Spoken Sanskrit

[Dominik Wujastyk]

There's an interesting set of reflections on the topic here:

Journal of Linguistic Anthropology
June 2008, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 24-45
Posted online on July 28, 2008.
(doi:10.1111/j.1548-1395.2008.00002.x)

Licked by the Mother Tongue: Imagining Everyday Sanskrit at Home and in 
the World
by Adi Hastings

Abstract:
This paper examines the ways in which Sanskrit revivalists in contemporary 
India imagine social contexts for the production and reproduction of 
Sanskrit speech. In contrast to the received view of Sanskrit as being a 
ritual language par excellence, opposed at every step to the domestic 
sphere and everyday life, Sanskrit revivalists treat Sanskrit as a “mother 
tongue,” figuring the home as the primary site for the creation of an 
“everyday Sanskrit” world and the mother as the primary agent of this 
process of Sanskritizing the domestic sphere. “Domesticating Sanskrit,” 
the process of bringing the elevated ritual language down into everyday 
life, at the very same time “Sanskritizes the domestic,” that is, ritually 
transforms or elevates the home into a “Sanskrit home.” Moving outward 
from the Sanskritized domestic sphere, activists also imagine other 
contexts in which one could use Sanskrit, which nonetheless conforms to a 
notion of a Sanskrit interiority or domesticity.




-- 
Dr Dominik Wujastyk
Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow
University College London