Indian traditions of history initially viewed past events as occurring in "previous births", metaphorically situating them within the lifetimes of significant figures like the Buddha. This paper argues that early historical texts used the concept of previous births as an artificial framework for chronological ordering, as seen in Buddhist writings that located state-building acts within the time of the Buddha's births. It aims to demonstrate how this was deployed as a tool for conceptualizing historical time through examples from primary sources from India's early historic period.

1. History as 'Previous Birth': Resolving Chronologyin the Indian Tradition
By
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Ajay Pratap
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Abstract
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This paper sets out to argue, that in the earliest reckoning of 'historical
time', Indian traditions of 'history' preferred the metphor of 'previous birth',
as an artifice for reckoning past events of significance, and the
chronological bracket in which they must be roughly situated. Outstanding
examples are present even in the agnostic Buddhist tradition, where
scribes sought to locate, and sacralise events of significance (in the
development of the state) as acts of importance completed in the time of
'births' of the Buddha.
That this is an artifice for reckoning historical time, is made clear, and
referenced in terms of its precise deployment as a tool, within an age-
system of a kind, using examples of various primary texts of the early
historic period.
Introduction
It is clear that Buddhist primary writing revolves around kings, kingdoms
and there doings in the early period of Indian state-formation. However, that
these also contain history is not so clear nor that they do too a historical
periodisation imagined as time within the period of various births of the
Buddha, a historical persona, weilding incalculable influence on early kings,
and kingdoms. This is likely because the self-same it provided opportunities
of moksha became its working-class retinue giving the Buddhist order its
economic leverage with early states desirous of 'producing' their economic
lives.