ABSTRACT
The readaptation of different knowledge traditions and the politics of referencing in vernacular public spheres has built up a fascinating topic for scholars of British India and other colonial situations. Some have used the category of “vernacularization” to underscore the agency of colonized translators. Projit Bihari Mukharji's work on the appropriation of modern anatomo-physiological knowledge, Mukharji further developed his definition: Vernacularization as a process is not simply the rendering of something into a “vernacular” language. Nevertheless, if vernacularization involved transformation of pieces of knowledge belonging to different scientific or “para-scientific” traditions, it also often meant measuring these traditions against each other. Between the 1880s and the 1930s we can ascertain not only a growing use of “Western science” but also a general multiplication and diversification of referencing within these forms of knowledge. Sets of references could crystallize and become normative within a specific form of vernacular knowledge.
