The Modernity of Sanskrit

Simona Sawhney

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Year: 2008
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780816666362
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: History

Sanskrit texts have usually been discussed either within the frames of anthropology and religious studies or with a veneration that has substituted for analysis. Going beyond such approaches, Simona Sawhney argues that only a literary approach that resists the closure of interpretation can reveal the fragility, ambivalence, and tension that mark the canonical texts. Today we witness, Sawhney contends, the near-total appropriation of Sanskrit literature by Hindu nationalism. The Modernity of Sanskrit challenges this appropriation by exploring the complex work of Rabindranath Tagore, M. K. Gandhi, and Mohan Rakesh. Sawhney proposes that Indian nationalist writings about classic Sanskrit became a charged site for postcolonial reflections on politics and art in India. Sawhney claims that although new readings of Sanskrit literature played a decisive role in the intellectual conception of modernity in India, the space for such readings has steadily shrunk in contemporary times, leading to a stark diminishment of both the political and the literary lives of the texts.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Smara: The Memory/Love of Kalidasa
• 2. Literary Modernity and Sanskrit Poetry: The Work of Mohan Rakesh
• 3. Allegory and Violence: Gandhi’s Reading of the Bhagavad Gita
• 4. The Lure of Violence: Dharamvir Bharati’s Andha Yug: (The Blind Age)
• 5. Poetry beyond Art
• Epilogue: Poetry and Justice
• Notes
• Index