ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Man and Universe Chapter 26: What is History? History can be defined in three ways. In fact there are three branches of history closely linked with each other. I. History is that branch of knowledge which deals with the past events and the conditions connected with the people of the past as distinguished from the present day conditions and circumstances.

All events which relate to the existing time, that is the time when they are recorded, are called the events of the day, are judged, reported, and recorded by daily newspapers. But as soon as its time passes, every event becomes a part of history. So in this sense history means that branch of knowledge which deals with the past events and occurrences and give an account of the past people.

Biographies, narratives of the conquests and the stories of the eminent people as compiled by all nations come under this category. In this sense history means, firstly, the knowledge of the individual matters and the events concerning the individuals, not of general laws, and rules of mutual relations. Secondly, it is a transmitted science. Thirdly, it is a knowledge of 'being', not that of 'becoming'. Fourthly, it is related to the past, not to the present.

We in our terminology call this sort of history 'transmitted history'. II. In another sense history signifies that branch of knowledge which deals with the rules and the traditions which governed the life of the peoples in the past. These rules and traditions are deduced from the study and the analysis of the past events. The subject of the transmitted history and the questions with which it deals, namely the past events and occurrences, serve as the preliminaries of this branch of history.

In fact the past events, for the purpose of history in this sense, can be compared to the material which a physicist collects in his laboratory for his study, analysis and experiment in order to find out its characteristics and properties and to discover general laws concerning it.

The job of a historian in this second sense is to discover the nature of historical events and to find out their causative relations in order to be able to deduce some general rules applicable to all similar events of the past and the present. We call this branch of history 'scientific history'. Though the past events are the subject of study in scientific history, the general rules which are drawn from these events do not exclusively belong to the past.