Water in History and Historiography

Abstract

Water has been central to human life and imagination in multiple ways. In contemporary times, with climate change and increasing disasters connected to water or its absence (take, for example, the huge forest fires that decimated many parts of the USA, or, at the other end of the scale, the massive destruction caused by floods in India, the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and many other disasters varying only in scale of destruction), the centrality of water is greater than ever before. Historically, wars have been fought over water, claims to sovereignty have been made on it, it has been claimed as identity, as culture, as religion, as myth, as memory and much more. How do we understand the various ways in which water has been and continues to be studied? Water, if one may speak in grammatical terms, is both verb and noun – and each of these has been represented and written about. It is this aspect of the historiography surrounding water that we propose to highlight. Mythology – whether Mesopotamian, Indian, or from any other part of the world – has often been rooted in the existence of water, both salt and sweet. The oceans, too, have been part of human history. Given the multitudes of ways in which water can be, and has been studied, we propose in this panel to bring together a mix of approaches – historical, primarily, but also through memory, landscapes, and performance. As features of a sacred landscape, water both is, and defines, a geographical, political, ritual and socio-economic space; as memory, whether living or constructed, it is an ever-present reality. But water is also part of performance, for in classical Indian dance, for instance, depictions of water or life in and around water have often been key to a dance recital. Erasure, in memory and/or maps (as for example of maps which do not show islands in a river, or do not mark the changes in water courses), is yet another aspect that needs to be highlighted. The papers presented here therefore address the following themes: - Water in Indian Ocean studies - Water and sacred landscapes - Water in and as performance - Water in and as economy - Water in and as memory - Mapping water

Papers

Currents, Monsoons, and Maritime Traffic in Asia during the 17th and 18th Centuries: Shipping Operations of the Dutch East India Company

Ryuto Shimada

Laws of Oceanic Water: Conflicts and Rituals in the Early Modern Indian Ocean

Mahmood Kooria

The Sacred River in India from the Vaidic to the Pauranic Times

Manu V. Devadevan

Sacred Waters of Iran: Continuities in Religious Symbolism from Zoroastrianism to Islam

Tomoko Morikawa

Looking in water: Explorations on Waterscape through the history of 17th-19th century writings on Konkan

Durga Kale

Classical dance: Water in and as Perceptions and Performance

Nisha Seshan

Waterscapes and Landscapes: Contested Economies and Histories around water in the far south of India in the late 18th century

Radhika Seshan

The Making of Bugun History by Invoking Myth, Memory and Materiality of their Pam (Mountain) and their Kho (Water)

Sushruti Santhanam

Fluvial Provocations in Modern Cartography: Visualizing Citizenship in the Chars

Nayanika Shome

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