Bilingual Discourse and Cross-Cultural Fertilisation:

Only for my personal use and not an article

Bilingual Discourse and Cross-Cultural Fertilisation:

Bilingual Discourse and Cross-Cultural Fertilisation: Sanskrti and Tamil in Medieval India, ed. Whitney Cox and Vincenzo Vergiani,  Pondichery, Institut Francais De Pondichery Ecole Francaise D’extreme-Orient, 2013

Preface. Whtney Cox and Vincenzo Vergiani. Pp.vii-x

…It is equally the case, however, that modern scholarship has been invested in an effort – often unconscious, but sometimes willful and programmatic – to keep the cultural and intellectual worlds of Tamil and Sanskrit sealed off from each other….—p. viii.

…The model of consmopolitan and vernacular literary interaction proposed by the Sanskritist Sheldon Pollock, as summarized in his magnum opus of 2006, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men, has supplied an argumentative framework that has become more often than not implicit in the recent comparative work on Tamil and Sanskrit, and this volume is no exception.  This is most clearly in evidence in Francis’ contribution, which offers a meticulously documented correction of Pollock’s characterization of the epigraphical practices recorded in the Pallava kingdom.  More generally, however, the basic fabric of Pollock’s historical model, in which the superimposition of cosmopolitan Sanskrit catalyses the literarisation of a vernacular speech-form, which only gradually attains equal dignity with the language of the cosmopolis in the literary and political arena, fails rather dramatically to adequately account for the long shared history of Sanskrit and Tamil….—p. ix

…the degree to which historical reality exceeds the ideal-typical limits of any theorization is not something that should preclude such attempts: it is only through empirical testing that any theory can be refined and improved.—p. ix

Introduction. Dominic Goodall. P. 1-11

…Evidence of non-Sanskrit literary activity in Dravidian-language-speaking areas also survives from earlier than elsewhere, and it is by no means unambiguously clear that such literature with-Aryan models: the degree to which the oldest surviving Tamil poetry influenced or was influenced by poetry in Prakrit and Sanskrit is still a subject of debate.—p. 1

…Many texts seem to have been transmitted down to us across the centuries with bewilderingly little indisputably contemporary information that might anchor and contextualize them.—p. 2

            One certainty can be advanced that, although obvious, is perhaps worth spelling out.  For much of the history of Sanskrit literature, the authors who composed works in Sanskrit did so in a learned language that was not their own.  The languages in which their first thoughts were formed would have been different in every part of the vast territory into which Sanskritic influences reached…..—p. 2

…the Dravidian-speaking South is well known to be an exception in this regard, notably because of the survival of a corpus of remarkable evocative poetry, the so-called “Cankam” (Sangam) works, in old Tamil, and of a tradition of grammar and poetics.  This means that we can be certain that Southern authors who wrote in Sanskrit must consciously have chosen to write in Sanskrit and, conversely, many authors who wrote in Tamil must also consciously have chosen Tamil over Sanskrit….One should not therefore imagine this choice as being always or typically one between a high, rule-bound and literary language and a free, living vernacular – both languages had higher and lower registers, after all –, but often a choice between two high literary idioms….—p. 2

            Sanskrit and the other languages of India are, in other words, so closely intertwined that their interrelationships cannot be reduced to any one simple model of Sanskrit hegemony, still less seen only in terms of a Brahmin conspiracy to abase and subjugate others, a vision influenced by the wounds of a painful social warfare whose divisions are, by some Tamil-speakers, perceived to be rooted in or inseparably associated with the division between Sanskrit and Dravidian languages….—p. 3

…the arid and meaningless debates about the relative superiority or anteriority of one or other language {Sanskrit and Tamil}, about wildly implausible etymologies deriving the words of one language from another, or about impossible dating propositions that are based only upon a sort of nationalist pride….—p. 3

…When ideas change shape and expression as they evolve in a conversation between two speakers, can we always be aware of who contributes exactly what….—p. 3

