On the Ethos of the Multilingual: Exploring Sanskrit Registers of Performance in Maratha Tanjavur

Presenter:

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Abstract

The Maratha court of Tanajvur, particularly under king Śāhaji I (1685-1712), is often viewed as a paradigmatic example of multilingual production crossing vernacular and cosmopolitan divides, especially in the context of its booming culture of performance. My point of departure is that this ethos of hybrid culture, often linked with praise for the king, was being consciously staged. When this hybridity in texts of performance is not taken at face value, it can in fact illuminate the different modes, asymmetries, and implications of multiculturalism. What can we learn from lingering on the differences between languages and within linguistic registers, which the courtly rhetoric tends to gloss over? I will focus on three staged productions from around the court, which together form an axis of different Sanskrit registers. Saptaṛṣi’s Mohinīvilāsakuravañci is a Sanskrit-Tamil dance drama in a Tamil genre that was famously being reinvented; Vasudevakavi’s Sanskrit padam songs range between classical and colloquial Sanskrit within a markedly non-Sanskritic genre; Rāmabhadra Dīkṣita’s Śṛṅgāratilakabhāṇa employs a classical Sanskrit register, within a classical Sanskrit genre that was being radically revived. These works share a governing erotic and humorous tone, and a certain conscious linguistic and generic hybridity. However, they drastically differ in the kind of hybridity they offer, in their vision of Sanskrit as a language of performance, and in their implied audience members. By exploring differences in the performed Sanskrit of early modern Tanjavur, this paper will offer distinctions within the underexplored category of the multilingual.