Books
THE PAST BEFORE US: Historical Traditions of Early North India
by Romila Thapar. Permanent Black, New Delhi, 2013.THE latest book by Romila Thapar is a classic work on the sense of history in early India. It consists of five parts. The first describes the search for early Indian historical writing and discusses the reasons why it came to be held that there was an absence of such writing in early India. It then considers how the subject can be investigated differently with a move towards the creating of historical traditions. The start of such a tradition is represented by fragmentary narratives in the Vedas, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.
This is followed by a discussion of the emerging historical tradition as exemplified by genealogies as contributing to the making of such a tradition as in the vamshanucharita of the Vishnupurana, with further reference to early inscriptions as historical statements (up to sixth century AD), and history as literature as represented by the plays of Vishakhadatta. A systematic analysis of alternative histories as exemplified by the Buddhist tradition with monks as historians, writing monastic chronicles and Buddhist biographies, forms the subsequent part.
The last part consists of an externalization of the historical tradition as exemplified by biographies like the Harshacharita and the Ramacharita. It also includes interpretation of inscriptions as official histories, the exposition of the voice of the bard, discussions of Vamshavali-s as chronicles of place and person, an appreciation of the Rajatarangini as a distinct historical text par excellence, and an analysis of the Jaina historical tradition as in the Prabandha-chintamani. In the final chapter, on looking back and looking forward, Thapar affirms that in early North India, ‘A sense of history and historical consciousness existed, that there were historical traditions emerging from diverse historiographies, and that these occasionally took the form of historical writing,’ with which statement the book ends (p. 701).
The widespread denial that early India provides evidence of a sense of history, is a belief so entrenched now that one almost hesitates to question it. This denial has provoked Thapar over the last fifty years. She marks the beginnings of a fundamental shift in the perspective to the 1960s when it was being suggested that it might be feasible to search for a sense of history in early India. She began a systematic inquiry in this direction with a distinction between how the past is to be understood and represented, and the perception of the past as specifically historical. She has written a book of rare insight to argue for ‘a denial of this denial of history.’ Her arguments start with refuting the relevance of the initial denial, in light of the fact that ‘every society has a concept of the past and that no society is a-historical’ and that ‘every society sees its past in a particular way, which it may refer to as history or not, but which is relevant to understanding that society’ (p. xi). According to Thapar, ‘Many texts of early India reflect a consciousness of the past and they show how, over a period of time there came into existence varieties of texts with recognizable forms of history and historical writing’ (p. 3), and that cultural symbols and stereotypes have a role in delineating the past, which accounts for the different genres of texts. The central argument is that, ‘irrespective of the question of the presence or absence of historical writing as such, an understanding of the way in which the past is perceived, recorded, and used, affords insights into early Indian society, as it does for that matter into other early societies’ (p. 4).
In this sense the history of every age has been a representation of contemporary consciousness. This precludes the colonial European sense of history, which too had its contemporary consciousness, from setting a universal norm. Are we justified in judging the historicity of early writing in the light of the criteria of what we now define as history, which too is impermanent? Just because the various texts of the past do not match the contemporary genre called history, can we, succumbing to the colonial prejudice, continue to deny the existence of historical consciousness in the past? The legitimacy of applying a contemporary sense of history is because the methods of investigation and inquiry have been considerably refined, and therefore it might be more meaningful to juxtapose today’s readings of the past with those that emerge from earlier times. Since historical consciousness has been taking different forms from time to time, our concern should not be only with assessing their historicity but also with analyzing them to understand if and why they were regarded as the equivalent of history. Can we insist that history in a text of the past has to be what we regard as history today?
Her question relates to how authors from the early past saw the past before them. She has ‘tried to refine what is meant by a sense of history in the context of early societies and locate its articulation in varied Indian texts from early India, at various times during the period c.1000 BC to c. AD 1300.’ In doing this she is not attempting to broaden the current definition of history in order to accommodate forms of writing prevalent in early India. The argument is that what is included as history in the present day is in any case no longer limited to what it was in the nineteenth century, and that ‘many more forms are now seen as potentially or actually historical’ (p. 681 & 2). But Thapar is not legitimizing any or every claim to an indigenous reading of Indian history. The purpose of the book is to try and identify the forms that encapsulated a sense of history in early India and ascertain how they were defined.
