Professor Burton Stein, Vijayanagara Empire and I: An Epistolary Journey

 

I worked for my Ph D in History with Professor Burton Stein in the Department of History, University of Hawaii at Manoa. I graduated in 1987 and returned to India where I taught in Pondicherry University as a Professor of History and retired as Dean, School of Social Sciences and International Studies and am now settled In Pondicherry,a toen I have grown to love. A few day back there was a programme on FaceBook in which a noted Delhi based historian gave a talk on "Working with Burton Stein". Since I am the only Historian in India who has had the privilege of working with his doyen of Medieval History, I thought that I could share my thoughts and experiences with my larger world of fellow Historians through this Blog. It has been more than 38 years since I received these letters and I am making them available to the wider world as I think, there will be greater interest in the sort of work that Burton Stein pioneered once the "Post Colonial" conceits are quietly set aside. Stein himself was very skepetical of the intervention of Edward Said who stareted this movement with his Orientalism. 

The work I did with Professor Burton Stein was entitled, Temples, Kings and Warriors: The Role of Warrior Chieftains in the Political Structure of Late Medieval Tamil Country, AD 1300-1565. From citations to this work, I learn that several Historians have contacted Hamilton Library, University of Hawaii, Manoa, and have consulted this dissertation. The starting point of my work was the last chapter of Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India in which Vijayanagara Empire was discussed. I felt that the Nayaka level of leadership that emerged with the Vijayanagara Expansion would enable us to get a good picture of the structure of Political Power at the intermediate level in the late medieval period. The old structured relations around land and its resources broke down under the impact of the decline of the Chola State and the expansion of the Turkish Sultanates into the region during the reign of Alauddin Khilji and later Muhhamad Bin Tughlaq. Through the difficult time when I was writing the Dissertation before the advent of internet and fast communication Professor Stein and I kept in touch through Correspondence and I have nearly 50 letters from him. I have uploaded a few so that in future there documents are available.

Professor Burton Stein taught me the value of meticulous documentation. He was a great believer in depth and on more than one ocassion admonished me that good history is done by reconstruction of the Past based on the basis of the maximum study of available records. For this reason I am tempted to say that the subjective post colonial deconstructist versions that are fashionable today would not have had his approval. In fact, a Guru of Post Colonialism whose work is now de riguer for contemporary purposes was not popular with Professor Stein, though after the unfortunate demise of Professor Stein in 1996, this Guru has acquired cult like status and with it a controversial image. In Thomas Munro: Man and Vision of Empire Stein showed that he was right in seeking the roots of the Munro System in the medieval past. I followed up this work by undertaking a study of Mark Wilks as a Historian of Vijayanagara. I worked on the basis of the official records of the East India Company.

Burton Stein insisted that History should be based on what he called Primary Documentation and all available records must be studies for the purpose of eliciting information of the past. He practically made London his second home even while he was teaching at the University of Hawaii and each Summer Dorothy and he would fly off to London and work in the India Office Library. I have  been interested in studying the papers of Mark Wilks and Colin McKenzie and hope that after the end of this season of COVID 19 will be able to visit the British Library. 

Thorough exploration of existing Documentation and Hisrtoriography were the main features of Burton Stein's work. In fact the first thing he made me do, when I joined him for the PhD was to spend a full semester reading books on Vijayanagara Empire. Stein had set aside Thursdays from 2:30 to 5:00 exclusively for me and we would meet in his Office with the glass windows overlooking the Japanese Bamboo Garden in Sakamaki Hall, Dole Street snd he insisted that I come prepared with a full 10 page critique. As I have always said and I say again, I learnt History from a Great Master and am proud of it.

To the best of my recollection he did not miss a single Thursday Class and from him I learnt to take Class timings seriously. After he left Hawaii and retired to London, Professor Stein continued to supervise my work and was able to graduate in 1987.

When I look back across the life time that has lapsed since I left Honolulu and the University of Hawaii, Manoa, the entire field of Medieval History has undergone a sea change. Scholars like the Late Noboru Karashima and James Heitzman continued to work on the lines suggested by Stein and widened the arena of investigation. The debate between Sanjay Subramanium and Noboru Karashima on the relative merits of Inscriptions written or rather engraved on hard surfaces like Stone and Copper and more ephemeral surfaces like paper was an exiting debate. Textures in Time could not have come about without the work of Burton Stein laying the foundation for the use of the McKenzie Collection.

Vijayanagara Historiography has not fared too poorly over the years. For some inexplicable reason Medieval History is dominated by the Mughals and their contempararies like Vijayanagara and other Southern polities have not got the same attention. One reason of ourse is the crass embrace of linguistic identity politics in post Independence India. Vijayanagara itself claimed to be Lord of Karnata a geographical term they used to denaote the entire imperium they commanded. However the creation of linguistic states has distorted the entire approach to Vijayanagara Historiography as Andhra Pradesh is seen as the heartland of the Empire. True Telugu was the chosen vehicle of expression of Krishandeva Raya but that did not make the Empire a "Telugu" one.  Andhra Pradesh has taken a lead in publishing the Telugu kaifyats collected by MCkenzie and his team. Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology has published 4 volumes culled from the Mackenzie vamshavalis or genealogies preserved in the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library. This spate of interest in the Mckenzie Collection is due to the work of Professor Stein.

After my return to India I kept in touch with Professor Stein and or last meeting was when he came to Tanjavur to attend the World Tamil Conference in 1995. And in just over a year from then he passed on. I remember Professor Burton Stein with affection and gratitude. He made me what I am today and will ever remain in his debt.