From ‘Historia’ to Historiography: The Evolution of Seeking the Past

History is an English word borrowed from the Greek word “Historia”. The purpose is to seek knowledge from enquiry.  The father of history is Herodotus in the 5th century B.C. He wrote the History of the Greco-Persian Wars, the first significant narrative history in the ancient world.  His groundbreaking work, The Histories, laid the foundation for systematically studying and recording past events.  Unlike attributing events to divine inspiration or revelation, he reported events as he understood them. He emphasised separating fact from myth and querying sources to get the story right. Today, we often think of history as records of factual events, while stories can encompass varying amounts of truth and fiction. Interestingly, both words – History and Stories, share the same lineage, and this distinction didn’t exist earlier.

Historians, the intellectual architects of our past, are not mere recorders of events. They are critical thinkers, storytellers, and inquisitive investigators who unravel the mysteries of the past. The scholarly activity of undertaking writing and constructing history is called Historiography. Their task is not just to report the truth but to interpret it through their philosophical lenses, connecting the dots to reveal the history beneath the surface.

Historians have long categorised history into distinct eras, focusing on reporting significantevents. However, in the 20th century, a more comprehensive approach emerged, influenced by Marxist thought, which considers social and economic factors alongside events. This evolution in historical categorisation has broadened our understanding of history, making us aware of its dynamic and multifaceted nature. In the Indian context, historical narratives often revolve around religious identities such as Hindu, Muslim, or British (rather than Christian) periods. This perspective may limit our understanding of history by emphasising religious divisions and socioeconomic factors.  

As we know, language consists of spoken symbols for communication. Humans have usedlanguage for interaction much before they invented written scripts. However, a script or writing is a visual communication system that uses signs or symbols associated with specific meanings or words written on a surface. According to Western historians, the cuneiform script of Mesopotamia (3400 BC) is one of the oldest. In the Indian sub-continent, the Harrapan civilisation (4000 BC) is one of the oldest to have the scripts, but to date, no one has been able to decipher them. Writing marked a new stage in human expression for storing and transmitting ideas and knowledge across distances and time. While the use cases of writing were many, the skill was known to a few, giving them power and privileges over the others who didn’t have it. Historians latched on to this armour in their store, and the prominence of documented evidence occurred from verbal communication. A point to highlight is that documented evidence covers only a tiny portion of our past; other non-documented forms, such as oral communication and artefacts, also state our history. So, a historian needs to consider all forms of evidence to tell us about our past.