Vernacular futures

Abstract

The article explores how a new concept of historical time entered discourses on language in nineteenth-century south India. Particularly, I look at the work of C.P. Brown, a prominent scholar of Telugu in the nineteenth century, who through his philological intervention—his Telugu grammar, dictionary and definitive editions of Telugu literary classics—worked arduously to preserve the language. I argue that because colonial philology saw language as having a progressive history, i.e., the unfolding of language in progressive stages towards constant improvement, it instigated a profound intervention in language practices and thought, foreshadowing the great debates at the turn of the twentieth century on ‘modernising’ languages.