In “Future Philogy? The Fate of a Soft Science in a Hard World”, Critical Inquiry, 35 (2009: 931-61), Sheldon Pollock laments that the loss of interest in engaging with the literatures of the past appears now to be a world-wide phenomenon, but his remarks about philology in and about Indian languages over many centuries reveal how much its decline in India, the home of “the most philologized of any language on earth” (p.931), is to be regretted.—notes. 3. P. 3

…Paninian grammar may have “fertilized” other Indian languages, beginning with Tamil, in such a way as to stimulate grammatical thinking, but to view Tamil grammar exclusively or primarily in terms of the influence of the Astadhyayi upon the Tolkappiyam would be simplistic: the contact between traditions of grammar in Sanskrit and Tamil continued over many centuries and the dialogue may well have involved many lost intermediaries.—p. 8

The contribution of Tamil literature to the Krsna figure of the Sanskrit texts:thecase of the kanruin Cilappatikaram 17.  Charlotte Schmid. Pp.15-52

…First, if we consider that Pinnai, the combat against the bulls and the theft of clothes represent the first known literary expressions of a southern folk Krsnaism, the whole of canto 17 of the Cil. Might have to be considered the same way.  These three elements are not the only ones mentioned in Cil.  That are rather difficult to trace back to ancient Sanskrit texts: Cil. 17 states four other activities of Krsna’s that are also not so easy to find there.  The young god of Cil. 17 plays the flute, steals butter that is kept in a suspended pot, uses a kanru to get fruits and tears down a kuruntu tree.  None of these seems to be recounted within Sanskrit texts before the BhP{Bhagavatapurana}.  The butter thief and the flautist are rather famous as they have become some kind of emblems of Krsna in sculpted and painted images as well as in texts.  Still, they do not make any appearance in Sanskrit literature before the BhP.  Krsna is not represented as a flautist in North India before the 13^th century…..—p.23

Is clearing or plowing equal to killing?  Tamil culture and the spread of Jainism in Tamilnadu.  Takanobu Takahashi (Tokyo). Pp.53-67

…Firstly, as mentioned in Asokan inscriptions, there existed the countries of Chera, Chola, Pandya, and Satyaputa in the Tamil area, which means that they had their indigenous culture in the 3^rd century BCE.  Next, Brahmi inscriptions usually contain all kinds of letters used to represent the sounds of Indian languages, namely, voiceless consonants, voiceless aspirates, voiced consonants, voiced aspirates, and homo-organic nasals, while Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions adopt the letters for voiceless consonants, voiced consonants, and homo-organic nasals.  This means that the Tamil phonetic and orthographic systems had already been established by the 2^nd or 1^st century BCE.—p. 62

Early Tamil poetics between Natyasastra and Ragamala.  Herman Tieken. Pp.69-91

…Narada’s Sangitamakaranda (between 700 and 1100) introduced a classification into male, female and neuter ragas.  This classification is based on the attribution of the ragas to the rasas.  Those producing the vira, adbhuta and raudra rasas are male, those producing the srngara, hasya and karuna rasas are female, and those producing the bibhatsa, bhayanaka and santa rasas are neuter (Koch, Lars-Christian, Zur Bedeutung der Rasa-Lehre fur die zeitgenossische nordindische Kunstmusik.  Mit einem Vergleich mit der Affektenlehre des 17. & 18.  Jahrhunderts.  Bonn: Holos Verlag. 1995:30-31).  In the same text the ragas are also assigned to different seasons and times of the day (Koch 1995:32, n. 15)….—p. 81

…The seven notes are connected with the rasas, with animal cries (e.g. sadja with the cry of the peacock), colors, gods, ancestors, seers, demons, the four castes and regions…..—p. 81

