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faculteit letteren en wijsbegeerte academiejaar 2009-2010
Ascetics and Crafty Priests Orientalism and the European Representations of India
Proefschrift voorgelegd tot het verkrijgen van de graad van doctor in de Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap door Raf Gelders • Promotor: Prof. Dr. Balagangadhara Rao
contents List of Plates Acknowledgments Note on Bibliography and Style
v vi vii
1. Introduction: Orientalism and the Construction of Hinduism
1
1.1. Postcolonial Studies and the Indian Traditions The Problem of Hinduism The Textualization and Brahmanization of Tradition Nationalism and Religious Reform
2 3 4 6
1.2. The Constructionist Failure Rethinking the Role of Brahmins Rethinking the Role of Scriptures Rethinking the Chronology of Orientalism
7 8 9 10
1.3. The Brahmin: An integral part of European Culture Monastic Orders and the Caste System
20 22
1.2. On the Nature of Hinduism The Orient: An experiential Entity of the West Orientalism: A cultural Project Orientalism: A limited Way of Talking About Hinduism: An experiential Entity of the West
2. Proto-Christianity and the Brahmin Exemplum
13 14 15 16 17
24
2.1. The Brahmins and the Universality of Christianity A Christian History of Religion The Brahmins in a Christian Tale The Salvation of the ancient Just Salvation in the Middle Ages
24 25 27 28 31
2.3. The Brahmin in the popular Imagination Renard le Countrefait The Voyages of Mandeville
47 49 50
2.2. Anticlericalism and the proto-Christian Brahmin Anticlericalism in the Middle Ages Anticlerical Movements in the Middle Ages The literary Tradition The Brahmin in the Exemplum Tradition The Brahmin in historical Writings
2.4. The Brahmin Exemplum: A long theological Career The Customs of all Nations 2.5. Conclusion
34 34 35 37 38 42
56 56 60
contents 3. False Religion and the Crafty Priest
62
3.1. The Theology of Idolatry Idolatry in Scripture De Idololatria Against the Worship of Idols
63 64 66 68
3.3. The Calicut-Motif in Continental Europe The Calicut-Motif in Germany The Calicut-Motif in France The Calicut-Motif in Catholic Discourses Saintly Heathens or crafty Priests? The Calicut-Motif in the Low Countries
82 83 90 93 96 100
3.5. Conclusion
114
3.2. Idolatry and Promiscuity: The Decades of Wonder Itinerario di Ludovico di Varthema Idolatry, Promiscuity and the Reformation Protestant Antiquarianism
3.4. The Calicut-Motif in English Controversies The Calicut-Motif in English Scholarship Calicut and the Art of Sermons
4. The Brahmin in England: A long theological Career
70 72 75 80
105 106 111 116
4.1. Universality and Particularity in Christianity 117 Proto-Christian Brahmins and the Universality of Christianity 121 The Brahmin in the Pamphlet Wars 122 The Brahmin in Quaker Scholarship 125
4.2. The Brahmin in the Religion of the Enlightenment Natural Religion in early-modern England The Brahmin and the Religion of Reason The disenchanted Brahmin The Naturalized Brahmin in popular Sources
129 129 133 136 138
4.4. Conclusion
152
4.3. The crafty Brahmin in seventeenth-century Controversies The Brahmin in anti-Catholic Polemics Calicut and the Art of Sermons The Virgin of Calicut
5. The Indian Religion of the Priest: A cosmographical Project 5.1. Special Geography: Outline of a Discipline Descriptive Geography and Ethnography Descriptive Geography: Organizing the World Distributing useful Knowledge Descriptive Geography in Education
141 144 149 150 153
154 155 157 159 160
contents 5.2. The Indian Religion of the Priest in Continental Europe The Brahmin Religion in German Cosmography The Brahmin Religion in the Low Countries The Brahmin Religion in French Cosmography
163 163 170 173
5.4. Conclusion
186
5.3. The Indian Religion of the Priest in England The Indian Religion of the Priest in Popular Sources
6. The Indian Religion of the Priest in Jesuit Discourses
176 183 188
6.1. For the Greater Glory of God The Apostle of the Indies and Japan The Jesuits in India
189 190 196
6.3. Brahmins and the Genealogy of Paganism The Marvels of the World The Distribution of Postel’s Thesis China Illustrated The Textualization of Tradition
210 211 214 216 220
6.2. From proto-Christian to post-Christian India The Trinity in the East The Brahmin Religion in Hagiographies The Brahmin Religion in Catholic Scholarship
6.4. Conclusion
7. Hinduism: An experiential Entity for Europeans
198 199 202 204
225 227
7.1. The early Travel Tradition: Brahmin Ascetics and devil Priests The Dutch cross-cultural Encounters The German cross-cultural Encounters The French cross-cultural Encounters The English cross-cultural Encounters
228 230 238 241 243
7.3. Conclusion
260
7.2. The Orientalist Travellers in the East Hinduism in the English cultural Experience Hinduism in the Dutch cultural Experience Hinduism in other European Experiences
8. Orientalism and the cultural History of Europe: Two Case Studies
8.1. Pentitentiary Orders and the Indian Religion of the Priest Monasteries, Rules and Works of Penance Asceticism and Works of Penance The Medieval Wanderers The Penitentiaries of the Devil The illustrative Tradition Monastic Orders and the Comparative Method
247 248 252 257 262
262 264 265 266 268 275 279
contents 8.2. The Tribes of Israel, Varna and the Caste System Varna and Purusha Shukta: A Colonial Fixation? Dictionaries and Encyclopaedias The Language of Castes and Tribes Caste in the Dutch Sources Caste in the French and English Sources The Twelve Tribes of Israel: Some Concluding Remarks
283 285 290 291 293 295 297
9. Postcolonialism: The Closure of Orientalism? From Orientalists to Anglicists From pre-colonial to colonial Discourses The Heydays of Orientalism Priestly Despotism taken for Granted Orientalism and Colonial Consciousness Towards a Comparative Science of Cultures The Construction of Hinduism
302 304 305 307 308 310 314 315
Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Bibliography Selected Person Index
318 320 322 368
list of plates 1. Idol of Calicut by Jörg Breu the Elder, in L. Varthema, Die Ritterlich un[d] lobwirdig Rays (Augsburg, 1515), Iiii. 2. Idol of Calicut, in L. Varthema, Hodeporicon Indiae Orientalis (Leipzig, 1610), facing 192. 3. Idol of Calicut, in P. Boaisteau, Certaine Secrete Wonders of Nature (London, 1569). 4. Vitzliputzli in J. Andersen, De Beschryving der Reizen van Georg Andriesz; deur Oost-indiën en d ’Eilanden (Amsterdam, 1670), 46. 5. Monstrous races, in S. Münster, La Cosmographie Universellse (1552), 1332. 6. Idol of Calicut, in Münster, S., La Cosmographie Universellse (1552), 1341. 7. Muslim mosque and Hindu temple, in Bry, J. T. de and Bry, J. Israel de, India Orientalis (1613), plate xxi. 8. Idols and Religion at Malabar, in Aa, Pieter van der, La Galérie Agréable du Monde, vol. 25 (1729), 4d. 9. Yogis or Banyan Saints by Gilliam Vander Gouwen, in Nieuhof, Johan, Gedenkweerdige Brasiliaense Zee- en Lant- Reize, vol. 2 (1682), facing 82. 10. Fakirs, in Aa, Pieter van der, La Galérie Agréable du Monde, vol. 24 (1729), 42. 251 11. Idol Ganga, in Aa, Pieter van der, La Galérie Agréable du Monde, vol. 24 (1729), 42. 12. Penitentiary ceremonies, in Aa, Pieter van der, La Galérie Agréable du Monde, vol. 25 (1729), 4e. 13. Heathen Penance, in Happel, Eberhard Werner, Relationes Curiosæ (1683), facing 780. 14. Enlarged view of Heathen Penance, in Happel, Eberhard Werner, Relationes Curiosæ (1683), facing 780.
v
87 88 98 148 167 168 233 246 271 276 276 277 277 278
vi
acknowledgments
Many people have contributed considerably to this work that bears only my name. Prof. S. N. Balagangadhara introduced me both to the Comparative Science of Cultures and to India, and he has been an unfailing source of wisdom, erudition and empathy in the long years that mark our friendship. The members of the Research Centre Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap at Ghent University, both previous and present—Esther Bloch, Sarah Claerhout, Nele De Gersem, Willem Derde, Dr. Jakob De Roover, Emanuel Maes, Marianne Keppens, Alexander Naessens and Sarika Rao—provided a collegial and familial environment. Should they concur with what I have to say, consider this essay as being jointly authored. Most of the research for this thesis was conducted at the British Library, London. The staff and librarians of the Rare Books section and the India Office Records were so helpful and accommodating that I made the library my home for three years. Dr. Sanchari Dutta copy-edited the final chapters, with eagle-eyed precision and unconditional friendship. This essay was written with the financial support of the Flemish Science Foundation. Lastly, and most importantly, I reserve a deep gratitude for my parents—August and Marie-Louise Gelders—without whom, little of this would have been completed.
note on bibliography and style
vii
The bibliography provides a comprehensive list of European engagements
with India in England, France, Germany and the Low Countries; the relevant works from the Iberian Peninsula and Italy are included where they exercized a measurable impact on the European representation of India. The remit of the coverage includes: early-modern histories of Christianity, geographies and histories of Europe, cosmographies, universal histories, and theological and polemical treatises in the popular domain. The bibliography divides this wide corpus into: (1) pre-fifteenth-century sources; (2) Reformation and Enlightenment debates; (3) geography, historiography and comparative religion; (4) fiction; (5) Jesuit scholarship and correspondence; (6) travelogues and collections of voyages; (7) dictionaries; (8) British colonial scholarship. This will provide the basis for an annotated bibliography, to be compiled at a later date, which will serve as a catalogue for colleagues in the field and a resource base for students of the history of anthropology and cultural history of India and Europe, with a focus on the early-modern period. In order to emphasize the dissemination and impact of a specific narrative— for example, that of Ludovico di Varthema, Johannes Boemus or Sebastian Münster—its multiple editions and translations are stated in the main text of the dissertation. Standard bibliographical information—that is, edition, place of publication, and wherever possible, the translator—follow in the footnote reference. Where no language is given, English is implied. Place names are standardized and transliterated in the contemporary spelling. To assist the reader, the citations from the European vernaculars—French, Dutch and German—are translated in the main text; the original quotation follows in the footnote reference. All translations are mine, unless indicated otherwise.
Chapter One
Introduction: Orientalism and the Construction of Hinduism
E
dward Said’s Orientalism (1978) popularized the idea that European descriptions of other cultures are unreliable at best, unscientific at worst and implicated in an imperialist and western-cultural project. The present essay is situated within the larger context of the debate on Orientalism. It engages with a controversy arising from Said’s seminal work: the debate about the colonial construction of Hinduism. South Asia scholars have challenged the conception of Hinduism as a world religion, with distinct doctrines, clerical institutions, sacred laws and holy scriptures, on grounds that this understanding of the Indian traditions is little more than a colonial construction. In opposition to the scholarship of the subject, this essay argues that Hinduism is a European construct, but one that emerged as a theoretical entity in the libraries and universities of Europe, long before the era of British colonialism. A rich and extensive corpus lies readily at hand, for a critical assessment of the cultural context in which the European representations of the Indian traditions, and especially, ‘Hinduism’ emerged. This Chapter introduces these works, whilst outlining the theoretical framework and research hypothesis that will guide our inquiry into the European representations of India. The first section summarizes the conventional wisdom on the construction of Hinduism, with the view of critically evaluating the merits of the postcolonial assessments of the colonial representations of India. This Chapter finds that contemporary critical scholarship on Indian traditions has kept many if not most of the colonial presuppositions intact, leading to a continuity between colonial and postcolonial reflections on the Indian traditions. As shown below, our analysis of the construction of Hinduism therefore needs to be situated in the more general debate on the European representations of the East. In this context, the second section of this Chapter outlines an alternative hypothesis on Orientalism. It proposes to look at Orientalism not simply as an anthropological chronicle of the East—shaped by the nexus of power and knowledge—but as a revealing mirror of a specific dynamic of European culture. The subsequent Chapters (2-7) explore this claim by primarily looking at one instance of Orientalism: the European representations of the Indian traditions. Chapter 8 will broaden the scope of the argument by additionally enquiring whether our hypothesis on Orientalism is also applicable to the European representations of the rest of Indian society.
2
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1.1. Postcolonial Studies and the Indian Traditions Said’s Orientalism is indebted to two bodies of literature. The first situated European research on the East in the context of specifically European debates. P. J. Marshall’s The British Discovery of Hinduism (1970) is a representative example where he suggests that Orientalist studies of Hinduism were not so much about India as they were about contemporary debates in Christian theology.1 The second body of scholarship called attention to the relations between Orientalism and colonial expansion. As Bernard Cohn had argued since the 1960s, the colonial archives, the command of Indian languages and the translations of Indian manuscripts shaped a predictable India that could be catalogued for colonial pursuits of power.2 Said’s Orientalism was heir to both bodies of literature. While one pertains the European experience of the East, the other stresses the politics of Orientalism. In accordance with the latter that relates Orientalism to the process of acquiring power over the East, postcolonial intellectuals have deconstructed categories such as caste, kingship and village India—unchanging essences used to classify and to dominate India.3 One of the questions in this debate pertains to the status of Hinduism. In this context, postcolonial scholarship has put across two important claims: (a) that Orientalism of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries systematized Europe’s knowledge about the Indian traditions into rigid and homogenous categories, and (b) these categories played a crucial role in the functioning of the colonial state. Together, these represent what might be termed as ‘the colonial constructionist thesis.’ Before positioning this essay within this specific debate on Hinduism, I will unpack the main arguments of the constructionist approach. P. J. Marshall, The British Discovery of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1970). Also see Raymond Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance: Europe’s Rediscovery of India and the East, 1680-1880, trans. G. Patterson-Black and V. Reinking (New York, 1984; French edition 1950). 2 Bernard S. Cohn, “Notes on the History of the Study of Indian Society and Culture,” in Structure and Change in Indian Society, eds. M. Singer and B. Cohn (Chicago, 1968), 3-28; and Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge. The British in India (Princeton, 1996). For a political analysis of Orientalism prior to Said, see A. Abdel-Malek, “Orientalism in Crisis,” Diogenes 44 (1963): 103-40. Also see Hussein A. Syed, The Myth of the Lazy Native: A Study of the Image of the Malays, Filipinos and Javanese from the 16th to the 20th Century and its Function in the Ideology of Colonial Capitalism (London, 1977). 3 The 44th South Asia Seminar at the University of Pennsylvania spent the academic year 1988-1989 on the topic “Orientalism and Beyond.” The emphasis on the problem of knowledge and power is manifest in the collection of essays derived from these deliberations. See Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, eds., Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia (Philadelphia, 1993). 1
introduction
3
The Problem of Hinduism The field of religious studies has for long acknowledged the difficulty in making sense of the religious landscape of India. Not only does Hinduism lack many properties of religions such as Christianity and Islam but it also embraces a large variety of traditions that could share little or nothing in common. Many of these traditions either reject the authority of the Vedas or emphasize their insignificance. It is thus impossible to identify a scripture to which all the Hindus adhere. In addition, there is simply no doctrine or practice central to the multiple traditions called ‘Hinduism’ today, and there exists no central authority that could pass binding judgment on the exegesis of scriptures were they to exist. None of these separate traditions built an allIndia institutional body; none of them knows of what could be considered a central organization; authority still resides exclusively in the charisma of individual teachers and the guruparampara. Accordingly, traditions such as Vaishnavism and Shaivism, for instance, consist of numerous sampradayas or traditions themselves, which are divided in turn on the basis of local differences. A central creed, a common scripture and an identifiable authority not only define religions like Christianity and Islam, but also allow us to distinguish these religions from each other. Given the absence of such elements in the realm of the Indian traditions, it is widely held today that Hinduism only emerged as a unified religion through the colonial encounter. It is commonplace that the term Hinduism came into common parlance only in the nineteenth century. It was derived from ‘Hindooism,’ first employed in 1787 by the missionary and later director of the East India Company, Charles Grant.4 The construction of a unified Hindu religion is therefore said to have been part of the British colonial project to impose conceptual and administrative order upon a world alien to them. The constructionist thesis has it that multiple religious phenomena were wrongly understood as part
Geoffrey A. Oddie, Imagined Hinduism: British Protestant Missionary Constructions of Hinduism (London, 2006), 68–72. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (Minneapolis, 1991 [1964]), 144, can be seen as a precursor of this thesis. The term ‘Hindu’ traces to ancient Greek and Persian applications of ‘Sindhu,’ which referred to anything native to the country beyond the river Indus. This is how the Muslim administration used it: not to deisgnate a people united by religious identity, but to combine various communities within the political structure of Muslim rule. The term did not ascribe a religious unity to the communities and also embraced the Indian Muslims and Christians.
