5 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Did Emperor Ashoka really exist?
I have a follow up question for you: Was there historiography, which had emerged in Greece and China in the 5th century, in ancient India? And if there was, what are the oldest available sources coming from the subcontinent?
Comment by SeptimusT at 07/04/2020 at 16:46 UTC
20 upvotes, 0 direct replies
That’s getting into the literary realm and a bit out of my depth, to be entirely honest. That being said, during the course of my research, the answer is either “not really” or “none that still survives.” They definitely had a sense of history and there are relatively reliable chronologies, but there are also many gaps in our understanding. The texts that we do have are a lot later and usually biased, but still have ‘echoes’ of reality. And of course, Ashoka’s inscriptions themselves do show some sense of historical consciousness.
The Mauryan period did see a lot of literary development, such as the compilation of some early forms of the Mahabharata.