Orientalist translation freed Sanskrit texts from sectarian control despite its biases.

Evidence

Nor is it deniable chat in collecting those textual materials from Sanskrit the Orientalists brought together and made available to a public domain texts that had been widely scattered, often in sacrosanct possession of sundry sectarian groupings, and rhus performed a task of collation and dissemination for which many of those sectarian groupings were scarcely willing. … The ·Brahminical stamp and generally metaphysical bias (medievalist, since much of Romanticism was itself often attracted by medievalism) remained strong in that body of scholarship, but it is also true that in transferring those texts to some of the modern languagesalbeit the European onesthe Orientalist scholar played a useful role in freeing them, however partially, from that sectarian, ecclesiastical stranglehold and made them accessible, in whatever layered wrappings, for the scrutiny of the modern, secular, critical intelligentsia. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 1138

Categorization

• XREF: Relevant to the reader’s materialist line: bad-faith dismissal of Orientalism is itself a discourse-first move that ignores actual material effects. — connects to: Orientalist Sanskrit bias excluded Tamil literature from the Indian canon — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 505; South Indian literary languages remain understudied compared to contemporaneous Sanskrit literature — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 491; Colonial rule of India by its own laws required European mastery of Sanskrit.

Broader Connections

• Orientalist Sanskrit bias excluded Tamil literature from the Indian canon #complicates (0.82) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 505
• Colonial rule of India by its own laws required European mastery of Sanskrit. #expands (0.78)
• South Indian literary languages remain understudied compared to contemporaneous Sanskrit literature #exemplifies (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 491