Beyond the syntax of national culture

This book is not just a masterly exploration of India's linguistic civilisation. More importantly, it serves as a timely warning against recent attempts at conducting the epistemic study of Indian languages through a narrow prism of singularity.

- A K BHATTACHARYA

As persuasively argued by the book's author, Ganesh Narayandas Devy, plurality and diversity are inalienable attributes of any study of Indian languages. That this warning comes from India's pre-eminent linguistic scholar is extremely reassuring at a time when cultural debates about the idea of India are increasingly focused on creating a unified vision of one great country, one great language and one great culture, ignoring the rich tapestry of Indian languages that should have ideally challenged such majoritarian impositions threatening the country's vibrant multiculturalism.

Embarking on that ambitious journey of exploring India's linguistic civilisation, Devy demolishes a few widely-held beliefs about Indian languages. One of them concerns the origins of Sanskrit, which is often idolised as the primary language of India or the Adi Bhasha. The author points to the existence of a proto-Dravidian language variety in different parts of India prior to its coming in contact with Sanskrit. What's more, he explains how Sanskrit and the early-ancient Dravidian languages forged closer associations with other languages over time.

Devy has also examined afresh the origins of many Indian languages, such as Gujarati, Bangla, Odia, Marathi and Konkani. It was not Sanskrit, but Prakrit that evolved into these languages. Indeed, even as a small number of scholars wrote in Sanskrit in ancient India, most thinkers, saints and poets used the Prakrit-based languages that had emerged a thousand years ago.