Sanskrit everywhere!!

[ucgadkw at ucl.ac.uk]

On Apr 8, 10:22pm, you wrote:

> Maybe it's time for a new Indology to serve us.  It is time that Indology
> cease to be equated with Sanskrit language study.  Rick Asher is right,
> there are speakers of Dravidian languages for whom Sanskrit has only a
> negative association, and they are not all Moslem.  And then there are the
> Urdu-speakers....  Does this List really see itself as Indologists with
> these attitudes?

>From it's very beginnings, this INDOLOGY list has very explicitly tried
to include all classical languages and cultures of South Asia.  In the
various notes I have from time to time written in an attempt to
characterise INDOLOGY's aims, I have always included mention of Tamil,
for example.  I would not wish the members of INDOLOGY to feel that
they had to limit the scope of the discussion to any particular
linguistic or cultural milieu.  Indeed many of the most interesting
developments in INDOLOGY have come precisely out of the scholarship
that crosses these boundaries: I think of Caldwell, Emmeneau, Burrow,
Hart, Masica and many other scholars who have contributed enormously in
this way.  There was a time when most Sanskritists also knew Persian,
though that is a long time ago now, and tied up with imperial
administrative requirements.   Such scholars were certainly
Indologists.  But the colossal role of Sanskrit as the vehicle of a
great part of India's heritage cannot seriously be challenged, and it
is only natural that Sanskrit scholarship will always be a very
important and perhaps dominant part of Indology as a whole.

Dominik