LITERARY HISTORY. REGION. AND NATION IN SOUTH ASIA 7 to put on the table is the notion that the question of "representation" at this level, too, can no longer be avoided and is pan of the long mental revolution this past decade has seen. My peihaps idiosyncratic review of why we are where we are now thus highlights three components in the critique of^Orientalism." As I have already suggested, I consider some of this critique in its strongest formulation epistemologically unsound, empirically and linguistically weak, and worse, historically deficient, for it presupposes a post-Orientalist history ofprecolonialism—how else to chart the ravages wrought by the Raj?—that is only beginning to be written. Yet the questions it has posed are hard and good and will not go away, and in one way or another they do their work in the issues and questions with which the essays in this volume are concerned, and continue to inform our studies in the history of literary cultures in South Asia. The Workshop on "Literary History, Region, and Nation" was made possible with seed money from the Social Science Research Council and a generous grant from the Smithsonian Institution. I would like to thank Franrine Berkowitz of the Smithsonian for her support. Itty Abraham of the SSRC and other members of the Joint Committee on South Asia provided intellectual as well as financial assistance as the literary histories project was developed. V. Narayana Rao was the first to press upon the Committee's attention the theoretical, historical, and political importance of an inquiry into regional literatures, and has remained throughout a valued collaborator. Professor K. K. Ranganathacaryulu of the Department of Telugu. Central University of Hyderabad, gave unstinting help in organizing the meeting. Dr. Atluri Murali, also of Hyderabad and an associate bf the Social Scientist, who was also an important voice at the Workshop itself, invited publication of the papers in this journal. I want also to thank Bronwen Bledsoe and Alyssa Ayres of the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, The University of Chicago, for their editorial assistance. SHELDON POLLOCK Hyderabad, December 1993/Chicago, June 1995