98 SOCIAL SCIENTIST years from today? It is no consolation that history swallows us all, that fish eats fish, for some of us are rather more easily swallowed than others. Finally, then, the question remains: Can the writing of history ever have emancipatory possibilities? The attitude of another ancient civilization, that of India, may be instructive in this respect, although I fear that what I shall say may well be confused for a species of Orientalism. But I shall say it without qualification: ancient India was unequivocally of the view that the writing of History belonged to a lower order of intellectual and spiritual activity, and that appears to me to be perfectly apposite for a civilization that chose to cremate, not bury, its dead. NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. Indian readers at least should recognize the allusion. On account of his unbounded devotion to Shiva, the evil king, Hiranyakasipu, recived a boon from the god that would apparently render him inviolable immunity from harm, injury, or death. According to the boon, Hiranyakasipu could not be killed either by man or animal, in daylight or at night, inside or outside. But since evil must not triumph, Vishnu sends an incarnation, Narasimha, half man, half lion, who kills Hiranyakasipu on the threshold at twilight: in that hybridity alone is there luminosity and emancipation. The authoritative narrative of this story is to be found in the Vishnu Purana. Of course this story can be read in numerous other ways, most significantly as indicative of a sectarian struggle between followers of Vishnu and Shiva, the two leading pan-Indian gods, but that line of inquiry need not bind us. 2. Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions. The Wonder of the New World, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1991, pp. 128-40. 3. Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy, Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1983, p. xi 4. Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony. The World System A.D. 1250-3350, Oxford University Press, New York, 1989, ch. 8.