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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.
Book Details
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publish Date: Jun 1st, 2009
- Pages: 706
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 8.90in - 5.90in - 1.40in - 2.10lb
- EAN: 9780520260030
- Categories: • Asia - South - General• Asian - General
About the Author
Sheldon Pollock is William B. Ransford Professor of Sanskrit and South Asian Studies at Columbia University, and former George V. Bobrinskoy Distinguished Service Professor at The University of Chicago. His previous publications include Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia (California, 2003), Cosmopolitanism (2002, with Homi Bhabha et al.), and The Ramayana of Valmiki, Volume III: Aranyakanda (1991), and Volume II: Ayodhyakanda (1986).
Praise for this book
"Pollock . . . has reached back to the rise and fall of the Sanskrit Cosmopolis, and he is looking ahead to a globalizing world in which vernaculars are again yielding to the cosmopolitan. He has looked sideways to the broader world of scholarship beyond the narrow confines of Indology and is feeding into the wider scholarly community."-- "International Journal of Asian Studies"
"Sheldon Pollock's magisterial essay on the history and fate of Snaskrit is the kind of scholarly synthesis and insightful interpretation that comes along, at most, once in a generation or two. It is a bold work, panoramic in scope, forthright in conception and argument, and extraordinarily rich in philological-historical detail."-- "Journal of Asian Studies"
"A large, ambitious, important, and exciting book, bursting with ideas at every level."-- "Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute"
"An intriguing study of classical and medieval India, but also a useful contribution to the theoretical literature. . . . a grand narrative . . . accessible to the non-specialist scholar [and] a work that will surely be read for years to come."-- "Journal of the American Academy of Religion"
"A tour de force, examining in detail the cultural and political worlds of Sanskrit and its related languages over two millennia."-- "American Historical Review"
"The Language of the Gods . . . opens up a rich series of theoretical debates about language, modernity, culture, power and identity. . . . If there was a discipline of Pre-Modern Studies, [it] would be required reading."-- "New Left Review"