Language, Texts, and Society

This collection brings together a series of Patrick Olivelle’s research papers, published over a period of about ten years, whose unifying theme is the search for hidden historical context and developments within words and texts. Words (and cultural histories represented by words) that scholars often take for granted as having a continuous and long history are often new – sometimes even being neologisms. They can thus provide important indications of cultural and religious innovations. Olivelle’