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Sanskrit and Sanskritization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

J. F. Staal
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Language, culture, and society can be studied from various points of view. Classical Indology and Indian anthropology have different points of departure, but deal sometimes with the same material; the difference in background has generally prevented close collaboration. Classical Indologists tend to look upon Indian anthropologists as mainly interested in almost inaccessible hill tribes, in village superstition, and sometimes in contemporary affairs; moreover a synchronistic bias in methodology has often limited the potential richness of their studies. Anthropologists who study India, on the other hand, are often inclined to view classical Indologists as busy with case endings and etymological derivations, or as discussing obscure and long-forgotten doctrines. Yet neither field has been able to dispense with concepts traditionally handled by the other; for instance, anthropologists talk about language, and classical Indologists about culture. A recent example is the concept of Sanskritization, introduced by anthropologists with obvious reference to Sanskrit, the language to which the main attention of classical Indologists has always been directed. As a student of Sanskrit and classical Indology, I offer some reflections on Sanskritization with the hope that I am not altogether blind to the problems occupying anthropologists.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , May 1963 , pp. 261 - 275
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Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1963

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References

1 This paper was written for the Conference on South Asian Religion sponsored by the Committee on South Asia of the Association for Asian Studies, and the Center for South Asia Studies, Institute of International Relations, University of California, Berkeley. I am grateful both to these and to the Social Science Fund for enabling me to participate in this conference. I am also grateful to Professors Edward Harper (Washington), Dorodiy M. Spencer (Pennsylvania), Dr. H. M. J. Oldewelt (Amsterdam), Dr. Milton Singer (Chicago), and to my wife, Saraswathy, for valuable comments and suggestions.

2 In: Village India. Studies in the Linie Community, ed. Marriott, McKim (Chicago, 1955), pp. 1–35.Google Scholar

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4 In a later paper, Sanskritization is also applied to Brahmans: “The Problem of Indian Unity,” The Economic Weekly, 26 04, 1958, pp. 571–577Google Scholar; reprinted in Introduction to the Civilization of India: Developing India, ed. Weiner, M. (Chicago, 1961), p. 52.Google Scholar

5 “The Social Organization of Tradition,” The Far Eastern Quarterly, XV (1955–1956), 13–21Google Scholar. In 1956 he modified this distinction in the light of complexities revealed by research in India, China, and Islam: Redfield, R., Peasant Society and CultureGoogle Scholar, Ch. III, “The Social Organization of Tradition.”

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16 Bailey also says, with reference to Sanskritization: “No-one seems to like this term.”

17 Village India, p. 59Google Scholar. According to Cohn, Rāmānanda became a member of the “South Indian Rāmānuja sect which worshipped Rām, hero of the Rāmāyana.” Rāmānuja is the founder of the Viśiṣṭādvaita school of Vedānta, which has no special connection with Rāma or the Rāmāyaṇa apart from being a vaiṣṇava movement.

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38 This resulted in what Edgerton has called Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit.

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44 See previous note.

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46 Ṛksamhitā 8.46.32, referred to in Basham, A. L., The Wonder That Was India (New York, 1954), p. 32.Google Scholar

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50 Cf. Staal, J. F., “The Theory of Definition in Indian Logic,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, LXXXI (1961), 122–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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52 For the following see: Pillai, S. A., The Sanskritic Element in the Vocabularies of the Dravidian Languages (Madras, 1919)Google Scholar; and cf. Levi, S., Przyluski, J., and Bloch, J., Pre-Aryan and Pre-Dravidian in India (Calcutta, 1929).Google Scholar

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59 Srinivas, , “Sanskritization and Westernization,” p. 495Google Scholar; also quoted in Bailey, Tribe, Caste and Nation, p. 188Google Scholar, n. i.