Book Description

India has enjoyed a fantastically abundant and functionally diverse tapestry of sources, which throw much welcomed revelatory light on the circumstances, conditions and contexts of the day, 'as they were prevailing' in India (Majumdar, 1960). While their veracity is beyond being infallible, their veracity questionable, their authenticity mis-aligned, but their aid in supplementing afore us un-ignorable data of the period concerned, and the appearance of a differing perspective, not necessarily bounded by socio-cultural mores, socio ritual paradigms and geopolitical constraints, makes their utilization more interesting, immersing, and enlightening in its own merit. Surely, Banabhatta vividly and veraciously describes the life and legends of Harsha, but without Hsieun-Tsang, they are incomplete, non-corroborated, biased and, in some cases, even non-conclusive (Devahuti, 1970: p. 14). In this capacity, Al-beruni plays a critical and crucial role in not just supplying us with a vantage viewpoint, but with calculative and constructive comments on the life and times in India, especially during a period when a novel religio cultural change was about to make its commencement felt in the geo-political constructions inside India, in the Early Medieval Age (Eraly, 2014). A feather in the cap is offered by the extraordinary scholastic ambitions and cerebral cognizance of Al-beruni, who took sufficiently advanced measures to infuse accuracy and exactitude in his historiographical and anthropological writings, besides perfecting his art of the Scientific Method (Sachau, 1914: p. 38). The craft of Al-beruni combined the best of both worlds, which left behind a holistic corpus of masterly commentaries on the quotidian practices of the common people, while his deliberate avoidance of positioning focus on the economic political elites makes his work subalternin its vision. This paper shall attempt to provide a contextual glance and analytical glimpse of the errands and endeavours of Al-beruni, and highlight the academic and scholastic contours of his life and legacy.