4
4
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of one religion of all the Hindus.5 Its proponents claim to have identified the elements that gave birth to the construction of Hinduism. The Textualization and Brahmanization of Tradition The first element that is said to have given birth to Hinduism is the ‘textual attitude’ of the British: by assuming that the key to understand the Indian traditions was to be found in the ancient texts of India, the Orientalists were guilty of understanding these traditions by looking for their textual foundations. A criticism of such an orientation is not meant to deny the existence of indigenous literary traditions, as Richard King (1999) points out, but emphasizes instead “the sense in which Western presuppositions about the role of sacred texts in ‘religion’ predisposed orientalists towards focusing upon such texts as the essential foundation for understanding the Hindu people as a whole.”6 Guiding this ‘textualization of tradition’ are the specific presuppositions of the Orientalists, or what King (2009) also calls “the dominant Anglo-Protestant conception of religion.”7 The emphasis upon scriptures as the locus of religion channelled the interest of many into the textual aspects of Indian culture. In other words, they applied what Sharada Sugirtharajah (2003) calls “Western Protestant hermeneutical principles” in their search for a body of texts which far from being pan-Indian in application only represented the views of a priestly elite.8 This, then, leads onto the second element: the role of native agency. The British did not simply single out texts picked at random; but when they spoke of Hinduism, they were referring to a religion constituted by the canonicity In 1989 a collection of essays on this subject was issued, resulting from the European Conference of Modern Asian Studies at Heidelberg (1986). See Gunther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke, eds., Hinduism Reconsidered (New Delhi, 1989; revised edition 1997). 6 Richard King, Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and ‘the Mystic East’ (London, 1999), 101. 7 Richard King, “Colonialism, Hinduism and the Discourse of Religion,” in Rethinking Religion in India: The Colonial Construction of Hinduism, eds. E. Bloch, M. Keppens, R. Hegde (London, 2010), 95-113 [105]. 8 Sharada Sugirtharajah, Imagining Hinduism: A Postcolonial Perspective (London, 2003), 25. Also see Rosane Rocher, “British Orientalism in the Eighteenth Century: The Dialectics of Knowledge and Government,” in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia, ed. C. Breckenridge and P. van der Veer (Philadelphia, 1993), 215-249. This textual orientation is by no means unique to the study of of Hinduism. See Philip Almond, The British Discovery of Buddhism (Cambridge, 1988), 24; and Gregory Schopen, “Archaeology and Protestant Presuppositions in the Study of Indian Buddhism,” History of Religions 31, no. 1 (1991): 1-23. 5
introduction
5
of the Vedas, which carried the authoritative approval of the Brahmins. The second component of ‘the colonial constructionist’ thesis came into vogue in the process of adding nuances to bare claim that Orientalism would be an exclusively western affair. Many felt that to simply claim that ‘Hinduism is a western construct’ was to deny agency to the natives: hence, the added nuance that there was complicity between the ruling Metropolis and the native elites in the process of construction. In the words of King (1999), ignoring the role of the colonized would be “to erase the colonial subject from history and perpetuate the myth of the passive Oriental.”9 The native informants who provided the data that gave content to the colonial discourse are typically identified as the Brahmins. Robert Eric Frykenberg (1989) suggests that the Brahmins participated in colonial discourse in such a way that the Hinduism we know today emerges as “a symbiosis between government and local elites.”10 An influential proponent of this thesis, Nicholas Dirks (2001), similarly argues that a myriad of traditions was delineated into a pan-Indian religion that turned out to be ever more Brahmanic. The canonization of Brahmin texts and structures was instrumental in dictating colonial choices regarding traditions and identities.11 In other words, in a quest for unifying categories, colonial scholars mistook the elements of the Vedantic religion to be the essence of a unified religion. Several administrative measures contributed to the reification of this entity. The census project touched almost everyone in India. It is generally accepted that the compiling of information into the categories of the colonial administration Richard King, Orientalism and Religion, 146. Robert Frykenberg, “The Emergence of Modern ‘Hinduism’ as a Concept and as an Institution: A Reappraisal with special Reference to South India,” in Hinduism Reconsidered, 29-49 [35]. Also see John S. Hawley, “Naming Hinduism,” Wilson Quarterly 15, no. 2 (1991): 2034; Richard King, Orientalism and Religion, 103-04; Geoffrey Oddie, Imagined Hinduism, 99, 265-7; Peter van der Veer, “The Foreign Hand: Orientalist Discourse in Sociology and Communalism,” in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament, 23-44; and Gauri Viswanathan, “Colonialism and the Construction of Hinduism,” in The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism, ed. G. Flood (Oxford, 2003), 23-44. 11 Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton, N. J., 2001). The notion of Brahmin centrality also guides historians who seek to soften the impact of colonial rule on Indian society by emphasizing collaborations between native informants and colonial administrators, leading to more gradual transformations. See Christopher Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire (Cambridge, 1988), 155-68; Eugene Irschick, Dialogue and History: Constructing South India, 1795-1895 (Berkeley, 1994); and David Washbrook, “Orients and Occidents: Colonial Discourse Theory and the Historiography of the British Empire,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire: Historiography, ed. R. Winks (Oxford, 1999), 596-611. For other variations, see Brian K. Pennington, Was Hinduism Invented? Britons, Indians, and the Colonial Construction of Religion (New York, 2005). 9
10
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led to the imposition of such concepts on the Indian population itself.12 As David Ludden (1993) sees it, “The fathers of orientalism in India furthered colonial centralization by subordinating the Indian intelligentsia to English epistemological authority.”13 Nationalism and Religious Reform The adoption of the categories of the state extended to several domains. Detailed historical studies have shown that by using the legal apparatus of the state for the settlement of disputes related to the administration of Hindu temples, indigenous movements developed a structure of legal precedents for an entirely new and state-supported religion.14 Those who had been categorized as Hindus had no reason to contradict the notion of a unified identity, as the vision of a Hindu majority community was not without its political advantages. In light of the struggle for Independence, a unified Hindu entity leveraged the search for a national identity and supported political mobilization.15 Simultaneously, several reform movements—such as the Brahmo Samaj, the Arya Samaj and the Prarthana Samaj—developed as indigenous responses to the missionary encounter and the Christian mindset of the rulers.16 The nineteenth-century reformers sought for a monotheistic God, a Scripture and congregational worship in Hinduism. They set out to “rid religion of the features most attacked by Christian missionaries” and made “the Hindu religion correspond more rigorously to the Judeo-Christian conceptions of a
Bernard S. Cohn, “The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia,” Folk 26 (1984): 25-49; and Michael Haan, “Numbers in Nirvana: How the 1872-1921 Indian censuses helped operationalise ‘Hinduism’,” Religion 35, no. 1 (2005): 13-30. 13 David Ludden, “Orientalist Empiricism: Transformations of Colonial Knowledge,” in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament, 250-278 [253]. Also see Peter van der Veer, Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain (Princeton, N. J., 2001). 14 Robert Eric Frykenberg, “Constructions of Hinduism at the Nexus of History and Religion,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23, no. 3 (1993): 523-550 [538-9]. 15 Vasudha Dalmia, ““The only real religion of the Hindus.” Vaisnava self-representation in the late nineteenth century’,” in Representing Hinduism: The Construction of Religious Traditions and National Identity, eds. V. Dalmia and H. von Stietencron (New Delhi, 1995), 176–210; and Romila Thapar, “Imagined Religious Communities? Ancient History and the Modern Search for a Hindu Identity,” Modern Asian Studies 23, no. 2 (1989): 209-31 [228-29]. 16 Kenneth W. Jones, Arya Dharm: Hindu consciousness in 19th-century Punjab (Berkeley, 1976); and David Kopf, British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance (Berkeley, 1969). 12
introduction
7
single, all-powerful deity.”17 In this context, Romila Thapar (1985) observes that the result was a “syndicated Hinduism” paralleling some features of the Semitic religions.18 In other words, an amorphous set of ritualistic traditions with a variety of scriptures and modes of worship that were rarely congregational was transformed into a unified religion. Just as the vision of a majority community played a central role in the struggle for Independence, a unified religious identity stood as a bulwark against Christian conversion.19 Even today, one of the largest diasporic movements known to modern times continues to contribute to this Sanskritization, textualization and homogenization of the Indian traditions.20
1.2. The Constructionist Failure While ‘the colonial constructionist thesis’ can be seen as a forceful critique of the Orientalist discourse, it falls prey to its own criticism. One could easily argue that ‘the constructionist thesis’ is in itself a product of Orientalism: After all, it presupposes a monolithic and non-historical Brahmin religion around which Hinduism came to be constructed. One of the central tenets of ‘the constructionist thesis’ is this: the Orientalists focused upon manuscripts that were only representative of the ecclesiastical elite. Such an assertion carries with it an intrinsic inconsistency. If there was no unified Hindu religion prior to the colonial intervention, what do the constructionists mean when they say that Orientalism focused solely on the texts of a priestly elite? Who were these priests? This remains obscure, unless we assume that they were the priests of the Brahmin religion, that is, Brahmanism. If this answer is given, one can indeed suggest that postcolonial scholarship recapitulates Orientalist discourse. First, it accepts that at least Brahmanism has properties similar Gauri Viswanathan, “Colonialism and the Construction of Hinduism,” 27. Also see J. Laine, “The Notion of “Scripture” in modern Indian Thought,” Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute 64 (1983): 165-179; and Geoffrey Oddie, “Constructing “Hinduism”: The Impact of the Protestant Missionary Movement on Hindu Self-Understanding,” in Christians and Missionaries in India: Cross-Cultural Communication since 1500, ed. R. Frykenberg (Michigan, 2003), 155-182 [158]. 18 Romila Thapar, “Syndicated Moksha?,” Seminar 313 (1985): 14-22. 19 John Zavos, Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in India (Delhi, 2000); and John Zavos, “Defending Hindu Tradition: Sanatana Dharma as a Symbol of Orthodoxy in Colonial India,” Religion 31, no. 2 (2001): 109-123. 20 Steven Vertovec, “Hinduism in Diaspora: The Transformation of Tradition in Trinidad,” in Hinduism Reconsidered, 157-186. 17
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to Christianity and Islam: sacred scriptures, a central creed and a priesthood. Second, while shifting the analysis from Hinduism to Brahmanism, it presupposes the existence of a monolithic Brahmanical system that holds sway both before and after colonial rule as a pan-Indian system. Rethinking the Role of Brahmins The Brahmins can hardly be called a unified group. Nor do they constitute an ecclesiastical organization. It has been empirically demonstrated that diverse groups in Indian society have always been able to set up their own temples without being dependent upon the Brahmins.21 This has also been suggested in an ethnographic study undertaken by Kuvempu University (2007) on the political, economic and socio-cultural status of the Dalits (scheduled castes) in Karnataka.22 Their comprehensive fieldwork is worthy of elaboration, for it uncovers in rich detail the very complexity of the traditions and identities that characterize India today. The different communities in rural India are shown to maintain their own shrines and organize these shrines around the devotion of their own devas or deities. Within the boundaries of the same village, the several communities not only have their own temples but also enjoy the service of a pujari (who performs the rituals) from within their own community. The main village deity is invariably selected from the majority community and differs widely across the villages. Equally, whichever shrine is designated as the village shrine, those responsible for the rituals belong to the majority community. They are the only ones allowed to enter the shrine where the village deity is kept. In areas where non-Brahmins are in the majority, the village pujari will not be a Brahmin. In other words, the Brahmins were not and nor could have been the priest of India. They did not constitute any organization: a pan-Indian Brahmanic alliance did not exist prior to colonization, nor does it exist today. The constructionists simply presuppose the existence of a unified priesthood and power centre today, which dominates the religion of all Hindus and decides about orthodoxy and orthopraxy. However, in the absence of such an institutional body, it is next to impossible that a religion could have come into being Partha Chatterjee, “Caste and Subaltern Consciousness,” in Subaltern studies: Writings on South Asian history and society, ed. R. Guha (Delhi, 1989), 169-209 [195]; and Declan Quigley, The Interpretation of Caste (Oxford, 1993), 54-86. Also see Raf Gelders and Willem Derde, “Mantras of Anti-Brahmanism: Colonial Experience of Indian Intellectuals,” Economic and Political Weekly 38, no. 43 (2003): 4611-4617. 22 Shanmukha Armugam, Status of Dalits in Village Life (Shankaraghatta, 2007 [Kannada]). 21
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from the Himalayas in the North to Cape Comorin in the South.23 Rethinking the Role of Scriptures In giving primacy to textual sources, the constructionists fail to address the moot fact that the ‘sacred texts of Brahmanism’ were unknown to the majority of Brahmins when the British began to create a colonial state. It is simply presupposed that the ‘textualization of tradition’ is unproblematic when applied to the Brahmin traditions; and thus, they reapply precisely those “Protestant hermeneutical principles” that they set out to critique. Yet, the focus of this application is Brahmanism—i.e., the core of Hinduism—which is transfixed in an ancient Sanskrit past. Hence their inability to take into account that these texts were unknown to the majority of the Brahmins until they were unearthed by colonial scholars in the nineteenth century. For instance, when the Bengali reformer Rammohun Roy translated the Upanishads into English in the 1820s, a local pundit charged him with having fabricated them himself.24 The Sanskritist Fitzedward Hall wrote in 1868 that “the learned Bengali has long been satisfied, substantially, to do without the Veda.”25 Max Müller compiled his famous series, The Sacred Books of the East (1879), exactly in order to popularize them. While it is assumed that these works were not only known but also important, it is a matter of historical record that texts like the Bhagavad Gita, the Vedas and Upanishads only moved to occupy the centre stage in colonial thought.26 This is not to deny the existence of Brahmin traditions where textual transmission does play a role, but to emphasize Needless to say, Brahmin centrality is widely accepted by scholars who defend a more traditional, Indological approach and still argue for an ancient Vedic unity found in sacred scriptures. Madeleine Biardeau, Hinduism: The Anthropology of a Civilization, trans. R. Nice (Oxford, 1989; French edition 1981) argues against the constructionist thesis by postulating an ancient Vedic structure behind contemporary practices. For the same approach in traditional sourcebooks on Hinduism, see Steven Rosen, Essential Hinduism (London, 2006). Others even argue that ‘the constructionist thesis’ denies the Brahmins their traditional role: “to do what theologians do: dictate, in general terms, about the nature and supposed essence of religion.” See Brian K. Smith, “Who Does, Can, and Should Speak for Hinduism,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 68, no. 4 (2000): 741-49 [744]. 24 Stephen Hay, ed., Dialogue between a Theist and an Idolater: An 1820 Tract Probably by Rammohun Roy (Calcutta, 1963), 46 n. 25 Fitzedward Hall cited in Om Prakash Kejariwal, The Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Discovery of India’s Past, 1784-1838 (Oxford, 1988), 3. For similar observations, see Jean-Antoine Dubois, Description of the Character, Manners, and Customs of the People of India etc. (London, 1816), 173-74. 26 A similar point is made in G. P. Deshpande, “The plural Tradition,” Seminar 313 (1985): 23-29. 23
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the ways in which the postcolonial scholarship reapplies the assumptions that are alleged to have guided the colonial scholarship. While some manuscripts or texts might undoubtedly be of importance to some traditions in India, there is no reason to assume that they serve the same purpose as the Torah, the Bible in Judaism and Christianity. The realm of the Indian traditions knows of many books, songs, legends and poems. Some are recited in some traditions, others in other traditions, and there are yet traditions that reject all textual transmissions.27 Even when textual sources are considered important, scriptural authority is either absent or differs significantly from the status of divine Revelation amongst the Jews and Christians. The presence of various meditation techniques and yogic practices central to so many Indian traditions should suffice to get the point across: these are not textual in nature. Therefore, it is not clear today what the role of texts is in the Indian traditions. There is no prima facie evidence to presume that some texts among the Brahmin traditions (or any other Hindu tradition) have the same status that the Bible has in Christianity or the Koran in Islam.28 In consequence, the postcolonial critique of the ‘ahistorical textualization of tradition’ is deceptive: it takes for granted that the body of manuscripts on which the Orientalists relied was indeed central to the Brahmin traditions, and presupposes the pre-colonial existence of a unified Brahmanic religion. But evidence in support of these assumptions is still to see the light of day. Rethinking the Chronology of Orientalism This is not all. The connection between postcolonial reflections on the nature of Hinduism and the Orientalist method runs much deeper. In fact, colonial scholarship explicitly emphasized the presence of diversity in the realm of the Indian religions. The ‘method’ used by the nineteenth-century Orientalists to negotiate this diversity was to postulate and identify a sacerdotal nucleus. The proponents of ‘the constructionist thesis’ use and extend the same method today: they negotiate the diversity that marks the subcontinent by postulating a unifying Brahmanic essence around which Hinduism was supposedly constructed. Heinrich von Stietencron, “Religious Configurations in Pre-Muslim India and the Modern Concept of Hinduism,” in Representing Hinduism, 51-81 [51-52.] 28 Specialists in the field have since long recognized this. See R. N. Dandekar, “Hinduism,” in Historia Religionum: Handbook for the History of Religions, eds. E. J. Bleeker and G. Widengren, vol. 2 (Leiden, 1969), 237-345; and Simon Weightman, “Hinduism,” in A Handbook of Living Religions, ed. J. R. Hinnells (Harmondsworth, 1984), 191-236. 27
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The colonial scholars and administrators organized the data on the Indian traditions into a specific structure of representation. They used ‘Hinduism’ as a single category of analysis to classify a heterogeneous collection of traditions, and held that this variety of traditions is united under a Brahmin priesthood. Whereas its scriptures harbour a monotheistic religion, the priesthood masterminded new religious laws and ceremonies. This proliferation of modes of worship was the source of their sacerdotal revenue and power. In other words, the colonial structure of representation consists of two distinct branches: ‘philosophical Hinduism,’ and ‘popular Hinduism.’ The former identifies an ancient monotheistic religion in sacred scriptures, while the latter points to its corrupted manifestations in idolatry and ritual praxis. Central to this simplified synthesis of manifold and crosscutting traditions stands the Brahmin protagonist: the agent of religious change is identified as the priesthood, or the nodal point in this colonial composition. These elements structured the account of ‘the Gentoo religion’ by the East India Company employee, John Zephania Holwell, by the 1760s.29 The same ideas enticed eminent Orientalists such as Sir William Jones (1786) to delve into India’s past and uncover its unadulterated religion.30 The multiplicity of local sects and practices was the focus of Horace Hayman Wilson’s famous Sketch of the Religious Sects of the Hindus, issued in two volumes of the Asiatic Researches (in 1828 and 1832, respectively). One of the most authoritative colonial sources on Indian religion, Monier Monier-Williams’ Hinduism (1877), was in fact an attempt to unite the two extremes that had come to light after comparing the scriptural sources with the local sects and practices. Monier-Williams accomplished this task by juxtaposing ‘the Brahmin religion’ against contemporary forms of Hinduism. His Brahmanism and Hinduism (1891) further explained that “the multiplicity of domestic ceremonies … are ‘roped together’ by one rigid and unyielding line of Brāhmanical pantheistic doctrine.”31 Monier-Williams emphasized the composite character of Hinduism, and, like contemporary scholarship on this issue, stressed the alien nature of the term.32 John Zephaniah Holwell, Interesting Historical Events relative to the Provinces of Bengal and the Empire of Indostan etc. (London, 1765-67). Also see Alexander Dow, The History of Hindostan (London, 1768). 30 William Jones, “The Third Anniversary Discourse: On the Hindus,” Asiatic Researches 1 (1786): 343-55. Also see Henry T. Colebrooke, “On the Religious Ceremonies of the Hindus, and of the Bra’hmens Especially,” Asiatic Researches 5 (1801): 345-68, and Asiatic Researches 7 (1801): 232-87. 31 Monier Monier-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism: Or, Religious Thought and Life in India (s.l., 1891), ix. 32 Ibid., xvii-xviii. 29
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The colonial scholars and administrators were thus not entirely out of touch with the Indian reality. This made them use a terminology that clearly prefigures the postcolonial vocabulary: Hinduism is “an immense mosaic,” Monier-Williams wrote. It was “a colossal edifice formed by a congeries of heterogeneous materials, without symmetry or unity of design.”33 The colonial scholars engaged with this diversity by postulating a Brahmanic nucleus behind the mosaic of traditions: ‘philosophical Hinduism,’ or the Sanskrit form of religion that traces to a paradisiacal past.34 The second fork in this model of religion was ‘popular Hinduism,’ or the corruption of the monotheistic core into idolatry.35 Postcolonial proponents of ‘the colonial constructionist’ thesis recapitulate this structure of representation: they similarly negotiate the diversity that marks the subcontinent by postulating an ancient sacerdotal system that unifies multiple Indian traditions into a pan-Indian religion. This two-tiered structure of representation not only advances forward from the colonial era reaching into the post-colonial present. But, as this essay demonstrates, it has a long history of interpretation that extends backwards into the pre-colonial past. Once contemporary scholarship established that Hinduism was the outcome of colonial forms of knowledge production, it seemed unnecessary for most to study the greater part of the archive of European descriptions of India, which is neither British nor for that matter, colonial in nature. Yet, the subject is of considerable interest. As shown in the subsequent chapters, the juxtaposition of ‘philosophical Hinduism’ against ‘popular Hinduism,’ and the emphasis on a Brahmin ‘priesthood’ as the axis around which both images revolve, can be traced to two modes of representation that developed in the European libraries and universities before the 1550s. The existence of a unifying and Brahmanic religious system appears unchallengeable and simply in the nature of things. As shown below, a better understanding of how it developed requires a serious engagement with
Ibid., xviii. This golden past was elevated by poets and philosophers of the Romantic period. See Raymond Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance. For the impact of the golden-past theory on indigenous developments, see David Kopf, British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance. 35 This two-tiered conception of religion additionally structured the representation of religion in colonial historiography and successive Orientalist scholarship. For colonial historiography, see Mountstuart Elphinstone, The History of India (London, 1841), 86, 99; and John Wilson, India three thousand Years ago (Bombay, 1858). Also see Alfred Lyall, Natural Religion in India etc. (Cambridge, 1891), 6-7. The notion of priestly corruption also structured French Orientalism of the period. See Jean-Antoine Dubois, Description of the character, manners, and customs of the people of India. 33 34
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the pre-colonial European representations of India.36 As such, the widely accepted thesis that the Orientalist descriptions of India were primarily shaped by the colonial project has to be called into question. For those who followed Said (1978), Orientalist scholarship became an expression of the intellectual superiority and political dominance exercized by the West in India. Hence, the connection drawn between the construction of Hinduism and the colonial state. As this work intends to show, the European representations of the Indian traditions cannot be fruitfully approached without an understanding of Orientalism that transcends the tired theme of power and ‘colonial’ knowledge. The following section therefore presents an alternative understanding of Orientalism. It will outline the working hypothesis, to be elaborated in greater detail in the Chapters that follow.
