This impressive volume describes the proof for the existence of a distinct family of languages in South India known as Dravidian. While such a theme may seem so highly focused as to be of interest only to South India specialists, this is hardly the case. Thomas R. Trautmann's Languages and Nations bridges the interests of imperial historians, linguists, scholars of race and ethnicity, and those interested in intellectual currents extending through Europe and South Asia during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In fact, the central appeal of the book is the way it sets the story of Francis Whyte Ellis, who authored the proof, against a broader canvas of European and Indian linguistic analysis and knowledge production.
The book begins with a discussion of “locational technologies” used since ancient times to help people make sense of the universe. Among these are star charts, the Ptolemaic grid, and the Eusebian...
