Indology

South Asia is a large region stretching from Afghanistan in the northwest to Sri Lanka in the southeast, and from the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh east of Bhutan to Cape Comorin in southernmost India. India is the largest country in the region and even in the world by population. Two languages and their literary traditions are of particular importance for the research at Uppsala University:

• Hindi is the official language of the Indian Union. It is spoken and understood in most parts of India and is closely akin to its sister language Urdu. Hindi uses the Devanagari (देवनागरी) system as its script, which is also the system most commonly used for Sanskrit.
• Sanskrit is important as the classical language and cultural base in Hinduism and Buddhism. It is also fundamental in the Indian traditions of belles lettres, philosophy and sciences.

Comparative Indo-European Linguistics, a field closely related to Indology, is pursued in collaboration with the General Linguistics section.