The Language of the Gods in the World of Men : Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India.
Title:
The Language of the Gods in the World of Men : Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India.
Author:
Pollock, Sheldon.
ISBN:
9780520932029
Personal Author:
Edition:
1st ed.
Physical Description:
1 online resource (705 pages)
Contents:
Contents -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I: The Sanskrit Cosmopolis -- 1. The Language of the Gods Enters the World -- 2. Literature and the Cosmopolitan Language of Literature -- 3. The World Conquest and Regime of the Cosmopolitan Style -- 4. Sanskrit Culture as Courtly Practice -- 5. The Map of Sanskrit Knowledge and the Discourse on the Ways of Literature -- 6. Political Formations and Cultural Ethos -- 7. A European Countercosmopolis -- Part II: The Vernacular Millennium -- 8. Beginnings, Textualization, Superposition -- 9. Creating a Regional World -- 10. Vernacular Poetries and Polities in Southern Asia -- 11. Europe Vernacularized -- 12. Comparative and Connective Vernacularisation -- Part III: Theory and Practice of Culture and Power -- 13. Actually Existing Theory and Its Discontents -- 14. Indigenism and Other Culture-Power Concepts of Modernity -- Epilogue -- Appendix A -- Appendix B -- Publication History -- Bibliography -- Index.
Abstract:
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.
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
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