…the question is: how old is Cankam poetry anyway?  The dates assigned to Tamil Cankam poetry differ widely, ranging from the 3^rd century BCE to the 8^th or 9^th century CE.  However, as I have tried to show on various other occasions, the early date has never been backed up with verifiable evidence.  The evidence is mostly circular, that is to say, once it is accepted that the early date is not established as firmly as one wants to believe, most of the evidence put forward in its support collapses.  In addition to that, if the Tamil literary (p.83) theory has indeed been based, directly or indirectly, on a music theory formulated in Sanskrit, here we have another piece of evidence suggesting that the tradition is not as early or as independent as it is often claimed to be.  As suggested already elsewhere, we should start from a post-Pallava date for Cankam poetry (Tieken, Herman, Kavya in South India: Old Tamil Cankam Poetry.  Groningen: Forsten. 2001).—pp. 83-84

Above, I have argued that the Tamil literary theory was inspired by a theory of music that originally must have been formulated in Sanskrit….—p. 87

…the key term of the Tamil literary theory, tinai, is a loan translation of a Sanskrit theory of music seems one more piece of evidence for a late date of the Tamil theory.—p. 88

From source-criticism to intellectual history in the poetics of the medieval Tamil country. Whitney Cox. Pp. 115-160

…There is, however, no terminological equivalent in the Tolkappiyam’s text to the rasas that are the subject of the NS’s {Natyasastra}previous chapter: the term cuvai, which in later scholarly Tamil is the functional calque for rasa, strikingly occurs nowhere in the text of the Tolkappiyam. As a result—and somewhat oddly, given the universal acceptance of the direction of influence from Sanskrit sources—what little scholarly discussion there has been of meyppatu has tended to argue for it as an index of the aesthetic difference of Tamil poetry as measured against Sanskrit.—p. 118

…It is important to note, however, just how much Ilampuranar is bringing into the discussion here, especially in his importation of the term cuvai itself, which, to repeat, does not occur in the Tolkappiyam at all.  Ilampuranar is not actively trying to foist a perverse interpretation onto the text he is commenting upon; rather, he shows himself to participate in the confident interpretative theory—more familiar from thinkers working in Sanskrit….—p. 122

Caught in Translation: Ideologies of literary language in Kerala’s Manipravalam.  Rich Freeman.  199-239

… “Manipravalam is the union (yoga) of Sanskrit and the vernacular (bhasIa)”.{LiIaatilakam: Manipravalalaksanam. Edited and translated by I. Kunnan Pilla. Kottayam, Kerala: National Book Stall, 1985,  {14^th century treatise}}….—p. 202

…for the LT {LilaatilakIam , 14^th century treatise} must specify from the outset that the bhaIsa that goes into its Manipravalam is the particular speech of the Keralas, Kerala–bhasa. This is because the regional self-designation for the very bhasa whose verses the author wants to cite, as used by the Keralas themselves, is “Tamil”!  Our author must therefore advance arguments to show that this “Tamil” is not that of the neighboring Tamil realms, not that of the Cola–, or Pandya–bhasas, which would collectively claim this Tamil as their own, and demote the Kerala–bhasa to a mere (and distorted) regional dialect (desa–bhasa.).—p. 203

Words for Worship: Tamil and Sanskrit in medieval temple inscriptions.  Leslie C. Orr. Pp.325-357

…In a consideration of words for worship in medieval Tamil inscriptions, the obvious parallel Sanskrit system is that of the Agamas—particularly those later Agamas, dating from perhaps the 12^th century onward and showing the impress of South Indian culture, in which temple ritual, rather than individual spiritual pursuits, is increasingly central….—p. 326

            Although the word puja appears in the Sanskrit sections of both the Pallankoyil and Kuram copper-plate grants, it is not taken up very quickly (p.330) in the Tamil inscriptions.  There are a few appearances of the Tamil word pucai or pucanai as the 9^th century, but the word only gains currency in the 12^th century….  Instead, the more commonly occurring words for worship—for what priests do—are other terms borrowed from Sanskrit: arccani….—pp. 330-331