1.2. On the Nature of Hinduism The two bodies of literature which coalesced in Said’s work are carried forward in contemporary scholarship. With regard to India, the Orientalism debate has mainly been conducted by scholars who elaborate the power of colonial knowledge. Two options offer an avenue out of the empirical problems faced by postcolonial scholarship. On the one hand, we could argue—as classical studies of India do—that Hinduism is indeed the age-old Vedic religion of India. Yet, the vision of a centralized religion centred upon a Brahmanic nucleus runs into several difficulties. On the other, we could revisit Orientalism (1978) and emphasize with S. N. Balagangadhara (1998, 2009), another approach to the European representations of other cultures.37 This essay will travel along the latter route. Hence, rather than outlining the relations between colonial state formation and colonial knowledge, it will draw attention to the often neglected thread in Said’s work that engages with Orientalist discourse not primarily as an imperialist but rather as a cultural project.
It must be remarked that the archive of pre-colonial sources constitutes the most challenging problem for ‘the colonial constructionist thesis.’ See the essays in David N. Lorenzen, Who invented Hinduism (New Delhi, 2006). Besides the empirical problems outlined above, the debate on the construction of Hinduism is also fraught with conceptual ambiguity. See Jakob De Roover and Sarah Claerhout, “The Colonial Construction of What?,” in Rethinking Religion in India: The Colonial Construction of Hinduism, 164-183. 37 S. N. Balagangadhara, “The Future of the Present: Thinking through Orientalism,” Cultural Dynamics 10, no. 2 (1998): 101-123; and S. N. Balagangadhara and Marianne Keppens, “Reconceptualizing the postcolonial Project,” Interventions 11, no. 1 (2009): 50-68. 36
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The Orient: An experiential Entity of the West Said characterized the Orient not only as a physical space in the world—adjacent to Europe and the stage of European colonialism—but also as an idea. Orientalism represents the place that the Orient is, “as a mode of discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines…”38 An entity in the world (the Orient) is represented in some way or the other by a mode of discourse, and exists within this discourse together with concomitant imageries and representations: an idea, more than a physical entity.39 In other words, ‘the Orient’ is a theoretical term. This is how we can understand the claim that “The Orient is an integral part of the European material civilization and culture.”40 Or to put this differently, the Orient knows of a special place in western culture: Unlike the Americans, the French and British—less so the Germans, Russians, Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, and Swiss—have had a long tradition of what I shall be calling Orientalism, a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in European Western experience.41
If ‘the Orient’ is part of the European experience, then it has to be understood as an ‘experiential entity’ of the West. The Orient is thus not only a place or simply a theoretical term: but it is also constructed as a specific entity within the western experience of the world. It makes sense to talk of the special place of this entity in the “European western experience” by relating it to other ‘experiential entities.’ One culture (the West) creates an experiential universe to come to terms with another culture (the East). This universe is inhabited by experiential objects, ‘the Orient’ being one such. In other words, the West takes recourse to its experience of the world when it engages with the Orient that exists in the world. The term ‘Orient’ refers to an entity-inexperience: it is an object within the experiential world of the West.42 Orientalism represents this object—Orientalism is therefore an expression of the western experience of the world.
Edward W. Said, Orientalism: Western Representations of the Orient (London, 1978), 2. Ibid., 1-2. 40 Ibid., 2. 41 Ibid., 1 (emphasis in the original). 42 S. N. Balagangadhara and Marianne Keppens, “Reconceptualizing the postcolonial Project,” 52. 38 39
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Orientalism: A cultural Project Said repeatedly wrote that Orientalism is not simply an imperialist project but has to be understood as a cultural project: “to speak of Orientalism is to speak mainly, although not exclusively, of a British and French cultural enterprise...”43 This view surfaces several times in his work and also receives a deeper meaning: Said writes that Orientalism “has less to do with the Orient than it does with ‘our’ world.”44 That Orientalism “makes sense at all depends more on the West than on the Orient … Orientalism responded more to the culture that produced it than to its putative object.”45 In other words, the manner in which the East that exists out there was transformed into ‘the Orient’ tells us something about the West. While the putative object of Orientalism is the East, its actual object of description is an entity that exists in the experiential world of the West. Orientalism thus tells us about western culture: far from being a mere description of the East, it hints at the manner in which the West comes to terms with the reality that is the East. Or to put this differently, Orientalist discourse is an indirect representation of the West, masked as a discourse about the East. This conception of Orientalism throws light on Said’s claim that “Orientalism is a form of paranoia, knowledge of another kind, say, from ordinary historical knowledge.”46 That is to say, the paranoid mistakes his own experiences of people and situations in the world with actual knowledge about the world. He sees his stubborn conviction about people’s intentions as a description of the world and not as a record of his own experience of the world. The same holds good at the level of Orientalism. The Orientalist also proclaims that his work—Orientalism—represents other cultures. In much the same way as no objective observation or fact can refute the experience of the paranoid, no observation or new discovery can alter the obstinacy of Orientalist discourse.47 Because Orientalism is a record of the European experience, ‘Orientalist knowledge’ similarly cannot be refuted: This information (about the Orient) seemed to be morally neutral and objectively valid; it seemed to have an epistemological status equal to that of historical chronology or geographical location. In its most basic form, then, Oriental Edward W. Said, Orientalism: Western Representations of the Orient, 4. Ibid., 12. 45 Ibid., 22. 46 Ibid., 72. 47 S. N. Balagangadhara and Marianne Keppens, “Reconceptualizing the postcolonial Project,” 58-59. 43 44
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material could not really be violated by anyone’s discoveries, nor did it seem ever to be revaluated completely.48
As such, Orientalism is not false because the West gave a false description of the reality that the East is, but rather since it wrongly assumed that the experiential entity it constructed to come to terms with the East is also an entity that exists in the East. Said not only describes Orientalism as how the West experienced the Orient, but also as the discourse which structured that experience: the West built conceptual frameworks using resources available from its own culture. Orientalism: A limited Way of Talking About Said has repeatedly noted that racist, sexist and imperialist vocabularies do not render any kind of discourse into Orientalism. These are not the inherent properties of Orientalist discourse but its imageries.49 His characterization of Orientalism can be summed up as follows: “Orientalism ... is, rather than expresses, a certain will or intention to understand, in some case control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is manifestly a different (or alternative and novel) world.”50 In other words, Orientalism is the western project of coming to terms with an alien world. This task has cognitive limits. In Said’s own words, “Orientalism is better grasped as a set of constraints upon and limitations of thought than it is simply as a positive doctrine.”51 The Orientalist imageries “impose themselves as a consequence” of the constraints.52 The racist, sexist and imperialist vocabularies do not define Orientalist discourse but result from a set of constraints imposed upon western thought in its attempts to come to terms with the alien world that is the East. What transforms a constrained way of thinking into Orientalist thinking? To the Westerner, however, the Oriental was always like some aspect of the West; to some of the German Romantics, for example, Indian religion was essentially an Oriental version of Germano-Christian pantheism.53
Orientalism represents the world in terms of the western culture and obscures
Edward W. Said, Orientalism: Western Representations of the Orient, 205. S. N. Balagangadhara, “The Future of the Present: Thinking through Orientalism,” 102-03. 50 Edward W. Said, Orientalism: Western Representations of the Orient, 12. 51 Ibid. 42. 52 Ibid., 60. 53 Ibid., 67 (emphasis in the original). 48 49
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the differences between other cultures and the West. The western representation of other cultures effaces the otherness of ‘the Other.’ While all human thinking is constrained by language and the conceptual resources available to it, a particular mode of thinking can be understood as Orientalist thinking when it transforms other cultures not simply into variations of itself, but into pale or false variants of itself.54 The restricted (racist, sexist and imperialist) vocabulary is but a consequence of this cognitive constraint. To summarize, ‘the Orient’ exists in the experiential world of the West. The creation of this entity is limited by cognitive constraints: it is construed as a pale or erring mirror image of the West. As a consequence, the multiple ways in which Europe has described the world are entwined with the ways in which it has experienced the world. Put differently, the history of Orientalism maps unto the multiple ways in which Europe has experienced the world. An understanding of Orientalism, therefore, necessarily begins with an understanding western culture. The present essay explores these claims by looking at one instance of Orientalism: the European representations of India. Hinduism: An experiential Entity of the West What light can our approach to Orientalism throw on the so-called construction of Hinduism? It will be my argument that Hinduism was constructed (a) as a theoretical term in the European discourses, and (b) as an object in the experiential world of the West. Few would disagree today that Christianity has determined the development of western culture. This claim needs to be taken seriously. For, it then implies that many things we take for granted are shaped by Christian thought. This theology determined the manner in which the Europeans—from different eras and places—came to terms with the cultural traditions they confronted in other parts of the world. From its inception, Christian theology predicted that religion could be found amongst all nations, because (the biblical) God conferred religion upon mankind. During the history of Christian thought, several interpretations of this idea developed. Some studied the history of this religion in the bloodline of Adam and Eve and traced its dissemination and degeneration via the sons of Noah into the nations of the world. Others argued that God implanted a sense of divinity in the human soul, which led all people and cultures to Ibid., 62: “[T]he Orient and the Oriental, Arab, Islamic, Indian, Chinese, or whatever, become repetitious pseudo-incarnations of some great original (Christ, Europe, the West) they were supposed to have been imitating.”
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seek their Creator. Whichever interpretation one preferred, the theological belief that religion was a cultural universal shaped the expectations of those who explored the world. This is the most general level at which we can pitch our hypothesis on the construction of Hinduism. When European travellers came to terms with the cultural traditions they confronted in India, they could not but conceptualize them as religion. Indeed, no ethnographic or theoretical research was needed to convince the Europeans that the traditions in India had to be categorized as religion.55 Christian theology is also a theory of religion: it has itself as object of theorizing. Christianity maintains that religion is the knowledge that God is the Creator and the Sovereign of the Cosmos. Religion is God’s Revelation of His will. The Bible narrates this will. As such, religion is also a set of propositions or beliefs about the world. Religion turns into false religion when people worship the creation instead of the Creator: Humanity has been seduced by the Devil to follow human precepts as though they expressed the will of God. With this theory of religion operating in the background, several elements of the Indian culture—the temples and architecture, images and statues, philosophical treatises, stories and folklore—were selectively interconnected to form a coherent pattern. From their philosophical traditions, the Europeans selected the aspects that resembled the belief in a monotheistic God; the temples became the churches; manuscripts became sacred scriptures; the stories became religious doctrines; animals sacred; and the devatas false gods, or the minions of the Devil. These elements were interrelated to one another and incorporated into the category of religion. Of course, it is not the case that the many Europeans who participated in this process were wildly imaginative: some Indians indeed performed puja and put garlands and other items in front of statues; others performed practices that were nothing but grotesque in the eyes of the Europeans; India knows of the most sophisticated architectural traditions; it also knows of literary traditions; and there are virtually millions of stories, songs and poems that permeate the popular imagination. But these elements were incorporated into a latent theoretical framework that determined the relations between these elements and related them to religion. This framework was no other than Christian theology. Despite its limitations, an anology from the sciences clarifies this point. Take the theory of gravity: it tells us that the attraction between two bodies, S. N. Balagangadhara, “The Heathen in his Blindness...” Asia, the West, and the Dynamic of Religion (Leiden, New York, 1994). 55
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the ebb and flow of the oceans, the orbit of the planets, the free fall of objects, and so on, result from gravitational pull. Newton allowed us to hypothesize a relationship between these phenomena and the gravitational force. In the absence of this theory, we only observe facts: the acceleration of objects; the leaning tower of Pisa; the rise and fall of the Thames. Newton allowed us to relate these phenomena to each other and to gravitation. In much the same way, Christian theology allows us to relate elements from Indian culture to each other and to religion. Without this theory of religion, the practices and treatises that were combined into a representational structure would appear as unrelated facts. These elements of the Indian reality were also given a specific meaning. The Sanskrit manuscripts became sacred texts; the devas became gods; puja became worship; temples houses of worship. Such designations are not neutral: ‘religion,’ ‘sacred,’ ‘worship,’ ‘gods’ are the terms of Christian theology, in the same way as ‘force,’ ‘mass’ and ‘gravity’ are concepts in the theory of gravity. It is in this manner that ‘the Indian religion’ (later known as Hinduism) was constructed as a theoretical entity in the framework of Christian theology. This raises two issues: (a) many Europeans who contributed to this process were neither familiar with Christian theology, nor zealots, and (b) the reason for why this framework continues to structure European representations of India long after theology has lost its sway over European society. A quick answer would be this: the representation that emerged (when several elements from Indian culture were interrelated into the background theory of Christianity) also came to exist outside the immediate ambit of theology, where it provided structure to the European experience of India. On the one hand, ‘the Indian religion’ became a concept in Christian theology. On the other, it allowed for a sense of familiarity and recognition when the Europeans confronted alien customs. Any new element in the Indian culture which the Europeans reported upon—from newly discovered manuscripts, through sati and hookswinging, to juggernaut marches—was incorporated into this conceptual scheme. As such, this theoretical entity also provided structure to the European experience of India—it was an entity-in-experience. Said (1978) distinguishes between the Orient as a physical place and ‘the Orient’ as an entity in the cultural experience of Europe. Orientalist discourse was not wrong because the West described the Orient falsely, but because it wrongly assumed that this entity-in-experience existed in the world. Similarly, ‘Hinduism’ is not a false term because it stands for a wrong account of the Indian reality, but because it has mistakenly been assumed to have an
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existence outside the European experience. It is not a description of India but rather, an account of the manner in which the West came to terms with India. In the language of Said, ‘the Indian religion’ (later known as Hinduism) has “a special place in European Western experience” and is “an integral part of the European material civilization and culture.” As an entity-in-experience it provides stability, structure and coherency to the European experience of India.56 As such, an understanding of the European representations of Indian traditions is to begin understanding European culture itself. In order to make this research hypothesis richer, this essay will explore the specific historical manifestations of this process and their connections with the particular developments in the cultural history of Europe.
