Sociology and History: Dialogues Towards Integration

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Conceived as a series of dialogues between Shah and his fellow social scientists, and indeed between the two disciplines of Sociology and History, essays in this collection nuance ethnographic fact with a historical dimension in ways that were path-breaking for their time.

The book includes Shah's well-known study of the Vahivancha Barots traditional record-keepers of genealogies and narrators and creators of myths, The focus on genealogical depth explains the vital role this group plays in legitimising lineage, clan, and a suitable ancestry traced back to a glorious mythological past. M. N. Srinivas in a foreword provides the theoretical backdrop.

By examining historical records, Shah, along with M. N. Srinivas, questions the myth, till then accepted as a given, of the self-sufficiency of the Indian village. An essay on the political system in eighteenth-century Gujarat, shows the persistence over time of well-integrated structures of power, spanning the village, provincial and imperial levels.

Shah offers several essays on theory and method in sociology and history, anchored in review of literature, and empirical materials. A significant inclusion is the discussion between Shah and Romila Thapar on sociological understanding of ancient India, examining the relation between lineage, clan, caste, and the state. Three other essays deal with the history of sociology and anthropology in India as seen from the perspective of three early journals.

The book will be invaluable for scholars and students of sociology, anthropology and history.

A. M. Shah retired as Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Delhi, in 1996.

Front cover image credit: Motif taken from a shawl designed by Vankar Naran Samat Cover design: Silika Mohapatra

This collection comprises my eleven essays, each in the form of a chapter, and three notes put together in one chapter- Chapter 11-published in various journals and symposia from 1958 to 2014. Of the eleven papers, I wrote "The Vahivancha Barots of Gujarat: A Caste of Genealogists and Mythographers' jointly with my late friend and colleague, R. G. Shroff. I thank Mrs Madhuben Shroff for permission to include it in this collection. The late Professor M. N. Srinivas, our teacher, wrote the Foreword to the paper. I thank Mrs Rukmini Srinivas for permission to publish it in this volume.

I wrote the paper 'Myth of the Self-sufficiency of Indian Village' jointly with Professor Srinivas. A few years before he passed away, he suggested that whenever I publish a collection of my papers, I should include this paper in it. I am thankful to Mrs Srinivas for permission to do so.

Chapter 7, 'Towards a Sociological Understanding of Ancient India', includes my review article on Professor Romila Thapar's book, From Lineage to State: Social Formations in the Mid-First Millennium B.C. in the Ganga Valley, and her 'A Response to Professor A. M. Shah', both published in Contributions to Indian Sociology. I thank Professor Thapar for permission to include her response in this volume.

I thank the publishers of the various journals and symposia for permission to reprint my papers.

The first nine chapters are arranged according to the year of their first publication, beginning with 1958 and ending in 1989, with a view to giving an idea of development of my work over time. Chapters 10, 11 and 12 are in a different time sequence.

Sociology and History: Crossing the Boundary

Some of the circumstances were fortuitous. When the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda was established in 1949, it had to follow the teaching programmes of the University of Bombay till it formulated its own programmes. After I passed the BA examination of Baroda university in 1953, with economics as the major subject and cultural anthropology as the minor,' I decided to enroll once again in my alma mater to study sociology at the Master's level. Although a new Department of Sociology was set up there under the leadership of Professor M. N. Srinivas in 1951, it was not able to introduce the entire eight-paper MA programme in sociology by 1953, the year I enrolled. Prof. Srinivas began with just a four-paper programme and that too, adopting the Bombay syllabus.

Therefore, I had to choose another subject with four papers. Srinivas advised me to opt for archaeology and ancient Indian history at another new department, set up for those subjects-the Department of Archaeology, led by the eminent archaeologist, Prof. B. Subbarao. I followed his advice.