Language in South Asia is a collection of twenty-six articles distributed (albeit unevenly) among ten sections: (1) language, history, families, and typology; (2) languages and their functions; (3) Sanskrit and traditions of language study; (4) multilingualism, contact, and convergence; (5) orality, literacy, and writing systems; (6) language conflicts; (7) language and modernization; (8) language and discourse; (9) language and identity; (10) languages in diaspora. The individual articles are of uniformly high quality, and the volume achieves a marked degree of comprehensiveness, a remarkable achievement given (as we learn from this collection) the breadth of South Asian languages (some 320 different languages in four dominant families; p. 33), the depth of India's linguistic history (much of which is oral and not written, thus presenting its own unique problems), and the complex sociolinguistic interactions (polite and familiar forms of address, bilingualism, and so forth) that are a well-known characteristic of the Subcontinent.

The studies included here range from highly technical discussions of language elements and linguistic structures, including syntax, grammar, morphology, end even systems of writing (see Yamuna Kachru's “Hindi–Urdu–Hindustani”; Karumuri V. Subbarao's “Typological Characteristics of South Asian Languages”; Ian Smith's “Pidgins, Creoles, and Bazaar Hindi”; Peter T. Daniels's “Writing Systems of Major and Minor Languages”; S. N. Sridhar's “Language Modernization in Kannada”), to broad yet comprehensive representations of census details of languages spoken (see R. E. Asher's “Language in Historical Context”; Tej K. Bhatia's “Major Regional Languages”; Anvita Abbi's “Tribal Languages”; E. Annamalai's “Contexts of Multilingualism”), to a number of well-thought-out and carefully crafted analyses of the social dimensions of language in South Asia (see Madhav M. Deshpande's “Sanskrit in the South Asian Sociolinguistic Context”; Ashok Aklujkar's “Traditions of Language Study in South Asia”; S. N. Sridhar's “Language Contact and Convergence in South Asia”). Adjoining this last group of studies is a selection of articles that explore language in the diverse arenas of advertising (chapter 19), cinema (chapter 20), religion (chapter 21), gender (chapter 22), and among the nonmainstream groups of Dalits, Indian youth, and the South Asian diaspora (chapters 23–26).

In brief, there is, in this volume, “something for everyone” interested in language in South Asia. If there is a central theme, it is perhaps that language anchors culture in South Asia, whether expressed, as Ashok Aklujkar reiterates, in the notion that the Indian grammatical tradition underlies the development of systematic thought in South Asia (p. 195), or, as S. N. Sridhar points out, in the role of bilingualism in Indian modernization (p. 329). In a similar vein, several essays discuss how language elements were used and continue to be used as agents of political and social hegemony in South Asia (Sanskritization, Persianization, Englishization, to name the best known, as discussed by Braj B. Kachru in the volume's introduction).

There are a few editing issues to be noted. First, some of the articles appear to be out of date for a volume with a 2008 imprint; thus, chapters 1, 6, and 7 all draw on 1991 census data; the works cited in the volume's extensive list of references were nearly all produced prior to 2001; and there are two references (pp. 33, 308) that indicate Parpola's work connecting the Indus Valley “language” to Dravidian is the current standard (now much debated). Additionally, at least three articles in the volume have appeared elsewhere; in one case, an article contains the note that the chapter is a revision of a previous publication (Deshpande's “Sanskrit in the South Asian Sociolinguistic Context”), but two other articles have no such notation (Sridhar's “Language Modernization in Kannada” and “Language Contact and Convergence in South Asia,” an odd omission given that Sridhar is one of the volume's three editors). The intent behind some of the section titles is not always apparent, and the collection seems a bit unbalanced; thus, while there are separate articles discussing Persian, Sanskrit, Hindi-Urdu, and Kannada, many of the other South Asian languages appear only in the context of broad discussions (e.g., “Major Regional Languages”; “Minority Languages and their Statuses”)—though again, the breadth of the subject matter must be taken into consideration here, and certainly not every element of South Asian languages can be discussed in a single volume (even one as hefty as this one).

There are other minor editorial matters to be noted: there are no author biographies; abbreviations are not standardized throughout the volume (an unwieldy chart of chapter-by-chapter abbreviations appears as part of the volume's front matter); and systems of transliteration are not regularized throughout the volume. However, these are but unfortunate distractions from an otherwise substantial collection of essays, and certainly should not keep curious readers (generalists and specialists alike) from delving into these fascinating studies of the languages that, as the essays in this volume ably show, are the cultural anchor for the lived-in world of one-quarter of the earth's population.