1.3. The Brahmin: An integral part of European Culture In a recent article (2009), I have explored European representations of the Brahmins, with a view to demonstrating the genealogy of colonial discourses on Hinduism.57 The present essay amplifies the core ideas emanating from my published work on the subject, and extends it to embrace new themes, documents and a wider cultural focus. In first instance, the argument will substantiate the hypothesis on Orientalism by analyzing the central role of the Brahmins in the European imagination. The nineteenth-century Orientalists (like the proponents of ‘the colonial constructionist thesis’) negotiate the diversity that characterizes the Indian subcontinent by postulating an ancient sacerdotal system behind the multiplicity of local traditions. As shown throughout, this two-tiered structure of representation—‘philosophical’ versus ‘popular Hinduism’ and ‘the Brahmin priesthood’ as the axis around which both revolve—goes back to two modes of representation that developed in the European libraries before the 1550s. Both images concern the Brahmins. They are the central focus of this essay for they illustrate most crucially how European representations of India were framed for internal theological purposes. Chapter 2 introduces my argument about the first representation of the Brahmins by locating it within the wider Latin Christian context prior to the Protestant Reformation. The Brahmins and their traditions are here defined S. N. Balagangadhara, “Orientalism, Postcolonialism and the ‘Construction’ of Religion,” in Rethinking Religion in India: The Colonial Construction of Hinduism, 135-163. 57 Raf Gelders, “Genealogy of Colonial Discourse: Hindu Traditions and the Limits of European Representation,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 51, no. 03 (2009): 563-589. 56
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as the proto-Christian expressions of religion in the East. Several developments internal to Christian theology propelled the image of the proto-Christian Brahmin from the earliest ages of the Church all the way to Renaissance Europe. Chapter 3 discusses the early-modern mode of representation, and locates a second representation of the Brahmins in the polemical vocabulary of Reformation thought. That is to say, the Protestant Reformers reformulated the medieval representation in an explicit anticlerical fashion and used this novel representation to demonstrate the alleged similarities between the Roman-Catholic and the heathen priests. This second image defines the Brahmins as evil priests, responsible for the corruption of religion in the East. Both imageries are defined by the theological debates that mark the cultural history of Europe. They hold a central position in the European discourses on the East and have an impressive record in the popular imagination. Chapter 4 demonstrates that both modes of representation—the medieval image of the proto-Christian Brahmins and the image of crafty priests— were continuously recapitulated in theological controversies of seventeenthcentury England. In other words, by the time that the English East India Company transformed into a territorial power, two distinct and stable imageries of the Brahmin protagonist were widely circulating in western Europe. Taken together, these three chapters lay bare multiple issues. They suggest the emergence of a stable and coherent mode of representing Indian traditions in Renaissance Europe. Secondly, they suggest the endurance and impact of medieval imageries on the ethnographic imagination of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Europe. Thirdly, they demonstrate that the images and ideas about India that circulated in Europe were specifically defined by the theological issues of the day. Because this essay takes the first step in reconstructing the historical and cultural processes through which ‘the Indian religion of the priest’ (later known as ‘Hinduism’) became a theoretical entity in the European discourses, I will focus on the outer limits of this representational structure in Chapters 2, 3 and 4. Chapters 5 and 6 provide a detailed study of the Renaissance geographies to suggest that a two-tiered model of ‘the Indian religion of the priest’ (characteristic of both colonial as well as postcolonial scholarship) emerged when both images of the Brahmins were united at the universities of Renaissance Europe. Chapter 5 focuses on the geographies and cosmographies produced in Protestant scholarship. Chapter 6 suggests that the outline which emerged when both imageries united was not simply framed by Protestant presuppositions, but by a ‘generic’ Christian conception of the history of religion shared
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across the denominations. In addition, it demonstrates that the associated ‘textualization of tradition’ was not a specifically Protestant project but was in fact initiated in a predominantly Catholic context. In doing so, the research focuses on the works of the Jesuit missionaries and the Catholic cosmographies of the Counter-Reformation. The conceptual structure that emerged when both imageries of the Brahmins combined has become the prerequisite of order in the western experience of India. That is to suggest, without this scheme, the West would confront pandemonium and a chaotic collection of customs and traditions in the East. Drawing upon the travel reports produced in England, France, Germany and the Low Countries prior to the colonial era, Chapter 7 substantiates the statement that ‘the Indian religion’ as a conceptual structure (and as an experiential entity) provided Europe with a unitary and coherent experience of India. Every custom, every practice and tradition that subsequent travellers confronted and ‘collected’ in their notebooks was fitted into the representational structure delineated by both theological representations of the Brahmin protagonist. In other words, this work will insist that Orientalism has to be understood, not as a discourse about the East, but rather as a report of Europe’s experience of the East. To the extent that this hypothesis is acceptable, its empirical consequences will extend far beyond the present limits of ‘the construction of Hinduism.’ Monastic Orders and the Caste System Therefore, Chapter 8 outlines the emergence of two descriptive trends that ran parallel to the construction of ‘Hinduism.’ With ‘the Brahmin priesthood’ as the most central character in the European discourses on India, the ‘Indian religion of the priest’ was created as a concept at the European libraries and universities. In other words, the construction of ‘Hinduism’ was continguous with the ‘creation’ of a clerical estate. In this regard, Chapter 2 demonstrates that the medieval understanding of the role of the priests in religion determined the role assigned to the Brahmins in European discourses. Chapter 8 suggests that a parallel descriptive trend reinforced this vision of an Indian sacerdotal estate: if India’s spiritual landscape was governed by a priestly estate, it then followed that it also featured monastic orders. Indeed, Europe not only recast its monastic history to conceptualize the role of the Brahmins in Indian community life but also constructed a system of penitentiary orders around the Brahmin protagonist. Put differently, the application of the monastic history of Europe had consequences beyond the construction of a
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clerical estate. It also allowed for the construction of another trope in the European discourse on India: an Indian monastic order. The monastic history of Europe was projected onto India in such a way that the history of ‘Hinduism’ became an almost exact replay of the cultural history of Europe. Second, our hypothesis on Orientalism also has consequences for the European representations of Indian society. In this context, Chapter 8 takes serious issue with Nicholas Dirks’ study of the caste system (2001). I argue that ‘the caste system’ was emphatically not a colonial construction, because all the prerequisites that comprise the colonial representation of Indian society were present in a stable and coherent form in the early-modern European discourses. Together with ‘the religion of the priest’ crystallized the notion of the four-fold Varna division of Indian society. This had little to do with the machinations of colonial governance but is the result of a process in which multiple descriptive trends merged into a fixed and stable representation of Indian community life. Once again, these threads reflect the cultural history of Europe and were combined in the European discourses, such that at the end of the seventeenth century ‘the caste system’ was constructed as a concept that provided coherence and unity to the European experience of Indian society. As we have seen, ‘Hinduism’ is not a false representation of India because it wrongly describes multiple indigenous traditions. Rather, it is not a description of India at all, but a report of the European experience of India. Much the same could be said about the ‘caste system.’ As shown in the following chapters, ‘Hinduism’ and ‘the caste system,’ both as concepts and as experiential entities, have little or nothing to do with India. The European engagement with the world is such that it projects its own cultural history onto the history of other cultures and societies.
Chapter Two
Proto-Christianity and the Brahmin Exemplum
A
ll the way through the European Middle Ages, the Brahmin protagonist served a well-defined theological and educative purpose. Not only was he omnipresent as a virtuous heathen in the debates on salvation, but images of the Brahmin ascetic also became a didactic tool for the moralists and educators. The works discussed below introduced the Brahmins as a kind and righteous nation, pleasing to God Almighty—as an example for western Christians to follow. This Chapter will trace the profile of the Brahmins in the medieval imagination: it is the trope of the Brahmins living in a commonwealth of virtue and worshipping the biblical God. This imagery will be traced from the anticlerical debates in early-modern and medieval Europe to the early stages of Christian thought. Whereas this Chapter chronicles the manner in which Indian community life was understood and documented by outsiders, it starts with a critical evaluation of the intellectual and cultural forces that shaped the contours of representation.
2.1. The Brahmins and the Universality of Christianity The image of the Brahmins worshipping the biblical God has to be understood within the context of the early-Christian apologetics against Christianity’s Greco-Roman critics. The early Church Fathers defended their religion by appealing to its alleged antiquity and universality. According to the advocates of Christianity, the entire world had known—and many nations still knew—the God worshiped by the Jews and the Christians. Christianity saw itself as the embodiment of the religion which God had bestowed upon mankind upon Creation. Therefore, other traditions were defined either as the proto-Christian or the corrupted manifestations of this original religion. An example of this process can be found in Christianity’s first encounter with non-Semitic traditions: the traditions of ancient Greece and Rome.
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A Christian History of Religion In order understand the early Christian evaluations of themselves and others, it is necessary to approach the Christian theology from within the context in which it matriculated: the religion of the Jews. At the time of the Roman Empire, the Jews saw themselves as the descendants of the twelve tribes of Israel, scattered amongst the other nations as a punishment by God—the God of Israel and the Creator of the Universe. Whereas the children of Israel had failed to keep His commandments, God had promised the Jews that He would send a Savior to earth who would unite the several tribes again. History oversaw the arrival of a series of Messianic candidates, the most successful—in terms of lasting impact—being Jesus of Nazareth. Those who followed him tried to convince the Jews that Jesus was indeed the Christ—the promised one who came to save the children of Israel. Turned down by most of the Jews, the disciples of Jesus revised the Jewish prophecy: Jesus had been sent from heaven not only to save the Jews but to redeem humankind. They continued to profess several points of the Judaic religion (the notion of original sin, heaven and hell); at the same time, the followers Jesus—henceforth, the Christians—also developed new creeds, such as the Messianic nature of Jesus, His death on the cross to redeem the sins of humankind and His resurrection. This outline of the origins of Christianity—however rudimentary—is specifically relevant to our purposes: the Christians were adamant that their religion was the fulfilment of all the religions that ever existed and still existed in the world. In addition to the Jews, they were to confront the intellectuals of Rome. The latter did not see Jesus as the saviour of humankind but only as one of many teachers, directing His disciples towards the good life. At the same time, they were not quite convinced of Jesus’ success, and rather saw the Christians as a gullible lot which believed in ludicrous ideas like resurrections after death.1 Rejected by their Jewish brethren, and prosecuted by the Romans, the Christians had to insist more vigorously on the truth of their doctrine: theirs was not simply a story about the history and future of the Jews (whether the Jews believed in it or not) without it being the history of humankind. Their God was not simply the God of the Old Testament—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but ‘God’ of mankind, the Creator of huSee the anti-Christian polemic of Roman philosopher Celcus in Origen, Contra Celsum, Translated with an Introduction & Notes by Henry Chadwick, trans. H. Chadwick (Cambridge, 1953). Also see Joseph Hoffman, ed., Porphyry’s Against the Christians: The Literary Remains. Edited and Translated … by R. Joseph Hoffman (Amherst, 1994).
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mankind. He created the Cosmos and presided over it; He was the source of morality; and His will was the Law. To defend their positions, the apologists of the Church assimilated the intellectual traditions of Greece and Rome into their fold, incorporating the pagan thinkers into the Christian religion. Athenagoras of Athens—a Christian apologist who lived in the second century—discussed the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, only to conclude that the pagan poets and philosophers confirmed the existence of the Christian God.2 With tremendous intellectual dexterity, the historian of the Church, Eusebius of Caesarea (Præparatio Evangelica; ca. 315), argued that pagan philosophy had been a preparation for the Gospel: the Greco-Roman philosophers had been aware of God and the Christian conception of the soul, the life hereafter and the right mode of conduct.3 In the second century, Justin Martyr went as far as to argue that Abraham and Socrates had been Christians prior to Christ.4 But if everyone was or had been familiar with the God of the Christians, why then did different nations worship different ‘gods’? The Christian answer to this question accelerated the process of the assimilation of heathens into the Christian fold: the pagan cults and practices were corrupt manifestations of the original religion grafted by God unto the heart of humankind. The cults and practices were false—all their ‘gods’ were false, because they were minions of the Devil, the biblical Devil. The Greek daimones (from which the English word ‘demons’ is derived) became depraved spirits that lead mankind towards destruction. The Greeks did not of course think that their daimones or ‘deities’ were the agents of the Christian Devil. Nevertheless, the cults were permanently transformed into the vehicles of false religion: they embodied the Devil’s plan to corrupt the Message of God and seduce humankind into idolatry, the worship of the Devil.5 Athenagoras the Athenian, “A Plea for the Christians,” in The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, 129-48 [131-32]. For other variations, see Clement of Alexandria, “Exhortation to the Heathen,” in The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, 171-206 [192-95]; and Tatian’s “Address to the Greeks,” in The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, 59-83 [76]. 3 S.N. Balagangadhara, “The Heathen in His Blindness. . .” Asia, the West, and the Dynamic of Religion (Leiden, 1994), ch. 2; Henry Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition: Studies in Justin, Clement, and Origen (Oxford, 1966); and Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (New Haven, 1985), ch. 3. 4 Justin Martyr, “The First Apology of Justin,” in The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A. D. 325, 163-187 [178]. For other variations, see, for example, Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, R. Dyson, ed. (Cambridge, 1998), 8.11. 5 Justin Martyr, “The First Apology of Justin,” 289; and Origen, “Origen against Celsus.” 2
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As we have seen, the Christians held Jesus of Nazareth to be the Redeemer, not only of the Jews but of humankind—Christianity was the religion of humankind. The assimilation of pagan cult and thought can be traced to the specific notion of the divine Law, implanted by their God in the heart of humanity. The apologists of the primitive Church domesticated the pagan philosophies, represented the pagan cults and practices in a fashion that fitted their theology, and with the conversion of Constantine in the fourth century, gained political power. The result was the end of the Roman persecution of the Christians and the beginning of Christendom. The Brahmins in a Christian Tale The Brahmins did not escape the radar of the Christian apologists: the existence of virtuous heathens in the lands of the East was seen as a proof for the validity of Christianity. The distribution of this imagery in the patristic era suggests that the Christian writers appreciated them. For instance, in one of the non-biblical texts in Syriac—The Book of the Laws of Countries, dating to the late second century c.e.—the Gnostic philosopher Bardaisan argued that all the evil results from free will, the existence of which is suggested by the different laws that men made in different countries. The laws of the Brahmins were presented in terms that suited the early Christians: they neither paid reverence to idols, nor consumed meat or wine. The variability in human design was indicated by what the other Indians did. In contradistinction to the Brahmins, they practiced idolatry and committed all kinds of impurities.6 As we have seen, Eusebius argued that pagan philosophy had been a preparation for the Gospel. In the same work, he also reproduced Barsaisan’s account of the Brahmins.7 The Christians were adamant that their religion could be traced back to Adam and Eve and suspected its remnants to survive in the most distant quarters of the world, testifying to the universal propagation of the truth, prior to the Devil’s deceptions. The world was thus carved up in two ways: from a temporal perspective, there had been heathens prior to Christ, with a continuous, yet limited access to true religion—from a spatial perspective, there were heathens outside the geographical realm of Christendom. Some of their best minds, too, had a limited access to true religion. A. Robertson and J. Donaldson, eds., Fathers of the Third and Fourth Centuries. The Twelve Patriarchs, Excerpts and Epistles, the Clementina, Apocrypha ... and Syriac Documents (Michigan, 1951), 730. 7 Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, trans. E. Gifford (Oxford, 1903), book 6: 34. 6
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The complex history of the Brahmin motif in early-Christian writings— and the close ties between the Christian and Jewish motifs—has been convincingly traced.8 The wide distribution of the Indian images in the patristic era suggests that the apologists of the early Church employed them like they applied Greco-Roman philosophy: to provide proof for the universality of their doctrine. While the image of the proto-Christian Brahmin has its origin in a more ‘generic’ Christian conception of the history of religion that developed in opposition to the Greco-Roman critiques, several internal Christian disputes further propelled this imagery all the way through the medieval and early-modern history of Europe. The Salvation of the ancient Just Before the voyages of the Renaissance, Europe mainly derived its understanding of India from the chronicles attached to the expedition of Alexander the Great. This corpus includes works such as, the Indica by Megasthenes (third century b.c.e.), the Historia Naturalis by Pliny the Elder (ca. 77 c.e.) and Arrian’s Anabasis Alexandri and Historia Indica (second century). While the sources associated with Alexander’s military campaign are virtually inexhaustible, several manuscripts were eventually collected in the fourth century c.e. The whole resulted into an anonymous work, known under the name of pseudo-Callisthenes. As the name suggests, the pseudo-Callisthenes was incorrectly attributed to Callisthenes, the historian of the Macedonian campaign. Within thirty years after the Greek manuscript was finished, the Roman historian Julius Valerius prepared a Latin translation, which was superseded by a second Latin translation, fundamental to the widely popular Alexander romance. Written by Archbishop Leo of Naples (ca. 950) the second translation went through multiple copies and is known under the title of the first interpolated version—the Historia de Preliis (Book of Battles; eleventh century). The medieval Alexander romance has to be understood as a collection of historical records and legendary tales, which continued to be reworked as late
A fascinating attempt is made in Duncan M. Derrett, “Jewish Brahmins and the Tale of Zosimus: A Theme Common to three Religions,” Classica et Mediaevalia Revue Danoise de Philologie et d’Histoire 34 (1983): 75-90. For a detailed analysis of the Brahmin motif in the work of the Jewish Alexandrian Philo and others, see Beverly Berg, “Dandamis: An Early Christian Portrait of Indian Asceticism,” Classica et Mediaevalia 31, no. 1-2 (1976): 269-305.
