Prof. D. Venkat Rao represents the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad . The paper presented by him in Prof. M. B. Emeneau Centenary International Conference on South Asian Linguistics was titled "Epistemic Memories: Tradition and the Question of Inheritance".

         In his paper Prof. Venkat Rao, explains how the sign forces divide the sense(s): they bind and unbind the senses. He adds that art could be an attempt to grapple with that which exceeds the signs and the sense; but the struggle art can only be through the sign systems and sense nets. Archives are constituted by these sign systems and sense relays. He further says that thought can be assessed only as effect of modes of communication or articulation dividing it into lithic and alithic.

         Discussing the mnemotext he classifies them as allusion, citation, ellipsis and enumeration and with these specific compositional features the mnemotexts circulates as an interminably proliferative and non-totalizable force. Mnemotexts are organized on the epistemic figure of memory-memory as singular and incalculable occurrence or emergence. Prof. Venkat Rao also discussed the features of memories in relation to mnemotext. He cites examples of mnemocultural traditions from Sanskrit quoting Malamoud. The tendency to view mnemocultural heritage as a past object goes against the principle of performative force of the heritage is deliberated by quoting Sheldon Pollock. He further adds that Pollock's characterization of the heritage in this conjucture is strange- strange especially, in the case of a critical intellectual who has set out to unravel Indian intellectual traditions.

         Prof. Venkat Rao tackles some of the related questions by engaging with a couple of texts from the Chitrasutra and Kavyamimamsa. The former is a discourse that can only be described as an enumerative episteme. Here, what gets enumerated is the series of functions, essences, characteristics (guna/lakshana) usefulness (p hala) appropriate place of operation and defects ( dosa ) of the "arts" and rituals. He explains how enigmatically that which is inaccessible to the senses comes into being through the senses. If the utterly heterogeneous universe is without a referent, the arts that are aligned to the senses have a peculiar relation to the universe ( ankarana ). The textual recognition and reception of the available in all its distinguished and demarcated heterogeneity are rendered remarkably in these two texts.

         The lithic mnemotechnology of writing has a place has a place in the Sanskrit textual heritage, but it is the mnemoculture of speech and gestures that form and disseminate the cultural inheritances.

         In the discussion that followed the session, chaired by Prof. Anoop Mahajan, the discussion was initiated by Prof. Malshe, who commented whether the protocols mentioned were diachronic or synchronic, and would the mnemotext remain outside that enquiry.