12 C. Historiography — the history of historical writing

Historiography = the study of how history has been written: who wrote, from what sources, for what audience, with what assumptions. Development of historiography: 1. Ancient — Herodotus (the "father of history") and Thucydides (critical, contemporary history); in South Asia, the Itihasa-Purana tradition and Buddhist chronicles (the Dipavamsa/Mahavamsa of Sri Lanka); Nepal: the vamshavali (chronicle/genealogy) tradition. 2. Medieval — annals, court chronicles, biographies (Kalhana's Rajatarangini, 12th c. Kashmir — South Asia's first critical history; Nepal's medieval chronicles). 3. Modern — Ranke's scientific archive-based history; social and economic history; Marxist and Subaltern schools (history from below); post-modern critique. Nepali historiography (know this arc): 1. Traditional vamshavalis — king-lists blending myth and memory (the Gopalarajavamshavali, 14th century, the oldest). 2. European accounts — the Kirkpatrick mission (1793), Francis Buchanan Hamilton (An Account of the Kingdom of Nepal, 1819 — on your reference list), Brian Hodgson's essays — the first external, "ethnographic" gaze. 3. Nationalist historiography (Itihas Prakash group, 1950s) — Baburam Acharya, Yogi Naraharinath, Dilli Raman Regmi, Surya Bikram Gyawali — collecting inscriptions, reconstructing the unification epic, often patriotically framed. 4. Modern critical historiography — Mahesh Chandra Regmi's economic history of land tenure; Dhanavajra Vajracharya's epigraphic studies; social and regional histories (Karnali, Limbuwan, Madhes) giving voice to what the Kathmandu-centred chronicles ignored.