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as the sixteenth century.9 Its sources are of limited use to learn about Alexander the Great, yet are valuable documents to trace the myths and images shared by diverse literary traditions. One of these images is the portrait of Alexander as a courtly prince. In the Alexander literature, the Brahmins also appear, first as a community troublesome to Alexander—in the Punjab province of present-day Pakistan, as explained by the Anabasis Alexandri (second century c.e.). It is from sources such as these that the image of the protoChristian Brahmins would soon be extrapolated to Christian thought. The complex history of the medieval representations of India has been outlined in Thomas Hahn (1978) and in George Cary’s comprehensive work about the moralists and educators of the Middle Ages (1956), from which much of the following is drawn.10 While the Church fathers were developing their theologies in opposition to pagan thought, an internal Christian dispute transformed the Brahmins into the archetype of proto-Christians, outside the geographical realm of Christendom. The controversy began with the teacher of Origen—Clement of Alexandria—and is referred to as the question of the salvation of the ancient just. It derives from a question on the Old Testament fathers: had the patriarchs like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, despite their ignorance of Christ, found salvation or suffered eternal damnation? Would they find eternal beatitude in spite of their unfamiliarity with Christ or suffer in hell—the biblical hell—by mere temporal chance? One of the earliest philosophical centres to engage with this question was the Catechetical School of Alexandria, the driving force behind the assimilation of pagan philosophy into Christian thought. Its most famous apologist, Clement of Alexandria, argued that a righteous God would provide salvation to all humans, whether they lived prior to or after Christ. Christ and the apostles would preach to all souls in hell, offering salvation to those who eventually believed in them. This approach is known as the descensus ad infernos (the descent into hell). In the third century, Clement’s student, Origen Adamantius, incorporated these ideas in his own theological system, known as Origenism. Origen argued for the restoration of all souls to God after a process of purification. This doctrine conflicted with orthodox views on hell For some of the text’s ramifications, see J. Duncan M. Derrett, “The Theban Scholasticus and Malabar in c. 355-60,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 82, no. 1 (1962): 21-31; and David J. Ross, Alexander Historiatus: A Guide to Medieval Illustrated Alexander Literature (London, 1963). 10 George Cary, The Medieval Alexander, ed. D. J. Ross (Cambridge, 1956); and Thomas Hahn, “The Indian Tradition in Western Medieval Intellectual History,” Viator 9 (1978): 213-34. 9
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and has been branded as heretic. Nevertheless, it achieved great popularity, especially amongst the Egyptian and Palestinian monks.11 One of them was Palladius, the later bishop of Helenopolis in Asia Minor. Palladius is known for his Commonitorium Palladii (ca. 375 c.e.). Better known as the Palladius, its famous passages consist of the question-and-answer session between Alexander and Dindimus, leader of the Brahmin ascetics. The exchange that took place between the Macedonian and Indian kings aroused wide interest in Europe. This is the first text in which the Brahmin rejects the invitation to visit Alexander’s camp on the ground of Macedonian worldliness and sensuality. In the face of Greek display of power, Dindimus instructs Alexander on the human good. It is generally accepted that Palladius drew his inspiration from Arrian’s work. George Cary (1956) and Richard Stoneman (1994) suggest that Arrian does not contain genuine knowledge of India but traces to Cynic sources.12 Others like Duncan Derrett (1960) note that Arrian wrote about Alexander while he was still under the influence of his Stoic teacher, to whom his work would have been agreeable.13 Whatever the origin of these sources or philosophical inclinations of their author(s) might have been, it is clear that their content was soon filtered through the theological spectacles of the primitive Church. In other words, Palladius’ account of the Alexander-Dindimus encounter was written with a clear theological intention. Palladius had lived amongst the monks in Palestine and the Egyptian desert and his chief work (Historia Lausiaca; fifth century) is a chronicle of the desert fathers in the form of anecdotes and short biographies. In all likeliness, this blend of monastic asceticism animated his goodwill towards the Brahmin ascetics. One could also suggest that Palladius—in following Origen—aimed at presenting a nation outside the Christian world that possessed aspects of true religion. In favour of the idea that all souls could find their way to heaven, the vision of a community outside the Christian world that possessed a feature vital to salvation—knowledge of God—might have appealed to him. Ralph V. Turner, “Descendit Ad Inferos: Medieval Views on Christ’s Descent into Hell and the Salvation of the Ancient Just,” Journal of the History of Ideas 27, no. 2 (1966): 173-194. 12 George Cary, The Medieval Alexander, 91; and Richard Stoneman, “Who are the Brahmins? Indian Lore and Cynic Doctrine in Palladius’ De Bragmanibus and Its Models,” The Classical Quarterly 44, no. 2 (1994): 500-510. 13 Duncan M. Derrett, “The History of Palladius on ‘the Races of India and the Brachmans’,” Classica et Mediaevalia Revue Danoise de Philologie et d’Histoire, no. 21 (1960), 75. Also see Guillaume Sainte-Croix, A Critical Inquiry into the Life of Alexander the Great, by the Ancient Historians (Bath, 1793; French edition 1775]), 30-31. 11
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The Palladius would soon become one of the most important sources that distributed the image of the proto-Christian Brahmins. It was interpolated in Leo of Naples’ translation of the pseudo-Callisthenes (Historia de Preliis) and considered important enough to be translated into Latin twice. The first translation is attributed to St. Ambrose (340-79 c.e.). St. Ambrose was similarly influenced by the ideas of Origen. The Palladius thus might have been the sort of work that would appeal to him. His translation—the De Moribus Brachmanorum (About the mores of the Brahmins)—shows just how holy and pious the Brahmins had become. When the Macedonian messenger urged Dindimus to visit Alexander’s camp on pain of death, Dindimus refused to rise from the couch of leaves on which he rested and informed the ambassador about God’s mercy.14 The Brahmin elaborated upon the right attitude towards life and not only mentioned that every soul would return to God but also invoked His Final Judgement. After sending messages back and forth, both leaders met in person. Dindimus advised the Macedonian king to end his outward battles and instructed him to overcome the enemies within: his lust and desire. Dindimus brought the conversation to a close with a hymn to God, with idioms that must have sounded familiar to an early-Christian audience: “O immortal God, to Thee I render thanks in all things” (“Immortalis, inquit, Deus, tibi ego in omnibus gratias ago”).15 Then followed a tirade against sensual life, the murder of animals, the consumption of wine, and Gluttony, one of the seven cardinal sins. The Brahmins were free from all the evils that Dindimus named.16 Not only was the Palladius now associated with one of the most widely read fathers of the early Church, it would also have a permanent impact on the image of India prior to the Renaissance. Salvation in the Middle Ages In the twelfth century, the French theologian Pierre Abélard (1079-1142) revived the interest in the question on salvation. The references to the Brahmins reappeared accordingly. In his Introductio ad Theologiam (Introduction to theology) Abélard discussed the prophecies about the Messiah. He men-
I have consulted the English translation of a Vatican MS, printed with the original Latin text: St. Ambrose, The Brahman Episode: St. Ambrose’s Version of the Colloquy between Alexander the Great and the Brahmans of India etc., trans. S. V. Yankowski (Ansbach, 1962), 25. 15 Ibid., 36-37. 16 Ibid., 46-47. 14
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tioned the pre-Christian kings who anticipated the coming of Christ: the Jewish David and Solomon, and two heathen kings, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and Didymi regis Brachmanorum, or Dindimus, the king of the Brahmins.17 Thomas Hahn (1978) observes that Abélard took care to include the references to Dindimus in at least two of his other works, in which he also claimed that the Brahmins had an understanding of the Christian Trinity.18 The composite image thickens: not only did he know the biblical God and lived a life of virtue, the Brahmin was also aware of the finer aspects of Christian doctrine—the Triune God—another article of faith vital to salvation. In other words, he was not merely aware of the Semitic Old Testament divinity but also of the God of the New Testament: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is therefore reasonable to have a closer look at Abélard’s theological profile. The Scholasticism of the twelfth century was characterized by a renewed sympathy for the Greeks and Romans. Abélard took up the question of the Old Testament Fathers and agreed that the patriarchs had been amongst the elect few who found salvation. His fascination for the ancient Greeks and Romans similarly aroused an interest in the question of their salvation. While others had spoken of the Jews and Old Testament prophets, Abélard now took up the bold question of whether the pagan thinkers also enjoyed the grace of God. After all, why would anyone be damned to hell, simply by a temporal or geographical accident? The authorities on this topic argued that those who anticipated the coming of Christ would be saved. Abélard repeated Clement’s answer—that Christ had preached in hell—but also invoked the argument that the pagan philosophers had knowledge of Christian doctrines, which they achieved by natural reason.19 Much like the apologists of the Church, he tried to make this stick by evoking the Brahmins as the archetype of proto-Christian or perhaps semi-Christian heathens. The truths that reason or the natural light could convey were generally considered to be no more than knowledge of God and the immortality of the soul. But Abélard went beyond all this, indeed, even bestowed upon the Brahmins the knowledge of the Trinity and anticipation of Christ. The work of Abélard aroused the interest of other scholars, like the Saxon mystic Hugh of Saint-Victor (ca. 1078-1141). Hugh followed Abélard’s model of argument and went as far as to grant Dindimus the role of chief Thomas Hahn, “The Indian Tradition,” 226 Ibid., 226. Also see George Cary, The Medieval Alexander, 93. 19 Ralph V. Turner, “Descendit Ad Inferos,” 179-80. 17 18
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interlocutor in his dialogue on philosophy, Epitome Dindimi in Philosophiam (The philosophical epitome of Dindimus). His work on grammar—in which Dindimus was likewise the chief spokesperson—suggests that Hugh was serious about his choice of actor. Thomas Hahn (1978) writes that his reasons for creating these pedagogical roles are easily discerned: both works deal with subjects that fall into the province of reason. Philosophical knowledge was beneficial for everyone, whether they be Christian or pagan. Similarly, grammar was the first of the seven liberal arts, and considered to be edifying too.20 But like Abélard, Hugh went beyond this by even suggesting that natural knowledge leads to divine understanding.21 That he chose Dindimus to show this suggests just how strong the associations with the Brahmins had become. It also indicates that Christian theologians continued to assimilate the Brahmins to lend more weight to specific theological positions. And it shows that the Indian tractates interpolated into the Alexander sources were understood as reliable portraits of the Brahmins.22 This favourable representation of the Indian Brahmin thus functioned as a rhetorical device. The composite image that was consolidated by the end of the twelfth century was used to testify to the truth of specific theological positions. This model of argument resurfaces at various points during the history of Christian thought and has an impressive record of recapitulating the imagery of the proto-Christian Brahmin, from the earliest epochs of Christianity, all the way through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, right into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As will be shown in Chapter 4, whatever the arguments for knowledge of true religion outside the purview of direct Christian Revelation were—from natural reason to spiritual contemplation—liberally inclined thinkers set forth the Brahmins as an illustration of their case.23 As must be clear, this representation of the Brahmins does not tell us much about India, but rather provides an insight into the cultural history of Europe. Thomas Hahn, “The Indian Tradition,” 228. Ibid., 228. 22 The Brahmin also became a prominent figure in the monasteries of medieval England, where he featured in Roger Bacon’s famous Opus Majus (ca. 1267), written in medieval Latin at the request of Pope Clement IV. This work ranges over all aspects of the natural sciences, and further discusses grammar, logic as well as philosophy. In his section on the life of the Brahmins, Bacon, a Franciscan friar, also mentions St. Ambrose’s translation of the Palladius. See Roger Bacon, The ‘Opus Majus’ of Roger Bacon, ed. J. Bridges, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1897), 353. 23 For a detailed analysis of the image of virtuous heathens in the medieval works on salvation, see Frank Grady, Representing Righteous Heathens in Late Medieval England (Basingstoke, 2005); and Cindy Vitto, The Virtuous Pagan in Middle English Literature (Philadelphia, 1989). 20 21
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A second source related to the Alexander material further distributed this stereotypical image of the proto-Christian Brahmins in the scholarly works and popular imagination of medieval Europe. Once again, particular developments in European culture provide the context for this ethnographic imagery, that is, the anticlericalism, which would eventually lead up to the Protestant Reformation. Together with the apologetic argument outlined above, European anticlericalism constitutes one of the threads that run throughout this essay, both of which play a defining role in the European discourse of India.
2.2. Anticlericalism and the proto-Christian Brahmin On the one hand, the idea of anticlericalism (including the term) emerges as a nineteenth-century phenomenon that designates the programme to curb the influence of the clergy in public affairs. On the other, it indicates popular sentiments about a worldly priesthood that are as old as the Catholic religion itself. Accordingly, it is appropriate to use the concept of anticlericalism in the context of the era prior to the Reformation—not as an expression of a radical critique of religion but as criticisms directed against a priesthood that did not live up to the spiritual status from where it claimed to derive its authority. This was the theme for the numerous anticlerical books, songs, poems, sermons and pamphlets that would come to characterize the literary tradition of Europe. In broad lines, the story went like this: The priests of the primitive Church were a humble and pious lot that followed in the footsteps of the Apostles. They lived among the laity and made no claims to political, social or economic power. With the triumph of Christianity over the Roman Empire, the clergy transformed itself into a separate estate of religious men, with tentacles that reached into every aspect of social, religious and economic life—corrupted by greed and eager to define government policy in their own favour. They lay down rigid requirements to join their community and misguided the laity by teaching superstition instead of the Word of God. Anticlericalism in the Middle Ages From the time of the Gregorian Reforms in the eleventh century (ca. 105080), this resentment of pot-bellied monks, licentious priests and greedy ecclesiastics became a prominent feature of the European consciousness. From within the Church establishment, the Gregorian Reformation comprised a series of reforms initiated by Pope Gregory VII (Gregory the Great) con-
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cerning the independence and integrity of the clergy. The circle he formed in the papal curia advocated a return to the primitive Church and vita apostolica—or the life of the Apostles. To separate the clergy from secular authorities (the Investiture Controversy) and impress upon them the apostolic nature of their calling, they modelled the Church on the monastic pattern. The best known result of this process was the practice of celibacy. The estates of the realm divided society into the clergy, the nobility and the commoners. Religion was the realm of the first: the clergy or spiritual men. The sacrament of ordination was the most distinct expression of this division, which gave the priest an infallible character and elevated him to a higher plane of perfection. This ideal empowered him to mediate salvation. The priests, and the priests alone, held the key of salvation. Adherence to celibacy and rules of penance made the priesthood into spiritual shepherds of the laity. At least, that is what the priests maintained themselves. The method they used to persuade those who opposed it was excommunication. While the ideals of the Gregorian Reforms won widespread support from lay and clerical leaders, the liturgical services of the priests who did not conform to the new models of behaviour were boycotted, and their churches deserted. The vices which the reformers set out to curb were identified as simony—the perversion of the spiritual office by material considerations—and concubinage. Sacerdotal asceticism and saintliness were the ideal. Evidence that this ideal was not often met informed the anticlerical sentiments prior to the Protestant Reformation. In other words, the vision that the priesthood and its teachings are essential to salvation always knew of a negative mirror image: a deep-seated, cultural suspicion of the priest. Anticlerical Movements in the Middle Ages The history of late medieval Europe is characterized by the tension between two fundamental ideas: on the one hand, the belief that the church and her teachings provide an exclusive path to everlasting beatitude, and on the other, that the inner workings of the church and its clerical establishment had become a burden upon society, if not degraded and corrupting. Religious movements deemed heretic by the establishment preached and wrote as never before, attacking the clergy not only with satire and polemic but also with acute theological reason. At the end of the European Middle Ages, such mystically or spiritually inclined cross-currents emphasized a direct relationship between the believer and God, circumventing the structures of the institutionalized priesthood and foreboding the Protestant Reformation.
