The notion of the flood in South Asia is no longer solely characterised as the archetypal natural disaster episode. This perceptual shift, as this essay will point out, draws from a conceptual churning within the field of environmental history of South Asia. In the course of exploring and debating ideas about environmental change, environmental historians have in the course of several monographs and research articles drastically reconsidered the role and impacts of flooding in South Asia through three distinct narrative frameworks: a) hydraulic event; b) geological process and c) biological pulse. Environmental history as a field, thus, has helped flesh out and radically revise our understanding of flooding from previously being an ahistorical calamitous event to instead providing contexts for revealing complex relationships between ecological processes, biological pulses and livelihood strategies. The notion of the flood in South Asia, consequently, is now acknowledged as an ecological force that is modulated by social, cultural and political interventions rather than exclusively belonging to the domain of Nature.

中文翻译：

---

事件、过程和脉搏：重新定位南亚环境历史中的洪水

南亚洪水的概念不再仅仅被描述为典型的自然灾害事件。正如本文将指出的，这种感知转变源于南亚环境史领域内的概念转变。在探索和辩论有关环境变化的想法的过程中，环境历史学家在几本专着和研究文章的过程中，通过三个不同的叙事框架彻底重新考虑了洪水在南亚的作用和影响：a) 水力事件；b) 地质过程和 c) 生物脉冲。环境史作为一个领域，因此，帮助充实并彻底修改了我们对洪水的理解，从以前的非历史灾难性事件转变为揭示生态过程、生物脉冲和生计策略之间复杂关系的背景。因此，南亚洪水的概念现在被认为是一种受社会、文化和政治干预调节的生态力量，而不是完全属于自然领域。