cosmopolitan vernacular by sheldon pollock

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The Cosmopolitan VernacularAuthor(s): Sheldon PollockSource: The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Feb., 1998), pp. 6-37Published by: Association for Asian StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2659022 .Accessed: 18/11/2013 03:11

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The CosmopolitanVernacularSHELDON POLLOCK

THROUGHOUT SOUTHERN ASIA AT DIFFERENT TIMESstarting round 000, but nmostplacesby 1500, writers urned o the use of ocal anguages or iterary xpressionin preference o the translocal anguage hat had dominated iterary xpression or heprevious housand ears. his development onstitutes t the evel of ulture he inglemost ignificant ransformationn the region etween he reation f ne cosmopolitanorder t the beginning f the first millennium nd another nd far different ne-through olonialism nd globalization-at the end of the second.

The vernacularization f southern sia is not only the most mportant ulturalchange n the late medievalworld-or perhaps we should say, n the early modernworld that t helps to inaugurate-but also the east studied. We have no coherentaccount f the matter or ny region, et alone a connected istory or outhern siaor for he arger urasiaworld where development ery imilar n cultural orm ifnot n socialor political content) ppears o have occurred. We have no well-argued

theoretical nderstanding f many of the basic problems t issue. And, what isespecially isabling, we lack any reliable ccount of the political transformations nsouthern sia to which these cultural hanges re undoubtedly f obscurely elated,or a theory f power nd culture eforemodernity hatwould allow us to make enseof this relation.

What I aim to do in the spaceavailablehere s try o sketch ut, first, few ofthe larger conceptual ssues that impinge on an analysis of cosmopolitan ndvernacular n literary ulture, nd the narrower uestions that pertain to theirhistoricization. he very idea of vernacularization epends upon understandingsomething f the world gainst which t defines tself, nd this providewith brief

account f the historical ormation nd ideational haracter f what call the Sanskritcosmopolis. or the former look at the rise nd spread f Sanskrit nscriptions, hichserve s a synecdoche or range f iterary-cultural and political-cultural) ractices;for the latter, consider s paradigmatic he space of cultural circulation s thisstructures he iterary nd literary-critical magination. ll this s preparatory o ananalysis of one case of the formation f vernacular iterary ulture, hat of early

Sheldon ollock s the George . Bobrinskoyrofessorf Sanskrit nd ndic tudies ttheUniversity fChicago.

I wish o thank . V. Venkatachala astry Mysore), y uide n Old Kannada. enedictAndersonIthaca) ffered elpful riticism hen n earlier ersion f hepaperwaspresentedat the 1995 meeting f the AssociationorAsian tudies. hanks lso to Chicago olleaguesArjunAppadurai, arolBreckenridge,ipeshChakrabarty,ndSteven ollins or heir ug-gestions, nd HomiBhabha, o whose ngoingwork n the vernacularosmopolitan npostcolonialismhepresent apermay e viewed s something f precolonialomplement.

The ournalfAsian tudies 7,no. 1 February 998):6-37.? 1998 by the AssociationorAsian tudies, nc.

6







THE COSMOPOLITAN VERNACULAR 7

Kannada. Here the localization of the globalizing literary-cultural ractices ndrepresentations f Sanskrit constitutes a model instance of cosmopolitan

vernacularism. t the ame time hope to show, hrough ne narrow ut symptomaticexample the history f the literary-critical iscourse n the Way of literature,mdrga), ot only how the vernacular econfigures hecosmopolitan, ut how the twoproduce ach other n the course f their nteraction. end with brief ccount f thefailure of existing historical xplanations such as they are) to account for thevernacular urn, nd flag omeof the challenges or uture nquiry, most rucially herelationship f literary ulture to political culture n the non-West nd the veryproblematic f premodern lobalization.

Hypothesizing Vernacularization

The possibility f conceptualizing nd historicizing hecosmopolitan/vernaculartransformation equires working hypothesiswith a number f components hat,although hey may appear to attempt o settle hrough efinition hat can only bedetermined mpirically, an all be demonstrated istorically. hese concern ulturalchoice, herelativity f vernacular, he iterary, hehistorical ignificance fwriting,the meaning f beginnings, nd the sociotextual ommunity. address hese brieflyin order.

Cultural ChoiceA language-for-literatures chosen rom mong lternatives, ot naturally iven.

Human linguistic diversity may be a fatality, n Benedict Anderson'smelancholyformulation, ut there s nothing ated, nselfconscious, r haphazard bout iterary-languagediversity; t is willed. Vernacular iterary anguages husdo not emergelike buds or butterflies, hey re made. Not many cholars cknowledge his fact rdo much with t. One of the few wasBakhtin,who saw more learly han nyone hatthe actively iterary inguistic onsciousness t all times nd everywhere that s, in

all epochsof literature istorically vailableto us) comesupon languages' nd not

language.Consciousness inds tself nevitably acing he necessity f having ochoosea language 1981, 295). Yet so far s I can see what neither akhtin nor nyone lsehasspelledout n detailedhistorical erms or pecific anguages n the everyday ense(by language Bakhtin usuallymeant ocioideological egisters) s what s at stakein this choice,what else in the social and political world s being chosenwhen alanguage-for-literatures chosen. or t s onething o recognize hat iterary-languagediversity s willed, and another hing altogether o specify he historical easonsinforming hiswill.

Vernacular / 'CosmopolitanTo define ernacular ver gainst osmopolitan ppears osubmerge number f

relativities. lthough not all cosmopolitan anguagesmay nitially e vernaculars-here the history f Sanskrit when Sanskrit iterature kdvya) s invented t thebeginning f the common era differs harply rom hat of, say, Latin in the thirdcentury .C. whenLatin iterature sabruptly nvented-many ernaculars hemselvesdo become cosmopolitan or heir regionalworlds. This is true for Braj, which wasrendered rootlessly cosmopolitan by the elimination-conscious elimination,according o some scholars-of local dialectal difference n the fifteenth o sixteenth







8 SHELDON POLLOCK

centuries.' annada, oo, though ften hought f s a regional iterary ode,has ongbeen transregional orwriters n yet maller ones uchas Tulu Nadu or the Konkan.

But these relativities ook less worrisome romwithin he subjective niverses f theagents involved. Vernacular ntellectuals define a literary ulture in consciousopposition o something arger; hey choose to write n a language that does nottravel-and that they know does not travel-as easily s the well-traveled anguageof the cosmopolitan rder. The new geocultural pace they magine, which discussin what follows, ully estifies o this. That this local in turn ypically omes to beconstructed s dominant nd dominating or maller ultural paces s a further tepin the cosmopolitan-vernacular ransformation nd unthinkable ithout t.

The LiteraryHowever much contemporary hought wants to ignore, resist, blur, or trash

definitions f literature, he historical ocieties tudied here made an unequivocaldistinction, ractically nd often y explicit heorization, etween realm f textualproduction hat s documentary nd another hat s something lse-call it expressive,interpretative, workly dcas Werkhafte, eidegger 1960), literary, r whatever.Contemporary cholarship s certainly ight o question these ocal distinctions, ndto ook for heexpressive r workly n the documentary nd constative, nd the reverse(LaCapra 1983, 23-71). But that is a second-order nterprise nd subsequent ogaininghistorical-anthropological nowledge fwhatpoets n middle-period outhernAsiathought hey weredoing and when nd why. The distinction etween estrictedand elaborated odes, between he documentary nd the iterary, as often roducedand reproduced recisely y means of anguagechoice, s the history f nscriptionsclearly hows. Facts of social or cultural power seem to have impinged upon thischoice, suggesting that restriction nd elaboration re potentialities ermitteddevelopment n the onecase and denied t n the other. When this denial schallengedin the vernacularization rocess,moreover, he challenge ypically akesthe form fdomesticating he literary pparatus themes, genres, metrics, exicon) of thesuperposed ultural ormation hat et the rules of the iterary ame.

Writing

The literary n southern Asia comes increasingly n the middle period to bedistinguished ot ust from he documentary ut from he oral, nd to be ever moreintimately inked to writing, with respect to the authority onferred y it, thetextuality ssociatedwith t, and the history roduced hrough t. The authorizationto write s not, ike the ability ospeak, natural ntitlement. t is typically elatedto social and political privileges,which mark iterature n the restricted enseas adifferent mode of cultural production and communication rom so-called oralliterature.2 ranted hat iterate iterature n SouthAsiaretainsmany ext-immanent

'Such processes ave been noticed only by inguists, who discuss the matter n referenceto koines and typically gnore most of what nterests ultural heory. f., e. g., Segal 1993.For Braj, cf. Snell 1991, 30-32, and, more generally,Masica 1991, 54.

2According o well-known egends,Tukaram, ike Eknanth before im, was forced youtraged rahmans o throw his poems nto the river. When he defends is use ofMarathi,he is thus clearly efending he right o write, not ust to compose cf. Pollock 1995, 121-22).








Whether r not overdraw hisdiscontinuity etween highly estricted ocialsphere of Sanskrit liturgical nd scholastic) nd a new political use of Sanskritaccompaniedby wholly new forms f written iterature, he subsequent history fSanskrit n inscriptional iscourse s the history f an unprecedented nd vastdiffusion. nce it came to be used for nscriptional iterature n North ndia in thesecond to third centuries, anskrit was adopted elsewherewith astonishing peed.Prakrit isappeared rom he epigraphical ecord hroughout ndia in the space of acentury, ever o be revived or nscriptions hereafter, nd retained nly a residualstatus n the iterary-cultural rder.

A crucially mportant imension o the use of Sanskrit n epigraphs nd the riseof kdvya s the division of inguistic abor n inscriptional iscourse, nd, relatedly,the iterary ilenceof the vernaculars hroughout he cosmopolitan ormation. nce

Sanskrit ad becomethe anguagefor he public literary xpression f political willthroughout much of southern Asia, it remained he only language used for thatpurpose. he vernacular as not prohibited rom peaking n the nscriptional omain,but the permission as restricted. typical nscription ommences ith genealogyand praise-poem f the overlord who issues the document, ollowed y the details ofthe transaction he nscription s meant o record the boundaries f the gifted and,the conditions f a temple endowment, nd the like). When used at all vernacularlanguage s restricted o the second or business portion of the grant, nd thus tocounting,measuring, nd above all localizing.The literary unction-whereby owerconstructed or tself ts origins, randeur, eauty, erdurance, nd which anperhapstherefore e characterized s the function f nterpreting heworld nd supplementingreality-was the work xclusively f Sanskrit oetry. he very ontrast enerated ythis divisionof abor, relation f superposition f unrelated anguages hat havetermed hyperglossia,erves to enhance the aestheticism n which one may locateSanskrit's upreme ttractions.