Failing to locate in early India anything comparable to the Greco-Roman historical texts, the Chinese chronicles, Arab writings or even the Biblical genealogies, colonial Europe popularized the axiom that Indian society denied history. Thapar exposes this distinction by lucidly arguing that the classical Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian, Renaissance European and Islamic traditions of history were all composed of diverse strands. She refers to recent analytical studies of Greek and Roman historiography, which suggest that in their representations of the past, history and fiction were often interwoven. It is untrue that the classical Hellenic civilization distinguished between the mythologizing historiography and the real historiography. Thapar quotes Paul Veyne, Arnaldo Momigliano and particularly W. den Boer, who argues that it is difficult to describe even Thucydides as a rational, scientific historian (p. 10); that the ancient Greeks did not differentiate between primary and secondary sources; that there were no historians in the sense that there were artists and philosophers; and that Polybius and other Roman historians were concerned with rhetorical preoccupations and political intentions (p. 12).
In the same way, given the multiple elements that went into the making of the Islamic and Indian heritage, she argues that there was no common single source for the Sultanate and Mughal histories. Thapar then considers at length the colonial formulations about early India dismissing histories in the Sanskrit tradition as a-historical. A few like William Jones and Rapson were sympathetic and thought there was a potential in some texts, while most like MacDonnell thought that India had no sense of history. This was part of the European mode of coming to terms with the existence of the Other and, for many Orientalists, the attempt was to domesticate the Orient through control over its knowledge. Finding no signs of progress in the Indian past, the English Utilitarians endorsed the denial attributing it to Indian society having been static for centuries.
Thapar makes a nuanced differentiation between historical consciousness, historical tradition, and historical writing. She maintains that, ‘Studying a tradition involves looking at a number of indices: first the point in history at which the need to create and keep a tradition becomes imperative; second, the social status of the keepers of the tradition; third, whether the tradition was embedded in sacred literature to ensure its continuity; fourth, the genres that emerged… independent of other literary forms; fifth, the social context…; sixth, the audience…; seventh, the social groups, which used and manipulated the tradition… to legitimize the present and give it sanction’ (p. 5). ‘A tradition is created and taken forward, but it often needs reformulation in accordance with later requirements. This process then constitutes a historical tradition, although not necessarily history... A historical tradition has to claim that what it narrates are events that happened in the past, a claim which differentiates it from fiction… the tradition can change over time, partly on account of the many ways in which the past is used in the present ’(p. 7).
Thapar has also suggested that these differences are linked to the form of the record and are an aspect of what she has called embedded history and externalized history. The former is that which is presumed to be historical by the authors and their audience, and where the narrative is embedded in ritual texts. With societies undergoing change, this is followed by a gradual reduction in the need to embed narratives in ritual texts, and instead to record them in new genres specifically recognized as pertaining to the past. Such records view happenings from the perspective of those in authority. This change suggests the demise of clan societies and their being replaced by kingdoms, requiring more recognizably historical records.
Thapar argues for three kinds of historical traditions whose identity is partly determined by the authors, the audiences and the agenda of the text. The three are the shramana tradition of the Jain and Buddhist monks, the itihasa-purana tradition of brahmana-s, and the bardic tradition, each comparable to the other in certain respects but different in various ways, with the shramana tradition distinct for its sharper perception of the role of history. Thapar assesses notions of historiography and explains the historiographical variants apparent from different perceptions. She, therefore, searches for the structuring of the consciousness of the past, and the uses made of the construct (p. 53-55). She examines the reconstruction of the past in order to ascertain whether, in its view, it reflects sociopolitical changes and emphasizes what the authors of this tradition took to be significant. According to her subsequent genres are ‘externalized’, autonomous and evidently more historical (p. 59). These would include the charitas, biographies of rulers, vamshavalis, chronicles of regions and dynasties, and the lengthy royal inscriptions, which when read sequentially for a dynasty are in effect its annals.
Unlike what most historians do, Thapar reads ancient texts not only for the information they provide about persons and events, but also from the focus of how they understand past societies and the actions of persons believed to have been historical. In short, her project is to try and understand the way the past was looking at its own past (p. 683). This is deconstructive reading in the sense that her understanding of the past texts hardly depends exclusively on their empirically given external truth or the traditionally given absolute meaning, but also on the insight that their meaning allegorically produces.
Instances of deconstructive reading are suggested in parts II, III, IV and V of the book, of which the interpretation of the embedded tradition turns out to be intellectually the most challenging. She draws from studies of morphological analysis of traditional narratives in understanding the Mahabharata and Ramayana, in terms of their structure, constituent elements, functions and spheres of action, in order to unravel the embedded tradition. This is a difficult exercise for it demands not only knowledge in narratology and social theory, but also some control over negotiating with mutually incompatible perspectives divided between the historical and the a-historical. Thapar’s handling of the culturally contingent uniqueness of traditional narratives is impressive. Equally awesome is her analytical unravelling of the emerging historical tradition in different categories of texts like biographies and plays. Another significant instance of deconstructive reading is that of the narrative of events in the declining years of Chandela rule in central India. The composition of the bard in this case provides a view of the rule from a subordinate’s perspective. Thapar recognises the narrative not as a eulogy but as a text relatively realistic about presenting persons and events. But her reading goes beyond the realist aspect by taking note of the formulaic structure of the narrative that belongs to the bardic tradition.
