Concept Note
Alexander’s time in the Indus Valley, in comparison to his campaigns elsewhere, was comparatively brief, a mere two and a half years. However, the legacy he left behind defined a (cultural) epoch in this geographical region that is not understood and is usually overlooked. Certain scholars like Eggermont have explored in detail some aspects of the time he spent in the greater Indus region, primarily from his military campaigns. But, for the most part, scholars have failed to fully grasp what his incursions entailed, and what they mean for us today. Aside from the fatal injuries he sustained in battle here, his local alliances, the towns he set up under his name, and the rebellion of his army against a proposed larger campaign to the East (in mainland India), and the loss of part of his army in coastal Baluchistan, little else is inferred by scholars as to what his time here actually meant to the country. The main reason for this is the lack of archival evidence available to historians due to the antiquity of the Classical period, and the subsequent inability of ‘straight’ academic disciplines like History to be able to move forward on this matter.
In terms of cultural sentiment, unlike in neighbouring Iran, where he is seen in that country’s historical memory as a pariah, an invader who laid waste to Iran’s great Achaemenid civilisation, razing its cities and burning its libraries and religious literature, to an extent it is argued that Iran could not recover for centuries, Alexander’s time in the Indus Valley is regarded as being mostly favourable. This is primarily due to the alliances he made here, and the legacy he left behind, including settler towns that eventually intermingled and mixed into the local population. His mention has made its way into ballads and folklore, literature and song, phenomena which endure until today.
The obstacle we face as scholars to be able to fully gauge Alexander’s legacy in the Indus Valley is due to the rigidity of traditional academic disciplines like History, Archaeology etc, be they text or material based. However, as articulated eloquently by our colleague Katja Rieck in her concept note for the ‘Materialities of Everyday Religiosity’ conference held at the Orient Institute Istanbul in June 2021, ‘In the 1980s, as an outcome of the constructivist turn in the Social Sciences and Humanities, the field of ‘new materiality studies’ emerged, which contributed to the so-called material turn (in the Humanities), influenced by authors such as Bruno Latour and Arjun Appadurai. By the 2000s, this ‘material’ research perspective was systematically taken up by scholars of religion. Taken forward by Birgit Meyer and the contributors to the journal Material Religion founded by her, but echoing and reinforcing the wider trend of new materialism in social science and humanities research, ‘material religion’ serves as a framework for highlighting and analysing the role of the materiality of religion in different fields and aspects of human activity, such as the production and trade of commodities, arts and handicrafts, travel and pilgrimage, landscape, habitation and architecture, media, food, clothing, etc. Such a comparative study of materialities offers possibilities for an interdisciplinary discourse which transcends the European arena and includes other religions.’
According to Katja Rakow, who was that conference’s keynote speaker, ‘Materiality refers to matter, something that is concrete, substantial, physical, tangible, and real, as opposed to the immaterial, imaginary, ideal, spiritual, and intellectual dimension of human life. Usually the opposition of material/immaterial implies a hierarchy that ranks the immaterial, the spiritual, and the realm of ideas higher than the world of matter, the physical, and the corporeal.’ Rakow adds, ‘In the past two decades, many scholars have called for a ‘materialization’ of the study of religion to counterbalance the tendency to emphasize the study of textual sources and theological or philosophical debates. The reevaluation of the materialities of religion happened in the context of a broader paradigm shift within the humanities and social sciences referred to as ‘the material turn.’’
The greatest beneficiaries of new material studies have been the scholars of the Study of Religion (SOR), who are ever-dogged by religious debates and interpretation of Scripture, as is evident from the eyes of our colleagues. But by no means is SOR the sole beneficiary of this new approach. All disciplines of the Humanities, and indeed some in the Social Sciences, have adopted materiality to make their arguments more credible when traditional academic fields fail them due to an absence of discipline-based evidence. Indeed, the concept of materiality as side-discipline supporting a main academic field is not limited to the Study of Religion at all, although that is where it has perhaps made its greatest impact.
In essence, materiality is a wider academic notion of tying traditional academic disciplines together, by defining and using sub-disciplines, based around the production of objects which maybe or may not be physically tangible, including today social media and digital imagery.
As a result, the emergence of new sub-fields like Material History and Material Culture complement disciplines like History and add to the ability of its scholars to make an argument which traditionally could not be made. In addition, these new fields also give older material-focused approaches like Archaeology and Museum Anthropology, more flexibility. In our context, recent academic developments like the Indian Ocean trade and its impact, and Folklore Studies, provide us with a new infrastructure to be able to explore the real impact of Alexander’s legacy in the Indus Valley, which was previous restricted. It is with this transdisciplinary approach that we hope to be able to uncover what this subject means to us today.