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The following excerpt is from "India's Ancient Past" by R.S. Sharma (Oxford University Press, Ninth Impression, 2011). It is at the end of Chapter 3, "Nature of Sources and Historical Construction".
So far numerous sites, prehistoric, proto-historic, and historical, have been excavated and explored, but the results do not find a place in the mainstream of ancient Indian history. The stages of social evolution in India cannot be properly comprehended without taking into account the results of prehistoric and proto-historic archaeology, not to speak of historical archaeology. Although nearly 200 sites relating to the ancient historical period have been excavated, yet their relevance to the study of the social, economic, and cultural trends in ancient times has not been adequately discussed in survey studies. This needs to be done both in the context of the rural and urban aspects of ancient India. So far the significance of largely Buddhist and some brahmanical sites has been highlighted, but religious history needs to be seen in relation to social and economic developments.
Ancient history has so far been constructed principally on the basis of literary sources, foreign and indigenous. Coins and inscriptions play some part, but the texts receive greater weightage. Now new methods must be adopted. Historical knowledge keeps growing. We have to be more critical about dates and contents of the texts. This may be done if we examine the texts in the context of archaeological evidence. Initially, archaeologists were inspired by written texts, and several sites mentioned in the brahmanical and Buddhist texts were excavated. This immensely enriched historical information, though the digging results did not always confirm the contents of the texts. Though full-length reports of many excavated sites are yet to be published, it is advisable to examine the texts in the context of archaeological findings. For the study of the age of the Rig Veda we have to take into account of the Gandhara grave culture in which the horse was used and the dead were cremated in the second millenium BC. We have to establish a co-relation between the later Vedic age, on the one hand, and the Painted Grey Ware and other types of archaeological finds, on the other. Similarly, early Pali texts have to be related to the Northern Black Polished Ware (NPBW) archaeology. Besides, the information derived from the Sangam texts needs to be co-related with that inferred from inscriptions and early Megalithic archaeology in peninsular India.
Archaeological evidence should be considered far more important than the long family trees found in the Puranas. The Puranic tradition could be used to date Rama of Ayodhya to around 2000 BC, but diggings and extensive explorations in Ayodhya do not show any settlement around that date. Similarly, although Krishna plays an important role in the Mahabharata, the earliest inscriptions and sculptural pieces from Mathura between 200 BC and AD 300 do not attest to his presence. Given such difficulties, the ideas of an epic age based on the Ramayana and Mahabharata must be discarded, although in the past it formed a chapter in most survey volumes on ancient India. Of course, several stages of social evolution in both the Ramayana and Mahabharata can be detected. This is so because the epics do not belong to a single phase of social evolution; we may recall that they have undergone several editions. Further, on the basis of literary traditions and epigraphic material, Vardhamana Mahavira and Gautama Buddha are generally dated to the sixth century BC, but the cities they visited are archaeologically not older than 400 BC and therefore the tradition-based dates of these great personalities need to be reconsidered.
On chronological and rational grounds, archaeology, inscriptions, and coins are more important than texts. However, the grammatical works of Panini and Patanjali have almost fixed dates, and they are comparatively free from myths and legends and are therefore as important as coins, inscriptions, and the results of excavations.
Many inscriptions have to date been dismissed on the ground that they are of little historical value. 'Historical value' is taken to mean information necessary to reconstruct political history. However, a royal inscriptions contains exaggerations. The term hundres of thousands seems to be a cliche in Ashokan inscriptions. It is applied to people and animals., and raises doubts about the number of the people killed in the Kalinga war and those bought to Pataliputra. There are exaggerations too in the inscriptions of Samudragupta and King Chandra. Despite these exaggerations, in comparison to Puranic traditions, inscriptions are certainly more reliable. Thus, though the Puranas are used to push back the origin of the Satavahanas, the inscriptions place it in the first century BC. Inscriptions may indicate the regnal period of a king, his conquest, and its extent, but they also reveal trends in the development of polity, society, economy, and religion. This study, therefore, does not use inscriptions merely for political or religious history. Epigraphic land grants are valued not for the family trees and lists of conquest, but more importantly for the rise of new states and changes in the socila and agrarian structure, particularly post-Gupta times. Similarly, coins need to be used not only for the reconstruction of the history of the Indo-Greeks, Shakas, Satavahanas, Kushans, but also for the history of trade and urban life.
In sum, a careful collection of the material derived from texts, coins, inscriptions, archaeology, etc., is essential for historical reconstruction. We have seen that this raises the problem of relative importance of the sources. Thus, coins, inscriptions, and archaeology are considered more important than mythologies found in the epics and Puranas. Mythologies may support dominant norms, validate social mores, and justify the privileges and disabilities of people organized in castes and other social groups, but the events described in them cannot be taken to be true. Past practices can also be explained with the help of some ancient survivals in our own times. Familiarity with village life and the insights derived from the study of primitive people are valuable assets in the construction of ancient history. A sound historical reconstruction cannot ignore developments in other ancient societies. A comparative view may remove the obsession with the idea of 'rare' or 'unique' in ancient India and may bring out those trends that ancient India shares with the past societies of the other countries. We may also use the results of human genetic research to learn about Indian connection with peoples in other parts of the world. A scientific study of heredity and generation wise inherited traits indicate ethnic mixture, dispersal of population, and dissemination of culture.
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