Understanding History through Geographical Context: An Overview of Historical Texts

In tracing the forgotten past to give a living history to the present, topography and landscape plays an equally important role like polity and society. As such, it has been an endeavour to understand the geographical features such as the mountains, rivers, lakes, oceans and the names of places embodied in the historical texts like Kālidāsa’s Raghuvaṃśa, Kalhaṇa’s Rājataraṅgiṇī and the Cheitharol Kumbaba. What is striking about the geographical features represented in these texts is the varied meanings and abstracts that they carry. While at one level, they symbolize human sentiments and temperaments; at another level, they depict the scene of the prevailing political affairs of the realm. Focussing on this, this paper seeks to examine the significance of geography in understanding thehistory of three different regions of the Indian subcontinent.