Cultural Ideologies of Language in Precolonial India: A Symposium

Extract

The intensity of cultural investment that South Asian societies have channeled into their languages and literatures, whether gauged in a globally comparative perspective or in absolute terms, is truly remarkable. The intellectual energies poured into linguistic and aesthetic expositions, the assiduous maintenance and temporal depth of written and oral traditions, or the complexity and consequence of sociolinguistic relations, both locally and in interactions of regional diversity, would each suffice on its own to underscore South Asia's marked preoccupation with language. Their combined effect, however, has at times produced a civilizational sphere whose very self-definition rested with foundational claims to achievement in language. Yet despite the richness of this linguistic and literary history (or, perhaps, because of it), relatively few studies combine substantive textual analyses with theoretical agenda adequate to a treatment of the multiplex roles and articulations of specific languages and their interactions in the constitution of particular South Asian societies.