Language of the Snakes: Prakrit, Sanskrit, and the Language Order of Premodern India

South Asia Across the Disciplines

by Andrew Ollett

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.

Genres: History, Linguistics, Language, Academic, India, Nonfiction

482 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 10, 2017

Reviews

[Revanth Ukkalam · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is nothing short of a god-sent to students and enthusiasts of Premodern Indian history and its cultural studies. We read very casually about Prakrit Inscriptions but are seldom told what this mysterious language truly is. We are also typically not conscious that 'Sanskrit texts' are really multilingual works with liberal employment of Prakrit as well. At the same time apparently Prakrit is not a spoken tongue. It is a clear literary language but with niches different from those of Sanskrit carved out. Ollett performs a very sophisticated reading of Prakrit texts (a skill we seldom run across among Western academia style philologists) to be able to tackle the elephant in the room: Sheldon Pollock.

What we have is a history of the language in it journey from Ashokan Inscriptions through what he regards as Prakrit's most vibrant and glamorous moment, the cave inscriptions of Western Ghats commissioned by the Shatavahana kings and Western Satraps till its slow and eventual demise in the turn of the millennium with the 'vernacularisation' of the subcontinent.

In this journey Ollett dips at the various literary classics in Prakrit, the Gathasaptashati obviously but also Pravarasena's Ravanavaho, and Tarangavati and recovers a Prakrit of love, of the townsman, and subtlety.

An excellent excellent book.

[s · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finally understand what Prakrit really was, so that's good. However I actually picked this up to see if it has anything to say about Nagas (i.e. the titular snakes) because I think it's a very undertheorized category that's central to understanding the negative space around Sanskritized polities. It didn't so I'm disappointed, but that's just the burden of being ahead of the curve.

[Andy Febrico Bintoro · Rating 4 out of 5]

prakrit and Sanskrit

This book trying to understand prakrit and Sanskrit's background. What is actually this language for, and whenever this language was being used.

[Naveen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent ...