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Sheldon Pollock on what makes Sanskrit special..

What work then did Sanskrit do in much of the Sanskrit Cosmopolis?

What makes Sanskrit’s cosmopolitan career remarkable

  • The historical career of Sanskrit
  • The conditions of possibility for Sanskrit’s diffusion as a language of politics
  • It’s social domain
  • It’s political work

  • Not as material power
  • Common aesthetics of political culture
  • Sanskrit “ecumene”

Relationship between Sanskrit and Khmer

  • Unequal relationship; Sanskrit uninfluenced, Khmer massively invaded by Sanskrit at least at the lexical level
  • Vernacular literacy mediated by Sanskrit literacy
  • Assymetrical cultural authority

Culture and Ideology

  • Cultural colonization
  • Gift of civilization – the division between inferior and superior cultures
  • Transculturation
  • Global Ecumene

Definitions

Vernacular Culture

  • Dominant assumption
  • Gramsci – “The vernaculars are written down when the people regain importance”
  • Relations between language, literature and social power
  • Ideology
  • “Linguistic relations are always relations of symbolic power..” – Bourdieu & Wacquant

  • Sanskrit Cosmopolis: transregional cultural formation in the premodern world
  • Polis: Political dimension
  • Premier instrument of political expression in most of South and Southeast Asia

Research Questions

  • How did the transculturation process at work in the Sanskrit cosmopolis function?
  • Can we make any valid generalization about the relationships between Sanskrit and vernacular culture especially in terms of political language?
  • Can we theorize this process without risking mechanical functionalism and anachronism (‘legitimation’ being a causal explanation that illustrates both problems)?

Java

Khmer Country

  • Khmer language for everyday speech and documentation
  • Khmer scripts used by and for royals
  • Khmer heavily influenced by Sanskrit
  • No proof of original Sanskrit lit being produced

  • Used Sanskrit differently than Khmer people
  • Sanskrit died when Old Javanese became popular
  • Big influence in javanese works
  • 40% of old Javanese lexicon is derived from Sanskrit

Expansion

  • Kannada
  • Calukyas of Madami and Rastrakutas
  • Tamil literature
  • Calukyas
  • England
  • New theorization of a politics of a vernacular culture

Sanskrit's lasting impact

Sanskrit for socio-political needs

Section I

  • Language for ‘political legitimization’
  • Aesthetic use to legitimize political power
  • No political/cultural center, especially from the mainland to manipulate the spread of Sanskrit
  • Separating Sanskrit from local languages for everyday, communicative purposes

  • Used as a language of politics and literary discourse
  • Not a language of everyday life
  • Throughout a millenium (300 – 1,300 C.E) undergone significant changes in South and SE Asia
  • Transculturation without imperial subjugation and/or bureaucratic control

Inscriptional Discourse

The Cosmopolis

  • “Unique” discourse
  • Enhancement
  • Increasing Popularity

Section V

  • Common imperial formations
  • Hierarchical Societies
  • Cities planned in geometric orientation
  • Similar language led to similar beliefs

Relationship between Sanskrit and Khmer

The Sanskrit Cosmopolis

When and how does Sanskrit enter the domain of “public” political discourse in South Asia?

  • Sanskrit culture was completely indigenized
  • Why are the Khmer using Sanskrit?
  • Poem inscriptions as prayers

Section II

  • The first public political text in Sanskrit
  • Kavya
  • Sanskrit at the end of the first century C.E

Inscriptional Discourse

Sanskrit in the Transculturation Process

Comparing Sanskrit

By Arman, Giri, Jeremiah, Monica, Riju, Sherrine & Shivam

  • Angkoran inscriptional discourse comparable to India
  • Sanskrit deployed in Khmer to make literary claims about the world
  • Usage of Sanskrit and Khmer language

  • Introduction of Sanskrit into local, distinct cultures embraced as a linguistic ideology
  • No cultural conquest of local languages
  • Literization of local languages into Sanskrit texts accompanied and accepted as part of local culture
  • Use of Sanskrit as a unifying, political language for empire-building

  • Best comparative is Latin in 800 CE
  • Imaginaire politique
  • Key difference
  • The Latin Vernacular
  • New Persian – 1000 CE West Asia
  • Sanskrit’s aesthetics

Inscriptional Discourse

When and how does Sanskrit enter the domain of “public” political discourse in South Asia?

Division of Linguistic Labor

  • What is “public”?
  • What is the significance of Sanskrit?
  • Maurya & Gupta

Parallelism

  • Relationship between Sanskrit and Prakrit among the southern regions in India And
  • Pallavas of Tamil Nadu for most of the 1st millenium

  • First appearance of the metrical prastasi and its appearance in the Pallava records of Tamil
  • Sanskrit is used to interpret, supplement and reveal reality, whereas for documenting reality in the pragmatic portions of the grant, non-Sanskrit is required

  • Cambodia follows that of continental South Asia
  • Badami Calukyas & Rastrakuta successors
  • Between 9th and 13th centuries, fascination with sophisticated forms of royal poetry in Khmer country

Emphasis on “Expectabillity”

Sanskrit in Khmer and Malayo-Polynesian speaking countries in Southeast Asia

  • Production of political culture throughout the region
  • “Funan Polity” in Khmer
  • Growth of Sanskrit in Khmer during Angkor period (dated 20%, undated 35%)

  • Pallava dynasty primary example
  • In 600 years no transcription where Tamil did any work beyond recording the everyday
  • Functions usually denied to Sanskrit from an early date

When and how does Sanskrit enter the domain of “public” political discourse in South Asia?

  • Satavahanas & Ksatrapas
  • Sungas

Kannada

Drastic change in inscriptional style of Pallavas

  • Parallel with Tamil
  • Epigraphs of the Gangas “documentary”
  • Percentages of inscriptions in Kannada relative to those in Sanskrit rose from 30% to 90% from 960-1200 C.E
  • Sanskrit’s competitor languages were only allowed to serve documentary function

Sanskrit political-cultural idiom offered in the historical records of Pallava Dynasty

Emergence of Sanskrit inscriptions

  • 5th century appeared almost simultaneously across Southeast Asia ranging from Burma to Indonesia
  • Some dies out rather quickly, and in some last for hundreds of years

Section IV

When and how does Sanskrit enter the domain of “public” political discourse in South Asia?

  • 4th generation after Sivaskandavarman
  • Elements of the standard prasasti style developed
  • Fixing of the genealogical succession
  • The catalogue of kingly traits of the dynasty
  • The eulogy of the ruler lord and a documentary account of the gift that the record inscribes as well as conditions against violation

  • Stone inscription of Simhavarman
  • Copper plate in Prakrit without prasasti portion
  • Land-grant on copper plates (338 C.E)

  • Prakrit & Sanskrit
  • Diglossia & Hyperglossia
  • Basim Plates

Before the beginning of the common era..

Generalizations on the basis of epigraphical evidence

  • Trades were limited to small groups of traders, adventurers, religious professionals
  • No evidence that large-scale state initiatives were ever at issue, or anything that resembles colonization

Namaste for listening to our presentation!

  • Institution of the transregional use of Sanskrit for public political texts in South India
  • Development of Sanskrit at expense of local literary traditions
  • Cosmopolitan character generated by transregional developments as a shared language practice that points to the aestheticization of the political

Section III

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