Related to the empirically bservable division of labor in inscriptions s thediscourse n literary anguage n the lacgkdraradition. rom he eventh entury nit becamea commonplace f this tradition hat kadvya as something hat could becomposedonly n a highly restricted et of languages.Chief of these was of courseSanskrit; arbehind both n theory nd in actual iterary roduction ereMaharastriPrakrit nd Apabhrams'a, wo anguages hatunder he nfluence f Sanskrit adbeenturned nto cosmopolitan dioms, and which therefore ould be and were used forliterary omposition nywhere n the Sanskrit osmopolis.5 dvyawas not somethingmade n the vernacular; hus range f regional anguages romKannadato Marathito Oriyawere iterarily ilent.

As the turn o Sanskrit s taking lace n the ndian ubcontinent or hecreationof inscriptions t once political, iterary, nd publicly displayed, recisely he samephenomenonmakes ts appearance n what re now the countries f Burma, hailand,Cambodia,Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, nd Indonesia, nd with a simultaneity hat sagain striking. he first anskrit ublic poems appear n Khmer country, hampa,Java, nd Kalimantan ll at roughly he ame time, heearly ifth entury t the atest,or not much more han coupleor three enerations fter heir widespread ppearance

5The restriction n literary anguagesbegins with Bhamaha Kdvydlankdra .16, 34-36.Only near the end of the cosmopolitan poch do Sanskrit writers dmit the possibility fproducing rdmya ahdkdvya, ourtly pics in the vulgar anguage cf. the twelfth-centuryKdvydnus'asana.6, p. 449). The linguistically unlocalized quality of Apabhramsia s notedby Shackle 1993, 266; cf. also Hardy 1994, 5.








forces hat operate n the other translocal ormations f antiquity; t is peripherywithout enter, ommunity ithout nity. One may wellwonderwhat hisglobalizedculture meant f noneof the familiar material, overnmental, r religious onditionsof coherence ertained o it. What cultural work, or nstance,was performed y theubiquitous anskrit iterary exts nscribed nd displayed y ruling lites? ince theyemerged from he very enters f authority hroughout his world, t is natural ofactor he political nto any explanation, ut it seems to be the political with anobscure, nfamiliar ogic to it.

Even as we try grasp this ogic, the predicament f theorizing he premodernfromwithin conceptual pparatus equeathed y modernity oomsbefore s. Therehas largely revailed single paradigm for understanding he social foundations fSanskrit cosmopolitan culture, namely, legitimation theory and its logic of

instrumental eason:Elites in command f new forms f social power deployed hemystifying ymbols and codes of Sanskrit omehow to secure consent. But thisfunctionalist xplanation s not only anachronistic, ut really s a mere ssumption,and an intellectually mechanical, ulturally omogenizing, nd theoretically aiveassumption t that.6

If we contemplate heSanskrit cumene t its height, rom he middle o the astfew enturies f the millennium, t appears o consist f a limited number f arge-scale agrarian polities (and their smaller-scale mitators), military-fiscal tatesgathering ribute rom arge multiethnic opulations, nd defining heir politicalaspirations s universalist. lthough notoriously ifficult o define n concrete erms,

empires -the nameusuallygiven to the worlds f the Guptas, for xample, r theGurjara-Pratiharas, r Angkor-seem to share ertain ystemic ultural eatures. nemay evenpostulate n empire-system r empire-model f premodernity, field s itwere of the reproduction f empires nd of the deployment f the empire form-inthis ike the system f nation-states f modernity, here he structure f the systemitself roduces number f cultural ffects Balibar nd Wallerstein 991, 91)-withits own distinctive ultural epertory.

In this system mitation f an imperial orm eems to be successively ecreated,not only n South and Southeast Asia but elsewhere, oth horizontally cross pace,perhaps hrough process imilar o what rchaeologists all 'peerpolity nteraction,and vertically n time through istorical magination. ne could plot such a form,on both axes, among a range of embodiments: Achaeminid and Sassanian, ndGhaznavid), Hellenic (and Byzantine), Roman (and Carolingian, nd Ottonian),Kushan and Gupta, and perhapsAngkor) see alsoDuverger 1980, 21). In many fthese ases, ualifying s empire,whether mperial overnance asactually xercisedor not, eemsto have required languageof cosmopolitan haracter nd transethnicattraction, ranscending r arresting ny ethnoidentity he ruling elites themselvesmight possess. t had to be a language capable of making the translocal laims-however maginary hesewere-that defined hepolitical magination f this world.Moreover, t had to be a languagewhosepowerderived, ot from acral ssociationsbut from esthetic apacities, ts ability o make reality more real-more complexand more beautiful-as evincedby ts iterary diom and style, nd a literary istoryembodying uccessful xemplars f such inguistic lchemy. n the Roma renovataof Carolingian nd Ottonian Europe this language was Latin, which, though nconstant eedof rehabilitation, asretained nd reinforced s a crucial omponent n

6Thenotion ontinues o shapework n state ormation nd culture n South nd SoutheastAsia, cf. e.g., Kulke 1993, and contrast ollock 1996, 236ff.







14 SHELDON POLLOCK

the political and cultural-political nderstanding f polity. n West Asia from .D.1000 on, it was New Persian, whose first reat iterary roduction, he Shahnama,sought o link the new political formations ith

an imagined ranian mperial ast,and along with other brilliant works of literary ulture made it the language thatruling elites from istan to Delhi adopted perforce f they were to participate nimperial cultural politics, regardless f what they may have spoken n private.

Similar n its cultural-political ogic to Latin and Persian, s in its temporal ndgeographic pread, was Sanskrit.

More than just qualifying he polity for mperial status, however, anskritmediated set of complex esthetic nd moral valuesof mperial ulture, while t thesame time providing code for the expression f key symbolic goods-the mostimportant mong these being fame-in a wayno other anguage was apparently ble

(orpermitted) odo. The source f uch apabilities sto be located n the ophisticatedand immensely nfluential anskrit isciplines f grammar, hetoric, nd metrics.Imperial anguage typically resupposed he dignity nd stability onferred y

standardizing rammar. Only in a language constrained y such a grammar ndtherefore scaping the danger of degeneration ould fame and distinction findenduring expression. But there is more to grammaticality han such quasifunctionalism n the Sanskrit radition, omething eeper rooted. f the order ofSanskrit oetry was tied to the order of Sanskrit rammar, hat order was itselfmodel or prototype f the moral, ocial, and political order. A just sddhu) ing wasone who himself sed and promoted he use of correct anguage sddhusabda). otonly was Sanskrit herefore he appropriate ehiclefor he expression f royalwill,but Sanskrit earning ecame component f kingliness. his is demonstrated y thenumerous verlords who-from our Rudradaman n south Gujarat in A.D. 150 toSiiryavarman I on Tonle Sap a thousand years ater-celebrated their Sanskritlearning, specially rammatical earning, n public poetry, nd sought to confirmthis earning y patronizing he production f almost every mportant rammaticalwork nown oUS.7

That the tradition f Sanskrit hetoric nd metrics was central o this wholeprocess s evidenced y the nscriptional oetry tself. ut the texts f these forms fknowledge lso circulated s something ike globalized cultural ommodities, ndwere ventually oprovide general ramework ithin which number fvernacularpoetries ould themselves e theorized. hus, for xample, he late seventh-centuryrhetorical reatise f Dandin, the Mirror f Literature Kdvyddars'aKAI),was studiedand adaptedduring heperiod 900-1300 from ri Lanka to Tamil country o Tibet.One could write an equally peripatetic account of metrical texts, such asKedarabhatta's Jewel Mine of SanskritMeters Vrttaratndkara, a. 1000). By wayof its twelfth-century ali translation uttodaya, t played a defining ole in thecreation f Thai poetry t the Ayutthaya ourt n the seventeenth entury Terwiel1996). It is instances uch as these hat help us gauge the extraordinary mportancethat he nstruments fSanskrit ultural irtuosity ossessed or ntellectuals nd theirmasters hroughout sia.

As a result f all this, Sanskrit iterature n general kdvya) nd political poetry(pras'asti)n particular ossess uniformity hatgivesa clear tylistic oherence o thecosmopolitan ultural form. For without denying ome local coloring though for

7SeePollock 1996, 240 for eferences. artmut charfe was the first o perceive patternof royal atronage 1977, 187), but it is far denser hanhe knows nd his examples re easilymultiplied.








Angkor, or xample, his has been exaggerated, f.Wolters 1982, 91), to participatein the cosmopolitan rder meant precisely o occlude ocal difference. he Sanskritpoet here-this is the nsistent mplication f the form, tyle, diom, nd even ontentof thousands f nscriptional s well as more trictly iterary exts-participated othby theoretical raining nd literary ractice n a transregional ultural phere imilarto that f his Latin and, would guess, Chinese)peers t the other nds of the ncientworld.8 t is this that makes t often irtually mpossible o localize or date a work fSanskrit iterature-which, y my argument, s exactly what constituted ne of tsgreatest ttractions.

There s no doubt far reater omplexity o the nteractions f power nd culturein the Sanskrit osmopolis han can capture n my brief ccount, r perhaps venknow. Yet it is arguable that imperial-cultural ssociations nd aesthetic tyle,

especially s these hapedpoliticalvocabulary nd culture, ad at least as much to dowith the making of the cosmopolitan imension f this world nd its attractions spersuasion, et alone misrecognition r mystification. anskrit ave voice to imperialpoliticsnot s an actual,material orce ut as an aesthetic ractice, nd t was especiallythis poetry f politics hat gave presence o the Sanskrit osmopolis.

At the ideational evel, the Sanskrit osmopolis found xpression bove all incertain epresentations f the spaceof cultural irculation. wo of these need to beintroduced, iven their role n the theory nd practice f iterary ernacularization:the epic space of political ction, bout which will be very rief, nd the spaces ofliterary tyle,which need some detail to make understandable.

