Inscriptions of Nature: Geology and the Naturalization of Antiquity by Pratik Chakrabarti (review)

Inscriptions of Nature will appeal to diverse readers from a wide range of academic disciplines. Its eclectic synthesis of the origin and pervasive influence of the naturalization of India’s past is provocative and compelling. Chakrabarti seeks to understand how historical imagination was infused with the deep history of nature in colonial India. The volume will surely attract attention from anthropologists and historians, but students of Indian culture history and religion, as well as those with an interest in geology and prehistory, will find the book engaging. The author contends that the study of Indian antiquity was not confined to traditional disciplinary boundaries but was impacted by the interplay and fusion of natural and historical imaginations. The cross-disciplinary linkages explored in this engaging book suggest it will appeal to and enlighten scholars across a wide array of traditional academic specialties. Unappreciated and diverse intellectual threads between disciplines (i.e., Hindu theology, colonial history, mythology) and subjects of prehistory and archaeology, geology, and palaeontology are intertwined with issues of Indian social structure and ethnic identity. Dichotomies and linkages between tribes and castes and indigenous autochthones and newly arriving groups yield valuable insights into the naturalization of Indian antiquity, human origins, and evolution.

I enjoyed the book immensely. This is in part because my eclectic range of academic research in South Asian archaeology, anthropology, human biological diversity, population history, geology, and palaeontology melds well with the book’s coverage. It is also because Chakrabarti’s innovative focus fostered new insights on how geology and deep history naturalized Indian antiquity. For example, I learned of the linkage between an autochthonous tribal group known as the Gonds of central India, their remote jungle habitat in an ancient geological landscape, and the naming of the southern supercontinent: Gondwana.

Following a brief introduction describing the goals of the book and contextualizing the concepts of deep time and geohistory, four topics are addressed in some detail. The digging of the Doab Canal in 1820 by colonial engineers is documented in chapter 1 and interpreted as a key factor in creating a new naturalized narrative of antiquity. The event assumes broad ranging significance with archaeological and geological implications.

The origin, evolution, and palaeontology of the Himalaya are detailed in the second chapter. Fossils from stratified sediments of the Siwalik hills and theories of human origins are interpreted to impart a greater naturalistic influence on Oriental antiquarianism and the work of linguist William Jones (1746–1794) (Kennedy 1994–1995). However, I was disappointed by Chakrabarti’s lack of reference to the numerous fossil apes recovered from the Miocene - Pliocene Siwalik strata in the early 1900s by British geologists and paleontologists. The so-called “God apes” of the Himalaya, initially named Ramapithecus, Sivapithecus, and Brahmapithecus, were critical to theories of human origins debates from 1965 to 1980 (Kennedy 2000). Their impact on understanding hominin evolution and origins of the human lineage coincide well with Chakrabarti’s focus in chapter 2, merging the geohistory of the Himalaya and Indo-Gangetic Plain with Orientalist and Indological ideas of Indian antiquity, yet they are not discussed.

Though mythology and geology are not conceptually related disciplines in scientific minds, in chapter 3, Chakrabarti investigates how Hindu mythologies became nineteenth century geomyths. Then he explores how myths assumed geological or deep history undertones. Himalayan shaligrams (marine fossil ammonites), venerated by Hindus as avatars of Vishnu, and the Puranic tortoise myths are analyzed to edify the unlikely associations of deep earth history with Hindu mythology. In his treatment of deep history and sacred geography in chapter 3, I found Chakrabarti’s account of the history and significance of the giant fossil tortoise (Colossochelys atlas) captivating. British palaeontologists in Indian service were also students of Hindu religious texts; they argued that the giant tortoise could be the mythological tortoise of the Indian Puranas.

Questions concerning origin, identity, and diversity of India’s kaleidoscope of...