Praising the king in Tamil during the Pallava period. Emmanuel Francis. Pp. 359-409

…I will not deny that the history of the Cankam corpus is a complex and debated matter, but when Pollock presents {Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: University of California Press. 383-385} a description of Tamil in the first millennium, he only mentions facts that go well with his general theory: the late appearance of the legend of the Cankam, the written character of Bhakti poetry, the commentatorial writing modelled on Sanskrit, the adaptation in Tamil of Sanskrit epics, the philologisation of language, the conceptual borrowing from the Sanskrit grammatical tradition.  Not a word about he Puram literature centred on kings, about the tinai concept so specific to Cankam poetry, about the pirapantams (a specifically Tamil type of work, even though its name is Tamilised Sanskrit) which are the heirs of Tamil Cankam conventions, however subverted they may be sometimes….—p. 393

            First, there is an ancient Tamil literature going back to the first centuries of the first millennium, the so-called cankam corpus known through later anthologies. Pollock quite rapidly dismisses this Cankam corpus as being “obscure” or “opaque” as far as its history and development are concerned.  Even though the date of any particular poem in these anthologies and the status of this literature—the usual opinion is that a bardic oral tradition was taken over by a literary written tradition responsible for its anthologisation—is debatable, it is nevertheless generally accepted that already several centuries before Pollock’s vernacularisation, that is relatively early in the first millennium, there existed an expressive or imaginative Tamil for the description of kings (that is the Puram poetry; see also the theme named paataan in poetics).  However thorny the dating, (p.394) the consensus is that at least before the middle of the first millennium, Cankam poetry, which is a worldly literature comparable to kavya, was established.  However late a written aspect may have come to attach itself to this Cankam poetry, the anthologisation as well as the later creation of a Cankam legend proves that there was an interest for this early literature in the Tamil country, that it was an early revered and known beginning.—pp. 394-95

            Second, Pollock’s ensuing view that “there is no doubt that for many centuries Tamil was, if not mute, then certainly not loquacious in the domain of political-expressive, until in the last several centuries of the millennium it began to speak with an altogether new and confident voice” (2006: 292) is an overstatement. The Pallava evidence provided above attests to the relatively early appearance of political, literary, expressive or imaginative epigraphy in Tamil, that is at the beginning of the 7^th century, as opposed to the 8^th century, at the earliest, for Pollock.  We may find that the lists of birudas are not very imaginative.  But the venpa at Talavanur and the Centalai verses are good pieces of political poetry.—p. 395

            So, if vernacularisation as conceived by Pollock concerns only the early Pandyas, what is the impact of this fact on his general theory?  Criticism of Pollock’s concept of vernacularisation has already been expressed from a variety of perspectives, ¹¹⁰ but I will concentrate here on Tamil.  Since vernbacularisation as conceived by Pollock played only a minor role for Tamil, as I have tried to demonstrate, and since there was an ancient Tamil literary tradition, we arrive at the question why, before political discourse in Tamil, Sanskrit was adopted, for centuries, as the language of power in certain sectors of the Tamil area.

            One has to keep in mind that Sanskrit appeared relatively late in the epigraphy of the Tamil country.  Sanskrit is used intensively in royal Pallava epigraphy only from the middle of the 6^th century onwards.  Earlier Pallava Sanskrit prasastis exist, but mostly in the Andhra region. Only one has been found near Kancipuram, but it is in prose, not in verse as Pallava prasastis usually are from ca. 550.  It thus seems that before the Pallavas, usually considered as culturally oriented towards the north, there was no need in the Tamil country for a discourse of public power, be it in Tamil or in the Sanskrit, supposing that Puram poetry had no public dimensions. In any case, the Pallavas played a decisive role in making the Tamil country part of the Sanskrit cosmopolis.

