Digital Rare Book:
Political History of India
By Jean Filliozat
Translated from the French by Philip Spratt
Published by Sushil Gupta, Calcutta - 1957

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The educated of ancient India attached little value to history. Their philosophy turned their thoughts away from it. In theory that philosophy sought the Absolute; in practice it taught them to preserve their equanimity in the face of the contingencies of life. Doubtless kings had their genealogies preserved and their exploits celebrated, but too often these were celebrated in pompous and empty phrases, and the genealogies were tainted with serious errors. Errors are inevitable,but sometimes they were made willingly : an able genealogist could do much to establish the prestige o fa dynasty. More truthful than authors’ memories, the Indian soil has fortunately preserved monuments more authentic than the statements of court poets and the compilers of legends. Quite apart from all literary evidence, the material relics of the Indian civilisation would enable us to follow the general development from prehistoric limes till to-day. Numerous inscriptions add to our information, and for some periods constitute the whole of it. In addition to panegyrics we find detailed documents, charters of donations ot foundations, writings full of names, facts and dates which suffice completely to establish many special historical points. These special points become precious landmarks : they do not themselves show the course of events, but they enable us to plot it exactly. Even panegyria are not entirely withot value. The evidence of foreign writers who have visited India supplies further data, established synchronisms, and allows us to reconstruct for India a large part of the history which she herself disregarded.

The Sanskrit texts o fBuddhism glorify a pious monarch, Asoka, who would be taken, at first sight, as a figure from legend. But the stone edicts of a king Piyadasa have been preserved, and the Dipavamsa, the chronicle of Ceylon, informs us that Piyadasi is another name of Asoka.The Mahavamsa, the great chronicle of Ceylon, places his coronation date which corresponds to 325 B.C. This date would establish the chronology of Asoka’s empire, which was very large, judging from the distribution of his edicts throughout India. It would also fix the dates of the whole dynasty to which Asoka belonged, about which the texts inform us.

Above all, it would fix an important date in the expansion of Buddhism which Asoka protected. However, among the contemporary kings mentioned in the edicts are Antiyoka, Turamaya, Antikini, Maga and Alikasandra, who are Antiochus, Ptolemy, Antigone, Magas and Alexander; and we know that these Greek kings reigned simultaneously between 260 and 250 B.C. Thus we have to correct the chronology of the Sinhalese chronicles, which however are known by facts from other sources to be generally reliable. This is a typical example of the way in which, in order to reconstruct Indian history, it necessary to bring together the various types of information, archaeological, epigraphic. historical, literary and foreign, which we shall now review.

Author:
Jean Filliozat (4 November 1906 in Paris – 27 October 1982 in Paris) was a French author. He studied medicine and was a physician between 1930 and 1947. He learned Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan and Tamil. He wrote some important works on the history of Indian medicine. He taught at Collège de France from 1952 to 1978.

Jean Filliozat became a medical doctor in 1930, and was awarded a diploma from the École pratique des hautes études in 1934. In 1935 he was awarded a diploma by the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales. He was director of studies at the École pratique des hautes études from 1941 to 1978. He established the Institut Français d'Indologie at Pondicherry in 1955 and was at the same time director of the École Française d'Extrême Orient from 1956 until 1977. He became a member of the Academie in 1966 and vice president of the Societe Asiatique in 1974.

He was a member of the Legion d'honneur.

- Wikipedia