In recent years, several socio-linguistic studies of classical South Asia have clearly illustrated the functional relations between language and authority. As a result it is now possible to discuss how various forms of authority emerged from different modes of speech and their related linguistic taxonomies. Nevertheless, several aspects of this logic of distinction remain unexplored, though they are of decisive importance in understanding how certain groups can acquire authority on the basis of the privilege attributed to a specific linguistic medium.

In the following pages I propose to address some of these aspects as well as the geneaology of specific forms of authority, and to attempt to clarify their social and political implications.

Language, power and authority in South Asia

All hegemonic cultural systems aim to maintain the balance of the legitimising relations between a given linguistic medium and the social conditions of its production and use. Consequently they seek to protect the practical reasons behind their linguistic practices from both criticism and potential competition.

The case of classical South Asia is no exception to this rule. Here linguistic primacy was protected from delegitimising criticism by elevating the linguistic medium itself to the rank of sacred and ‘eternal’. Consequently, the brahmanic sources replied with authority to all those who questioned the ‘sacred’ and ‘eternal’ status of the language by pointing out, on the one hand, the reasons for that linguistic primacy, and, on the other, prohibiting or inhibiting attention to voices that might undermine that primacy.