South Asian Languages and Civilizations

Quad Entrance

The Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations (SALC) was founded in 1966. The Department emphasizes a text-based approach to the study of historical, social, literary, and political issues of South Asia. Language training is another core component of the Department and the following languages are taught through SALC: Bangla, Hindi, Pali, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, Tibetan, and Urdu. MAPH students taking SALC coursework may also find relevant courses in Cinema and Media Studies, Comparative LiteratureNear Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and Philosophy.

Selected Faculty

Portrait of Whitney Cox

Whitney Cox

Sanskrit Language and Literature, Premodern Tamil Language and Literature, History of Medieval South India
Portrait of Sascha Ebeling

Sascha Ebeling

Tamil language and literature of all periods, in particular nineteenth-century literary culture, Tamil epigraphy, Tamil cinema, South Indian cultures, comparative literary studies. Regional Interests: South India, esp Tamilnadu and Kerala, Southeast Asia
Portrait of Rochona Majumdar

Rochona Majumdar

Indian Cinema, Gender and Marriage in Colonial India, Indian Intellectual Thought

Sample Courses

SALC 30100 - Introduction to the Civilizations of South Asia I (Muzaffar Alam)
The first quarter focuses on Islam in South Asia, Hindu-Muslim interaction, Mughal political and literary traditions, and South Asia’s early encounters with Europe.

SALC 32710 - Introduction to Rajasthani Literature (Tyler Williams)
This course will introduce students to the language, genres, and history of literature in the region now known as Rajasthan. Students will gain basic philological skills related to the grammar and vocabulary of the literary languages known as diṅgal and piṅgal and the paleography and codicology of written sources in those languages (stone inscriptions and paper manuscripts), as well as receive a general overview of the various literary traditions of the region. We will read excerpts from works representing different genres; this survey will thus be general rather than comprehensive. We will discuss questions such as the following: what constitutes a ‘language’, literary or otherwise, in precolonial South Asia? What distinguishes a ‘region’ as a geographical and cultural entity? What constitutes a literary genre or ‘tradition’?

SALC 40106 - Research Themes in South Asian Studies: Textual Transformations - From Manuscript to Print (Ulrike Stark)
This course offers an introduction to the theory and practice of book history and print culture studies, a relatively recent and vibrant field of inquiry in South Asian Studies. The course will explore some of the main theoretical approaches, themes, and methodologies of the history of the book in comparative perspective, and discuss the specific conditions and challenges facing scholars of book history in South Asia. Topics include orality and literacy, technologies of scribal and print production, the sociology of texts, authorship and authority, the print “revolution” and knowledge formation under colonial rule, material cultures of the book, the economy of the book trade, popular print, and readership and consumption.

SALC 48603 - Talking Birds and Cunning Jackals: A Survey of Indo-Persian Prose (Thibaut d'Hubert)
South Asia was a major source of narrative matter for the development of literary prose in the Islamicate world. For instance, literary prose in Arabic, but also in Persian (and Castilian) were fashioned through successive renderings of the Sanskrit Pan͂catantra. Later, in the post-Timurid period, South Asian Persianate literati, and munshis in particular, contributed to elevate the status of Persian prose to that of poetry. This course offers a survey of a variety of Indo-Persian prose texts such as tales, premodern translations of Indian romances and epics (Mahābhārata, Rāmāyaṇa, Pan͂catantra, Mādhavānala Kāmakandalā, etc …), letters, anecdotes from chronicles, tadhkira literature, autobiographical writings, treatises, and encyclopedic works.

A complete listing of offerings is available at the Department’s course page.

Recent SALC Thesis Projects

"The Making of Ibn-e-Safi’s World Of Espionage"
Shuyan Huang, MAPH '21
Advisor: Tyler Williams

"Making History: Reading the Historical Novels of “Kalki” Krishnamurthy as Projecting Visions of History in Mid-Twentieth Century Tamil Nadu"
Jackson Cyril, MAPH '18
Advisor: Sascha Ebeling

"The Memoirs of a Veiled Princess: Zeb-un-Nisa, Her Poetry and the Mughal Harem"
Anurag Advani, MAPH '15
Advisor: Muzaffar Alam

"To Hell and Back: The Journeys in Homer’s Odyssey and Valmiki’s Ramayana"
Parth Joshi, MAPH '15
Advisor: Wendy Doniger