The analysis of the three chronicles – the Chamba vamshavali (the genealogy of a small kingdom probably by a single author), Kalhana’s Rajatarangini, and Merutunga’s Prabandha-chintamani – goes into the differential features and the dynamic of each. The Rajatarangini, transparent about its sources and their reliability, shows a distinct historical perspective and is distinguishable from the Prabandha-chintamani which comes from the shramanic tradition, also showing a clear sense of history, but with what might be called a Jaina bias. Each of these genres follows from the previous but marks a departure.
Analyzing the composition, authorship, and audience helps. Thapar overcomes many a riddle that the early Indian texts present through their differing genres (such as poetry, drama, biography, chronicle and inscription), or even epic time or mythical space. She observes that a change in genre assumes changes in authorship and audience. Authors of the early heroic compositions and epics were bards and poets attached to the clans, but their compositions were worked over by brahmana-s with a literary bent. The audience for both would initially have been gatherings of clan members and others. The authors of the Purana-s were brahmana-s who collated the material from various sources and recited it to audiences in temples as well. The Buddhist texts were composed by learned monks and written as the history of the teaching and of the Sangha (p. 694). Inscriptions, intended to be read by or read to the public audience rippled out from the court circles to the populace, being statements associated with rulers involving the court and administration, and are suggestive of the authority of the state. Likewise, it was in the context of the court and the literati that plays were performed and biographies read.
Thapar shows concepts of time also becoming part of this process, especially in the interface of cyclic and linear time. The cyclic time of cosmology plays on imagined numbers, some drawn from astronomy and some invented (p. 697). According to her, a sharper and more manageable sense of time and rational history surfaces in situations of crisis (p. 699). The ordering of the past into history becomes all the more necessary when there is a crisis of acculturation, with new groups having to be adjusted in existing society, but with the probability that new identities will have to be forged.
According to Thapar a text from the past relates to prior texts in some ways. Sometimes the text may directly and self-consciously identify with other texts on which it builds, or against which it sets itself ; sometimes the reference is more implicit, but intentional; and sometimes the relation is entirely submerged, relying on familiar textual traditions and cultural resources. Her analysis of traditional texts includes unravelling their sub-texts, and the identification of their historical context. Thapar’s interpretation of what the texts seek to accomplish depends on her close understanding of the way the text relies on the prior texts. In short, it constitutes what may be called intertextuality, that is, the relationship among texts. It is a reserve generated across texts and a sphere of action enabling textual assertions of position, implication, and result. At the same time, it is not a text outside the text, for the intertextuality at the instance of every text is ultimately within itself.
Thapar probes into ambiguities, ironies, contradictions, conflicts, silences, breaks, deviations, differential meanings, linguistic oddities, recurrences and so on and examines the ways in which a text implies something different from what it openly states. Her strategy throughout the book is to look for moments in each text when it refers to itself and to discover as to how the texts unravel. Inevitably this also involves examining the historical, cultural, social and political processes that bring a genre into being.
In this book dedicated to comprehending the contextual relationship between texts of the past and the nature of their historical consciousness, Thapar uses the latest theoretical research but without borrowing much of its technical language. Firmly rooted, she is in a face to face relationship with the theories in cognate disciplines, creatively negotiating with them and independently shaping her own interpretations. The hard-core substance in this volume is quite original, stemming from her rootedness that enables her to make a strong epistemic critique of the imperialist theories of Europe.
Her central argument hinges on the theory that not only is history defined as the textual product of historians, but it is also the narrative understood as the textual model for the past itself. Inquiries into the history of a sense of history should begin with textual representations of the past instead of with the past itself. Historical texts are not expected to embody the truth about the past, but only the truth that each text constructed as its time wanted. The past and written history are not the same anyway, a predicament that precludes the possibility of the latter to be strictly objective. Hence, Thapar makes no claims for logo-centric certainties and methodological objectivity in the book about the past before us, for such claims are not invariably philosophically sustainable.
