The Absent Vedas

The Vedas were first described by a European author in a text dating from the 1580s, which was subsequently copied by other authors and appeared in translation in most of the major European languages in the course of the seventeenth century. It was not, however, until the 1730s that copies of the Vedas were first obtained by Europeans, even though Jesuit missionaries had been collecting Indian religious texts since the 1540s. I argue that the delay owes as much to the relative absence of the Vedas in India—and hence to the greater practical significance for missionaries of other genres of religious literature—as to reluctance on the part of Brahmin scholars to transmit their texts to Europeans.Peer Reviewe

The Absent Vedas

The Vedas were first described by a European author in a text dating from the 1580s, which was subsequently copied by other authors and appeared in translation in most of the major European languages in the course of the seventeenth century. It was not, however, until the 1730s that copies of the Vedas were first obtained by Europeans, even though Jesuit missionaries had been collecting Indian religious texts since the 1540s. I argue that the delay owes as much to the relative absence of the Vedas in India—and hence to the greater practical significance for missionaries of other genres of religious literature—as to reluctance on the part of Brahmin scholars to transmit their texts to Europeans.Peer Reviewe

Mapping Hinduism: 'Hinduism' and the study of Indian religions. 1600-1776

The process by which Hinduism came to be constituted as an object of European study is often taken to be the most egregious example of the invention of a religion through the reification of disparate traditions of belief and practice an the projection of theological preconceptions or imperial ambitions. In this work Will Sweetman offers both a theoretical reconsideration of the status of the term Hinduism and an alternative historical account of its emergence in the eighteenth century based on consideration of early Dutch, English, French and German sources, demonstrating that its scope owes more to Indian ideas of religious affiliation as the time of its emergence more to the evolving modern concept of India as a geographical entity than either does to theological preconceptions or imperial ambitions.Peer Reviewe

Forgeries, Falsifications, Fictions, Fälschungen? : Some Early Modern European “Vedas”

This article examines—and rejects—the idea that, in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Europeans who sought to obtain copies of the Vedas were repeatedly duped by having other works (purporting to be Vedas) passed off on them. The focus is on a text entitled “The Essence of the Yajur Veda,” produced by a Pietist missionary, Christoph Theodosius Walther (1699–1741), and a Brahmin identified only as Krishna, published in a German missionary periodical in 1740. This text is examined in the context of a series of similar works produced by Indian intellectuals with, or at the behest of, European missionaries and colonial officials in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Rather than seeing these works as fakes, it is argued here that they are better understood as the outcome of distinctive modes of composition, transmission, and translation of Indian religious literature emerging from the early modern encounter of Indian and European scholars

Acknowledgements

Research for this work was made possible by support from a number of agencies. I thank the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for a fellowship in 2003–2004, during which I began work on the Halle and Copenhagen manuscripts of the Bibliotheca Malabarica. A grant from the University of Otago enabled the archival research carried out by R. Ilakkuvan in Tamil Nadu in 2006. I am grateful to the Division of Humanities, University of Otago, for sabbatical leave for work in India and Europe in 2007 an..

Bibliotheca Malabarica

La Bibliotheca Malabarica est un catalogue annoté de la bibliothèque de manuscrits tamouls collectés par le missionaire luthérien allemand Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg pendant les deux premières années qu’il passa en Inde (1706–1708). La troisième section de ce catalogue, qui comprend 119 entrées incluant des ouvrages d’obédience hindoue et jaïne, offre un aperçu fascinant des ouvrages de la littérature tamoule en circulation à la veille du colonialisme. L’introduction évalue le caractère de la bibliothèque de Ziegenbalg dans le contexte des sources desquelles il a obtenu ses manuscrits. Will Sweetman a ensuite accompagné sa traduction de notes qui identifient les ouvrages de la collection et qui commentent le point de vue de Ziegenbalg sur ceux-ci. Cet ouvrage identifie pour la première fois le Tirikāla cakkaram, texte qui contribua fortement à la formation du point de vue de Ziegenbalg sur l’hindouisme, depuis ses premières lettres écrites d’Inde jusqu’à son magnum opus, le Genealogia der malabarischen Götter (1713). Un chapitre de conclusion considère les autres ouvrages tamouls mentionnés par Ziegenbalg dans ses écrits postérieurs à 1708.The Bibliotheca Malabarica is an annotated catalogue of Tamil manuscripts collected by the missionary Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg during his first two years in India (1706–1708). The third section of this catalogue, consisting of 119 entries covering works of Hindu and Jaina provenance, provides a fascinating insight into Tamil literary works in wide circulation on the eve of colonialism. The introduction assesses the character of Ziegenbalg’s library in the context of the sources from which he obtained manuscripts. Will Sweetman’s translation is then augmented by annotations which identify the works and comment on Ziegenbalg’s view of them. It identifies for the first time one text — the Tirikāla cakkaram — which was formative for Ziegenbalg’s view of Hinduism from his earliest letters from India to his magnum opus, the Genealogia der malabarischen Götter (1713). A concluding chapter considers other Tamil works mentioned in Ziegenbalg's writings after 1708