HISTORY AND THE ENTERPRISE OF KNOWLEDGE 15 The last is well illustrated, for example, by Emperor Akbar's initiation of a synthetic Solar calendar in the form of Tarikh-ilahi, in 1584, and its continuing influence on the Bengali san (on these issues, see my "India through Its Calendars," The Little Magazine, 1,1, May 2000). 6. A good example of an interesting but rather bold speculation is Rabindranath Tagore's conjecture about a story in the epics that "the mythical version of King Janamejaya's ruthless serpent sacrifice" may quite possibly stand for an actual historical event involving an "attempted extermination of the entire Naga race" by the dominant powers in ancient India (Tagore, A Vision of India's History, p. 9). 7. Amartya Sen, "Reach of Reason: East and West," The New York Review of Books, July 20, 2000. 8. See Michael Sand-el, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition, 1998), for a fine presentation of the "discovery" view of identity, and in particular of the thesis (among others) that "community describes not just what they have as fellow citizens but also what they are, not a relationship they choose (as in a voluntary association) but an attachment they discover, not merely an attribute but a constituent of their identity" (pp. 150-2). 9. I have discussed the role of choice in the selection of identities and in the determination of priorities in my Romanes Lecture at Oxford, Reason before Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), and in my Annual British Academy Lecture (to be published by the British Academy): for a shorter version, see "Other People," The New Republic, September 25, 2000. 10. See Rabindranath Tagore, The Religion of Man (London: Unwin, 1931,2nd edition, 1961), p. 105. 11. See particularly Bimal Matilal, Perceptions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). 12. Even though I shall not discuss in this paper the role and reach of Arjuna's disagreements with Krishna's high deontology in the Mahabharata, and in particular in the Bhagavad-Geeta, that too is philosophically an important departure; on this see my "Consequential Evaluation and Practical Reason," The Journal of Philosophy, 97 (September 2000). 13. Tagore, A Vision of India's History, p. 22. 14. The translation is taken from Makhanlal Sen, Valmiki Ramayana (Calcutta: Rupa, 1989), pp. 174-5. 15. On this general subject, see my "Positional Objectivity" (1993), and also "Accounts, Actions and Values: Objectivity of Social Science" (1983). 16. James Mill, The History of British India (London, 1817; republished, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), pp. 225-6. 17. Mill, The History of British India, pp. 223-4. 18. For an English translation, see Alberuni's India, translated by E.C. Sachau, edited by A.T. Embree (New York: Norton, 1971). 19. Quoted in John Clive's introduction to Mill, The History of British India (republished, 1975), p. viii. 20. Alberuni's India, pp. 110-1. 21. Alberuni's India, p. 111. 22. On this see also my "Accounts, Actions and Values: Objectivity of Social Science" (1983) and "Positional Objectivity" (1993).