[INDOLOGY] ECSAS 2020 - CfP

[Andrew Ollett]

Dear colleagues,

Since it is the season for announcing panels for the next European
Conference on South Asian Studies in Vienna (29 July - 1 August 2020), I
would like to bring to your attention, as well as that of your colleagues
and students, a panel on "Vernacular Grammars." Please find the abstract
below, as well as on the ECSAS website (
https://ecsas2020.univie.ac.at/panels/c2ok2/), where you can submit
abstracts until November 17. Do also feel free to contact me if you have
any questions.

Andrew


*Vernacular Grammars*This panel focuses on the phenomenon of “vernacular
grammars,” i.e., grammars written for languages other than Sanskrit, in
precolonial South Asia. We will try to define this phenomenon and trace out
important patterns, connections, and developments across languages and
regions.

*Convenors*:
· Andrew Ollett, University of Chicago (Chicago, Illinois, United States of
America)
· Victor D'Avella, University of Hamburg (Hamburg, Germany)
· Naresh Keerthi, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Jerusalem, Israel)
· Sivan Arzony, Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
of America)


*Long Abstract*Grammars were written for a number of regional languages in
precolonial South Asia. The many different projects that sought to bring
regional languages to order have been overshadowed, at least in modern
scholarship, by the tradition of Sanskrit grammar. This panel will bring
together scholars working in and across traditions of “vernacular grammars”
in an attempt to provide provisional answers to a number of questions about
the phenomenon as a whole. How do we define “vernacular grammars”? What
were the conceptual and philological resources that the authors of
vernacular grammars drew upon? How were basic fundamental differences
between languages accounted for? What “vertical” connections, to specific
traditions of Sanskrit and Prakrit grammar, and “horizontal” connections,
to other vernacular grammars, can we identify? What are the conditions —
social, religious, ideological or otherwise — that enabled these grammars
to be produced? Is it simply a coincidence that so many of them were
produced by Jains? What were the temporal and regional parameters of
vernacular grammar production? Why, for example, is the phenomenon
apparently limited to regions of Southern Asia where languages related to
Sanskrit, such as Hindi and Marathi, were not spoken? What does the
phenomenon of “vernacular grammars” say about the phenomenon of
vernacularization? This panel will mark the first attempt to study
vernacular grammars in a comparative and historical perspective. We are
especially interested in papers, above all co-authored papers combining
multiple regions and languages, that identify and seek to explain major
patterns, trends, and innovations.


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