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One such movement was the Devotio Moderna or Modern Devout, which was especially prominent in the cities of the Low Countries in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and a major influence on Desiderius Erasmus in the sixteenth century. The followers of the Modern Devout venerated Geert Grote (1340-84), a secular cleric at Deventer. Promoting meditation and inner spiritual life, the Modern Devout is considered to be a forerunner to the Reformation. Geert Grote underwent a religious turnover or conversion in about 1374 and adopted a penitential way of life. One of his distinct critiques of the clergy was directed against the pursuit of learning, a clear mark of the priest. The students of canon or civil law—according to Master Geert—rarely displayed tranquillity or genuine insight, but were driven by temporal gain and fame. The charges he made were commonplace: the clerics and religious jurists were like the Pharisees, distorting Scripture and replacing piety and justice with their own fabrications. Grote set out to preach to the simple and the poor, and bring them back to the message of God. His endeavour was not unique, and his work dovetailed with the charges of other reformers, such as the fifteenth-century French theologian Nicholas de Clémanges (De corrupto Ecclesiae statu).24 Across the Channel, these sentiments and critiques found their loudest resonance amongst the Lollards, the English counterpart of the Modern Devout, founded by the secular cleric John Wyclif (1324-84). The Lollards laid stress on preaching the Gospel in the vernacular and—like the Modern Devout—they violently raged against the clerical establishment in public sermons. They emphasized theological issues to a greater extent than the Modern Devout, the most notable (and anticlerical) of which was a critique of the doctrine of transubstantiation. Not surprisingly, at variance with the Modern Devout, they were quickly condemned heretics. For the late-medieval reformers, the vices of the Church were identical to those that had been identified during the Gregorian Reforms: concubinage, moral decline in general and simony, that is, the trade in ecclesiastical privileges, like indulgences or benefices.25
For Geert Grote and the Devotio Moderna, see John van Engen, “Late Medieval Anticlericalism: The Case of the New Devout,” in Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. P. A. Dykema and H. A. Oberman (Leiden, 1993), 19-52. 25 John van Engen, “Anitclericalism among the Lollards,” in Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 53-64. For similar anticlerical movements in central Europe, see František Šmahel, “The Hussite Crique of the Clergy’s civil Dominion,” in Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 83-90. 24
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The literary Tradition The medieval cities were a hotbed of anticlericalism. While their lay populations did not engage in the thorough theological critiques of later Protestant Reformers, they nevertheless shared in a common critique that had multiple origins: from moral decline and simony, through legal immunity and tax exemptions for the clergymen (increasing the laity’s burden for taxation), to their economic activities (credit business, beer selling and weaving) that became a source of competition for lay artisans.26 The hostility radiated from the poems, songs and sermons in the medieval archive—from the literary works of Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1343-1400), Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) and the papal secretary, Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459). Bracciolini’s Contra Ypocritas (1448) attacked the hypocrisy of the churchmen. No less anticlerical in tone was his Liber Facetiarum (1438-52), a collection of satires and exemplary stories that grew into his most popular work.27 Voices of dissent were expressed at the grassroots by various spiritual movements that highlighted the sacerdotal ideal: a penitential and frugal, inner spiritual life. Associated with the literature of this period is the exemplum. This literary genre served to illustrate such normative principles and the life of the true Christians with short narratives or anecdotal stories that know of a remarkable constancy in the popular imagination. They provided preachers with illustrative stories—from satirical jests and anecdotes to well developed tales—with which they could embellish their sermons and amplify the message they wished to convey. The best known compendium of quotes and exemplars is the Facta et dicta memorabilia (The memorable deeds and sayings), compiled in the first century c.e. by the Latin writer Valerius Maximus, which survives in numerous medieval manuscripts.28 It is within this literary and cultural context that the image of Brahmins living in a commonwealth of virtue made its reappearance, in this instance, in the Collatio Alexandri cum Dindimo. This was a fictional exchange of instructing letters between Alexander and Dindimus—the leader of the Brahmin ascetics—written between the fourth and sixth centuries c.e. Hans-Jürgen Goertz, “Anticlericalism,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, ed. H. J. Hillerbrand, trans. M. J. Baylor, vol. 1 (New York & Oxford, 1996), 46-51. Also see Albrecht Classen, “Anticlericalism in Late Medieval German Verse,” in Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 91-114; and José Sánchez, Anticlericalism: A brief History (Notre Dame, Ind., 1972). 27 Poggio Bracciolini, The Facetiae of Giovanni Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, trans. B. Hurwood (New York, 1968). 28 William Kibler, ed., Medieval France: An Encyclopedia (New York, 1995), 329-30. 26
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The Brahmin in the Exemplum Tradition Dindimus received an existence outside the Palladius and surfaced again in the Collatio Alexandri Magni cum Dindimo. This fabricated exchange of letters was intended as a critique on the asceticism of the Cynics. But as we have seen, the apologists of the Church represented the Brahmins as a nation fit for admiration. Just how strong they were appreciated in the Middle Ages can be seen in the reception of this correspondence: its delicate mockery of asceticism was lost on its audience. The European audiences were inclined to read the work from a standpoint favourable to Dindimus, and its reproductions embraced the sympathetic view of the Brahmin as standardized by Palladius and St. Ambrose. Alexander’s replies were gradually muted and met by a far more spirited Dindimus, confirming with vigour to the Palladian image of the proto-Christian Brahmin. The letters can be summarized as follows: 1. Sæpius ad aures meas… Alexander learns that the Brahmins maintain a peculiar way of life, and writes to their king to inquire about them. 2. Desiderantem te scire… Dindimus satisfies Alexander’s curiosity and informs him about their simple way of life, devoid of passion and desire. 3. Si hæc ita sunt… Alexander notes the perfections attributed to the Brahmins, yet claims that their way of life is more madness than saintliness. 4. Nos, inquit Dindimus… Dindimus defends himself against his interlocutor. 5. Tu nunc ideo te dicis beatum… Alexander maintains his opinions and criticizes Brahmanic asceticism.29 At least sixty-one manuscripts of the correspondence survive, which were immensely popular amongst the moralists and educators of the Middle Ages. For instance, the Anglo-Saxon educator and theologian Alcuin of York (ca. 735-804) forwarded a copy to Charlemagne, together with the equally fictional Epistles of St. Paul the Apostle to Seneca. This was doubtlessly inspired by a clear moral purpose.30 An emperor associated with educational reforms most likely read the work with enthusiasm. It is within this pedagogical con-
Paul Meyer, Alexandre le Grand dans la Littérature Française du Moyen Âge, vol. 2 (Paris, 1886), 30. 30 George Cary, “A Note on the Mediaeval History of the Collatio Alexandri cum Dindimo,” Classica et Mediaevalia Revue Danoise de Philologie et d’Histoire 15 (1954): 124-29. 29
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text that the exchange between Alexander and Dindimus became widely distributed in the scholarship and popular imagination of the later European Middle Ages. To give one of the early examples: the French historian Jacques de Vitry (1160-1240) wrote the Historia Orientalis, a first-hand account of the conditions in Palestine. It bears witness to the fact that medieval anticlericalism was as sharp as that of the Reformation. The second book is devoted to “la corruption des contrées Occident” [the corruption of the western countries]. The author discussed “des avares et des usuriers” [the gluttons and usurers].31 Moral decline also concerned the clerical estate, as explained in the next chapter that treats of the negligence and sins of ecclesiastical dignitaries.32 The French author poured scorn on the clergymen, the ministers and “cabaretiers de Satan.” They deceived the flock of believers and made financial gain with their trickery and fraud, like the practice of indulgences, or the trade in ablutions for sins.33 These ‘advocates of the Devil’ made their profit in churches, spent it on prostitutes and in houses of liquor and play, and abused their venerable titles in the eyes of the laity.34 The subsequent chapter was therefore devoted to the renewal of the western Church. The historian also embellished his work with picturesque descriptions of the Turks and geographical descriptions of Eastern lands, and reproduces the tales of classical ethnography, not only of the Amazons and the Gymnosophists but also of an Oriental nation, referred to in French as “bien dignes d’admiration” (well worthy of admiration). They were called “Brachmanes.”35 De Vitry reproduced large portions of the Collatio correspondence and took an important step in support of the Brahmin ascetic: he simply omitted Alexander’s apologetic and cast Dindimus’ trenchant critique of Macedonian worldliness and pride in an explicitly Christian idiom: We do not like riches; cupidity is an insatiable need which usually leads men to poverty, for they will not see the end of conquest. Amongst us there is no hatred; amongst us no one is stronger or has more power than any other. We only have poverty, and that is why we are rich, because we hold everything in common. We do not make lawsuits, we don’t take up arms, and we have peace by practice, not by virtue. We do not administer justice, because we do not do that which requires Jacques de Vitry, Histoire Des Croisades, Par Jacques De Vitry, ed. M. Guizot (Paris, 1825), 272. 32 Ibid., 281-87. 33 Ibid., 306. 34 Ibid., 307. 35 Ibid., 208. 31
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it. Only one law is contrary to our nature, we do not take to forgiveness, as we never have to take recourse to it.36
In de Vitry’s reproduction of the Collatio correspondence, Dindimus is also made to attack idolatry. The constancy of these sections in medieval sources and their biblical idioms call for quotations of considerable length. The passage on Macedonian religion follows: Your law [Alexander’s] is such that you honour your gods with all your goods, so they are asked to answer your prayers. You do not understand that God answers the prayers of men neither due to the price of money, nor because of the blood of a calf, a goat or a ram, but only because of good works, which He cherishes; that it is only by the word that Man is similar to God, that God is the Word, that this Word created the world, and that it is by this that all things live. As for us, we honour, adore, we like the Word, because God is totally the Spirit and totally the Heart, and He does not like anything but a pure heart. That’s why we say that you foolishly think your nature to be celestial, that it has everything in common with God, while at the same time soiling that very nature by adultery, fornication and the servile worship of idols. 37
The contention that the Brahmins think God is the Word (logos) was ultimately derived from the chapter on the Brahmins in the Philosophoumena or Refutation of All Heresies, a third-century catalogue of Gnostic-Christian systems deemed to be heretical, attributed to St. Hippolytus of Rome.38 The French historian observed the rift between the Brahmins, the Law of Moses Ibid., 210-11: “Nous n’aimons pas point les richesses; la cupidité est un besoin insatiable et qui d’ordinaire conduit les hommes à la pauvreté, parce qu’ils ne peuvent jamais voir le terme de leurs conquêtes. Chez nous il n’y a point de haine; nul parmi nous n’est plus fort ou plus puissant qu’un autre. Nous n’avons de la pauvreté, et par elle nous sommes riches, puisque nous l’avons tous en commun. Nous ne faisons point de procès, nous ne prenons point les armes, nous avons la paix par habitude, non par vertu. Nous n’avons point de justice, car nous ne faisons rien qui doive nous faire aller en justice. Une seule loi est contraire à notre nature, nous ne faisons point miséricorde, parce que nous ne nous mettons point dans le cas d’avoir recours à la miséricorde.” 37 Ibid., 215: “Votre loix est telle que vous faites honneur à vos dieux de tous vos biens, afin qu’ils soient tenus de vous exaucer. Vous ne comprenez pas que ce n’est ni à prix d’argent, ni pour le sang d’un veau, d’un bouc ou d’un bélier, que Dieu exauce l’homme, mais seulement à cause des bonnes œuvres, qu’il chérit; que ce n’est que par la parole que l’homme est semblable à Dieu, que Dieu est la parole, que cette parole a créé le monde, et que c’est par elle toutes choses vivent. Quant à nous, nous honorons, nous adorons, nous aimons cette parole, car Dieu est tout esprit et tout ame, et il n’aime rien qu’une ame pure. C’est pourquoi nous disons que vous êtes par trop insensés, estimant que votre nature est céleste, qu’elle a tout en commun avec Dieu, et en même temps souillant cette nature par l’adultère, la fornication et le culte servile des idoles.” 38 Robertson and Donaldson, eds., Fathers of the Third Century: Hippolytus, Cyprian, Caius, Novatian, etc. (Michigan, 1990), 21-22. 36
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and the Gospel, yet replicated Abélard’s model of argument: he connected their saintliness with the law of nature. Nevertheless, de Vitry cautioned the reader: the Brahmins would have lived according to true religion, were it not for one mistake, their pride: These quotations clearly show that these Brachmanes, who neither knew the law of Moses, nor the law of the Gospel, would have lived according to religion and the law of nature, if they had humbly recognized [their] sins, in accordance with the words of the Apostle: “If we say that we do not have sins, we beguile ourselves and the truth is not in us.” And indeed, we do not find anywhere, in the books of the Gentiles, the water of true humility that rises from the fountain of paradise.39
The presence of the Indian Brahmin in an early thirteenth-century history of the crusades and Palestine is remarkable by itself. But it is not difficult to imagine that the Brahmin protagonist performed a didactic role in this narrative. About a century prior to the Modern Devout, de Vitry was associated with the Beguines, a lay sisterhood that advocated a strong spiritual component to the religious life and combined asceticism with charity and teaching. De Vitry’s most significant contribution to the history of the Church—the Sermones Vulgares—provided a wealth of exemplars intended to serve as models for preachers. Given the strong anticlerical undercurrent in the Historia Orientalis, the image of the virtuous and ascetic Brahmins constitutes one such exemplum. Like the other exempla, it was constant. And like so many other stories in this genre, it served as an antidote for what was considered to be the moral and religious decline of Europe. This edifying image appeared and reappeared prior to the age of exploration. The Archbishop of Canterbury, John of Salisbury, was known for his Policraticus (The statesman; ca. 1159). This work of political theory was famous not only as an encyclopedia of learning but also for being a storehouse of exemplars, including the Brahmin exemplum.40
Jacques de Vitry, Histoire des Croisades, 221: “Ces citations font voir bien clairement que ces Brachmanes, qui ne connaissaient ni la loi de Moïse, ni la loi de l’Évangile, auraient vévu selon la religion et selon la loi de nature, s’ils se fussent humblement reconnus pécheurs, conformément à ces paroles de l’Apôtre: “Si nous disons que nous n’avons point de péché, nous nous séduisons nous-mêmes et la vérité n’est poins en nous.” Et en effet, nous ne trouvons nulle part, dans les livres des Gentils, cette eau de la vrai humilité qui découle de la fontaine du paradis.” 40 John of Salisbury, The Statesman’s Book of John of Salisbury. Being the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Books, and Selections from the Seventh and Eighth Books of the Policraticus, trans. J. Dickinson (New York, 1927), book 4: 93. 39
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The Alexander-Dindimus encounter also featured in the actual collections of exemplars. The Alphabetum narratiunum (Alphabet of tales) is a Latin collection of more than 800 stories for use by the preachers, compiled by the Dominican friar Arnold of Liège, which survives in more than fifty manuscripts.41 Amongst the many exemplars in which Alexander plays a part, number 514 is based on an otherwise unknown story about the confrontation between Alexander and the Brahmin Gymnosophists, referred to as the Historia Dragmanorum. The content of the story follows the standard pattern: the Brahmins are said to despise worldly things, and when Alexander offered them anything they require, they asked for immortality. When Alexander replied that he was but mortal himself, the Brahmin asked Alexander why then did he do much ill, thus putting himself at great peril.42 While it would be difficult to draw general conclusions without a detailed study of the subject matter, the fact that the Brahmin was part of a compilation intended to furnish preachers with stories that amplified the lessons they tried to teach, makes the question whether they featured in the spoken sermons of medieval Europe even more intriguing. As the embodiment of virtue and saintliness, the Brahmin performed a didactic role for moralists and educators, reprimanding from the outside the state of religion and morality inside Europe. The Brahmin in historical Writings The idea that the Christians in need of moral education compare unfavourably with the morally upright heathens has a history that is almost as long as Christianity itself. Many of the historians and encyclopaedists of the Middle Ages were involved in similar didactic projects. The Brahmin exemplum testifies to the impact of such edifying movements on ethnographic scholarship prior to the Renaissance. The literary genre most relevant for the purposes of this section is the universal chronicle, which surveys history from the moment of Creation to a given point near to the author’s own day. The admiration of the Brahmins not only showed itself in a muted reproduction of Alexander’s riposte but also in a number of radical alterations. The Italian priest Godfrey von Viterbo (ca. 1125-1202) even gave Dindimus the final word in the exchange between both men. Godfrey’s Pantheon (ca. 1185) was a chronology of the world in Latin verse and prose. It survives in at least thirty-three manuscripts, in fragments of others, and in reprints by non-Italian 41 42
G. H. Bunt, Alexander the Great in the Literature of Medieval Britain (Groningen, 1994), 81. Ibid., 82-83.
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historians. As late as 1584, the German Roman Catholic convert, Johannes Pistorius the Younger (1546-1608), edited a collection of historical literature in which the Pantheon was included. The Italian author went so far as to put passages from the Bible into the mouth of the Brahmin ascetic: Dindimus was made to draw an analogy between Alexander and Cain, that is, the son of Adam and Eve and first murderer of man.43 The Pantheon has been called “A Pantheon full of Examples.”44 In the thirteenth century, the French Dominican monk, Vincent de Beauvais, wrote the most famous medieval universal chronicle. Little is known of his personal history. It is thought that he joined the Dominican order shortly after 1218 and spent the rest of his religious life in the monastery at Beauvais. His Speculum Historiale was one of the four specula that made up the Speculum Maius (Mirror of the world; 1240-60), an encyclopaedic compendium of the available theological, natural and historical knowledge. The author devoted an entire book of the Speculum Historiale to the history of Alexander. The appendix reproduced the Collatio correspondence and indicates the constancy of the Brahmin exemplum. Dindimus once again introduced his subjects as divine ascetics, following the law of nature: The lineage of the Brahmins lives a pure and simple life … We know of no verdicts, for our actions are not in need of correction. We neither have laws, for there is no crime amongst us. There is but one law that we follow: never to go against the law of nature…45
Vincent associated the Brahmin conception of God with two of the three entities that constitute the Trinity: the Father and Holy Spirit. Though Alexander is given at least the chance to reply, the Macedonian king can hardly be spotted in the sections that contain Dindimus’ replies. The Brahmin says: We do not sacrifice animals for divine honour; neither do we build temples of gold. We do not sacrifice works of gold or precious stones … God neither accepts bloody sacrifices, nor does he like bloodshed. He takes pleasure in words 43 Godfrey von Viterbo, “Pantheon Gotfridi Viterbiensis etc.,” in Illustrium Veterum Scriptorum etc., ed. J. Pistorius (Franckfurt, 1584), 230-31. 44 A. M. Mulder-Bakker, “A Pantheon full of Examples. The World Chronicle of Godfrey of Viterbo,” in Exemplum et Similitudo: Alexander the Great and other Heroes as Points of Reference in Medieval Literature, ed. W. J. Aerts and M. Gosman (Groningen, 1988), 85-98. 45 Vincent de Beauvais, Le Premier Volume de Vincent Miroir Hystorial, trans. J. de Vignay, vol. 1 (Paris, 1531), fols. lxxiii-lxxiiii: “Le lignage des Bragmaneie[n]s vit de pure & de simple vie ... Nous navons nulz iugemens: Car nous ne faisons pas choses a corriger. Nous ne tenons nulles loix: car nous navons nul crime a mettre hors de nous. Une seule loy est a nostre gent, cest naller pas contre le droict de nature …”
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of prayer, for this is the only thing in which man resembles Him. For God is the Word and the Word created the world. He governs and nourishes all, and those are the things we love and believe in Spirit. Because He is God, He is Spirit and Thought. He does not take pleasure in riches … but only in the works of religion and gracious works, for which we find you to be too miserable …46
Vincent expressed similar sentiments about Plato: whereas Plato’s conception of God was far from perfect, he was similarly shown to be aware of many points of Christian doctrine.47 The Speculum Historiale reached all the corners of Western Europe. The translations into the vernaculars from the 1200s and 1300s are the medium through which the Brahmin exemplum was distributed all over Europe. While the Vatican was sending out emissaries to learn about the customs of the Mongols and the Polo brothers were travelling in the East, the most important Flemish poet of the Middle Ages, Jacob van Maerlant (ca. 1230-1300), produced a Middle Dutch translation of the Speculum Maius in verse, known as the Spiegel Historiael (1285-88). He introduced its sections on the Brahmins into the Middle Dutch vernacular, almost verbatim.48 The Speculum Maius was one of the most influential works of the Latin Middle Ages and reached a wide distribution with the arrival of the printing press.49 No medieval English translation of the Speculum Maius is known to exist, although the Chester monk Ranulf Higden made use of it for his Polychronicon, the most complete universal history available in the fourteenth century. Higden was associated with John of Salisbury and his sections on Alexander are taken from the Speculum Maius, including the Alexander-Dindimus encounter. While Higden’s position was that heathens were capable of achieving Ibid., fol. Lxxiiii: ”Nous ne sacrifions pas bestes en honneur divine: & ne fondons pas temples faitz de metaulx dargent. Ne ne dedions pas autelz resplendissans dor & de pierres precieuses … Dieu ne recoit point sacrifice de sang, ne il nayme point cultiveme[n]t ensanglante. Il est debonnaire aux deprians par parolle, pource que seulle chose est a icelluy soy delecter avec homme par sa similitude. Car dieu est parolle & celluy crea le monde. Celluy gouverne et nourrist toutes choses, et celle chose aymons nous et croyons esprit. Certes: car il est dieu Et luy mesmes est esperit et pensee. Et pource nest il pas appaise par richesses ne … Mais par oeuvre de religion et par action de graces, pour laquelle chose no[us] vous jugeons trop miserables …” 47 Ibid., fol. Li. 48 Jacob van Maerlant, Jacob van Maerlant’s Spiegel Historiael of Rijmkronijk (Leyden, 1863-79), book 1: chaps. 57-62. 49 The Dutch edition of Speculum Historiale was printed at Gouda in 1477, at Delft in 1479, 1488 and 1491 and Antwerp in 1515. The French translation was prepared by Jean de Vignay and issued in royal folio volumes at Paris in 1495, 1496 and 1531. William Caxton produced the English translation in 1481. At the end of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Latin editions of Jacques de Vitry (1597) and Vincent de Beauvais (1624) were reissued in France by Baltazaris Belleri. 46
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virtue and faith through natural reason, he also stressed the edifying nature of his work, and the Brahmins supplied an excellent incentive to virtue.50 For our purposes, the main contribution of the Polychronicon was the diffusion across the English Channel of the Brahmin exemplum. The Polichronicon enjoyed great popularity during the later Middle Ages and was used for popular consumption. It found translation into English in 1387 by the pen of John of Trevisa and was released from the presses of William Caxton in 1482 and Wynkyn de Worde in 1495. More than one hundred manuscripts dated from the 1400s and 1500s survive. While some belonged to the scholarly circles, they also appeared in the possession of individual clerics, members of the nobility, the merchants of London, the parish churches and several institutions of fourteenth and fifteenth-century England.51 Another Christian treatment of the Collatio which deserves notice can be found in the famous Chronicon pontif icum et imperatorum (Chronicle of Popes and Emperors; 1265-8) by the papal chaplain Martinus Polonus. This was the favourite handbook in the later Middle Ages, which survives in more than 425 manuscripts. Its historical sections on Alexander the Great also contain a lengthy passage that reproduces the letters by “Dydimo.” Alexander’s rebuttal is here completely suppressed.52 Not only the Collatio but also St. Ambrose’s translation of the Palladius (De Moribus Brachmanorum) gained independent popularity. This is indicated by its use in a fourteenth-century chronicle by a monk of the Abbey of Malmesbury—the Eulogium Historiarum (Eulogy of Histories)—which starts at Creation and runs to the year 1366. The first part (Eulogium Temporis) is a compilation from standard works, such as Polychronicon and Speculum Maius.53 Much like the chronicles discussed above, the Eulogium can be understood as a precursor to the Renaissance cosmographies. Its third book records the empires of the world (drawn from MarRanulf Higden, Cronica Ranulphi Cistrensis Monachi, trans. J. Trevisa (Westminster, 1482 [English]), fols. xx-xxi. Also see G. H. V. Bunt, “The Story of Alexander the Great in the Middle English Translations of Higden’s Polychronicon,” in Vinvent of Beauvais and Alexander the Great. Studies on the Speculum Maius and its translations into medieval vernaculars, ed. W. J. Aerts, E. R. Smits, and J. B. Voorbij (Groningen, 1986), 127-40. 51 Antonia Gransden Historical Writing in England (London, 1982), 55-57, lists the Benedictine and Augustine houses in England, the ecclesiastical institutions, cathedrals, churches and laymen that possessed a copy, and the continuations that were added to the text, one of the best indications of its sustained influence. 52 Dan Embree, ed., The Chronicles of Rome. An Edition of the Middle English Chronicle of Popes and Emperors and the Lollard Chronicle (Woodbridge, 1999). 53 For an analysis of the Eulogia, see the preface in F. Haydon, ed., Eulogium (Historarum Sive Temporis): Chronicon Ab Orbe Condito Usque Ad Annum Domini M.CCC.LXVI (London, 1858). Also see Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England, 103-04. 50
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tinus Polonus) and is followed by a collection of legends. These miraculous histories are followed by a miscellaneous collection of anecdotes, including the exchange between Alexander and the Brahmins, which was taken from Higden’s work. The English monk reproduced the first episode in the Collatio correspondence, emphasizing the asceticism of the Brahmins, their simplicity and worship of God.54 Alexander’s answers are here compressed into one sentence, immediately followed by Dindimus’ response.55 The Macedonian king is thereafter given more space to reply, yet the last word goes, significantly, to Dindimus.56 These episodes are succeeded by the meeting between Dindimus and the Macedonian messenger, known from the Palladius.57 In other words, the Brahmin’s place in the European imagination hardly undergoes changes between 400 and 1400. The story that includes the correspondence between Alexander and Dindimus was alive and well in the monasteries of the fifteenth century. Sometime around 1400, the Benedictine encyclopaedist and chronicler, Thomas Walsingham—one of the best-known representatives of the monastic historiography of late-medieval England— augmented the so-called Compilation of St. Albans, a twelfth-century prose history of Alexander. The manuscript is known as Historia Alexandri Magni, and further distributes the Alexander-Dindimus encounter as recorded in the Polychronicon (ultimately derived from Vincent de Beauvais) in a cultural context that became increasingly more familiar with these virtuous heathens.58 In other words, the imagery of the proto-Christian Brahmin was entrenched in the scholarly circles by the end of the fourteenth century. If the scholars and educators prior to the Renaissance were convinced of the Christian virtues of the Brahmins, it would come as no surprise that this imagery soon became even more widespread in the popular domain.