Political Space in Cosmopolitan Vision

It is an insistent oncern f a wide variety f kdvya ndprasasti exts o projectmeaningful upralocal pace of political-cultural eference. he tenth-century oetRajasekhara, or xample, ourt-poet o the kings of Tripura, was repeating long-standing ommonplace hen describing ispatrons s universal ulers in the entireregion from where the Gafnga mpties nto the eastern ea to where the Narmadaempties nto the western, rom he Tamraparn. n the south o the milk-ocean n the

north ViddhalabhanJika .21). So are the Kalachuri kings themselves hen theyrepeat his n their pigraphs. he source, r at least most articulate orerunner, fthis vision s in the tihdsa r epic Mahdbhdrata, here lotting he paceof largeworld, a zone within which its political action was held to be operative ndmeaningful, s a central project of the narrative a pure example, thus, of achronotope, nd with the chronotope's olitics of spacemore clearly isible than

Bakhtin himself nderstood, 981, 84-258). This unmappedmapping, n a differentbut not unintelligible orld f historical pace, onstitutes number f he mportantnarrative unctures n the text, from eginning o end. I describe everal o give asenseof the practice.

Onhiswanderingsuring is elf-exile rjuna harts path romndraprasthaorthto Gafigadvarand nto he astern imalayas, outheastoNaimisa, ast o KausikT,

8J tress iterary ractice; arious anskrits were n use outside the domain of kdvya. utwhereas raditional cholarship ifferentiated widevariety f Prakrits ivergent nphonology,morphology, nd lexicon, no such distinctions with the exception f drsa or archaic, Vedic)wereperceived or anskrit n the post-Paninian eriod cf., .g., SarasvatkanthAbharandlahkdra2.5ff.). The comparable world of early Latinity s well described by A. H. M. Jones 1964,1008.







16 SHELDON POLLOCK

southeast o Gaya,and further oVanga, south down the Kalifiga, ver to Gokarnaon the west coast, north o Prabhasa nd Dvaraka,northeast o Puskara nd thencebackto ndraprastha MBh. 1.200-10). Before is consecration s emperor udisthirasends out his brothers o conquer the four irections: rjuna proceeds o the north(Anarta,Kashmir, nd Bactria); Bhima to the east Videha, Magadha,Anga,Vanga,Tamralipi); Sahadeva to the south (Tripura, Potana, the lands of the Pandyas,Dravidas, Coladrakeralas, Andhras; Nakula to the west (Marubhtumi,Malava,Paficanada, s far s the and of the Pahlavas) MBh. 2.23-29). After he war, whenthe Pandavas perform he Horse Sacrifice o affirm nd confirm heir universaldominion, the wanderings f the horse plot a map that runs from Trigarta toPragyotisa, Maniptura,Magadha, Vafiga, Cedi, Kdsl-,Kosala, Dravida, Andhra,Gokarna, Prabhasa,Dvaraka, Paficanada, nd Gandhara MBh. 15.73-85). Lastly,when they renounce heir overlordship nd begin their Great Setting Forth, hePandavastravel irst o the Lauhitya iver n the east, by way of the northern i.e.,northeasternl oastof the ocean to the southwest uarter, hen o Dvaraka nd fromthere o Himavan, Valukarfnavathe great Ocean of Sand ) and Mount Meru MBh.17),thus performing he ast circumambulation f he world-the sort described ndcharted epeatedly efore-for he control f which heir amily ad been destroyed,and of which heyfittingly ake eave as they repare o die.

Thus, from the opening chapters of the principal narrative, nd at its keypoints-the royal consecration before the war, the reaffirmation f dominion after hewar, the ritual death-march at the end of the story-the epic insists continually onconcretely placing the action. It is the very fact of the existence of this spatialimagination in the Mahdbhdrata hat interests me, not its precision (indeed, it ismarked by uncertainty, confusion, and at times bizarre exoticism). There is aconceivable geosphere, the narrative uggests, where the epic's medium, the cultureof Sanskrit, and its message, a kind of political power, have application.

The spatial imagination that is found in the Sanskrit epics achieves sharper andmore concrete focus in the courtly iterature that arises in the early centuries of thecommon era, as in the conquest of the quarters motif appearing in courtly epics.The most influential example, one studied as far as Khmer country, s that found in

Kalidasa's masterpiece, the Dynasty of Raghu (Raghuvamsfa). Here, the realityeffects, s it were, of the judicious choice of detail are quite apparent. The clearerimage of the spatial domain both of power and, implicitly, of the poetry that fills thisdomain and gives voice to power no doubt has something to do with the fact thatKalidasa borrowed from the Allahabad Pillar inscription of the Gupta king,Samudragupta (r. A.D. 335-76). It is not that there is something less literary, moredocumentary bout the inscription than the poem (this would be so even if ts author,one Harisena, did not actually name it a kdvya, s he does) that somehow serves, asmodel, to render the account of Kalidasa more historical or more true. Rather, thepoint of juxtaposing inscription and text in their historical relatedness is simply toremind ourselves that the literary geography of power in Sanskrit culture sometimesachieved a kind of symmetry with the living aspirations of historical agents.

However this macrospace may be defined and note that it did not always embracethe full cosmopolitan space as mapped by inscriptional and other cultural practices),and whatever may be the precise nature of the imperial dominion and form of cultureit was imaginatively thought to comprise, it marks a wide range of epic and postepictexts. And it is against this macrospace that a range of vernacular spaces of cultureand power were to be defined.








The Space of Sanskrit Literary tyle

The Rajas'ekhara ho wrote f the universal overeignty f the Tripura kings lsowrote n allegorical ccount f the origin f iterature, he tory f the Primal Beingof Poetry, r PoetryMan, Kavyapurusa:

Brahma reated sonfor he Goddess f Speech, is mouth onsisting fSanskrit,hisarm f Prakrit, isgroin f Apabhramsa, is feet f Paisaca, is chest f mixedlanguage. ahityavidyaPoeticsWoman)was created o be his companion,ndwastold o follow avyapurusa herever eshould o. They went irst o the ast, ndas Sahityavidyaried o entice him Kavyapurusa poke o her n verses ull ofcompounds,lliteration,nd trings f tymologicallyomplex ords, hich ecameknown s the auda ath rLti). ext hewent orth o the ountry fPanicala, herehe poke nverses ith artial ompounds, lliteration,ndmetaphoricalxpressions,which ecame nown s the docdlaPath.Eventuallyhey eachedhe outhwherehe spoke n verseswith moderate lliteration, o compounds,nd simple words,which ecame nown s the vaidarbhaath.

(Kdvyam2mcmsd)

Rajasekhara's llegory f iterature, riefly ummarized ere, icks up severalthemes already noted, including the geocultural pace present to the Sanskritimagination nd the restrictions n the possible codes in which the literary an be

composed. cite this passage,however, o introduce he question f the transregionalgeography f iterary tyle.There wasa prehistory oRajasekhara's ccount f mdrga/rTti-the Way or Path of literary ulture-a somewhat onfused nd tangledhistory n its first manifestation, ut reasonably traightforward n its developmentby the tenth entury.

Mdrga the dominant nd foundational erm) arries wo principalmeanings. hefirst s that of a way others have gone before, nd thus connotes custom ortradition f writing. Like the Greek odos way ), mdrga lso comes to imply

something f a method or a following f a way (meth-odos)n the creation fliterature.9 s a term n the Sanskrit iterary-critical ocabulary t has a moment fprimacy n the seventh to tenth centuries-the Kashmiri theoretician amanaannouncing n the earlyninth entury hat the Path s to literature s the soul s [tothe bodyl and though t was eventually o cede this position, t remains crucialterm n the theorization f both cosmopolitan nd vernacular orms f writing. Andalthough hismay eemto be a narrow ssueofphilological nquiry iven ts formalistfocus-for the Way concerns he anguage tuff f iterature-we do well to bear nmind how seriously uch questionswere aken by ntellectuals cross hegreater artof southern sia for enturies.

As we see from he account of Rajasekhara, he Way of Sanskrit iterature sconceptualized s plural and regional: here s an eastern way gauda, oosely, fBengal), a southern way (vaidarbha, f Vidarbha), a northern way (pdigcdla, fPaficla, the north Gangetic plain), later western way Idt'y-a, f Lata or southernGujarat), and still later others. What differentiates hese nominally egionalizedprocedures f literature re certain ualities of language use (guncas)t the level ofphonology e.g., phonemic texture), yntax e.g., degree of nominalization), nd

9Forthe first onnotation, f., e.g., Manu 4.178; for he second, e.g. SRK 1729, 1733;Vakpatiraja ca. A.D. 730), Gaidavaho 84-85.







18 SHELDON POLLOCK

lexicon e.g., the relative revalence f primary ,rfdhij r derivative yoga]I ords).Dandin in the late seventh entury efines vaidarbha s endowed with all thequalities, whereas audca s characterized y their nversion r absence

viparyaya).10The former hus shows a minimal degree of compounding nd of complex exicalderivatives, he atter maximal degree f both.

From he beginning he ontology f he Ways ofwriting s implicitly r explicitlyqueried, nd the generalunderstanding s that writers ould freely dopt the one orthe other. or Vamana the regional ppellations meanonly hat hese tyles re foundin [the poetsof] thoseparticular egions; he regions hemselves ontribute othing.One could and should chose the vaidarbha tyle Kdvydlakdrascstra.2.6-10; 14-18).Although is remarks like much fhis presentation) re more han little onfused-for hey xplain nothing bout why regional tyles hould be found mong the poets

in given regions-there s no ambiguity hat for him region was not destiny, s itwas not, few enturies ater, or hecritic Kuntaka:If differentiationf tyle were ruly ased n that f region, he ormer ould e asnumberlesss the atter. ust ecause writing xhibits certain iti oes notmean tcanbe classifiedsa regional ustom, ike ross-cousin arriage . Furthermore,tcannot e said to be a natural roperty n the ame way hat ertain eautifulsounds, imbre, tc., renatural o the inging f southerner.

(Vakroktijivita.24)For most of Sanskrit istory riters oluntarily ould adopt one style r another.

