Language as a Cultural Archive: An Analytical Study in Christopher C Doyle’s The Mahabharata Secret

Abstract

Language serves not only as a tool of communication but also as a living cultural archive. It preserves collective memory, belief systems, and indigenous knowledge traditions. In the Indian context, classical language function as repositories of myth, philosophy, and civilizational ethics. The paper examines Christopher C. Doyle’s neo-mythological thriller The Mahabharata Secret to explore how
language operates as a cultural archive within contemporary Indian fiction. The study analyses Doyle’s concept of language to retrieve suppressed or marginalised knowledge systems rooted in the Mahabharata. The paper argues that linguistic competence in the novel becomes a gateway to highlight the consequences of linguistic neglect, linking language loss with culture and identity in the modern
society. Through its fusion of myth and thriller conventions, The Mahabharata Secret reasserts language as a dynamic medium of cultural continuity, identity formation, and knowledge preservation. The paper emphasizes the role of language in sustaining cultural memory and national consciousness.