Abstract
The received wisdom of the past 200 years describes the traditional Indian concept of time as cyclic, excluding all other forms and incorporating an endless repetition of cycles. This was in contrast to what was perceived as the essentially linear time of European civilisation. Implicit in this statement is also an insistence that cyclic time precludes a sense of history, a view which contributed to the theory that Indian civilisation was ahistorical. Historical consciousness it was said, required time to be linear, and to move like an arrow linking the beginning to a final eschatological end. Concepts of time and a sense of history were thus interwoven.
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