The eleventh-century oet Bilhana, for xample, nother Kashmiri, ells of himselfthat he writes n vaidarbha a rain of nectar rom clear ky .. guarantor f iterarybeauty-vaidarbha s granted o only the finest oets, Vikramdigkadevacaritas. 9).And, in fact, the freedom o choose from among regional styles grew into arequirement s the doctrine f the Ways was linked vermore losely o the discourseon literary motions ,rasa): s the affective tate o be generated n a scene or passagevaried, o would the Way. Thus for he ninth-century riter udrata, he vaidarbhaand pdAcd1a aths are appropriate or the moods of love, pity, fear, ndwonder ; he Ways themselves e classifies s anubhdva r the verbal reactions f a

character n different motional ituations Rudrata Kdvydl/aikdra5.20).

On the discursive plane what the category of the Ways most insistentlycommunicates s in fact he very osmopolitanism f Sanskrit iterature. Regionaldifferences re part f the repertory f globalSanskrit, he ignprecisely fSanskrit'stransregionality: hey were ocal colorings hat wereproduced ranslocally, nd thuswere n index of Sanskrit's ervasion f all local space. Eventually, s we will see, tis precisely his mplicit ense of the Way of Sanskrit iterature s a cosmopolitan(rather han truly regional) cultural form hat would be made explicit by a newdichotomy entral o vernacular oetries hat rose n the ate medieval eriod:Overagainst mdrga r the global Way of well-traveled anskrit ulture came to beconstructed hedesi r Place, that which doesnot travel t all.

The Sanskrit osmopolis, reated n South and SoutheastAsia in a more or lesssimultaneous istorical rocess, ossessed marked ultural imilarities, uch as theproduction f a codefor olitical xpression nd of a literature here dherence oa

10The valuative udgment mplicit here, nd the very distinction, ppear to have beenresisted s early s Bhamaha Kdvydlankdra .31ff.), hough the eleventh-century annadawriter Nagavarman akes Bhamahato mean not that the north-south istinction s meaning-less,but that he belief hat he one s superior o the other s mistaken Kdvydvalokanam,7tra522).








sophisticated ody of normative iscourses n grammar, hetoric, nd metrics nsureda uniform haracter hroughout he cosmopolitan ormation. he monopolization f

literary roduction n transregional odes was matched at the level of literaryrepresentation y the projection f supralocal rame f political-cultural eferencenepic and postepic narrative, nd at the evel of iterary heory y a doctrine f modesof writing whose regionality onnotes bove all Sanskrit's ranscendence f region.Theseare among the key components f iterary ulture hat will be engaged n thevernacularization rocess.

Producing he Vernacular

Few local literary ultures f premodernity nywhere how quite the same self-consciousnessnd permit s to follow heirdevelopment ith the sameprecision swe can achieve n the case of Kannada,a languagefound n what s now the ndianstate f Karnataka. want briefly o sketch he history f Kannada n the nscriptionalrecord, before going on to consider n more detail the intense and long-termnegotiation etween osmopolitan nd vernacular n Kannada iterary roduction.

The status of Kannada in the domain of the publicly displayed nscribed extsoffers textbook ase of the tendencies escribed bove.The earliest nowndynastyof northwestern arnataka-the locus of what was to become the prestige iterarydialect-the Kadambas fourth entury n), never sed Kannada for public records.The Gafigas, he oldest attested ynasty n southwestern arnataka fourth o ninthcenturies), id not use Kannada for he documentary ortion f copper-plate rantsuntil the time of Avinita n the sixth century. We are able to follow he literary-cultural politics of Karnataka kingdoms more closely, however,with the BadamiCalukyas, nd especiallywith their uccessors, heRastrakuitas. hat we find mongthe atter, when we look at the matter tatistically, s a slow but stunning ecline nthe production f Sanskrit ublic poetry ommencing n the early ninth century.

When the dynasty irst egins ssuing nscriptions tarting round .D. 750, Sanskritis used in more han 80 percent f the extant ecords; y ts end 200 years ater, essthan 5 percent re n Sanskrit Gopal 1994, 429-65).

Besides he lear vidence f hifting anguage reference, ll the arly nscriptionsin Kannada among the Badami Calukyas and Rastrakuitas emain resolutelydocumentary. he first xpressive r workly nscriptions n Kannadafrom withinthe royal ourt ome to be produced nly bout the time of the reign of Krishna II(939, EI 19, 289), or nearly alf millennium fter nscribedKannada first ppears(Halmidi ca. 450).

It is not many enerations efore rishna II that vidence or extualized iteraryproduction n the anguage s first vailable,during hereign f the Rastrakuita ingNrpatuniga Amoghavarsa ca. 814-80). In terms of literary ulture, this was aremarkable eriod and place in many respects, site of what appears o be literaryexperimentation cross anguages. t wasthen, or xample, hatJainas urn ecisivelyto Sanskrit or heproduction f their reat poetichistories as in the AdipurdnaA.D.

8371 of Jinasena II, the spiritual preceptor of Nrpatuniga, or Asaga'sVardhamdnapurdna 8531, the first ndependent biography of MahavTra), ndundertook heir irst rammatical nalysis f Sanskrit n perhaps ive enturies n the







20 SHELDON POLLOCK

?abddnufsdasanaf ?Skatayana.1I ere, too, a little ater n important ew current nApabhramrsa, s we have seen the third osmopolitan iterary anguage along withSanskrit nd Prakrit, inds xpression n the work of Puspadanta fl. 950), who wasprobably the first o write a Jaina universal history n the language.12 But thehistorically rucial nnovation n literary ulture oncerns annada.

No doubt attempts oproduce iterary exts n Kannada preceded heperiod ofNrpatuiiga. n the territorial magination f Kannada iterary ulture hroughout hemedieval period, the heartland f Kannada ( the very zone (nddu-e) betweenKisuvolal [Pattadakall, the renowned city of Kopana [Koppall, Puligere[Lakshmeshvarl, nd Omkunda Okkunda n the Belgaum District] . . is where hevery ssence tirull of Kannada is found] KRM 1.381), n other words, he royallysanctioned restige ialect, s placed not in northeast arnataka where Govinda I

and his son Nrpatuniga uilt their apital, but 250 km to the southwest, n the coreregion f the predecessor ynasty f the Calukyas. 3 et even f this were becauseofthe presence f a new Kannada iterature n Badami and Aihole, this would take usback only fewgenerations-which, n fact, s about as far s the iterary-historicalmemory f Kannada poets themselves eaches, s this s embedded n introductorykaviprars'amsrasthe earliest uthors mentioned re Asaga and Gunavarma f the earlyninth entury). he first xtant ext n Kannada describeshow difficult task t isfor he author o identify iterary models for he prescriptive roject before im: heis forced o hunt for craps f Kannada iterature ike a mendicant:

Both Sanskrit nd Prakrit re available ccording o one's wish bagedante)orcomposingiterature ith refinementsamari), or o be sure there re alreadyavailable oth iterary odels nd rules laksya, aksana)ngreat bundance or achof he wo.But the discourse present ere requiresi egging craps irikoregozdvu)[sc.,ofKannadaiteraturel o make t ntelligible.t is thus ifficult or nyone odoin the ase f Kannada heway he ncient eachersof anskrit ndPrakrit id).

(KRM 1.41-42)

Kannada iterature in the sense have been using the term hroughout) asa recent nvention, f perhaps he eighth entury, nd it is precisely he fact of its

novelty n the face f Sanskrit hatprompted hewriter f this ext o puzzle through,in a most detailed nd subtle way, hecomplexdialectic etween he ocal and globalin medieval literary culture. This singular work in the history of literaryvernacularization s the Kavirdjamdrgaca. 875), The Way of the King of Poets, atext o place beside Dante's De vulgari loquentia 1307)-or, rather, efore t; it mayin fact be the first ork n world culture o constitute vernacular oetics n directconfrontation ith a cosmopolitan anguage. 4 There are considerable ultural-

1He tyles imself bhinavas'arvavaramn recognition f the earlier model Sarvavarma'sKdtantra), nd names the autocommentary n his grammar moghavrtti fter is patron men-tioned n 4.3.208). The Jaina turn o Sanskrit or kdvya-and Jinasena I clearly egards isAdipurdna s such-needs study, specially he early works f Ravisena 678) and Jinasena(783). For a general ccount, ee Dundas 1996.

12Literary roduction n Prakrit as been thought ddly bsent cf. lready Altekar 960a,412), but as noted bove it had become residual r even archaic ultural eature, s inscrip-tional discourse rom hemid-fourth entury n demonstrates.

See KRM 1.37; Pa'mpaVAV 14.45. Cf. Chidananda Murti 1978, 256.14TheTamil Tolkdppiyams no doubt earlier its dating s much disputed; for ne sober

assessment ee Swamy 1975), but the dichotomy perative here s not cosmopolitan/local utstandard/nonstandard, entamilkotuntamill Zvelebil 1992, 134-36).








historical arallels etween hese works, ut also some ignal differences. t the microlevel,unlike the Eloquentia, heKRM aims to produce not a unified anguage for hepolity from mong competing ialects, ut a language ualified or iterature. t themacro evel, he KRM has a less transparent elationship hanDante's work o politicaltheory nd practice, ut its social ocation nd authorship re clear nd important. twas written t the court f Nrpatuniga nd under his guidance: he Way of the Kingof Poets s the Way of Nrpatunga himself.15

Despite the mportance fKRM for he cultural-political istory fmiddle-periodIndia, there xists no critical nalysis r even descriptive ccount f the work n anylanguage other than Kannada. Even Kannada-language cholarship as not alwaysappreciated ts larger historical ignificance. While Kannada in general s unjustlyignored everywhere n South Asian research, Old Kannada (Halagannada), the

language f his nd all literature f he region efore he VTras'aivaultural evolutionat the end of the twelfth entury, s understudied ven n Karnataka-in large partbecause t is hardly ccessiblewithout knowledge f Sanskrit. his paradoxical act,like the text's relationship o the tradition f Sanskrit oetics, specially Dandin'sMirror f Literature, re two mportant ndicators f what vernacular ntellectuals

writing n Kannada were trying o do. We have seen that he circulation f texts nSanskrit oetics wasboth factor nd a sign of the creation f the Sanskrit osmopolisin Asia, and at the ame time provided framework ithin which ocal poetries ouldbe conceptualized in Siam, SriLanka,Tibet, and soon).The same process ookplacein the subcontinent tself, first nd nowhere more profoundly han in Kannadacountry.

