Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>How were languages related to one another and to intellectual agendas in a highly multilingual milieu like premodern India? Surrender to God Across Languages explores this question through the intellectual history of self-surrender, a main soteriological doctrine of the Śrīvaiṣṇavas, a South Indian religious community that worshiped Viṣṇu-Nārāyaṇa as the Supreme God. It studies a connected series of six theological treatises composed in Sanskrit and Manipravalam (a hybrid language that combines Tamil and Sanskrit) by five key intellectuals of the community from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, namely Vātsya Varadaguru, Periyavāccāṉ Piḷḷai, Meghanādāri Sūri, Piḷḷai Lokācārya, and Vedāntadeśika. It argues that there was a complex interplay between interlinguistic changes and doctrinal developments, in such a way that it is impossible to fully account for one without the other: languages shaped self-surrender by providing distinctive conditioning factors both scripturally and theologically at each point in time; however, the intellectuals also navigated differently through the multilingual terrain, making choices that were responsive to their social circumstances and transforming the linguistic spheres in which they operated. Focusing on the Śrīvaiṣṇavas’ self-surrender, this book presents one of the most dynamic moments of premodern Indian multilingual and intellectual history. Drawing on theories of language politics and translation, it also proposes the new theoretical framework of the “language sphere” to better capture the linguistic and intellectual interaction from a micro perspective. Despite being formulated with the present case study in mind, this framework has broader implications that can help us understand multilingual cultures beyond premodern India.</jats:p>