Discovered the link at MiddleStage.
One of the tests of the presence of a united perspective in calendrical terms, already discussed, is the identification of a principal meridian and a reference location (like Greenwich in Britain). It is remarkable how durable has been the position of the ancient city of Ujjayini (now known as Ujjain), the capital of several Hindu dynasties of India (and the home of many literary and cultural activities through the first millennium AD), as the reference location for many of the main Indian calendars. The Vikram Samvat calendar (with a zero point in 57 BC) apparently originated in this ancient capital city. But it is also the locational base of the Saka system (zero point in 78 AD) and a great many other Indian calendars. Indeed, even today, Ujjain’s location is used to fix the anchor point of the Indian clock (serving, in this respect, as the Indian Greenwich). The Indian Standard Time that governs our lives still remains a close approximation of Ujjayini time — five hours and 30 minutes ahead of GMT.
This makes me wonder, why don't we have such extra-curricular activities in our schools, where we are asked to explore the history and culture of our surroundings, write essays on it. Doesn't it make a much more interesting and inspiring history lesson, to go find what the state of learning was in my town, rather than memorize the date of Boston Tea Party ? Yes, it is important to know what went on in other parts of the world, but then, it should be equally important to know what transpired in and around the very place you live. In my schools, history lessons used to be a fixed number of chapters, and a fixed set of question answers. You miss a line and loose five marks. No one in my school ever taught me about the state of science, religion, politics, learning in my city in ancient times. Our history lessons used to be a bore, a period where you catch up on sleep, where the teacher made you stand up for half an hour to read the chapters aloud. And ofcourse it only gave us a sense of rote, and not learning !
Separately, We were only made to memorize that "India is a unity in diversity", but we never even learnt a percent of how that came about to be.
3 comments:
It's the same in the US. I didn't learn to love history until after I left school. There are and so many different things that could pull people in regardless of their interests - but instead, we memorize dates and battles and they think we will remember.
Hayden, Very true about the dates.
Similarly, we rarely had debates upon communism, capitalism, socialism, monarchy etc. Instead, we had to memorize what Karl Marx said, what Lenin said, what were the guidlines of Labor Party.
Thank you for the comment.
i was lucky to have a teacher who never used her book while teaching history. did inspire some interest in the subject!
Post a Comment