by chiefs and kings in epic encounters. Does anthropology support such an understanding of the processes involved in the transition from hunting –gathering to agriculture? Is it possible that historians have misread early Indian texts because they have mistaken poetic conventions for a statement of reality? A resistant reading of the early Indian texts together with information from anthropology shows that communities of agriculturists, pastoral nomads and forest people were in active contact. Agriculturists located on the cultural or spatial margins of state societies colonised new areas for cultivation. Transition to agriculture was facilitated by the brahman-shramana tradition |
URI: | http://inet.vidyasagar.ac.in:8080/jspui/handle/123456789/1840 |
ISSN: | 2321-0834 |
Appears in Collections: | Vidyasagar University Journal of History Vol 3 [2014-2015] |
Files in This Item:
File | Description | Size | Format | |
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3 Agriculturists and the People of the Jungle.pdf | 192.4 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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