MARX'S WRITINGS ON INDIA 27 kept in mind that serious misunderstandings have arisen about the nature of Marx's historical theory, his logic of concepts, and sometimes even about facts of Indian history. Logical analysis can tell historians what they can and what they cannot learn from Marx's observations; and can perhaps show some incidental dangers of being too persistent in learning from Marx things he did not wish to teach. There are two common opinions among historians about what Marx's writings on India signify, both, in my judgement, inappropriate. The first is that we get in Marx's remarks on Indian history a set of credible empirical propositions about the structure of traditional social forms in India. There are two versions of this belief, one of which says that Marx's "theory" of Indian society can be reconstructed by putting together his scattered remarks into a consistent whole.4 The other suggests using his formational concepts, feudalism or the Asiatic mode of production. Traditional Indian society ought, on this view, to be seen as an Indian form of feudalism, or as the Asiatic mode of production. The laws of motion of that society should be analysed with reference to Marx's remarks about these modes, although such remarks are rather few5. The contrary view, proceeding from well-known difHcul-ties of establishing either of the earlier positions, holds that Marx's remarks are casual, episodic, occasional, with no logical necessity behind them. I shall try to argue against both these views, and suggest that these bewilderments arise out of false questions. To understand Marx's texts, it is necessary to break down the structuring of the alternatives in the common form. The falsity of these questions can be shown by some attention to canons of text interpretation. I shall suggest that the fact that some of Marx's empirical remarks about traditional Indian society seem to be false should not trouble us unduly; for it was not their primary function to be empirically true. They had other functions— which they perform admirably well. Secondly, his remarks, though occasional, are hardly casual. On the contrary, it is possible to demonstate an underlying logical necessity for them to be exactly what they are and to have come exactly where they do. Theories of Interpretation There are two theories of interpretation about the proper methods of ascertaining the reliable meaning of statements which compose an historical text: these two positions are grounded in what can be called a positivistic and a hermcneutic notion of what is interprcta" lively justifiable. It is a textualist (a theory which draws much of its philosophic furniture of justification from logical positivism) claim that meanings of historical texts, if these are not internally contradictory or faulty in formal terms, must be taken as being self-evident. Statements which compose them must be read off straight, without conscious attempts at establishing historical mediation of their meanings, as if they were written by a contemporary. Since there is no transcendent cittcrion