Ultimately, there are two overarching themes that unite Textures. First, there is the important argument that we must listen more carefully to the “textures” of these works—that is, that we must explore their stylistic qualities and subtle patterns of language usage—if we are ever to get to the core of what constituted history as a distinct register of writing about the past in South Asia. Through the varied linguistic devices that together constitute “texture”, works in the historical register are able to emphasize empirical facts and chains of causation, and to dwell on the singularity of unique events. They are able to assume a distinctive mode of reporting; that is, they aim to inform their readers rather than to elicit an affective, emotional response. Their style of description is often realistic, focusing on closely observed, quantifiable details, carefully combined in ways that avoid reliance on formulas. The individual textural qualities themselves may remain elusive in the analyses offered in the book, but their collective impact on the nature of the overall discourse in these texts is clear and immediately comprehensible, thanks to the three authors’ close readings and inspired analysis.

The book’s second major theme relates to the social context within which this new mode of historical writing arose. Textures presents an inspired model of historiographic production, a “sociology” of these texts, that on the one hand, begins to account for their distinctive textural and ideological characteristics, and on the other, permits us to see and understand the common qualities running through these works produced in so many different languages. According to this model, the sixteenth century efflorescence of historiographic writing in South India is intimately connected with the rise to prominence of a new class of scribes and accountants, within which most of the authors of these texts can be situated. Narayana Rao and his collaborators employ the Telugu term karaṇam as a convenient label to designate this class, in reference to the emblematic office of the karaṇam, the village record-keeper or accountant, but members of this class in fact held many other kinds of official appointments as well, and were hardly restricted to the village level. They could be found working variously as ministers, as accountants employed in treasury and revenue departments, as writers engaged in the production of diplomatic and administrative correspondence, and as “residents” and ambassadors stationed at other courts.

What united these diverse figures was their common, shared “karaṇam culture”, which the authors of Textures of Time characterize in terms of five key attributes. First, members of this class were highly trained in the specialized skills of graphic literacy, which included not just the basic skills of writing and reading, but just as importantly, a set of higher-order skills relating to written communication, numeracy, and record-keeping. Second, the members of this class shared an orientation which privileged prose over verse, marking an important departure from the dominant literary cultures of southern India, which had valorized poetic verse over prose. Third, in the karaṇam culture, author and recorder were typically one and the same person. In non-karaṇam literary contexts, texts were of course also written down, but generally by a scribe who was different from the author, and they were consumed by being read or recited out loud again in a public setting. It is only in the karaṇam culture that we find texts that were meant not to be recited, but to be read silently to oneself. Fourth, the karaṇam culture was markedly polyglossic. It was not restricted to any one language, nor even divided meaningfully into linguistically distinct sub-cultures, but found expression in a number of different local vernaculars and trans-local cosmopolitan languages including both Persian and Sanskrit. Because members of the karaṇam class were intensely multilingual, the languages they employed developed in a state of constant interaction, and accordingly, there are continuities of genre and texture in their historiographic works that cut across linguistic barriers. Finally, the members of this class tended to stand in an ambiguous relationship with kings. Rulers depended in important ways on the services provided by karaṇams, since they effectively controlled the domains of writing, accounting, and policy making. Yet, the karaṇam class controlled these domains without claiming any public visibility. As the authors put it, “karaṇam culture modestly contents itself with manipulation behind the scenes” (p. 111).

It is doubtful that any one of the three authors of Textures would have been able to arrive at the rich formulation presented in Textures of Time working alone and independently, the impressive breadth of their individual expertise notwithstanding. Although each of the three is noted for his multi-disciplinary leanings, each at the same time embodies a distinctly different stance and sensibility. In the final analysis, this difference in orientation is just as crucial a component of their collaboration as the range of different languages and disciplinary perspectives represented by the individual collaborators. To one who has closely read their individual works, and then contemplates the substance of the inspired readings and analyses of the “karaṇam” histories presented in Textures, it is immediately apparent that there are new and otherwise unprecedented ideas that emerge only through their collaborative work. Indeed, it is a vivid case of the whole being more than the sum of the parts—much more.

In their preface to Textures, the three authors comment disapprovingly on the speculations that had been offered by some reviewers of their previous collaborative work (Symbols of Substance, New Delhi: OUP, 1992) as to which author might have written a specific section “or even a particularly masala laden sentence.” They go on to assert that “we share responsibility for the whole text and assert joint authorship over every word in the pages that follow.” Then, alluding to Narayana Rao’s above-mentioned dictum about texts “writing” authors, they continue: “If texts make authors, our model lies surely in The Chronicles of Honorio Bustos Domeq” (p.xii). The reference here is to the fertile collaboration of the great Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) with his younger contemporary, Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914-1999), published under the pseudonym Honorio Bustos Domeq to represent their composite authorial identity—or “Biorges” as it has also been dubbed. Perhaps the three authors intended only to stress the merging of their separate identities in the “author function” called forth by Textures, but the reference to Borges and Bioy strikes me as equally appropriate on a deeper level as well. For, as Suzanne Jill Levine has remarked in discussing the relationship between the two Argentinean writers:

The familiar image of Bioy Casares as disciple and collaborator of Borges placed him, in the Latin American canon, under the shadow of the maestro. Even though Borges once called Bioy the “secret master”, …Borges message was, as always, double: “master” in the sense that children teach their parents. But more than mentor and disciple, Borges and Bioy were lifelong friends whose ingenious and passionate discussions of literature and their favorite writers were mutually nourishing (“Introduction” to Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel, tr. Ruth L.C. Simms, New York Review of Books, 2003, p.ix)
Substitute the names of Narayana Rao and his collaborators for Borges and Bioy Casares, and one has a perfect characterization of the nature of their relationship. The formulation provides a key to understanding both the humble generosity of Narayana Rao and the deeply enticing nature of collaboration as he and his “lifelong friends” have defined it for us.