History is not what is empirically given unlike what many believe, nor is it an objective reporting of what really happened. History is consciously done and rendered plausible as required by social power relations. It has always been a socially contingent cultural product and the methodology of contemporary history makes us aware of this. As Thapar has demonstrated through all her books, history is a narrative interpretation viewed through social theory and framed by the historian’s ideological presupposition. The views can be many but the acceptability and priority given to some depend on the reliability of the methods of analysis.
Despite the lengthy analysis of early Indian texts that the book embodies, Thapar is not satisfied. She maintains that her discussion touches only the surface of these texts. To her, ideally, a study such as this requires examining the various recensions, ascertaining their authenticity, and analyzing them for historical content. Such studies would help in understanding the notion of history in early India, but according to her, would take a few lifetimes. However, this lifetime study will be an authentic and scholarly reference volume on the theoretical historiography of early India for many years to come.
Rajan Gurukkal
Visiting Professor, Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
GUIDE TO COMPUTER NETWORK SECURITY by Joseph Migga Kizza. Springer, London, 2013.
THE book by Joseph Migga Kizza is primarily meant for undergraduate students undertaking courses in computer and network engineering. But the author has taken care to also cover areas which concern the administrators of computer and network security. Even inquisitive minds that may not be from an engineering background can get valuable insights into cyber security issues and how they are dealt with.
The book starts with fundamentals of computer networks, making both a potential engineer as well as a non-engineer aware of the three ingredients of all types of communications, viz. sender and receiver, the medium through which communication takes place, and finally the rules, i.e. the protocols which must be adhered to in the process of communication. It enables the reader to then appreciate the necessity for ensuring continuous secure communications which are uninterrupted and do not get vitiated. In other words, it implies that users, organizations, businesses, computer systems or files stored are secure from being infringed upon through unauthorized access. It cites the example of how a weakness in a small but key network component can put the Internet, phone systems, power grids and so on at risk of attack, drawing attention to the SNMP used in communications protocols. Hence, system vulnerabilities are weaknesses in the software or hardware on a server or a client machine which can be exploited by a determined intruder to gain access to or shut down a network.
The author explicitly warns readers and practitioners about the greatest threats to the security, privacy, and reliability of computer networks and other related information systems in general in the form of cyber crimes committed by cyber criminals amongst whom the most important are hackers. As is clear from the many reports now available, the damage caused by cyber criminal and hacker attacks has resulted in a loss of productivity and credibility worth billions of dollars. Hence, there is a growing community pressure on software and hardware companies to create more secure products that can be used to identify threats and vulnerabilities, fix problems, and deliver security solutions.
In the not very distant future, it is likely that most business transactions involving financial data, product development and marketing; storage of sensitive company information, and the creation, dissemination, sharing, and storing of information will be done online, more specifically on the Web. Scripting is a powerful automation technology on the Internet that makes the Web highly interactive. With the expansion of global computer networks on almost a daily basis, the security issues associated manifest not only in the security of computer networks but also in the form of user security on individual PCs connected to the Internet either via an organizations gateway or through an Internet service provider (ISP). The security of every user is thus essential, whether the user is a member of an organization network or a user of a home PC via an independent ISP. In either case, the effort has to focus on protecting not only data but also the user.
All this will result in massive interconnectivity and interoperability of systems. But the bigger the networks becomes the bigger are the security problems involving system resources on such networks. Many companies, businesses, and institutions whose systems work in coordination and collaboration with other systems, face a constant security threat to these systems. And yet, the collaboration must go on in order for international commerce and productivity and there is no looking back from the stage we are in and the direction in which we are moving in terms of computer connectivity and networking around the globe.
With systems and networks under constant threat of infringement by hackers and cyber criminals, there is a likelihood of a sudden crashing of the system and network communication channels. To mitigate man-made or natural disasters, effective and timely processes, procedures and training for such an event must be integrated into standard operating procedures.
Access control, authorization and authentication are other means to ensure that systems, networks and communication channels are secure. An unauthorized entry which skips getting authenticated can be a threat to control and usage of resources and destruction of vital data stored in files. It is only through authentication that a user is confirmed to be what is being claimed.
Another way to keep system and resources secure is by installing firewalls. Bad people and cyber criminals are intruding into company and individual systems looking for company data and individual information that erodes privacy and security. There is, therefore, a need to protect company systems, and individual PCs, keeping them out of bounds from such users. It is now important for companies using private networks to connect onto the Internet, to ensure network security, which is an important concerns for network system administrators. In fact, network administrators now face threats from two fronts: the external Internet and the internal users within the company network. So network system administrators must find ways to restrict access to the company network, or sections of the network, from both the ‘bad Internet’ outsider and from unscrupulous inside users. Computer network security is primarily based on three principles, viz. prevention, detection, and response. Although these three are fundamental ingredients of security, most resources have been devoted to detection and prevention because if we are able to successfully detect and counter all security threats, there should be no need for a response.
