Nature of Historical Thinking and Aitihya Problem of the Construction of Significance

Abstract

Broadly speaking, the paradigm of 'aitihya' is anchored in the nature and structure of narrative just as the paradigm of modem history is embedded in the autonomy of evidence. Yet, the spectrum varying from evidence-hunting to significance-directed-narration is so wide today that the contentious enterprises of history and of itihasa have arbitrarily come to be encompassed together into this. In vernacular circuits, ' history' continues to be pragmatically translated as 'itihasa', unmindful of the theoretical discord between the two that brews underneath.