F. Haydon, ed., Eulogium, 428-29. Ibid., 429. 56 Ibid., 430-32. 57 Ibid., 433-34. 58 Paul Meyer, Alexandre le Grand dans la Littérature Française du Moyen Âge, vol. 2: 52-68. For Walsingham’s authorship of the revised compilation and an analysis of his work, also see James Clark, “Thomas Walsingham Reconsidered: Books and Learning at Late-Medieval St. Albans,” Speculum 77, no. 3 (2002): 832-860. 54 55
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2.3. The Brahmin in the popular Imagination The Speculum Maius reached its widest audience in vernacular translations, and the Polychronicon reached an audience far beyond the limited circle of theologians and scholars. It must in fact be remarked that the reception of the stereotyped image of the Brahmin ascetic reached its height in a number of vernacular sources. One of them was the medieval alliterative Alexander romance, translated into English in about 1340-50. Entitled Alexander and Dindimus, its general contents may be described as follows: after Alexander slays the king of India, he finds people who are unclothed, called Gymnosophists. They request to be left alone. Alexander offers them peace, relocates towards the Ganges and encounters the Brahmins. What follows is the exchange of letters known from the Collatio episodes, criticizing Macedonian pride and deeds. The illuminations in the Bodleian manuscript represent Alexander meeting a crowned Dindimus.59 After explaining that his subjects are poor, live from the unploughed earth and fight the enemies within, Dindimus touches upon specific points of Christian doctrine. What follows is a diatribe against idolatry. To give an idea of the manner in which the Brahmin testified to the universal knowledge of Christ, the passage suggests that they were aware of all the constituents of the Trinity: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, an article of Christian faith vital to salvation. The section is taken from the paraphrases in modern English, printed by Walter Skeat (1978) in the margins of the Bodleian manuscript reproduction: We, for love of God, kill no beasts, nor carve. Ye worship your gods, and sacrifice to Devils. God hears not man because of sacrifices. God’s Word is the Son of Man. All are sustained by Him. God is a Spirit. Ye are all fools, and live in lust. After death ye will suffer pain. No sacrifice of beasts will help you. Ye have as many false gods as a man has limbs.60
A Middle Irish version of the Alexander romance was written on the basis of the Alexander material available at the time, entitled Scela Alexandir and included in the Book of Ballymote (ca. 1400). The latter contains the lives of saints and kings, but also the Alexander-Dindimus encounter.61 Another alliterative translation of the Historia de Preliis (Leo of Naples) is extant in two Walter W. Skeat, ed., Alexander and Dindimus: Or, The Letters of Alexander to Dindimus, King of the Brahmins, with the Replies of Dindimus etc. (London, 1978), xix-xx. 60 Ibid., 22-23. 61 Robert Meyer, “The Sources of the Middle Irish Alexander,” Modern Philology 47, no. 1 (1949): 1-7. 59
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fifteenth-century Middle English manuscripts and is best known as the Wars of Alexander. The translation is in particular interesting because of its emphasis in the Collatio episodes on the religious asceticism of the Brahmins.62 In other words, these works perpetuate a view of the Indian reality that readers in Europe could easily digest, transmitted in multiple European vernaculars, not to speak of the Armenian and Arabic versions of the Alexander legend.63 Another example from poetry can be found in the work of John Gower (ca. 1330-1408). Gower achieved international recognition with the Confessio Amantis. Its fifth book (on Avarice) contains a reference to one of Dindimus’ letters, which is again made into an attack against idolatry: “Dindimus, King of the Brahmins,” is said to have blamed the Greeks for having separate gods for all parts of the body.64 The Brahmins also occupied the world of narrative prose. The fifteenthcentury Prose Life of Alexander is considered to be an English translation of the Historia de preliis.65 Leo of Naples prepared the second Latin translation of pseudo-Callisthenes ca. 950, known under the title of the first interpolated version (Historia de Preliis; eleventh century). The latter embraces Palladius, the anonymous Dindimus de Bragmanibus and episodes from the Collatio correspondence. It continued to make an impression on the European image of India during the decades in which the Portuguese set out to discover a passage to the East. Quarto editions in Latin were printed ca. 1472 in Cologne and in Southern France in 1490. Both works reproduce sections from the Collatio correspondence.66 The composite image of the proto-Christian Brahmin became increasingly more integrated in Christian thought, and reached its zenith of influence with the production of two medieval romances: a French version of Renart the Foxe, and the fictitious travels of John Mandeville, both of which are located in the popular anticlerical tradition. Thorlac Turville-Petre, The Alliterative Revival (Cambridge, 1977), 98-99 It must in fact be remarked that the Brahmins or Barāhima also performed a polemical role in Islamic thought, though the question on their historical identity has been much debated. See Sarah Stroumsa, Freethinkers of Medieval Islam: Ibn Al-Rawāndī, Abū Bakr Al-Rāzī etc. (Leiden, 1999), ch. 5. Norman Calder disagrees with Stroumsa’s historical referent for the Barāhima: Calder, “The Barāhima: Literary Construct and Historical Reality,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 57, no. 1 (1994): 40-51. For other medieval Islamic sources, conflating the Brahmin topos with genuine information on India, also see Bruce B. Lawrence, Shahrastānī on the Indian Religions (The Hague, 1976). 64 John Gower, Confessio Amantis, ed. Russel A. Peck (Toronto, 1980 [English]), 246-47. 65 J. S. Westlake, ed., The Prose Life of Alexander. From the Thornton MS. (London, 1913), 77-88. 66 Both copies can be found at the British Library, London. See [Begin., fol. 1:] Incipit liber Alexandri magni regis macedonie de prelijs (Köln, 1472), no pagination; and Historia Alexandri Magni regis macedonie de preliis (1490), fols. H-Hv. 62 63
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Renard le Countrefait Strong anticlerical sentiments suggest just how deeply the priestly hierarchy had penetrated late medieval society. Its literary implications can be further located in the French romance of Renard Contrefait (ca. 1319). While the proto-Christian Brahmin was not that often explicitly present in the collections of exemplars, he featured prominently in the works that aimed their arrows at the monarchy and aristocracy, and at a range of ecclesiastical abuses. The Renard Contrefait is the final version of the Old French Roman de Renart, an extensive treatment of the famous figure of Renart the Foxe by Pierre de Saint Cloud (ca. 1175; Romance of Renard). This animal tale spawned many imitations and the final instalment, Le Roman de Renard le Countrefait (Romance of Renard the impostor) appeared in two redactions between 1319-22 and 1328-42. It was written by a former cleric from Troyes—defrocked for bigamy—and developed into a collection of satirical and allegorical stories whose targets are the aristocracy and the clergy as usual. As a compendium of medieval moral thought, it is also considered to have been a major inspiration for the Canterbury Tales (although it is unclear which of the multiple sources in the Renart cycle was actually used by Chaucer).67 The second branch or chapter of this work incorporates large sections from the Alexander Romance. Dindimus (king of the Brahmins) introduced his subjects to Alexander with the typical emphasis on their simple and ascetic way of life. This treatment of the Collatio correspondence contains perhaps the most explicit references to the Old Testament tradition, hauling the Brahmins directly into the realm of Judeo-Christian thought. Dindimus expressed his belief in God, the Creator of Adam and Eve. The piety of the Brahmins became obvious: they prayed to God night and day. The correspondence is again turned into a medieval attack against idolatry. Dindimus observed that the Brahmins did not perform sacrifices and worshiped no other gods but God. Alexander’s worship is related to diabolical inventions. This Old French work prefigures a theme that would grow popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the Brahmin is here said to be familiar with the Law of Moses, the Judeo-Christian Decalogue. Dindimus is made to write that idolatry and sacrifice are detrimental to the soul, and in their spiritual quest for heaven, the Brahmins followed the Law of God which had Robert Correale and Mary Hamel, Sources and analogues of the Canterbury Tales, vol. 1 (Woodbridge, 2003), 450. For the Romance of Renard and the Counterfeit Romance, see William W. Kibler, ed., Medieval France: An Encyclopedia (New York, 1995), 793-94.
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been delivered to them by Moses.68 This reference to the first commandment of the Pentateuch is continued with a long tirade against Macedonian idols, sacrifices, worldliness and pride. The Voyages of Mandeville The image of the proto-Christian Brahmins reached its height with the publication of the most famous, yet fictional travel report of the Middle Ages: the Voyages de Jehan de Mandeville Chevalier (The voyages of John Mandeville Knight; ca. 1357). As a medieval romance, this splendid blend of facts and myths recounts the adventures of Mandeville. Whereas the author claimed to have been born at St. Albans, Hertfordshire, and wrote that he left England in 1322, the authorship of this fictional report has been traditionally ascribed to a physician who died at Liège in 1372. Recent studies, however, have uncovered compelling evidence concerning his birth and death in England. The significance of his report is indicated by the rapid multiplication of manuscripts and translations and by its influence on such later writers as Sir Thomas More, William Shakespeare and John Milton. The report provides a description of the Holy Land and the route thither, followed by an account of the Near East and parts of Asia, of particular interest to pilgrims, crusaders and future geographers.69 Whether or not Mandeville performed any of these travels himself, most of the content is taken from the books that were circulating in his day. The most notable examples are the works of Pliny (ca. 77 c.e.), Jacques de Vitry (thirteenth century), Vincent de Beauvais (1240-60) and reports from genuine explorers such as, William of Boldensele (who visited the Holy Land ca. 1336) and Odoric of Pordenone (the Italian Franciscan who travelled to India ca. 1316). Mandeville reproduced, popularized and embellished these Henri Lemaître and Gaston Raynaud, eds., Le Roman De Renart le Contrefait, vol. 1 (Paris, 1914), 150-51: “Car iceulx sacrifiemens / Viennent de mal et de faulx sens / Qye ly grans deables vous font faire / Pour vous en fin en enfer traire. / La folye en est trop creüe En la fin l’ame en est perdue. / Mais nous crëons le souverain / Dieu, nostre Pere premerain, / Qui par Moÿse, son sergent, / Donna nostre loy a sa gent; / Toute nostre entente y metons, / Ne de riens tant Dieu ne loons, / Que quant viellesse vers nous vient, / C’est la plus grant joye qui nous tient; / Car il nous tarde issir de vye / Pour estre en la Dieu conpagnie; / L’ame en va a Dieu trestout droit, / Et le corps en terre ou il doit.” 69 For a detailed introduction to the author and his work, see Josephine W. Bennett, The Rediscovery of Sir John Mandeville (New York, 1954). For the reception of the work prior to 1550, see Rosemary Tzanaki, Mandeville’s Medieval Audiences (Aldershot, 2003). Also see A. C. Spearing, “The Journey to Jerusalem: Mandeville and Hilton,” Essays in Medieval Studies 25 (2009): 1-17. 68
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works. The quotations below are taken from a modern spelling version of the Cotton manuscript at the Oxford Bodleian Library (1900). Issues of faith and religion intersect this imaginative, fictitious travelogue. Mandeville strayed into the dispute about the salvation of those outside the Church. As he drew his conjured travels to a close, he wrote of an island in the legendary kingdom of Prester John: a land that was “great and good and plenteous, where that be good folk and true, and of good living after their belief and of good faith.”70 Though they were not certified Christians, they nevertheless knew the Ten Commandments. Whereas some had called this the “Land of Faith,” others called it “the Isle of Bragman.”71 The Christian appropriation of the Brahmin reaches its apogee in the narrative that follows: And albeit that they be not christened, ne have no perfect law, yet, natheles, of kindly law they be full of all virtue, and they eschew all vices and all malices and all sins. For they be not proud, ne covetous, ne envious, ne wrathful, ne gluttons, ne lecherous. Ne they do to any man otherwise than they would that other men did to them, and in this point they fulf il the ten commandments of God, and give no charge of avoir, ne of riches. And they lie not, ne they swear not for none occasion, but they say simply, yea and nay; for they say, he that sweareth will deceive his neighbour, and therefore, all that they do, they do it without oath.72
Mandeville’s location of the Brahmins in Prester John’s kingdom has a clear theological implication. In the twelfth century, European Christendom received word of the existence of Prester John, king of India, commander of a large army and the temporal and spiritual ruler of a thriving Christian community. In about 1165, a letter purporting to have been written by John reached the European courts. The eighty manuscript copies that survive in several languages to this day talk about the wealth of his country, its monsters, beasts and birds. Prester John [pseud.] informed us that the mighty Indus flows through his empire, mentioned the works of St. Thomas the Apostle, and revealed that poverty, thievery, adultery and avarice are not known in his legendary land. It is generally accepted that some utopian elements in this widely distributed letter were lifted from pseudo-Callisthenes.73 The impact of the narrative is reflected in a twelfth-century mission subsequently sent John de Mandeville, The Travels of Sir John ManDeville (London, 1900), 192. Ibid., 192. 72 Ibid., 192 (emphasis mine). 73 See Charles E. Nowell, “The Historical Prester John,” Speculum 28, no. 3 (1953): 435-445. On the letter by “Prester John, King of Kings ruling over the three Indians,” and the attempts to locate him in time and space, also see Andrew Athappilly, “An Indian Prototype for Prester John,” Terrae Incognitae 10 (1978): 15-23. 70 71
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by Pope Alexander III in search of its author. A Christian king in the East would indeed have been a formidable ally in the attempts to recapture Jerusalem. Even without resolving the issue of the authorship of this work, it is evident that the letter fits the European picture of India in 1165, and it should come as no surprise if the author had been inspired by the Brahmin material in pseudo-Callisthenes. It was written with clear educational intent, presenting the followers of Prester John as a community which the West might try to emulate. The empire of Prester John thus served as an ideal abode for the Brahmin divine. Mandeville’s project of moral betterment was the most influential vehicle of the Brahmin exemplum in the medieval popular domain: the author expressed his appreciation of the Brahmin’s near-perfection in allusions to the shortcomings at home. They were not given to theft, murder or adultery and also lived “as that they were religious men.” Because the Brahmins were teeming with good qualities, they never suffered tempests, famines or other tribulations, “as we be, many times, amongst us, for our sins.” Above and beyond good morals, they were familiar with the most central tenet of true religion: “They believe well in God, that made all things, and him they worship.”74 After this assessment of good morals and faith, Mandeville took recourse to the Speculum Maius and paraphrased the answers of Dindimus to Alexander.75 Mandeville also alluded to the fact that the Brahmins were not the only ones pleasing to God in the kingdom of Prester John: the “Gynosophe” were also good folk—and full of good faith. Mandeville was not the least deceived by outward appearances, for the Gymnosophists “hold, for the most part, the good conditions and customs and good manners, as men of the country abovesaid; but they go all naked.”76 The subsequent venture into biblical hermeneutics calls for lengthy quotations, as it illustrates again, the unshakable certainty with which medieval Europe understood the Indian Other: not quite different from ‘the Christian self.’ This results in a plea for toleration, set within the strict limits of Christian thought: And albeit that these folk have not the articles of our faith as we have, natheles, for their good faith natural, and for their good intent, I trow fully, that God loveth Ibid., 193. Ibid., 193. This section is omitted in the French edition of 1480 but occurs in the Dutch print dating approximately 1470. See John de Mandeville, [Begin. fol. 1 recto, col. 1:] Dit is die tafel van desen boecke (ca. 1470), no pagination. 76 John de Mandeville, The Travels of Sir John ManDeville, 193-94. 74 75
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them, and that God take their service to gree, right as he did of Job, that was a paynim, and held him for his true servant. And therefore, albeit that there be many diverse laws in the world, yet I trow, that God loveth always them that love him, and serve him meekly in truth, and namely them that despise the vain glory of this world, as this folk do and as Job did also. And therefore said our Lord by the mouth of Hosea the prophet, Ponam eis multiplices leges meas; and also in another place, Qui totum orbem subdit suis legibus. And also our Lord saith in the Gospel, Alias oves habeo, que non sunt ex hoc ovili, that is to say, that he had other servants than those that be under Christian law. And to that accordeth the avision that Saint Peter saw at Jaffa, how the angel came from heaven, and brought before him diverse beasts, as serpents and other creeping beasts of the earth, and of other also, great plenty, and bade him take and eat. And Saint Peter answered; I eat never, quoth he, of unclean beasts. And then said the angel, Non dicas immunda, que Deus mundavit. And that was in token that no man should have in despite none earthly man for their diverse laws, for we know not whom God loveth, ne whom God hateth. And for that example, when men say, de profundis, they say it in common and in general, with the Christian, Pro animabus omnium defunctorum, pro quibus sit orandum. And therefore say I of this folk, that be so true and so faithful, that God loveth them. For he hath amongst them many of the prophets, and always hath had. And in those isles, they prophesied the Incarnation of Lord Jesu Christ, how he should be born of a maiden, three thousand year or more or our Lord was born of the Virgin Mary. And they believe well it, the Incarnation, and that full perfectly, but they know not the manner, how he suffered his passion and death for us.77
Tzanaki (2003) devotes an entire chapter to this “startlingly tolerant treatment of religious otherness,” but fails to address the fact that this tolerance was only directed to those others who had been transformed into an idealized image of the religious self.78 The spiritual realm was composed of either erring variants of the Christian faith or those who reached the heights of ‘authentic Christians.’ Only the latter—explicitly hauled within the realm of Christian theology—could elicit the goodwill and toleration associated with the late medieval and humanist attitudes to religion. In other words, the Gymnosophists had a direct connection with God, like the Jewish prophets, and an explicit faith in the coming of the Messiah, much like Dindimus in the work of Abélard. Faith in the Redeemer had become one of the essential criteria for salvation, whether in a Christian kingdom or amongst the heathen, as put down by one of the greatest theologians of the Church, Thomas of Aquinas (ca. 1225-1274). The Indians performed a clearly articulated exemplary role. Although unfamiliar with the finer articles 77 78
Ibid., 195-96 (except the Latin phrases, all emphasis mine). Tzanaki, Mandeville’s Medieval Audiences, 219-58.
