Pollock,Sheldon
The Language of the Gods in the World of Men Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India - Berkeley University of California Press 2006 - xiv, 684 p.
The language of the Gods enters the world
Literature and the cosmopolitan
The world conquest and regime of the cosmopolitan style
Sanskrit culture as courtly practice
The map of Sanskrit knowledge and the discourse on the ways of literature
Political formations and cultural ethos
A European countercosmopolis
Beginnings, textualization, superposition
Creating a regional world: the case of Kannada
Vernacular poetries and politics in Southern Asia
Comparative and connective vernacularization
Actually existing theory and its discontents
Indigenism and other culture-power concepts of modernity
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
9780520260030 (PB)
Sanskrit literature Political aspects
Ancient Indian languages and/or literature
Indic literature
94(34) / POL
The Language of the Gods in the World of Men Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India - Berkeley University of California Press 2006 - xiv, 684 p.
The language of the Gods enters the world
Literature and the cosmopolitan
The world conquest and regime of the cosmopolitan style
Sanskrit culture as courtly practice
The map of Sanskrit knowledge and the discourse on the ways of literature
Political formations and cultural ethos
A European countercosmopolis
Beginnings, textualization, superposition
Creating a regional world: the case of Kannada
Vernacular poetries and politics in Southern Asia
Comparative and connective vernacularization
Actually existing theory and its discontents
Indigenism and other culture-power concepts of modernity
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
9780520260030 (PB)
Sanskrit literature Political aspects
Ancient Indian languages and/or literature
Indic literature
94(34) / POL