Oct 08, 2026 12:24pm IST
After ‘Baahubali’, SS Rajamouli to Create a New Fictional Language for ‘Varanasi’ (EXCLUSIVE)
SS Rajamouli’s upcoming magnum opus, “Varanasi,” starring Mahesh Babu, Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Prithviraj Sukumaran, is clearly poised to exceed the scale and spectacle of his previous outings “Baahubali” and “RRR”. Not only is it a time-travel adventure that takes its characters across multiple continents and moments in history, but it will also feature an entirely new language created from scratch, a phenomenon we’ve seen in epics like “The Lord of the Rings,” “Dune” and “Game of Thrones,” but rarely in Indian cinema.
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Variety India has exclusively learnt from a source that a linguistic expert has been contracted to create a new language for “Varanasi,” which the characters will encounter during one of their time-travel trips across history. The sequence will involve the characters going into a cave where the walls have been painted with writings in an ancient script, which they will have to learn to understand the hidden mysteries.
In 2015, for “Baahubali: The Beginning,” the filmmaker sought the help of lyricist and screenwriter Madhan Karky to create a fictional language called Kiliki or Kilikili, spoken by the Kalakeya warriors who attack the Mahishmati kingdom. Eventually, even a website was launched dedicated to the language. However, Kiliki was only a spoken language in the film, with barely a momentary appearance of its written script in a scene. For “Varanasi,” the fictional language seems to have a larger part to play in the story and might require a more elaborate creation.
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The creation of a whole new language, with a proper written script and elaborate rules of grammar and syntax, is no small feat. Authors like George R.R. Martin only created a few fictional words in “Dothraki” and “High Valyrian,” which were then used to construct the entire languages by linguist David J. Peterson. High Valyrian was even made available for everyone to learn on the language-learning app, Duolingo. However, author J.R.R. Tolkien, a linguist himself with beautiful handwriting, created scripts not for one but for multiple fictional languages like the Elvish Quenya and Sindarin and the black script of Mordor, which appears on the One Ring. Evidently, “Varanasi” has some big standards to meet!
“Varanasi” is scheduled to release on April 7, 2027.
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