182 CONCLUSIONafterlife of a given text. The result is that there is no clear understanding
of the life of the text and the political and social world that it inhabited
at any given rnornent. We remain constrained by histories that focus on
significant peoples and significant events and where political history
overpowers intellectual or cultural history. This study on Chachnama
demonstrates how such an approach has hindered our interpretation
and discovery of the political theory embedded in these texts.
The inethod·of this book included rny extensive walks in Uch. Those
walks and the material landscape shaped rny questions and guided rne
to think differently. The realities of post-Partition South Asia, in which
the historic regioh of Sind is split between India and Pakistan, have
rnade it impossible to see the whole space that is described in the
texts which I study. I could not without friction imagine the full net-
works of mobility that rny medieval texts rnove through. Instead of
ignoring this political present, I declared its limitations to be rny lim-
itations. If I could walk frorn Multan, across the Cholistan desert, to
Kharnbhat, I would know better the history I have sought to bring to
light here.
One of rny last walks introduced rne to another historian who brings
Uch to light. He is the keeper of a small graveyard in Uch. People know
hirn as the mu'arrakh (historian). He is an elderly rnan with silver in
his eyes. I was introduced to hirn through a colleague and was told
that he knows the political history of Uch better than anyone else. I
found hirn at the top of a mound, tending to a shrine where the graves
were covered in bright red embroidered cloth. He listened to rny request
for histories of Uch in silence and answered rne only after a further ex-
ultation by rny colleague. Thereupon he spoke freely and at length. He
spoke about the corning of Alexander, the rise of the Sarnrnas, and the
Mughal state in Sind as episodes which marked history in Uch frorn
the outside. He gave references to the campaigns frorn the princely
states of Kalat or the Talpurs and the British. In concluding, he ges-
tured to an ontological difference in the pasts he was transcribing: the
history of Uch that is visible frorn the outside-Alexander, Mughals,
British-was distinct frorn that "internal" past that we saw in the trees