Division of History

UPSC/History/Ancient

Good evening readers, this is third article and we learn about Division of History in this article. 

As we knew, history is very broad and it is difficult to remember its context. For simplicity, scholars divide history into some segments as that will easy for remembering and learning. 

If we talk about just history irrespective of any country, then it have two kind of divisions systems, i.e. Bipartite and Tripartite division of historical period. 

In Bipartite division of historical period, there are two periods only, which are Pre-historic period and Historic period. The period that have no written evidences is called Pre-historic period, while the period that have written evidence is known as historic period. In other words, the period before the beginning of writing around 30,00,000BC to 600BC is Pre-historic & 600BC to till date is historic.

On the other hand, in Tripartite division of historical period, there are three periods, which are as follows:

1. Pre-historic period

2. Proto-historic period

3. Historic period

As same as defined in Bipartite division; the period that have no written evidences is called Pre-historic period, and the period that have written evidence is known as historic period. The Proto-history, refers to a period between pre-history and history and it have different meanings; as in the context of Europeans, proto-history is refers to people, culture or civilization who did not yet developed writing but are mentioned in the written records of a contemporary literate civilization. On the other hand in context of Indian subcontinent, proto-history refers to civilizations who had developed writing, but their script is undeciphered. For example, the script of Indus Valley Civilization remains undeciphered; however, since its existence is noted in Mesopotamian writing and we have archaeological remains of that script, it is considered a part of Proto-history.

Note: Vedic period of c.1500BC to c.500Bc also included in Proto-history as there was an orally transmitted literature (i.e. the Vedas), but no evidence of writing. It is only in later periods that Rishis (Sages) started writing down this oral teaching.

Talking about evidences, for Pre-historic time period, we have only archaeological evidence or sources like excavation works, etc.  Proto-history period have undeciphered script and supported archaeological sources. While Historical period have both literary and archaeological evidences.

The dating of periods are vary from source to source. In context of Indian History, the general dating are as follows:

1. 30,00,000BC to 2500BC is the period of Pre-history.

2. 2500BC to 600BC is the period of Proto-history.

3. 600BC to till now, is the period of History.

There is Tripartite division of Indian historical period, which was given by German historian, Christoph Cellarius. He divided Indian history into three periods which are as follows:

1. Ancient History (upto 8th century AD).

2. Mediaeval History (from 8th Century AD to 18th Century AD).

3. Modern History (18th Centuary AD to till now).

This Tripartite division became standard (model) for Historical writing in India now. 

Write for any quarry, our next article will be on Sources of History.

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