Orientalist scholarship constructed ‘Indian Literature’ as Sanskritic, religious, and North Indian, excluding Tamil.

Evidence

Winternitz did devote one of the three volumes of his history to the early Buddhist and Jain classics, so that the emphasis on Sanskrit becomes less exclusive, but it is significant that ‘Indian Literature’ to him still meant, in the first decades of the present century, predominantly a universe of Vedic, Sanskritic, religious and metaphysical texts of North Indian antiquity. … Tamil literature seems not to have interested this tradition of Orientalist High Textuality, despite its own antiquity, perhaps because of the inherent Northerly/Sanskritic bias of the Indo-Aryan philological construct, perhaps because of late availability of the Sangam anthologies even in printed Tamil, and, conceivably, because the secularity and this-worldliness of Sangam poetic traditions really do not appeal to the kind of mind for which the outstanding attribute of the Indian tradition is its purported spirituality. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 1134

Categorization

• DEFINE: Documents the material construction of an essentialist ‘Indian Literature’ category — the empirical lineage relevant to how essentialist categories get assembled and naturalized.
• XREF: connects to: The unified ‘Indian Literature’ was assembled alongside a canonical syndicated Hinduism. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1142; Orientalist Sanskrit bias excluded Tamil literature from the Indian canon — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 505; Orientalist scholars were a diverse group spanning nations, religions, and politics — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 375 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Orientalist Sanskrit bias excluded Tamil literature from the Indian canon #corroborates (0.95) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 505
• The modern concept of Indian Literature and canonical Hinduism were fabricated together. #expands (0.85) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 509
• Orientalist scholars were a diverse group spanning nations, religions, and politics #complicates (0.75) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 375
• Orientalist scholars were a heterogeneous group, not a monolithic imperialist bloc #complicates (0.75)