Making he Global Local: the Kavirajamargaand the Ways of Literature

The KRM fully recapitulates he structure f Dandin's Mirror nd in someimportant ays even functions s our oldest commentary n the text. t first efinesliterature, escribes inguistic eatures hatmar t dosas) nd make t beautiful gugnas)

(chap. 1), and then atalogues igures f ound chap. 2) and sense chap. 3). In additionto similarity n structure, erhaps wo hundred f the illustrative erses re closelyadapted from anskrit ntecedents. ut the work s not a translation f the Sanskrit,as often ssumed.Not only does translation s usually nderstood makeno culturalsensefor his world where iteracy n Kannada presupposed iteracy n Sanskrit, utthe work has a quite different genda from ts Sanskrit model. What we are beingoffered n the KRM is an experiment n the localization f a universalistic anskritpoetics and an analysisof Kannada literary dentity. Conversely, owever, t hassomething f nterest o reveal bout the creation f this poetics, nd about the realdynamics f ocal-global xchange. want to illustrate oth features y an analysis fsomething hat has long confused tudents f the KRM: its appropriation f theSanskrit iscourse n the Way of iterature.

The KRMfirst ntroduces he categorymdrga n its broader onnotation, iterarymethod, omething oded in the very name of the work, Kaviradj'amdrga,The Wayof the King of Poetry. Way becomes covering erm or good literature, s such(contrasting ith corrupt oetry, usya, .7-8, soJinasena, dipurdna .31; 208-

'5KRM 1.44, 147, etc. The actual redactor f the work was a poet named SrTvijaya.







22 SHELDON POLLOCK

9); literature f the Way is the supreme use of language, n all its formal ndaesthetic omplexity:

The manwho understands anguage an communicate ith thers, isclosing isthoughts s he intended. Wiser hanhe is the man who can communicate argemeaningnbrief ompass,ndwiser till hemanwhoknows ow o make is wordsunitewith meter.More earned han ll is the manwho anproduce orks f thegreatWay mahddhvakrtigal).

(KRM 1.15-16)

This is a perfectly ntelligible sage. What hasbeen found uzzling s the KRM'snext move of adopting the notion of the regional Ways-whereby Sanskritdemonstrated ts pervasion f all literary pace-for a differentiation f Kannada

poetry tself.It s mpossibleully ocomprehendhe rocedures f heWay nd reach conclusionabout he multiplicity f heir ptions. aving onsidered he ules n words f heearlier astras, will ay littlewith especto Kannada othat hematter ngeneralmay eclear . Poets rise n a worldwithout eginning nd thus re nfinite nnumber, heir ndividualizedxpressionsre f nfinite inds, nd o the Way xistsin infinite ariety .. But to the best of my ability will discuss riefly hedistinction-their ifferenceserceived y he ld Sanskritj riters ho onsideredthe matter-between he wo xcellent ays, he northern ndthe outhern,nthemanner understandt .. Of hese wo he outhern ayhas en arieties,ccordingto the ten anguage eatures, unasj . .Thenorthern ay hasvarieties ifferentiatedby hepresence f he nverse f hese eatures.

(KRM 2.46, 49-51, 54-55)

This is followed by exhaustive nventory nd illustration f all the languagequalities taken over from he Sanskrit radition, which the author concludes sfoundational o Kannadapoetics: Whatever he words mployed n a poem they willenhance hevirtues f Kannada f madesubject othe different sages ssociatedwiththe Ways described bove 2.101). The KRM,in short, ppears o have completelygrafted he discourse hat makes Sanskrit osmopolitan-the universal epertory fstyles-onto the ocal world of Kannada.Modern Kannada scholars have found this entire nquiry of which there s areprise n the econd mportant edieval ext n Kannada poetics, heKdvydvalokanamof Nagarvarma a. 1040, at the court f Jayasimha I of the Kalyani Calukyas o benot only rrelevant o actual Kannadapoetry, ut incoherent. o advancewhateverhas been made over R. Narasimhachar's mpatient ismissal f the whole question:Northern nd southern n Kannadapoetics refermerely o the schools r styles

in Sanskrit, we are told, for here s no evidence hat anything omparable xistedin Kannada 1934, 121-22). Sucha judgment f course xplainsnothing f what heKRMintends yusing the discourse n the Way for ts analysis f Kannada iterature,yet there does seem to be every eason o interpret t as alien and even meaninglessto a local literary ulture. Designed to reaffirm he real transregionality f Sanskritliterature recisely y identifying uasi-regional arieties he madrgasppear to beincongruously f not ludicrously asted onto a real regionalworld of Kannada. Thecategory aptures nothing whatever n the local character f the literature nd fitsonly to the degree his iterature mimics anskrit.

The KRM is a text emerging rom he very enter f one of the most powerfulpolitical formations n middle-period India (cf. Inden 1990, 228ff.), and this fact, f








no general rinciple f hermeneutic harity, hould nvite s to ponder eriously hatit meansby using he talk of osmopolitan anskrit o represent vernacular-language

poetics. Metadiscursively ne might argue that, faced with exclusion from thetransregionality f Sanskrit nd refusing o be caught n the brackets f the ocal, theKRM seeks o remap he cosmopolitan Way onto the ocal world f Karnataka. heremust therefore e a northern nd a southern tyle of Kannada poetry tself-theKannadaNadu must be shown o embrace north nd a south, oconstitute regionalworld-whether or not such a division orresponds o any really xisting oetries.16If Kannada is to participate n the world of the iterary kdvya), world defined ySanskrit, t must how ts characteristic eatures. n a word, he ocal must evince tstranslocal apacities.

An account f this sort may capture omething f the cultural-political mpulse

at work n the KRM, and other vidence look at below seems o corroborate t. Butthere s another nd more significant, f somewhat more complicated, ationaleunderpinning t. We begin to grasp hiswhenwe consider ow the KRMdiffers romand supplements ts Sanskrit models. First, t renames he Ways as north ndsouth the categories auda and vaidarbha eing of course mpossible orKannada),

and thereby moderates he narrowly patial implications f the taxonomy.17 Moreimportant s the distinction-which from he vantage point of standard anskritpoetics eemsodd enough to constitute category rror-that the KRM introducesin distinguishing heWays according o the two main divisions f Sanskrit hetoricalpractice, ndirect nd direct natural ) xpression vakrokti nd svabhdvokti):

TwoWays ccordingly ame nto rominence,ndwith hem wo different orms fexpression,he ndirect vakra) nd the direct svabhdva).irect xpressions aninvariableharacteristicf he outhern ay. ndirect xpression,fmany arieties,is found n the elebrated orthern ay.

(2.52-53)

For the Sanskrit radition, s we have seen, the Ways are differentiated y thepresence r inversion r absenceof certain anguagefeatures gugnas)t the evel ofphonology, yntax, nd lexicon. Yet here another dichotomy s introduced hat,though argely unspoken n that tradition, inally helps make the whole thingintelligible: outhern poetry s devoid of tropes and thus makes prominent helanguageof iterary xpression tself,whereasnorthern oetry eliesmore on figuresof speech the many varieties eferred o above). Although here ppears to be afaint wareness f his fundamental istinction arlier han heKRM,we find t clearly

16Thedifferentiation, t should be noted, reflects o dialect divisionbetween north ndsouth in Old Kannada. Ganga poets in the south and Calukya poets in the north used ahomogenized iterary diom, producing nd reproduced y the philological work discussedbelow. (The Kannada Nighantu, .v. uttaramdrga, herefore s mistaken o gloss uttarakan-nada. )'7 North nd south are used preferentially y Dandin's tenth-century ommentator,Ratnas'rTjninaso, occasionally, y Dandin himself, A 1.60, 80, 83). Ratna composed hiscommentary omewhere n the Rastrakuta world, his patron being one Sarvabhyunnatar-as-traktutatilaka amed ?rTmattunfganaradhipa. nd it appears that the two other xtant om-mentators n Dandin worked n the Karnataka region if the one, Vadijafighala s the Vadi-ghafighala hatta mentioned n a tenth-century afiga grant Annual Report f the MysoreArchaeologicalept., 19211as niravadyasdhityavidycvydkhydnanipuna1. 168); and if the other sthe Tarunavacaspati ho worked t the twelfth-century oysala court). Evidently t was a textthat poke to southern ntellectuals ith special forcefulness.







24 SHELDON POLLOCK

articulated nly n a somewhat ater work, he ?rggdra rrakdfa f King Bhoja (firstquarter f the eleventh entury): There re three ources f beauty n poetry: ndirect

expression vakrokti), irect expression svabhdvokti), nd expression f emotion(rasokti). ndirect xpression s when prominence s given to figures f peech, imileand the ike; direct xpression, hen t is given to language features gu?nas)678).18How deviant rom he Sanskrit radition his orrelation-of uncas nd thus vaidarbhastyle with svabhdvokti,nd vakrokti ith gauda-is thought o be appears from hewords f Bhoja's editor, who found t altogether nintelligible Raghavan1963, 136-37; it is in fact nknown o Indological cholarship). n the ight ofKRMit becomesclear.

The logic of argument oth n KRMand of the examples t adduces19roducesgeography f Kannada tyles hat, tripped o ts essentials, omprises realdichotomy

of practices or vernacularwriters: a) southern Kannada literature s that whichfocalizes anguage itself literature s speech-directed peech ), and accordinglyemploys figuratively nadorned description the primary meaning of svabhdvokti),whereas northern annada literature ocalizes hetoric vakrokti); b) among themost distinctive inguistic eatures isted mong he gu?nass degree f nominalization:southern annada literature s uncompounded; northern annada poetry s the

reverse;20c) southern annada iterature s marked y the prevalence f ocal desi)words (the analog of primary exemes); northern oetry by the prevalence ofunmodified anskrit oans samasamskrta tatsama n other raditions], he analog ofderivative exemes).

