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Historiographia Linguistica
Vol. 31:1 (2004) ► pp.33–58

Discovering Aryan and Dravidian in British India

A tale of two cities

| University of Michigan

British India was an especially fruitful site for the development of historical linguistics. Four major, unanticipated discoveries were especially associated with the East India Company: those of Indo-European, Dravidian, Malayo-Polynesian and the Indo-Aryan nature of Romani. It is argued that they came about in British India because the European tradition of language analysis met and combined with aspects of the highly sophisticated Indian language analysis. The discoveries of Indo-European and Dravidian, the subject of this article, were connected with the British-Indian cities of Calcutta and Madras, respectively, and the conditions under which they came about are examined. The production of new knowledge in British India is generally viewed through the lens of post-colonial theory, and is seen as having been driven by the needs of colonial governance. This essay sketches out a different way of looking at aspects of colonial knowledge that fall outside the colonial utility framework. It views these discoveries and their consequences as emergent products of two distinct traditions of language study which the British and the Indians brought to the colonial connection. If this is so, it follows that some aspects of modernism tacitly absorb Indian knowledge, specifically Indian language analysis. Indian phonology, among other things, is an example of this process.

Published online: 30 July 2004
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https://doi.org/10.1075/hl.31.1.04tra
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[no author supplied]
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