ABSTRACT
Sanskrit has been for centuries a living second language for educated multilinguals to create and disseminate the arts and sciences. The vast majority of Sanskrit authors, who speak one or more languages, write only in Sanskrit; while many other authors, who know Sanskrit, compose only in one of the multiple literary languages that rose to prominence in southern Asia after the 10th century. The works of translingual authors who compose in Sanskrit and another language—few before the 19th century and more prevalent thereafter—offer important insights about what it means to simultaneously inhabit classical and vernacular linguistic worlds and to productively create within them.