The northern nd southern ypes f Kannada iterature husprefigure hat wereeventually o be named iterature f the Way and literature f the Place, magrganddesi.Far from nalyzingKannadaagainst n irrelevant et of categories, heKRMisidentifying hetwo modesofwriting hat onstitute he fundamental dentity hoicesfor Kannada, and in fact for ll South Asian regional iteratures. ut there s anadditional nd telling rony n the dialectic f cosmopolitan nd vernacular: or thesource of this organizing axonomy f Sanskrit oetry would appear to lie not inanything o do with the nature f Sanskrit oetry s such, but rather n underlyinginclinations f outhern oets-such asKannadapoets ike those t Nrpatufiga's ourtor Tamil-born oets ike Dandin himself-to write anskrit n conformity ith the

sensibilities f the southern anguages hat re finallymadevisibleby the productionofpoetry nd poetic theory n the vernacular.21n the process f full vernacularization

18Bhamaha regards auda as alankdravad, nd vaidarbha s avakrokti s well as prasanna,komala, tc., i.e., endowed with gunas, but he never laborates Kdvydlankara .34-35), nordoes Dandin despite his explicit dichotomy KA 2.360). Vamana illustrates aidarbhawith?dkuntala .6, perfect vabhdvokti, nd gauda with Mahdviracarita .54, perfect akrokti, utotherwise ives no hint that he understood he principles n play.

19ThusKRM vss 2.60 and 62 can be distinguished n the basis of vabhdvokti southern)and vakrokti northern, he le5sa u[-Jvalayamnd other igures), s can the two halves f 2.110(the first without rope, he second with metaphor ompound). By contrast, n 2.109, theoperative istinction s the play ofgugas n the first alf f the verse ndicating outhern tyle,as opposed to the northern tyle, which howsnothing omparable.

20The tatus of ojas was ambiguous lready o Dandin, who while isting t as a qualityofvaidarbha tylemakes t clearthat t is a peculiar eature f northern oetry 1.80), ofwhichsoutherners ake only moderate andkulam) se (83). Vamana eliminated t as a quality ofpure southern tyle 1.2.19), whereas or Bhojavaidarbha s whollyuncompounded nd

gauda compounded o the fullest xtent ossible ?P 580).2'ForRatna svabhdvoktis expression atural o southern oets: The vaidarbha Way-

which consists f beauty-factors elating o words hemselves as words), .e., the ten gunas-is natural o southern oets ddksindtydndmvdbhdvikah), hereas he eastern' ourse f poetry








that was engaged n ninth- nd tenth-century arnataka, he styles hat southernwriters ad already heorized or anskrit were naturally etheorized s components

of Kannada,ofwhich noncompounding, nitial lliteration prdsal, irect escription,and the ike are real components, s any passage of Old Kannada poetry will testify.The larger principle o extract rom his apparently arrow ase concerns he

mutually onstitutive nteraction f the ocal and the global: As the cosmopolitan sconstituted hrough ultural lows rom he vernacular, o the vernacular onstructsitself by appropriation rom he cosmopolitan-a process hat sometimes, s here,amounts o unwitting eappropriation.22

Philologization nd the Production f

DifferenceThe KRM has other ultural-political ims, which variously uancethe project

of creating cosmopolitan diom while at the same time identifying annadadifference. annada could not achieve ts new rank unless it possessed both theepistemological tatus of Sanskrit nd the dignity f ts philological pparatus i.e.,laksanagranthasr rule-setting exts).The KRM achieves he former y the very actof engaging n a discourse n Kannada at all, and the atter by the explicit nalysisof iterary-language ormswith which he greater art of the work s concerned. hetext tself s moreover performance f ts argument, or t constitutes annada as alanguageof science n the act of establishing annada as a languageof iterature bycontrast, heEloquentiaan onlymake ts scholarly rgument or he volgarellustre nLatin).

The precociously arly philologization we find in the KRM will continueuninterruptedly or nother our enturies. ictionaries re found rom he end of thetenth entury. number f these, ike the first, hat of the poet Ranna (ca. 990,fragmentarily reserved) re Kannada-Sanskrit, nd glossing s they ften o simpleKannadawordswith Sanskrit quivalents re aimed ess at enhancing ommunicationthan chieving anguage parity cf. Nagaraj 1996, 223ff.). rom the sameperiod wefind the first n a long series of sophisticated nalysis of Kannada metrics, heChandombudhir Sea of Meters of Nagavarman . Along with an elaboratedomestication f the complexquantitative-syllabic etric f Sanskrit, hisprovidesan account f the ten native meters, arntdtavisayabhdsdjdti,indigenous meters] fthe anguageof the Kannada world 5. 1). The grammatical radition eginswiththe Karndtakabhdsdbhisanar Ornament f the Kannada Language, composed nSanskrit &tras y Nagavarmam I (at the Kalyani court n northeastern arnatakaaround 1040),and culminates n one of the most mportant rammars f precolonialIndia, the ?abdamanidarpana f Kesiraja (at the Hoysala court, 1260). Thisextraordinary ork,which ike the KRMremains irtually nread utside f Kannada-language cholarship, ould have to occupy central lace in any serious ccount fthe processes f vernacular anguageunification nd standardization eforemodernity.

takes note of semantic igures f speech nd grandiloquence ad 1. 50). Accordingly, e seesthe different ays as inborn, native, specific tajja, sahaja, nija) to the poets of theparticular egions ust ike their egional anguage on 1.40, p. 28).

22Compare he ntertextual inkages hat show the fifteenth-century elugu poet Potanato be reappropriating nd localizing n his campi7 hdgavatamu Sanskrit ourtly urdna, hetenth-century hdgavatam, hich tself ppropriated as Potana was probably unaware) hesongsof the Tamil Alvars seventh-ninth enturies). f. Shulman 1993.







26 SHELDON POLLOCK

Suffice t to say here that n the ?MD, too, from he first erse o the ast, Kannadadifference s theorized within a Sanskrit ultural pisteme; t is constructed s anobject of study from the perspective f a Sanskrit hat defined what language,especially iterary anguage, s supposed o be.23

Every eature f the iterary n Kannada, for ts first alf-millennium f ife, eemsto be marked y the kinds f negotiations f difference nd calculations f vernacular-cosmopolitan redominance hat we find n the KRM. This text defines irtually hewhole range of iterary hemes hat will be meditated ver for he next four r fivecenturies, verything rom the large questions of genre (KRM 1.33ff.) and theconstruction, fprematurely, f canon of Kannada prose nd verse oetry uxtaposedto and complementing hat f Sanskrit KRM 1.28-32), to the tructure f ompoundsand the microanalysis f which Sanskrit nd Kannada may and may not be joined n

compound e.g., KRM 1.51ff.). uch negotiations re not ust theoretical, ither. heyinform he literary rocedures f the poets themselves ver a whole range of textswhose very titles-beginning with the earliest, the Karndta Kumdrasambhava(attributed oAsaga,A.D. 853)-bespeak the ocalization f the Sanskrit lobal, andsuggest hat big part f what arlyKannada iterature s about s the very ossibilityof making iterature n Kannada.

Vernacular olitical pace

No text makes ll this more xplicit han he first iterary ork xtant n Kannada,Pampa's VikramarjunavijayaVAV, ca. 950). Pampawas the court poet of ArikesariII, a Calukyaoverlord n what s now western ndhra Vemulavada) who held actualpower n the ast decadesof Rastrakiuta ule.The Vikramdrjunavijaya,onceived f sthe first complete vernacular ersion f the Sanskrit Mahdbhdrata, as solicited ythe courtly iterati nd paid for by the king himself: The learned elt hat no greatpoet n the past had properly re-]composed heCompletehdrata-an unprecedentedthing-without damaging hebody of the tale and retaining ts magnitude .. andthat this was something nly Pampa could do. And so they gathered ogether ndbesought me]; I [therefore] ndertake o composethis work . . Arikesari imselfsent a messenger nd gave [me] much wealth to have his fame established n theworld, nd in this fashion ad [me] compose historical arrative itihdsakathal. 24The negotiation f cultural difference entioned bove is undoubtedly ne of thework's main preoccupations, nd is signaled t its very ommencement: A work ofliterature ecomes beautiful f ts imagination s new . . if t enters nto the poetryof Place desiyolpuguvudu), nd havingdone so, penetrates nto the poetry f the Way(mdrgadola/vudu) VAV 1.8). But Pampa has additional purposes n mind, whichcome into clear relief nly once we recall omething bout the model he sought to

overcome.As my brief remarks bove tried to suggest, one of the things the SanskritMahdbhdrata s about is the production r organization f space and of a political

23The ast verse n fact frames nine points of Kannada difference the uniqueness ofKannada, aridu .. kannadan) ver against Sanskrit, n terms of phonology, andhi, om-pounding, rosody, tc. ?abdamanidarpanza42).

24 AV 1.11; 14.51. In fact, Peruntevanar's fragmentary?) amil adaptation, he Pdrat-venpa,s about a century arlier at the court f Nandivarman II Pallava,r. ca. 830-52).








vision hat ncompasses his pace. As we saw, the heroes' ravels n their xile, theirconquest f the quarters rior o the declaration f universal overeignty, he evying

of troops for war when that sovereignty s challenged, he wanderings f the ritualhorsewhose compass marks he extent f their reacquisition f mperial tatus ndwhose ritual laughter marks ts confirmation, nd the final funereal ircuit beforetheir deaths-when they renounce he world of political power n despair at theslaughter hey ngaged n to win it-reinforce he mage of a vast yet bounded, f ohazilybounded ulture-sphere f political reference, xtending romNepal to Assam(or the places now so called) to the outhern eninsula, nd thence o Sind, Qandahar,Kashmir. t is this pic space, nd the politics hat fill t, that Pampa seeks o redefinein his vernacularized ersion.

