ABSTRACT
Long before the modern languages of South Asia began to develop, a tradition of linguistic studies originated in areas of what is now India and Pakistan and what will, on account of a certain unity of traditional culture, be referred to as "India". While it is increasingly becoming known that it was in India that the science of linguistics originated and developed into an impressive tradition, India also continues to be regarded, especially in non-professional circles, as a country devoted to philosophy. An at times almost excessive preoccupation with language on the one hand, and with philosophy on the other, may indeed be regarded as a characteristic of Indian civilization. Since instances of cross-communication and cross-fertilization between these two trends have never been rare on the subcontinent, their confluence in the linguistic speculations of what could be called the Indian philosophy of language should be a rewarding subject for study. Recent research continues to justify this expectation. Because the Indian authors in this field wrote almost exclusively in Sanskrit and confined their attention to Sanskrit as the only object-language worthy of study and speculation, the philosophies of language here considered may be referred to as "Sanskrit philosophy of language".
