This Book Features The Influence And Interaction Of Sanskrit With Prakrit, Hindi Apabhransha, Urdu, Bangla, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Assamese, Punjabi, Kashmiri And Gujarati. It Modestly Attempts To Cover Various Aspects Of Mutual Reciprocation Between Sanskrit And Other Indian Languages.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Language of the Snakes traces the history of the Prakrit language as a literary phenomenon, starting from its cultivation in courts of the Deccan in the first centuries of the common era. Although little studied today, Prakrit was an important vector of the kavya movement and once joined Sanskrit at the apex of classical Indian literary culture. The opposition between Prakrit and Sanskrit was at the center of an enduring “language order” in India, a set of ways of thinking about, naming, classifying, representing, and ultimately using languages. As a language of classical literature that nevertheless retained its associations with more demotic language practices, Prakrit both embodies major cultural tensions—between high and low, transregional and regional, cosmopolitan and vernacular—and provides a unique perspective onto the history of literature and culture in South Asia.

For over five hundred years, Muslim dynasties ruled parts of northern and central India, starting with the Ghurids in the 1190s through the fracturing of the Mughal Empire in the early eighteenth century. Scholars have long drawn upon works written in Persian and Arabic about this epoch, yet they have neglected the many histories that India’s learned elite wrote about Indo-Muslim rule in Sanskrit. These works span the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire and discuss Muslim-led kingdoms in the Deccan and even as far south as Tamil Nadu. They constitute a major archive for understanding significant cultural and political changes that shaped early modern India and the views of those who lived through this crucial period. Audrey Truschke offers a groundbreaking analysis of these Sanskrit texts that sheds light on both historical Muslim political leaders on the subcontinent and how premodern Sanskrit intellectuals perceived the “Muslim Other.” She analyzes and theorizes how Sanskrit historians used the tools of their literary tradition to document Muslim governance and, later, as Muslims became an integral part of Indian cultural and political worlds, Indo-Muslim rule. Truschke demonstrates how this new archive lends insight into formulations and expressions of premodern political, social, cultural, and religious identities. By elaborating the languages and identities at play in premodern Sanskrit historical works, this book expands our historical and conceptual resources for understanding premodern South Asia, Indian intellectual history, and the impact of Muslim peoples on non-Muslim societies. At a time when exclusionary Hindu nationalism, which often grounds its claims on fabricated visions of India’s premodernity, dominates the Indian public sphere, The Language of History shows the complexity and diversity of the subcontinent’s past.

This book provides a general survey of all the inscriptional material in the Sanskrit, Prakrit, and modern Indo-Aryan languages, including donative, dedicatory, panegyric, ritual, and literary texts carved on stone, metal, and other materials. This material comprises many thousands of documents dating from a range of more than two millennia, found in India and the neighboring nations of South Asia, as well as in many parts of Southeast, central, and East Asia. The inscriptions are written, for the most part, in the Brahmi and Kharosthi scripts and their many varieties and derivatives. Inscriptional materials are of particular importance for the study of the Indian world, constituting the most detailed and accurate historical and chronological data for nearly all aspects of traditional Indian culture in ancient and medieval times. Richard Salomon surveys the entire corpus of Indo-Aryan inscriptions in terms of their contents, languages, scripts, and historical and cultural significance. He presents this material in such a way as to make it useful not only to Indologists but also non-specialists, including persons working in other aspects of Indian or South Asian studies, as well as scholars of epigraphy and ancient history and culture in other regions of the world.

The present volume contains studies of crucial periods and important areas in the history of the Sanskrit language, from the earliest, Vedic and pre-Vedic periods, through the period of "Greater India," up to the recent history of Sanskrit in India.

First Steps Towards Sanskrit: Language, Linguistics and Culture is an accessible first introduction to this ancient Indian language. Complete beginners are introduced to the language from scratch. Key terms are explained clearly and there is an extensive glossary to assist the reader who is unfamiliar with the terminology of language learning. By the end of the book, learners will have grasped the basics of the language and be prepared to engage readily in an introductory college or university course or through private study. The addition of cultural, linguistic and historical notes will appeal to learners with diverse interests, ranging from religious studies and philosophy to yoga and comparative or historical linguistics. The book includes references to classical and modern European languages. Parallels are also drawn with Indic languages where these are relevant, particularly as concerns the writing system. No knowledge of any language other than English is, however, presupposed. This book is ideal for both self-study and in-class use as a primer or core text for pre-sessional courses.

Panini's Ashtadhyayi represents the first attempt in the history of the world to describe and analyse the components of a language on scientific lines. It has not only been universally acclaimed as the first and foremost specimen of Descriptive Grammar but has also been the chief source of inspiration for the linguist engaged in describing languages of different regions. To understand Sanskrit language, and especially that part of it which embodies the highest aspirations of ancient Aryan people, viz., the Brahmanas, Samhitas, Upanisads, it is absolutely necessary to have a complete knowledge of the grammar elaborated by Panini. Being a masterpiece of reasoning and artistic arrangement its study is bound to cultivate intellectual powers. Western scholars have described it as a wonderful specimen or a notable manifestation of Indian intelligence. This book is an English translation of Ashtadhyayi in two volumes and has won a unique position in the world of scholarship.