ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the circumstances surrounding the inception of the Survey’s recordings of Indian languages. While intra-European rivalries played a role in their inception, the recordings were also meant to secure the ‘auditory order’ of British colonialism in India. They were part of the techno-modern technology which reinforced British authority. Grierson also wanted to use the recordings to teach British ICS officers to speak Indian languages with better pronunciation so as to reduce the risk of their being caricatured by Indians. However, the recordings were meant to overcome the inadequacy of the written word in the Survey, but in fact they deepened its reliance on the written word. Moreover, Grierson’s repeated description of the recordings as ‘séances’ expresses key issues about authorship, agency and the discreteness of individuals and languages which the Survey struggled with. The recordings reveal that the governing idiom in the Survey is not one of control and mastery but its opposite.
