12. The Spread of Sanskrit in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Sanskrit makes its first appearance in inscriptions in South Asia during the early centuries of the Common Era.It then gradually takes over and becomes the inscriptional language par excellence in the whole of the South Asian subcontinent and much of Southeast Asia.For almost a thousand years Sanskrit 'rules' in this enormous domain.Sheldon Pollock (1996, 2006) speaks for this reason of the 'Sanskrit cosmopolis', which he dates approximately between ce 300 and 1300.How do we explain the strange vicissitudes of the Sanskrit language?Was it a lingua franca for trade, international business and cultural promotion?Is the spread of Sanskrit into Southeast Asia to be explained by the same reasons that also explain its spread within the Indian subcontinent?Pollock, by using the expression 'Sanskrit cosmopolis', draws attention to the political dimension of the spread of Sanskrit.One defining feature of the Sanskrit cosmopolis, he states (1996: 197), 'is that Sanskrit became the premiere instrument of political expression in the polities that comprised it, those of most of South and much of Southeast Asia'.He rightly points out that Sanskrit was not a lingua franca: 1 Sanskrit's spread was effected by traditional intellectuals and religious professionals, often following in the train of scattered groups of traders and adventurers, and carrying with them disparate and decidedly uncanonized texts of a wide variety of competing religious orders, ® Saiva, Buddhist, Vai] s] nava, and others.[...]There is little to suggest [...] that Sanskrit was an everyday medium of communication in South let alone Southeast Asia, or that [it] ever functioned as a language-of-trade, a bridge-, link-, or koiné language or lingua franca (except among those traditional intellectuals) [...