Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India

This book is the first detailed examination of George Abraham Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India , one of the most complete sources on South Asian languages. It shows that the Survey was characterised by a composite and collaborative mode of producing knowledge, which undermines any clear distinctions between European orientalists and colonised Indians in British India. Its authority lay more in its stress on the provisional nature of its findings, an emphasis on the approximate nature of its