            Pollock argues that Sanskrit was chosen for its aesthetic dimension (power and culture being inseparable, see Pollock 2006: 2ff.), not because it was a language associated with Hinduism.  But since there was an ancient Tamil literary tradition—as Cankam poetry certainly presents a form of the language with significant aesthetic dimensions—why then did Tamilian dynasties not rely on it straight away, instead of waiting until after the Sanskrit discourse of power had been established to choose (p.398) Tamil?  In other words, why is it that Sanskrit served as a model in the case of the early Pandyas, and as a trigger in the case of the Pallavas?  The choice of Sanskrit by the Pallavas may be explained not only by the fact that it enabled the aestheticisation of power through its specific features (on these, see Pollock 2006: 254 ff.), but also because Sanskrit was associated with Hinduism, a rationale Pollock dismisses (op. cit.: 74).

            Pallava Sanskrit, with the exception of IP 1`7, is linked to the establishment of Brahmanic institutions (brahmadeya) and Hindu temples (devadana).  When we know the authors of these prasastis, their names reveal they are Brahmins.¹¹²  It is then conceivable that while dynasties turned away from Buddhism—too moralist, not sufficiently sanctifying the violence of royal duty—towards Hinduism, they adopted Sanskrit because it was the language of the religious culture (even though it could be shared by others) and of the Brahman elite.  Pollock shows that Sanskrit was adopted first by foreign dynasties which could emancipate Sanskrit from its religious background, that is, secularise it.  That may be true, but it doesn’t follow that the same logic operated everywhere, every time.  Sanskrit had to be secularized to be able to serve as the language of politics, but once this had been accomplished, it could be adopted also precisely because it was associated with the specific religious specialists that the Brahmins are.  What I want to say is that in a Brahmanic world, dynasties could choose Sanskrit because it allowed them to pretend to be dharmic kings in the eyes or ears of Brahmans, or even to challenge Brahmanic discourse on kingship in its own language.

            This suggestion goes against Pollock’s view about religion in the choice of Sanskrit, and against his criticism of the concepts of brahmanisation, sanskritisation, legitimation, ideology and functionalism (op. cit.: 511).  I believe these theories indeed have their flaws, several of which are (p.399) pointed out by Pollock, but that the analysis of political discourse in Tamil invites us to refine them, not to dismiss them and replace them entirely with Pollock’s aesthetic theory.  I contend that kings were engaged in an ideological debate for legitimation not with the people dominated, but with the dominant Brahmanic Sanskrit ideology and with rival dynasties.  They chose Sanskrit because, after it had been secularized, it was available for political discourse and because it was the language of those at whom their discourse was directed: the Brahmins as source of authority—or of contested authority—and the other competing dynasties.  They chose Sanskrit as a political lingua franca permitting a discursive relation with Brahmin ideology and rival dynasties.

            As Sanskrit developed as a language of political discourse, it triggered expression in the vernaculars.  Such expressions surfaced first in the Tamil country, because it already knew a literary tradition to latch onto.  The early Pandyas adopted a political Tamil fitting the model of vernacularisation described by Pollock. In the Pallava realm, a political Tamil relying more on the Tamil literary culture was adopted, at first mainly on local initiative (Talavanur; Centalai, from a minor dynasty that never used Sanskrit).  This trend finally reached the Pallava court under the reign of Nandin III.¹¹⁶

            In this rise of political Tamil we can discern an early form of regionalism that can be related to the process of “territorialization of Tamil cultural space” and to the creation of a “political regionality in the premodern Tamil world” mentioned by Pollock (2006: 385-86, 413 ff.).  In a sense the intrusion of Sanskrit caused this rise: Tamilians took conscience of their difference in an India globalized through the (p.400) Sanskrit cosmopolis, and wanted to show their Tamilness in the language of public political discourse itself. From the local level this process arrived at the court.  It is maybe symptomatic that this happened in the middle of the 9^th century, at a time when the Pallava dynasty was near its end, no longer playing a major role in South India.—Praising the king in Tamil during the Pallava period, Emmanuel Francis, pp. 361409, pp398-401

110. See Shulman (2007), Tieken (2008) mainly about North India, Fussman (2008:171 ff.), and Ali (2011) about Indonesia. Tieken and Ali insist that the dichotomy between symbolic, expressive Sanskrit and documentary, administrative vernacular during the first millennium is not sustainable. For the same criticism concerning Pallava records, see Orr (2009:99ff.).

