Introduction

In South Asia including Tibet, the indigenous religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism, and the extraneous religions, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism, currently coexist with various tribal religious systems. One of the striking features of the language of religion in this region is that there is no fixed equation of one linguistic form with one religion. Many languages are used to express one religion and one language is used to express many religions. For example, Christianity is expressed through English (in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka), Portuguese/Konkani (in Goa), Tamil (in Tamil Nadu), Hindi (in India), Sinhala (in Sri Lanka), Urdu (in Pakistan), and Bengali (in West Bengal and Bangladesh). Similarly, Hindi is used to express not only Hinduism, but also Buddhism, Christianity, and Jainism. Within the same religious community, diverse languages are used to perform different religious functions, thereby producing a diglossic situation. For example, Sanskrit is used for major rituals of Hinduism, while for household rituals, modern Indian languages are used. Adding to this variation are various registers of regional religious languages such as Sanskritized, Arabicized, Persianized Hindi, Marathi, and so forth.

The emergence, sustenance, and change in the patterns of variation in the use of linguistic codes (languages or language varieties) for expressing religions in South Asia has not been systematically and adequately studied. There are individual studies that explain the variation based on the historical events.