Handmade literacy

The epigraphic corpus of medieval South Asia constitutes a dense record of the loquacious lives of artisans and other literate professionals who worked with their hands. While the labour of inscription was—and continues to be—dismissed as non-intellectual, caste-marginalized artisans used the space they were granted in stone at the bottom of epigraphs and at the bases of sculptures as an opportunity to assert their own epistemic values and their own hierarchy of knowledge. These artisans worked closely with poets and scribes from privileged castes in shared poetic, political, and intellectual projects, often labouring in conjunction with the same scholars over the course of many years. At times echoing the ideologies of writing, language, and education that were enunciated in elite literary circles, and at times standing in opposition to them, these artisans articulated a vision of erudition distinct from that often associated with pre-colonial South Asia. Following these artisans allows a significant revision of the role literacy played in pre-colonial South Asia. And it offers a moment to reconsider how artisan literacy continues to be used in narratives of divergence that invoke the history of technology. This article shows how novel understandings of the status and intellectual labour of artisans were developed in the medieval period and continued to be deployed into the early modern period—and indeed, in the caste-inflected print cultures that emerged around the decennial census.

Indian and Buddhist Studies · Libraries, Manuscripts, and Books · South Asian Studies and Diaspora