Al-beruni on India: WebGuruCool Indological Studies 6(4)

In this capacity, Al-beruni plays a critical and crucial role in not just supplying us with a vantage viewpoint, but with calculative and constructive comments on the life and times in India, especially during a period when a novel religio cultural change was about to make its commencement felt in the geo-political constructions inside India, in the Early Medieval Age (Eraly, 2014). A feather in the cap is offered by the extraordinary scholastic ambitions and cerebral cognizance of Al-beruni, who took sufficiently advanced measures to infuse accuracy and exactitude in his historiographical and anthropological writings, besides perfecting his art of the Scientific Method (Sachau, 1914: p. 38). The craft of Al-beruni combined the best of both worlds, which left behind a holistic corpus of masterly commentaries on the quotidian practices of the common people, while his deliberate avoidance of positioning focus on the economic political elites makes his work subalternin its vision. This paper shall attempt to provide a contextual glance and analytical glimpse of the errands and endeavours of Al-beruni, and highlight the academic and scholastic contours of his life and legacy.