Additionally, the book covers aspects related to cryptography, virus and content filtering, computer and network forensics, security in wireless and sensor networks as also the criteria based on which evaluation of computer and related communications products can be carried out before they are integrated into organizations, government and businesses. It even gives an overview of the security issues associated with cloud computing which is growing at an exponential rate. It warns the reader about not only the risk of using cloud computing but also issue of ownership of data resources which can get compromised when lying outside the boundaries of a given nation state. Organizations/businesses will then have to resort to litigation using international laws, involving costs which can be abnormally high.
The book is both competent and well written, somewhat unusual in this specialized domain.
Ahmad Cameron
Engineering Scientist, Toronto
CYBER SECURITY by Edward G. Amoroso. Silicon Press, 2006.
‘30 years ago we did not know how to connect two computers. Now, we do not know how to disconnect two.’
– E.G. Amoroso, Cyber Security
Edward Amoroso, ex-security engineer of Bell Labs in the US, paints an image of a gloomy and yet promising future, where security breaches into networked computers. Now, social networking is at an all time high. The Internet is even being proposed in the Charter of Human Rights by some Finnish activists for inclusion, something which is already reality in that country.
Amoroso’s book discusses the stakeholders of cyber security breaches, consequences of adverse cyber events, detection methodologies, prevention infrastructure, and cyber violator prosecution. Written in an easy style, Cyber Security summarizes the most salient and relevant must-remembers about the next generation public policy guidelines for an enhanced firewall against cyber breaches.
Presented hitherforth are a few of the many takeaways you will read about in greater detail should you choose to give Cyber Security a serious reading. First, breaches into a network are advantageous even when the network’s users are lay people. Lay people are prime victims for what is defined in Cyber Security as reconnaissance. If phishing is for online, malignant pseudo-operational companies interviewing potential technology hires for technological information, equipment firmware details would be reconnaissance.
A search of networks by unintentional probes, or deliberate brute force are bound to expose at lease some unprotected computer systems, which can be a source of information about other networks or sensitive information. This is defined by Amoroso as scanning. The damage caused by digital crime can be of the following categories:
* Exposure of a governmental or enterprise secret operational information. Modern examples of organizations assisting in keeping ‘exposure’ hacked information are Wikileaks.org and Cryptome.org
* Damage to file system of a computer. Recent examples include Beagle Netsky and Trojan, common viruses adversely affecting file systems of non-Unix like machines, i.e. Windows OS.
* Theft stealing of customer usernames and passwords. This year, users of Yahoo Mail suffered unauthorized access and stealing of private mails; a billion and over Linux user database and forum Ubuntu Forums was hacked.
* Access occurring when a hidden group with hidden tracks acquires information about others without inflicting any harm. An example of this, in my opinion, includes Microsoft-NSA (National Security Council) secret agreement to release user information from German embassies to American security officials.
Amoroso gives real-life case studies drawing on first person encounters with IT companies on how top American firms reacted after detecting foreign access into their network. The reader experiences a true thrill in the accounts about what transpired between the system administration teams during an adverse event of an attack. Foreign root shell access to your network can be a shock that may just incapacitate a team, or bring forth a magnificent feat of defensive technical prowess in IT. You see how professionals handled their rainy days in the administration backrooms from Amoroso’s Cyber Security.
Prioritization is key to cyber security. Amoroso points to the increasing vulnerability to cyber attacks due to the prevalence of networked systems within modern critical infrastructure. Examples cited are taken from aeroplanes, power generation plants, telecommunications – all services that can fall victim to remote access by cyber terrorists. A remote access can result in destructive physical control of, say an aircraft, unforeseen blackouts for a power system authority, denial of service to millions of cell phone clients or Internet surfers of a demanded web source. It is worth recalling the denial of service that The New York Times news website experienced after a Syrian Army cyber attack on its news website. Millions of customers were left frustrated and the consequences included loss of registered subscribers.
I give Cyber Security a very high rating. The cons include lack of technical exercise modules for students to study from. I personally anticipated an exercise with pseudo-code every time Amoroso mentioned a cyber breach. Penetration testing examples ought to have been provided in the appendix. Nevertheless, the book targets a mature and IT expert audience with some experience of technological knowledge; Cyber Security is intended as a guide for IT expert and managers to arrive at sound policies. Amongst policies, the most important one includes: government mandated incentives for software penetration testing and security.
Ahmad Touseef
B. Tech Student, UOIT, Oshawa, Ontario
