The Language of the Gods in the World of Men : Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India

In this work of impressive scholarship, Sheldon Pollock explores the remarkable rise and fall of Sanskrit, India's ancient language, as a vehicle of poetry and polity. He traces the two great moments of its transformation: the first around the beginning of the Common Era, when Sanskrit, long a sacred language, was reinvented as a code for literary and political expression, the start of an amazing career that saw Sanskrit literary culture spread from Afghanistan to Java. The second moment occurred around the beginning of the second millennium, when local speech forms challenged and eventually replaced Sanskrit in both the literary and political arenas. Drawing striking parallels, chronologically as well as structurally, with the rise of Latin literature and the Roman empire, and with the new vernacular literatures and nation-states of late-medieval Europe, __The Language of the Gods in the World of Men__ asks whether these very different histories challenge current theories of culture and power and suggest new possibilities for practice. Frontmatter PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (page xi) Introduction (page 1) PART 1. The Sanskrit Cosmopolis Chapter 1. The Language of the Gods Enters the World (page 39) Chapter 2. Literature and the Cosmopolitan Language of Literature (page 75) Chapter 3. The World Conquest and Regime of the Cosmopolitan Style (page 115) Chapter 4. Sanskrit Culture as Courtly Practice (page 162) Chapter 5. The Map of Sanskrit Knowledge and the Discourse on the Ways of Literature (page 189) Chapter 6. Political Formations and Cultural Ethos (page 223) Chapter 7. A European Countercosmopolis (page 259) PART 2. The Vernacular Millennium Chapter 8. Beginnings, Textualization, Superposition (page 283) Chapter 9. Creating a Regional World: The Case of Kannada (page 330) Chapter 10. Vernacular Poetries and Polities in Southern Asia (page 380) Chapter 11. Europe Vernacularized (page 437) Chapter 12. Comparative and Connective Vernacularization (page 468) PART 3. Theory and Practice of Culture and Power Chapter 13. Actually Existing Theory and Its Discontents (page 497) Chapter 14. Indigenism and Other Culture-Power Concepts of Modernity (page 525) Epilogue. From Cosmopolitan-or-Vernacular to Cosmopolitan-and-Vernacular (page 567) APPENDIX A A.I Bhoja's Theory of Literary Language (from the Śṛṅgāraprakāśa) (page 581) A.2 Bhoja's Theory of Ornamentation (from the Sarasvatīkaṇṭhābharaṇa) (page 583) A.3 Śrīpāla's Bilpaṅk Praśasti of King Jayasiṃha Siddharāja (page 584) A.4 The Origins of Hemacandra's Grammar (from Prabhācandra's Prabhāvakacarita (page 588) A.5 The Invention of Kāvya (from Rājaśekhara's Kāvyamīmāṃsā ) (page 591) APPENDIX B B.I Approximate Dates of Principal Dynasties (page 597) B.2 Names of Important Peoples and Places with Their Approximate Modern Equivalents or Locations (page 597) PUBLICATION HISTORY (page 601) BIBLIOGRAPHY (page 603) INDEX (page 649) In this work of impressive scholarship, Sheldon Pollock explores the remarkable rise and fall of Sanskrit, India's ancient language, as a vehicle of poetry and polity. He traces the two great moments of its transformation: the first around the beginning of the Common Era, when Sanskrit, long a sacred language, was reinvented as a code for literary and political expression, the start of an amazing career that saw Sanskrit literary culture spread from Afghanistan to Java. The second moment occurred around the beginning of the second millennium, when local speech forms challenged and eventually replaced Sanskrit in both the literary and political arenas. Drawing striking parallels, chronologically as well as structurally, with the rise of Latin literature and the Roman empire, and with the new vernacular literatures and nation-states of late-medieval Europe, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men asks whether these very different histories challenge current theories of culture and power and suggest new possibilities for practice. Exploring the rise and fall of Sanskrit as a vehicle of poetry and polity, this title traces the two great moments of its transformation. Drawing parallels with the rise of Latin literature and the Roman empire, it asks whether these very different histories challenge theories of culture and power and suggest possibilities for practice