Dissertation Research: The "Revival" of Spoken Sanskrit in Modern India: An Ethnographic and Linguistic Study

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This dissertation research project by a cultural anthropology student at the University of Chicago will examine recent attempts in India to promote and broaden the use of spoken `Simple` Sanskrit. While the classical Sanskrit language has been supported by authorities as a medium of scholarly and literary discourse, it recently has been promoted by political groups as a future lingua franca and emblem of a specifically Hindu nation. Through careful ethnographic and linguistic study of two such projects in Karnataka, an organization in Bangalore which gives classes and promotes simple Sanskrit, and a model `Sanskrit-speaking village` in the central part of the state, the project will contribute to the literature on language death and revival. Methods include a formal linguistic analysis of the relation of spoken Sanskrit to Classical literary Sanskrit; an ethnographic study of how people in different speech communities gain competence in this new language, and an examination of the production of textual materials on the language's structure and use. This project will provide information on a case of language revival for political goals that will be valuable for theory building when compared to other attempts such as Hebrew and Latin. In addition the project will contribute to training a professional social scientist and add to our knowledge of this important region of the world.