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Language of the Snakes traces the history of the Prakrit
language as a literary phenomenon, starting from its cultivation in
courts of the Deccan in the first centuries of the common era.
Although little studied today, Prakrit was an important vector of
the
kavya movement and once joined Sanskrit at the apex of
classical Indian literary culture. The opposition between Prakrit
and Sanskrit was at the center of an enduring “language
order” in India, a set of ways of thinking about, naming,
classifying, representing, and ultimately using languages. As a
language of classical literature that nevertheless retained its
associations with more demotic language practices, Prakrit both
embodies major cultural tensions—between high and low,
transregional and regional, cosmopolitan and vernacular—and
provides a unique perspective onto the history of literature and
culture in South Asia.