Pampa often refers o his work as the samasta-bhdrata, where amasta has two

important meanings: he author ttempts o reproduce, s noted, he whole of themain tory f the Sanskrit oem. But also he wants his epic to be seen s a compositenarrative. hat is, it explicitly dentifies he poem's patron, his family, verlord,enemies, nd his region with the heroes, llies, ntagonists, nd world f the Sanskritepic. To be sure, he poet is not a simple allegorist, nd his touch s light. But hisdirections o readers re clear nough he is explicit bout the dentifications n 1.51),and the tory f Calukya olitical fortunes, s Arikesari ssumes hemantle fprimaryvassal sdmanta) mid the fraying tructure f Rastrakiuta ower, s pushed throughthe veil of the myth-epic t critical oints n the narrative. good example of thedouble narrative s provided n the very center of the poem. When the sons ofDhrtarastra n anticipation f battle begin to describe he great deeds of their nemy,the epic hero Arjuna-the hero's pride n fighting ith great god Siva and acquiringmagicweapons, he valorhe showed n defeating emons, hegrandeur f his sharingthe throne f Indra, king of gods-at this very point, where Indra king of godscould just as well stand for ndra III Rastrakutta, rikesari's maternal ncle (andgods could mean kings ), he discourse lides seamlessly nto a description f the

poet's royal atron:

The majesty f this Sea of Virtues . . who held his ground, hielding nd savingKingVijayaditya,orehead rnament f he Calukya amily, henGovindarajaIV

Rastrakuttalaged gainst im; .. who attacked nd conqueredgain hevassalswho ame n battalions n the rder f he upreme mperor ojjega Govindarajal... and restored mperial ower sakalasdmrdjya-JoKing Baddega = Amoghavarsa1111-who adcome o him rusting n him ..

(VAV 9.51 +)

Arikesari efeats he usurping Govindaraja nd restores o power the rightfulruler, ut n doing so constitutes imself s paramount verlord n the Deccanin themiddle of the tenth entury.

It is not the details of the historical ase that draw ttention, ut rather he form

of cultural ommunication ampa has invented o present hem.He has refashionedin the vernacular Sanskrit pic discourse n the political nd thereby evisioned hetransregional olitical order for another nd very different ind of world. And,accordingly, xactly ike the poem's political discourse, ts geographical maginationis adjusted o the primary arrative roject.The City of the Elephant, Hastinapura,which s home to the Bharata clan in the Sanskrit pic, becomesVemulavada, heCalukyan apital. The grand circumambulation f the quarters f the subcontinentthat epeatedly rganizes he ction f he picbecomes circuit f he entral eccan.Even the ist of rivers rom which the waters re collected for he hero's oronation








Robson 1983) and the prose Mahdbhdrata; Nannaya's Telugu version of theMahdbhdrata t the court of the Vefigi Calukyas n the mid-eleventh; Madhava

Kandali's Assamese Rdmayana, omposed at the request of the Barahi kingMahamanikya n the mid-fourteenth; isnudasa'sBraj Mahdbhdrata Pdndavacarita)and Ramayanakathd ritten t the court f the GwaliorTomars n the mid-fifteenthcentury; heOriya versions f the epicsand Bhdgavata rom he Gajapaticourt n thelater ifteenth entury. his vast transformation n the waypeople magined nd wrotetheir new regionalworldspresents complex f problems orhistorical nalysis ndcultural heory.We are nowhere ear to unraveling ny of these for ny part of thenewly vernacularized world, let alone constructing a unified theory ofvernacularization. ut I think we can identify omeconceptual ead ends and someother venues worth ollowing, nd formulate few arger rinciples hat SouthAsia

vernacularization uggests.In two recent ssays leadingpolitical nd cultural heorist fSouthAsia,SudiptaKaviraj, considers ome central ssuesof writing nd being on the eve of Britishcolonialism Kaviraj 1992a, 1992b).His reflections re nvaluable or heir nsistenceon the historicity nd therefore ariability f representations f ommunity, thnicity,identity, nd their erritorial ocalizations; ven more so for their recognizing ndcharting he long-term rend to incommunication n South Asia, that is, theprocesses ywhich hemultilingual apacities nd enthusiasms f peakers nd writerswere rodedby the monolingualization ffected y modernity. ut at the same timea number f received iews about the vernacularization f this world re reproducedthat havegoneuncontested oo long. Like every ther cholar who has written n theissue, Kaviraj ties the gradual separation f [the] emerging iteratures of thevernacular anguages] rom hehigh Sanskrit radition o religious evelopments,indeed, eligious evelopments ostile othat radition, gainstwhich he vernacularliteratures make an undeclared evolution. The origin of vernacular anguagesappears to be intimately inked to an internal onceptual ebellionwithin lassicalBrahminical induism. 25

In fact, there is precious little evidence to support these generalizations,universally ccepted though they are. There is of course no denying that somerelationshipmay be found between anguagechoice and religious ractice n SouthAsian history; he resistance o redacting he Buddha's words n Sanskrit nd thepreference fJainas for astern rakrit or heir criptures re familiar nstances roman early eriod. But by the beginning f the secondmillennium his relationship smuch etiolated. Sanskrit had long ceased to be a brahmanical reserve, ust asbrahmans ad long taken o expressing hemselves iterarily n languages ther hanSanskrit, uch as Apabhrams'a r indeed Kannada. The religious determinant nlanguagechoice n general has been vastly verdrawn or premodern outh Asia; inthe particular ase of the so-called rebellion n religious consciousness ermeddevotionalism bhakti), othing uggests t can be isolated s a significant et aloneprimary ynamic n the history f South Asian vernacularization. ome northernIndian vernaculars ame first o be employed orwritten iterature ltogether utsidethe brahmanical radition: indui in the west, for xample,by Mas'ud Sa'd Salmanin Lahore a. 1100, Avadhi n the east by MaulanaDaiud nJaunpur t the end of thefourteenth entury. And many vernacular naugurations how no concern withreligious devotionalismwhatever. arly Braj crystallized s a literary diom in the

25What s meant s the origin of vernacular iteratures, ot anguages, common lip-page prompting my remarks bove on writing nd the beginning f iterature.







30 SHELDON POLLOCK

writings f Visnudas under the patronage f the Tomars n Gwalior, nd as StuartMcGregorhas carefully emonstrated, is vernacular pics have nothing o do with

bhakti McGregor n.d.). The same holds true for the western nd of the Sanskritcultural cumene,where he earliest exts n Gujarati, f the fourteenth o fifteenthcenturies, nclude Bhalan's courtly Kddambari nd the anonymous rotic phdgu,Vasantavildsa, nd for he eastern, hepolitical-allegorical akawins f Javanese.

In the case of Kannada, belief n the religious mperative f vernacularization saltogether nchallenged n the scholarly iterature. Here, however, he putativeimpetus s not devotionalism ut what one scholar generation go described s Jainaloyalty o the precept f the founder f their aith hat he vernacular houldbe usedfor reaching o the masses Altekar 960b, 314). Why t tookmore han thousandyears for this loyalty o manifest tself n literary roduction n the language of

Karnataka,whereJainas had lived since perhaps 00 B.C., is a mystery. ysterious,too, is the fact that, t the very ime and place when Kannada literary roductionfinally oes make history, he greatest f Jaina religious oets-those whose oyaltyshouldbe beyond oubt-Jinasena nd Gunabhadra ca. 850-900), chose anskrit orthe spiritual oetry f their Mahdpurdna, s many did also for aukika r this-worldlymoral iterature, uch as Pampa's contemporary t the Vemulavada ourt, he Jainaabbot Somadevasturiauthor f Ya?(astilakacamp7,.D. 959).

If a number f the earlier Kannadapoets wereJainas, ome were decidedly ot.It is no anomaly hat when a brahman minister f religious ffairs dharmakdryesuniyukta) nderVikramaditya I of the western alukyas end of the eleventh entury)gifted and to a Mimaamsaollege aprdbhdkarasya ydkhyana?/d the most rthodoxof all orthodoxies-the ongprasasti ecomposedwasequallydividedbetween ersesin Kannada and Sanskrit El 15, pp. 348ff.). As for Jaina uthors, omewere lmostclearly ainabrahmans a category eculiar o the Digambara ay community f theDeccan), including Pampa cf. VAV 14.49) and Nagavarman I (Kdvydvalokanams.960). And much of their work has little r nothing o do with Jainism s such. Somemay havecomposed heological istories, ut they lso composed, t least for he firstthree centuries of literary history, non-Jaina rose-verse ourtly pics (campz7s),typically ornon-Jaina atrons Ranna wrote his Gaddyuddha a. 1000, for Saivaprince, f. 1.21). Pampa's Vikramarjunavijaya-which e calls a laukika poem incontrast o his indgama r theological ext, heAdiPurdnaVAV 14.60), and is, as wesaw, a work determined n its every mportant eature y political vision-not tospeakof the KRMand such high-culture ernacularizationss Karndta ddambar7 ca.1030), provides vidence nough f n audience nd a literary ulture ormed yvaluesto which religious dentity was subordinate. he one value that the KRM itselfcelebrates n describing he iterary ourt s cultural irtuosity:

Anyone ho betakes imself o the greatNrpatufiga obecome member f hisliterary ircle sabhd)must e committed o the discriminatingnderstandingf llthis-worldly atters, s well as Uainalscriptural, nd eminent aidika uestions(laukikasdmdyikdruvaidikavis'esa).e must e adorned ith istinguishedtterances,analysis, nd arts relating o the knowledge f iterature sdhita); e must haveexceptionalnsight, ndhighly killed onduct, nd be totally lear-thinking,ullyanalyzingach nd every efinitionndexampleof iteraturel.

(3.219-20)

Not onlywas Kannadavernacularization ot driven y religious mperatives,it was not n any meaningful ensepopular. Popular ommunication an hardly avebeen served by a literature o thoroughly resupposing anskrit raining n lexicon,








syntax,metric, hetoric; ome texts xplicitly tate they were commissioned y andintended or learned udience, s we saw in the case of Pampa.

The dominant xplanations, herefore, erived ltimately rom disciplinary iastoward eligious tudies hat an often eform hinking bout precolonial ndia,26 reof ittle help n understanding heprimarymoments f vernacularization hatmarkedmuch of South Asia in the early second millennium. What is abundantly lear,however, n virtually very ase we can historically apture-and again, Kannada isparadigmatic ere-is the role of the court n the vernacular urn. t is cosmopolitanelites-men like Pampa fully n command f Sanskrit nd enjoying ank nd status,paid by the king for his work and rejoicing n his power and grandeur VAV13.49ff.)-writing courtly poetry for their peers, who first urned Kannada (andTelugu, Malayalam, Braj, Assamese) nto an instrument or iterary nd political

expressivity, nd who for the next half-millennium ill continue o produce theliterary nd philological exts n the anguage.What we needto understand, owever,is what this courtly iterature meant for he self-understanding f polity, nd why tcame nto existence when t did.

