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My attempts at translating a tiny drop of assorted contents from among the contents of jeyamohan.in.

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Ancient, Modern historiography & Fiction - 3

  Original Source: https://stage.jeyamohan.in/197258/ Date: 24-Mar-2024   As soon as the modern historiography began in India, so did modern historical fiction. In fact, both evolved hand in hand. Even in case of European history, it can be understood that the situation was the same - that is modern historiography and modern historical fiction evolved together. What's more surprising is the fact that in 16th century AD, even as the ancient historiography was making way for the modern one, the trend of fictionalizing the early set of history books had begun. Shakespeare arranged his plays inspired by the books on Ireland and Scotland by Raphael Holinshed and Edward Hall. Alexander Dumas fictionalized the writings of French Historical author Pierre de L'Estoile. In Europe, modern historiography could be seen twinned with fictional literature.  India's modern historiography started in 18th century. Even as the history of Bengal was getting written, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee...
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Ancient, Modern historiography & Fiction - 2

Original Source: https://www.jeyamohan.in/197250/ Date: 23-Mar-2024 The short-stories collection "Padaiyal" is a historical fiction like that of "Aayiram Ootrukkal".  They are stories from the period of Nayaks - Marathas. I am writing this article to explain about why such historical fictions are written, how to approach them and the relationship between these fictions and history. All of us have this hallucination that history is an absolute entity like a thing that exists and that it comprises of truths that have been entirely established. Because, we read history as such in our institutions. History is a discussion forum. But it is provided as a collection of information. Only when we realize that historiography is an ideological space where myriad histories are written, can we proceed with further discussion. Ancient communities like India are deeply rooted in ancient historiography. Modern historiography is two centuries old here. Modern historiography is taugh...
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From the footsteps of Maanasaa

Original Source: https://www.jeyamohan.in/202806/ Date: 2-Aug-2024   A malayalam journalist asked me what was I experiencing while writing Mudharkanal. 'How can it be remembered? Its memories would just be tiny droplets, it isn't a truth in anyway', I replied. 'Yes, but so is creative literature, isn't it? Mudharkanal is but a tiny droplet of what you had attained. A reader is able to travel from the linguistic structure to that fullness of experience through his imagination", he remarked. It felt true.  There wasn't any exuberance when writing Mudharkanal, for it had already been 25 years then since I had started reciting on my dream of writing Mahabharatha in entirety. My library was replete with books for that. The list of scholars, including P.K. Balakrishnan that I had visited for that sake is huge.  The list of journeys undertaken in the past twenty five years is more vast than that. But I kept postponing it. 'Maybe later' - a thought on one s...
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