Origin from 1867
The medieval Indian subcontinent studied from its own Persian and Arabic chronicles, first assembled into one continuous English record by Henry Miers Elliot and John Dowson beginning in 1867. Lets rival medieval accounts of religious change be compared against each other.
Facts
Method
Methodcompilation and translation of primary chronicle sources into a continuous documentary record, letting a period be read from its own contemporary historians rather than from later summary 2 Subject
Subjectthe medieval Indian subcontinent's own chronicle record of Muslim rule, conquest and religious change, read from primary sources rather than later synthesis 2 Identity
Field Category Parent Field Origins
Emerged As Named Discipline Learn More
Elliot and Dowson Put India's Own Chroniclers Into One Continuous Record
South Asian medieval history studies the Indian subcontinent under the Delhi Sultanate and the regional Muslim and Hindu kingdoms that preceded Mughal rule, working from the period's own chronicle literature rather than from later colonial or nationalist summary. The field's foundational documentary project was The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians, compiled by Henry Miers Elliot and completed after his death by John Dowson, whose first volume appeared in 1867, translating extracts from dozens of Persian and Arabic chronicles into a single continuous English language record covering the medieval Muslim period for the first time.
Religious change in medieval South Asia, temple destruction and construction, forced and voluntary conversion, and the coexistence of Hindu, Muslim, Jain and emerging Sikh communities, is described very differently by different medieval chroniclers writing for different patrons, and Elliot and Dowson's compilation is what lets a modern reader compare those accounts against each other rather than accepting any single later narrative. The atlas draws on the discipline wherever a claim about medieval Indian religious history rests on a specific chronicle's account, checking what that chronicle actually says against the wider documentary record.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Persians directly: "The medieval Indian subcontinent studied from its own Persian and Arabic chronicles, first assembled into one continuous English record by Henry Miers Elliot and John Dowson beginning in 1867."
Branch Of
Sources
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
Choose a year to see this entry's facts and connections as the atlas records them at that moment: what it held then, what it held instead, and what it had not yet adopted. Choose Present for the current record.