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The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India
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.
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In the citing paper
“praśasti inscriptions contemporary with and subsequent to Kālidāsa's time are nonetheless often closely conversant with the poetic forms of the Raghuvaṃśa (or vice versa, see Pollock 2006: 240-44;Singh 2011: 178-80), including of course variants on the eropolitical compound with its logic of the instrumentality of subjugated feminine objects to the wielding of royal power.”
From The eropolitical compound: immanence, transcendence and a parasitic operation of patriarchy in Sanskrit literature (2023) · cites this paper as Pollock 2006: 240-44
In the citing paper
“Meanwhile even praśasti, so clearly tied to the priorities and tools of courtly kāvya, is nonetheless ignored by theoreticians (Pollock 2006: 135), which again should make clear that the compound motif cannot be reduced to or fully accounted for by referring to rasa aesthetics alone.”
From The eropolitical compound: immanence, transcendence and a parasitic operation of patriarchy in Sanskrit literature (2023) · cites this paper as Pollock 2006: 135
In the citing paper
“'Making it nice' ( ala ṃ k ṛ -) was the slogan of an aesthetic sensibility that traversed linguistic, political, and religious boundaries-a sensibility that lies at the base of what Sheldon Pollock called, for this reason, the Sanskrit cosmopolis.”
From Making It Nice: Kāvya in the Second Century (2019) · cites this paper as Pollock (2006)
In the citing paper
“Unlike in Southeast Asia where the ruling elites used Sanskrit extensively (Ali 2011; Pollock 2006), it would have been diffi cult to institute similar use of the Indic language in China.”
From The Spread of Buddhism to China: A Re-examination of the Buddhist Interactions between Ancient India and China (2012) · cites this paper as Pollock 2006
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Metadata
- Authors
- Pollock, S.
- Corresponding author
- Pollock, Sheldon
- Venue
- University of California Press eBooks
- Publisher
- University of California Press
- Published
- 2006-05-23
- OpenAlex
- W4255323775
- Cited by
- 876
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 69 · 2025: 45 · 2024: 28 · 2023: 71 · 2022: 43 · 2021: 86 · 2020: 81 · 2019: 137 · 2018: 71 · 2017: 22 · 2016: 22 · 2015: 28 · 2014: 49 · 2013: 20 · 2012: 17
- FWCI
- 42.68
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- University of California Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Religious studies › Indian and Buddhist Studies
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Classical Studies and Philology
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Comparative and World Literature
- Keywords
- Sanskrit, Sanskrit literature, vernacularization, language and power, Sanskrit poetry, Latin literature, Roman Empire, vernacular literature, nation-state, culture and power
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