The language of the gods in the world of men : Sanskrit, culture, and power in premodern India / Sheldon Pollock.

Berkeley : University of California Press, [2006], ©2006.

xv, 684 pages : maps ; 24 cm

"Philip E. Lilienthal Asian studies imprint."

The language of the Gods enters the world -- Literature and the cosmopolitan -- The world conquest and regime of the cosmopolitan style -- Sanskrit culture as courtly practice -- The map of Sanskrit knowledge and the discourse on the ways of literature -- Political formations and cultural ethos -- A European countercosmopolis -- Beginnings, textualization, superposition -- Creating a regional world: the case of Kannada -- Vernacular poetries and politics in Southern Asia -- Comparative and connective vernacularization -- Actually existing theory and its discontents -- Indigenism and other culture-power concepts of modernity.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 603-648) and index.