The Process of Vernacularization in South Asia

Abstract

In a fascinating, recent monograph Sheldon Pollock investigates two suc cessive and related processes in Indian culture: the adoption of Sanskrit, the Old Indian language of ritual and liturgy, in worldly, public docu ments, which started around the beginning of our era, and next, its gradual replacement in this domain by the local, or vernacular, languages which began at the end of the first millennium.3 Both developments were not restricted to South Asia, Sanskrits homeland, but took place practically simultaneously in the so-called indianized regions of Southeast Asia such as Cambodia and Java as well as in Europe, in the latter case with Latin as Sanskrit s counterpart. As Pollock argues, both the introduction of San skrit and subsequently that of the vernaculars in public documents and

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