Khcmanand Chandola Patriot Publishers IRs90
In this study, the author examines a variety of ancient, medieval and modern sources to advance a political claim for an Indian interest in Western Tibet today. He bases his thesis on the tributary relationships with northern Indian kingdoms in the past, common lineages, shared religious beliefs and practices, as well as close economic ties through trade. Such a political claim is questionable in its own right; it is also supported in this book by an often erroneous interpretation of historical sources.
Statements from epics, courtly chronicles, myths, travelogues, reports of colonial officials, works of historians as weli as archaeological evidence are all accepted at face value. Such uncritical use of sources has characterized almost every history of the Garhwal region.
History as a professional discipline today must involve economics, geography, anthropology, structural linguistics and literary criticism, Chandola recounts myths that trace the descent of Tibetan ruling dynasties from Indian clans such as the Licchavis and the Mallas. Rather than taking the myths literally and trying to establish biological descent, it would have been truer to the nature of myth to see them as legitimizing ideological claims. Similarly, the folk myth that Bhotiya and Huniya traders on either side of the border belong to branches of one family could be better utilized as an ideological construct.