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

芝加哥大学文化人类学专业的一名学生所做的这篇论文研究项目将考察印度最近推广和扩大梵语口语使用的尝试。虽然古典梵语一直得到当局的支持，作为学术和文学话语的媒介，但最近它也被政治团体宣传为未来的通用语言和一个专门的印度教国家的象征。通过对卡纳塔克邦的两个这样的项目进行仔细的人种学和语言学研究，该项目将为有关语言消亡和复兴的文献做出贡献。卡纳塔克邦是班加罗尔的一个组织，负责授课和推广简单梵语，以及该邦中部的一个模范梵语村庄。方法包括对梵语口语和古典文学梵语的关系进行正式的语言学分析；对不同语言社区的人如何获得这种新语言的能力进行民族志研究；以及检查关于这种语言的结构和使用的文本材料的产生。与希伯来语和拉丁语等其他尝试相比，该项目将提供关于为实现政治目标而复兴语言的案例的信息，这对理论建设将是有价值的。此外，该项目将有助于培养一名专业的社会科学家，并增加我们对世界这一重要区域的了解。

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.