ISSUE DATE: June 14, 2021
UPDATED: June 4, 2021 18:38 IST
'Wanderers, Kings, Merchants' by Peggy Mohan; Penguin Viking, Rs. 599, 352 pages
I have always been struck by the contrast between the seductive mystery of language and the kind of sterile stuff that emerges from traditional linguistics departments. Language is endlessly exciting. Indeed, we have long believed that the ability to use language is the crucial distinction of our species. The plainest act of linguistic communication is a complex dance of understanding and misunderstanding--jaane kya toone kahi, jaane kya maine suni.... Philosophers wrestle with the elusive and irreducible ambiguity of language, poets make love with it and linguists, they itemise the body parts! Happily, Peggy Mohan’s Wanderers, Kings, Merchants: The Story of India through its Languages, is a complete outlier in this dreary academic universe. She is a formidably-trained linguist--but she recognises that the stories that language can tell go well beyond the tedious categories of formal linguistics.