The common-sense f contemporary ocial theory uggests hat we should seeksome instrumental it between vernacular oetry nd polity. The grammatical ndliterary-normative ill-to-unification f the language,we may be led to assume bysuch theory, s intimately onnectedwith the political will-to-unification, ince thepowerover anguage s powerover the usersof that anguage-or more imply ut,grammarians nd politicians hare he ame delusions Bourdieu 1991, 43-65; Fabian1986, 8). This axiom nvites s to look for omething ewpolitically appening nthe world of the Rastraku-tas nd western Calukyas within which Kannadavernacularizations occurring. ne may, t is true, iscern different indofpoliticalparadigm rising n South Asiaat the end of the first millennium. he old aspirationof transregional nd trans- ethnic ule, the imperial polity that had marked hesubcontinent or he previous housandyears,had begun to give way to somethingdifferent, omething erhaps o be called vernacular olity.27 nduring dominancewas no longer o be sought outside the extended ore area, which for ts part cameincreasingly o coincidewith a languageor culture rea-something that hepolity,by its cultural-political ractices, helped to create-vague though both areasundoubtedly ere n conception nd on the ground.

When in late middle-period ndia, one might be prone to suppose,kingdomsbegan oreplace he arlier upraregional mpires, r dreams f upraregional mpires,with hereality f regional overnance; henkings from rpatuniga n ninth-centuryKannadanadu o Airlangga n eleventh-century avabecame ess the cakravartins fcosmic imperia and more the overlords f really existing regional polities, thecosmopolitan xpressivity f Sanskrit eded before vernacular hat could defineregional olitical pace that ctuallyworked s such. And thus choiceof anguageforthe making of literature-the inscription f new kinds of literary exts in the

vernacular-whereby ocal cultures

authorized nd made available for iffusion ndpermanence, ould be taken o constitute t the evel of culture nd communicationa new sense of the permanence nd diffusion f the polity s a form f community

26Thishas brought s to the point where ven the most careful tudents f the subjectare prone to contrast Sanskritization s a process f religious ulture with, ay, slamici-zation,which s said to inhabit he domain of the secular Wagoner 1996, 872).

27Kulke nderstands hese ater kingdoms s imperial olities, without, owever, pec-ifying what distinguishes hem from he earlier mperial ormations 1995, 242-62).







32 SHELDON POLLOCK

self-understanding nd solidarity. And the specific character of this newlyvernacularizing iterature, s a cosmopolitan ernacular, uggests hat t aimed to

usurp heposition f the superposed iterary ormation nd to recreate he conditionsof mperial ulture t the evel of the region.The trouble with this approach, earlier uggested, s that t rests pon a set of

beliefs bout the relation of culture and power whether s instrumental eason,legitimation, r deology) hat havebeenformed n the ge of apital n order o makesense of it (cf. Lefort 1986, 181-236; Scott 1990, 70-107). These encourageconceptual tyle hat typically educes anguageto power nd precludes ven askingwhat may be different bout their nteraction n the past. t is no easymatter, o statethe difficulty ore generally, o theorize premodern orld without eploying hetheoretical resuppositions-the nly ones we have-forged by modernity; o read

the precolonial rom location n the postcolonial, o displace et alone replace henotion of the nation form nd the theory f culture t generates. t thus remainsunclear to me what warrants uch presuppositions n understanding different-potentially adically ifferent-world f the nonmodern on-West. As I suggestedearlier o be the case in the Sanskrit osmopolis, ne might nstead theorize hepresence f some altogether ifferent ultural ogic, where he aesthetic, or xample,was centrally n play, or some peculiar new self-fashioning hrough he vernaculardistinction f persons nd places.Only more empiricalwork, however, nformed ya stubborn onceptual utonomy, s going to be able to test uch hypotheses.28

Developinga historically nd culturally ensitive ccount of the relationship fvernacular oetry nd polity beforewestern modernity s, however, nly part of abigger omplex f questions,which n lieu of a premature istorical onclusion boutthe cosmopolitan ernacular s such want to try o characterize, ith respect othto its historical nd theoretical hallenges.

This larger omplex s the problematic f premodern lobalization. What usedto be called Indianization s one of the variety f historically mportant ays n thepast other rude but still necessary ategories ncludeHellenization,Romanization,Sinicization) f being translocal, f participating n social and cultural networks naddition to material networks hat transcended he immediate community, ndagainst which wide range of vernacular ultures efined hemselves. ow, despitethe ustifiable ascination f the academywith the new globalization, he historicalstudy of the cultural nd social dynamics f premodern lobalization processes-without which henewness f hepresent ase can onlybe imagined nd not known-has yet to begin n earnest or ny part of the world. Consider or moment nly hescholarship n the Romanization of the western mpire, a process of no littleconsequence, think, n the creation nd construction f Western ivilization. n1990 a leading historian f the Roman empire ould say, There eems o have beenno scholarly ttention aid to anything ut the symptoms f Romanization; Evenin so richly nformed work s . . . there re only two or three ines devoted o themotives or ultural hange; nd I recall nothing more than that n all my reading(MacMullen 1990, 60).

On the rare ccasionswhen the global and local are analyzed s waysof being ninteraction, oth are typically hought of as pregiven, harply defined ulturalformations, he former s the exogenous, reat radition, he atter s the ndigenous,

28 Theorizing ernacular olity omparatively n South Asia and Europe, nd the currentlydominant ccounts of vernacularization nd nationalism n Europe Gellner, Anderson), refurther ddressed n Pollock 1998.








little tradition-the clichesof the ntroductory rea-studies ourse.They have takenon the character f stable things hat nteract or things hat clash, n the morecartoon-like ersion f civilizations) ather hanbeing een s a congeries f onstantlychanging epertories f practices; nd if they hange hey re thought o do so not byhuman hoice from mong such practices ut as things n nature hange.

In an important ecent essay on globalization and localization n the earlynineteenth-century acific East Asia, Polynesia, acific Northwest), arshall ahlinshas argued that the world system s not a physics of proportionate elationshipsbetween conomic impacts' nd cultural reactions.' ather, he pecific ffects f theglobal-material orces epend on the various ways hey re mediated n local culturalschemes. Indigenouspeoples, that s to say, variously integrate heir xperienceof the world system n . . . their own system f the world 1988, 4-5). This is a

welcome nd necessary orrective o the common mage of the ocal as inert wax forthe developmental mprint f the global. t is, for xample, ust such ocal mediationsin the premodern lobalization process of Indianization that have interestedstudents of early Southeast Asia for several decades (Wolters 1982 remains astimulating xample).

But implicit n Sahlins's ccount s a conception f ocal cultural chemes nd asystem f the world of indigenous peoples as things permanently iven. Manchuemperors n the eighteenth entury hus are said to share he same system s Ch'inShih Huang-ti n the third entury .C. (Sahlins 1988, 22). But we know such ocalsystems onstantly hanged, sometimes radically. Certain components f literary

culture, or xample, were ong central o the Chinese ystem f the world:The abilityto compose Recent Style poetry was required o pass the civil service xaminationfrom he Sung period onward. We now know that defining eatures f this poetrywere nvented n the T'ang by the importation f Sanskrit iterary heory, uch asDandin's Mirror Mair and Mei 1991), one of the important ultural preciositiesthat irculated n an Asian system f premodern lobalization.

Dehistoricization nd the ideology of indigenism hat depends upon it (theindigenous being nothing but the conceptual consequence of a deficiency fhistoricization), hichusuallygovern hestudy f ocal mediations f globalculturalforms, re even moreprominent n the study f the forms hemselves. iscussions fthe impact of South Asian cultural flows n Southeast Asia rarely cknowledge hefact hat no preternaturally nified ndian culture xisted o produce ndianization;what existed was only a set of recently eveloped cultural odes and acts, some ofwhich rose lmost imultaneouslyperhaps ven convergently, ulke 1990)outsidethe subcontinent, nd which only gradually coalesced into something ike acosmopolitan nity. n fact, much of India itself was being Indianized at the verysame period as Java or Khmer country-and in a hardly ifferent ay-and it wasIndian vernacular ntellectuals, hemselvesndianized,who drove heprocess orward.

Moreover, rom he ocal perspective, e need to see that when Sanskrit omesto, say, early Java, t is not as a medium for the articulation f realities hat areproperly avanese Lombard 1990, 13-14), as if reality were constituted rior o

rather han argely y anguage, nd Javaneseness omepreexistent hing verwhichSanskrit s laid rather han continuous rocess f becoming n which anskrit s oneelement. The role of the Sanskrit osmopolitan n southeast, r southern, sia wasless to bring ancient nd persisting ndigenous eliefs nto sharper ocus Wolters1982, 9) in some native culture hat tself etained distinctiveness oth as awhole nd in its parts Reid 1990, 1) than oparticipate n the very reation f thesecultures, nd to be itself hanged n the process.







34 SHELDON POLLOCK

What needs o supplement ahlins's mportant ritique, hen, nd future esearchon premodern lobalization, f which the cosmopolitan ernacular s an instance, s

appreciation f the fact hat indigenous ultures re produced n the course f ong-term ranslocal nteractions y the very ame processes hat produce heglobal itself.The local/global ualism, therefore, eeds to be historicized ut of existence, othbecause nothing s globally self-identical nd because the local is always newlydifferent ifferences, hile each becomes the other n constantly ew ways Pred1995). But not only for hese easons. f the dualism ontributes o people's politicaldisarming y producing falseunderstanding f the arger orces t work n theirlives, t may also contribute o their rming hemselves-to recreate ome localthat never xisted n the first lace.

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2d ed. Kannada Series.Madras:University f Madras Kannada Series). KRM)Kavirdjamdrgam. 983. Edited by K. Krishnamoorthy. angalore: BH; ed. M. V.

Seetha Ramiah. Bangalore:Karnataka Sangha, 1968, reprint 994; ed. M. V.SeethaRamiah,Mysore:D.V.K. Murthy, 975, revised d.

Kdvydvalokanam.967. Edited by R. Narasimhachar. d ed. Mysore:University fMysore.Pampa Bhdratam emba Vikramdrjunavijayam. 19263 1990. Edited byVenkatanaranappa. Mysore: University f Mysore Press. Reprint Bangalore:Directorate f Kannada and Culture. VAV)

?abdamanidarpanafKedirdja. 994. Edited by T. V. Venkatachala astry. angalore:Directorate f Kannada and Culture.

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