History and Belief: The Foundations of Historical Understanding

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History and Belief: The Foundations of Historical Understanding.

By Robert Eric Frykenberg. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1996. Pp. 377. Paperback $27.

This book offers a learned meditation on the nature, limits, and possibilities of historical knowledge. The author is professor of history and South Asian studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Its "central question" is "exactly how ideology, or religion ina broad sense, has served to inform the historiography of each major civilization" (p. 2). It approaches this question through a series of chapters that link aspects of historical understanding with historiographical discussion, for example, the possibility of …