Ali, Daud (2011). “The Early Inscriptions of Indonesia and the Problem of the Sanskrit Cosmopolis”.  In P.-Y. Manguin, A. Mani and G. Wade (Editors), Early Interactions between South and Southeast Asia: Reflections on Cross-Cultural Exchange, pp. 277-297. Singapore: ISEAS—New Delhi: Manohar (Nalanda-Sriwijaya Series 2).

Fussman, Gerard (2008). Review of The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India by Sheldon Pollock, Journal Asiatique, 296, pp. 163-180.

Shulman, David Dean (2007). Review Essay. The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India.  By Sheldon Pollock.  Journal of Asian Studies, 66, pp. 819-825.

Tieken, Herman (2008).  “The Process of Vernacularization in South Asia”, Reivew of The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India..  Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 51, pp. 338-383.

112…..Fussman (2008: Review of The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India by Sheldon Pollock, Journal Asiatique, 296, 175-76) rightly remarks that Pollock understimates the role of Brahmins even after the secularization of Sanskrit had begun.

116. Contra, Pollock (op. cit.: 29) places vernacular beginnings “not at the monastery but at the court”. The first part of the proposition is acceptable, but not the second, at least in the Tamil case for which the stimulus for vernacularisation (here simply taken as the development of a political discourse in a vernacular, without necessarily being modeled on Sanskrit) came both from the court (Mahendra I’s birudas) and outside the court (Talavanur).  The Centalai poems, commissioned by a minor local dynasty, stand midway between court and locality.

Legal Diglossia: Modeling discursive practices in premodern Indic law.  Timothy Lubin. Pp. 411-455

Anyone who has ever participated in courtroom proceedings, or watched a lawyer reformulate personal matters in the jargon of a legal document, is likely to have been struck by the gulf between “ordinary terms” and “legalese”. It is not just a matter of the specialized lexicon of the lawyer, but a whole way of thinking about personal relationships and social activities, and of making arguments about them, that is distinctively “legal”.  The differences between these modes of thought and expression are multiple: there is the difference between vernacular speech and specialized technical language, but also between the multiplicity of localized, group-specific, and idiosyncratic understandings and that of a shared, standardized, translocal idiom, and between subjects of the law and the experts and authorities who apply it. The parties to a dispute or those charged with a crime “all have their own definitions of their relations, conflicts, and hardships—their own conceptions of justice or injustice—but these must conform to existing legal criteria” (Zelizer, V.A. “The purchase of intimacy”.  Law & Social Inquiry, 25.3, pp. 817-848 2000:833)—p. 412

We find a striking ancient example in a Latin marriage-contract from 2^nd century CE Egypt drafted by Greek-speakers.  In Roman Egypt of the time, Latin was the official language of the army and of testaments made by Roman citizens, but other legal work was usually done in Greek.  In this document, the legal terms were in correct Latin, but the terminology of ornaments and domestic items composing the dowry was full of Latinized Greek and Greek words transliterated directly into Roman letters. The majority of these words are unattested elsewhere in Latin, and were instances of code-switching—Greek words used in place of equivalent Latin terms which were either unknown or unfamiliar to the writers, whose Latin training was focused on formal legal composition rather than colloquial expression (Leiwo, m.,  and Halla-Aho, H. “A marriage contract: Aspects of Latin-Greek language contact (P. Mich. VII 434 and P. Ryl. IV 612 = ChLA IV 249)”.  Mnemosyne (4^th series), 55, 5, pp. 560-580,  2002:576-580)…..—pp. 414