Q1.
During this period, inscriptions began using both Sanskrit and regional languages simultaneously. In land grants, the ruler and his dynastic history were often praised in Sanskrit, while the operative details of the grant were recorded in the local language. Why do you think such inscriptions were written in two languages?
Answer
Because the two halves of the inscription were meant for two different audiences. The praise was for posterity and for the learned world; the details of the grant were for the villagers who had to live by them. So each half was written in the language its readers could actually use.
| Part of the inscription | Language | Who it was for | What it had to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Praise of the king and his dynasty | Sanskrit | Scholars, priests, courts, other kings, and readers in later centuries | Carry prestige, and be readable anywhere in India — Sanskrit was the shared learned language from Kashmir to Kānchī |
| The operative details — who receives what land, its boundaries, the taxes, the conditions | The local language (Tamil, Kannada, Telugu…) | The donee, the village assembly, the neighbours, the local officials | Be understood exactly, so it could be enforced and disputes settled years later |
Three things this tells us.
- A grant was a legal document, not only a monument. Boundaries and shares had to be unambiguous to the people standing on that land. Poetry in a language they did not read would have been useless.
- Regional languages had come of age. Tamil, Kannada and Telugu were now fit to carry law and administration, not only songs. The chapter notes that Chola “inscriptions make use of both languages”, and that Telugu and Kannada literature flourished under the Eastern Chālukyas.
- Sanskrit was not being replaced — the two shared the work. This is the same pattern as the bhakti saints, who wrote in regional languages while Sanskrit learning continued in the maṭhas and monasteries.
Why it also helped the king: a bilingual inscription lets a ruler speak in two voices at once — as a great emperor in the language of empire, and as a familiar local lord in the language of the village. Kannada-speaking farmers heard their own language from the throne; visiting scholars read the Sanskrit and reported the king’s greatness elsewhere.
Did you know? India still does this. Look at a currency note, a government form or a railway station board — the national and the local languages side by side, each doing its own job. The habit is more than a thousand years old.