Unsanitizable Yoga: Revivalistics and Hybridic Reclaimed Sanskrit

By Patrick McCartney & Ghil‘ad Zuckermann

INTRODUCTION

Our paper is an attempt to locate the ‘Spoken Sanskrit’ revival within the complex socio- political, religious, linguistic ecological context of a contemporary, globalized South Asia, and world (see Bordia 2015, Brass 2005). One of the key points of discussion in this paper surrounds the nomenclature used to define the varieties of Sanskrit spoken today. Simply put, for many reasons, a lot of the Sanskrit spoken today is not really the same as the archaic Vedic and Classical predecessors. Therefore, through a revivalistic lens, we explore some of the different registers of vernacular Sanskrit spoken today, and propose that they ought to, instead, be called Hybridic Reclaimed Sanskrit (henceforth, HRS). Finally, we argue that these Classical Sanskrit-Modern Indian Language hybrids are a result of the imperfect learning of ‘Spoken Sanskrit’; which, due to their combination, essentially consisting of Sanskrit (saṃskṛta) and what we can appreciate as ‘modern Prakrits’ (prākṛta), should be considered similar to Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit (see Bronkhorst 1993). Finally, the key point is that HRS consists of a spectrum of registers, which can be topologized as running between ‘high’ and ‘low’ registers. As discussed below, this concept has historical precedent and is likely the least interesting part of the discussion. While more research is required, our main argument is that the lower the register, the higher the level of hybridity with a Modern Indian Language…