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of Christian doctrine, they had “kindly law” and “good faith natural.” Not only did they honour God, they also followed His Ten Commandments and anticipated His Son. The Indians thus provided fresh evidence to start a plea for natural religion, one that carried at its heart a critique of the institutionalized Church as the sole guide to salvation. Also the far-away Christians in the remote kingdom of Prester John could be called upon for explicit criticisms of the priests and anticlerical satire: In his land be many Christian men of good faith and of good law, and namely of them of the same country, and have commonly their priests, that sing the Mass, and make the sacrament of the altar, of bread, right as the Greeks do; but they say not so many things at the Mass as men do here. For they say not but only that that the apostles said, as our Lord taught them, right as Saint Peter and Saint Thomas and the other apostles sung the Mass, saying the pater noster and the words of the sacrament. But we have many more additions that divers popes have made, that they ne know not of.79
Mandeville’s work has to be understood as the storehouse of several utopian images, located in the wider context of the medieval anticlerical tradition, where it coalesces with the satire of The Canterbury Tales and the narrative poem Piers Plowman. Written in the English vernacular in the second half of the fourteenth century by William Langland, Piers Plowman survives in numerous manuscripts and suggests just how deeply the anticlericalism of the later Middle Ages affected the literary traditions: Piers Plowman found home in the writings of John Ball, a Wycliffite and leader of the Great Rising (the Peasant’s Revolt; 1381).80 Frank Grady (2004) locates the Alexander and Dindimus poem in the tradition of Piers Plowman. It is not only likely that Langland was influenced by the India material, but Alexander and Dindimus also survives in a copy late enough to have in turn been influenced by Langland. While this mutual influence might not be proven conclusively, the alliterative Alexander and Dindimus “can be most productively read in the context of the concerns and strategies it shares with Piers Plowman.”81 The same applies to Mandeville. Already in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, the Brahmins were implicated in the edifying discourse of ecclesiastic reform—as was especially clear in Mandeville’s work—and the Alexander and Dindimus poem employs the discourse of the saintly heathens John de Mandeville, The Travels of Sir John ManDeville, 199 (emphasis mine). Wendy Scase, Piers Plowman and the New Anticlericalism (Cambridge; New York, 1989). 81 Frank Grady, “Contextualizing Alexander and Dindimus,” in The Yearbook of Langland Studies, vol. 18 (Michigan, 2004), 81-106 [91]. 79 80
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in which Mandeville and Langland participated. Mandeville’s fictional report enjoyed instant, extraordinary popularity in the Latin and the vernacular literatures of Europe. More than three hundred handwritten manuscripts survive today, many others have been misplaced or lost to researchers. From the outset, this was a popular work, not in the Latin but written in the French vernacular—and by the second half of the fourteenth century, Latin was no longer the central language of literature; the literate Englishmen could more readily read French than Latin. The work was not only popular in the sense of its wide distribution but also in its appeal to people from many walks of life: from the laymen in the middle and lower classes, through the English, French, Italian and Spanish courtiers, to the monks of Germany.82 The printing press allowed for an even wider distribution. Printed editions in Dutch go as far back as 1470. To give an idea of the wide circulation of the printed work, at least twenty-five editions in Dutch and about twenty in English have been counted up to the eighteenth century. During the time that the adventurous sons of Europe roamed the earth in search of Prester John and the early-modern reports about the Oriental Indies were written, Mandeville’s fictional account retained its popularity.83 These works are representative of a wider edifying genre, illustrating how the Brahmin was assimilated into the Christian fold as the proto-Christian embodiment of the sacerdotal ideal, defined during the Gregorian Reformation, in order to serve an internal theological and moral purpose. The Brahmins were thought to guard the central aspects of true religion: good morals, faith and the belief in the biblical God. This tantalising image of a Brahmin nation would have such an impact on the popular imagination that to single out the Brahmins as a clerical estate appeared to be self-evident—they always had a fabled place in European learning and popular perceptions of the East. Religion was the realm of the priest, leading Mandeville to classify the Bragmans “as that they were religious men.” Most of the manuscripts were inexpensive ones, on paper and seldom illuminated. See Josephine Bennett, The Rediscovery of Sir John Mandeville, 220. 83 The first prints of the French edition appeared at Lyons in 1480, 1487, 1490 and 1508, with prints as late as 1729 at Leiden and at La Haye in 1735. The first Latin edition was printed at Zwolle in 1483, followed by Latin prints at Strasbourg in 1483-6 and at Antwerp in 1484. An English edition appeared at London in 1496, followed by further prints at Westminster by Wynkyn de Worde in 1499, 1503 and 1510. The German editions was printed at Augsburg in 1478?, 1481 and 1482, and at Strasbourg in 1483, 1488, 1499, 1501 and 1507. The Italian edition appeared at Milan in 1480, followed by another Milanese print in 1496; at Bologna in 1488, Venice in 1491 and Florence in 1492. The work remained popular and was widely quoted throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 82
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2.4. The Brahmin Exemplum: A long theological Career While the Reformation would depose off many structures specific to the medieval clerical estate, anticlerical sentiments were not new in Europe. As we have seen, the anticlericalism of the Middle Ages did not lack in spirit when compared to the sentiments that informed the Protestant Reformation. Many theologians in the sixteenth century did not desert the institutionalized Church, yet similarly developed programmes of reform that were perhaps as radical as the visions of several Protestant thinkers. One of the most central Catholic authorities in the early sixteenth century, the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus (ca. 1466-1536), convinced the educated elites that reform of the Church was possible through the laity. His programme of reform was outlined in the Enchiridion (1503), or the “Handbook of the Christian Soldier.” It emphasized—like the Modern Devout—personal piety based on an individual reading of Scripture. While Erasmus never left the Catholic fold, his work set out to curb the authority of the Church. Erasmus’ programme became a popular read in the sixteenth century: after a first reprint in 1509, the Enchiridion went through twenty-three editions in the subsequent six years. As shown in the final section of this Chapter, the Brahmins continued to serve an edifying purpose in this intellectual milieu, which became increasingly more radicalized at the dawn of the Reformation. While many of the works discussed above were still printed and read in this period, one of the sources that distributed the Brahmin imagery to the farthest corners of Europe was produced in 1520 by the German humanist, Johannes Böhm (1485-1533/35, Johan Boemus). The Customs of all Nations The Omnium gentium mores (The customs of all nations) by Boemus appeared in 1520 at Augsburg—a leading economic power and acknowledged centre for humanist learning. It was warmly received by Boemus’ contemporaries and ran through at least twenty-two editions in the sixteenth century alone. The first two books about Africa and Asia were translated into English by William Waterman in 1555.84 A Catholic Hebraist and canon at Ulm catheFor a detailed analysis of Boemus’ work, see Margaret T. Hodgen, Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia, 1964), ch. 4; and Margaret T. Hodgen, “Johann Boemus (Fl. 1500): An Early Anthropologist,” American Anthropologist 55, no. 2 (1953): 284-294.
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dral, Johan Boemus was united with his humanist contemporaries in their shared interest in classical literature that combined biblical lore and the Latin Christian tradition: Boemus prefaced his work with a history of religion that traces back to the apologists of the primitive Church. He explained his position thus: whilst humankind once worshiped the biblical God, the Devil made humanity bestow upon idols and images the honour that previously was bestowed upon God.85 This analysis was far from exceptional: Christianity generally represented itself as the original and true religion, bestowed upon humankind or grafted on to the heart of humanity. Boemus described the state of mankind before the lands were cultivated and cities were built: humanity wandered with the beasts in the fields, took its lodging without fear for theft and murder, lived an idyllic life in the absence of gold and money and enjoyed the communal usage of goods, thus emulating the Utopians of Sir Thomas More (1516).86 When the cities were erected, humanity founded the sciences and the arts. This premature departure from nature became the seed of vanity and idolatry: people came to receive honours and fame, and even the name of immortals.87 No one less than the Devil harvested this seed of deception. His schemes unfolded by initiating voices and spirits, launching into the hearts of men mindless fear and superstition. The next stage of corruption introduced pilgrimages and oracles and ever more idols and images, to ease the grip of fear and bestow upon idols the honours due to God.88 With the arrival of the Messiah the true religion was restored. Boemus continued that after Christ sent his disciples “into the universall worlde” and after the Gospel was thus “of all nacions received,” what was missing in this divine project was sustainability: Satan, returning to his natural malice, snared humankind again.89 Carina L. Johnson (2006) recently argues that humanist scholars such as Boemus reported about idolatry in a spirit of inquiry and a neutral tone. Johnson elaborates how Reformation discourse would eventually brand idolatry in terms of Devil worship.90 However, this is rather difficult to reconcile Johannes Boemus, The Fardle of facions conteining the aunciente maners, customes, and Lawes, of the peoples enhabiting the two partes of the earth, called Affrike and Asie, trans. W. Waterman (London, 1555), A.ii-v. 86 Ibid., A.ii-iiii. 87 Ibid., A.iiii. 88 Ibid., A.v. 89 Ibid., A.vi. 90 Carina L. Johnson, “Idolatrous Cultures and the Practice of Religion,” Journal of the History of Ideas 67, no. 4 (2006), 607. 85
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with the manner in which Boemus described the evolution of religion in the preface to his compendium. As a matter of fact, Boemus outlined a vision of the history of religion, the basics being agreed upon by Catholics, Lutherans and later radical Protestant Reformers.91 To call his analysis neutral or mundane is to miss out on the primary agent behind the spiritual revolution: the Devil. The latter could have reminded the sixteenth-century humanist of one thing only: Lucifer or Satan, the Common Enemy, the Prince of Darkness, the Father of Evil, the Author of Lies. Be that as it may, Boemus was clear about the merits of his work: while continuing the medieval tradition of edifying scholarship, he elaborated upon the benefits of learning about the manners, laws and rites of all the peoples in the world. Simply put, ethnographic learning should lead the way to the knowledge of God.92 Within this context, the Brahmins previously had been applauded as the proto-Christian heathens, worshipping the biblical God. It is within the very same context that the Brahmins make their reappearance in the sixteenth century. Boemus’ collection is divided into four regions: Africa, Europe, Asia and a short section on America. Chapter eight in the book on Asia concerns India. The classical texts recovered in the fifteenth century had familiarized the European literati with geographical and ethnographic details about the peoples inhabiting the world. Boemus effectively described the Indian “commune wealth” like Pliny the Elder (Historia Naturalis; ca. 77 C.E.) portrayed it almost a millennium and a half before.93 Pliny provided Europe with the most fantastic tales about the East, from those of the dog-headed and onelegged peoples beyond the Ganges, to the stories of amazons, griffons and mythical snakes. These mirabilia or marvels were popularized by Pomponius Mela (first century c.e.) and Caius Julius Solinus (fourth century).94 Both Roman scholars featured in the revival of geography in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Boemus reproduced these tales about the mythical nations in the East and mentioned the sages which the Greeks called Gimnosophistæ. Boemus’ sequence of Devilish interventions is, significantly, reproduced verbatim in the attempt by the Church of England clergyman, Stephen Batman, to represent a pantheon of all the heathen gods. See his The Golden Booke of the Leaden Goddes. Wherein is described the vayne imaginations of Heathe[n] Pagans, and counterfaict Christians… (London, 1577), fol. 34. 92 Johannes Boemus, The Fardle of facions, A.i. 93 Ibid., L.iii-v. 94 Pomponius Mela, The worke of Pomponius Mela. the cosmographer, concerninge the situation of the world etc., trans. A. Golding (London, 1585); Caius Julius Solinus, The excellent and pleasant worke of Iulius Solinus Polyhistor etc., trans. A. Golding (London, 1587). For similar reproductions of the marvels of the East, see William Caxton, trans., The Myrrour: Dyscrypcyon of the Worlde with Many Mervaylles etc. (London, 1527 [1481]). 91
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Amongst these Gymnosophists still existed a community known from their exchanges with Alexander the Great. They are called “Brachmanes.”95 The Brahmins were like the people to whom Boemus directed his readers in the preface: a perfect example of immaculate humanity. Boemus explained that they lived a pure and simple life, similar to the ideal that existed globally prior to the emergence of cities. They were void of lust and vanity and desired nothing than what the unploughed earth offered them.96 The law was absent amongst them for there was no one to punish—only the law of nature they had heard of.97 The English translator reinforced an idea that became popular in future scholarship on India: the belief that the name ‘Brahman’ derives from the biblical patriarch Abraham. Waterman derived his English translation from the French edition of 1540, and rendered the French “Brachmanes” (from “Bracmani” in the Latin) into the more suggestive “Abrahmanes.”98 The Abrahmanes did not praise the virtues of rhetoric: their eloquence consisted of the agreement of tongue and heart in truth. They had no universities and shunned the apish arts—like the Modern Devout—in favour of natural reason. Like their Jewish name-giver, they dod not worship God with bloody sacrifices but claimed that He accepted words of prayer. In Boemus’ assessment, this community of ascetics became the utopian model specimen of Christian virtue and faith.99 The English translator concurred with this sentiment, concluding that “the unchristened Brahmanes” lived by a code of conduct “wher with we Christianes are so farre out of love, that we are afraied leaste any man should beleve it to be true.”100 Johannes Boemus, The Fardle of facions, L.vii. Ibid., L.viii. 97 Ibid., L.viii. 98 Ibid., L.ix. 99 Ibid., L.ix-x: “Thei have neither moote halles, ne universities, whose disagreable doctrine more leaning to apisshe arte, then natural reason and experience ... One part of this people iudgeth ma[n]nes perfeteste blessednes to stande in honestie. And a nother in pleasure. Not in the tickelinges of the taile, or pamperinges of the bealy, more bittre then pleasaunte as thou maye use them: but to lacke nothing that perfecte nature desireth, ne nothing to do that perfecte nature misliketh. Thei thincke it no honour to God, to slea for him an innoce[n]te beast: yea thei say he accepteth not the sacrifice of men polluted with bloode, but rather loveth a worship voide of all bloodsheade. That is to saye the humble entreatie of woorde, because that property only (to be entreated with woordes) is commune to God and to manne. With this therefore saye they he is pleased, because we somewhat resemble him self therin.”(emphasis mine). 100 Ibid., L.x. This comparison between Brahmin and European morality is neither present in the original Latin, nor in the French translation which Waterman rendered into English, and therefore must have been an interpolation by the hand of the translator himself. See Johannes Boemus, Omnium Gentium Mores etc. (Augsburg, 1520), fols. xxv–vi; and his, Recueil de diverses Histoires touchant les Situations de toutes Regio[n]s et Pays etc. (Antwerp, 1540), 72. 95 96
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The seamless incorporation of the Brahmins into the Christian schematic testifies to the theological impulse that structured the ancient history of religion in the preface: all the nations had known of the biblical God and Christian mode of conduct, including the Brahmins. Writing in the first few decades of the sixteenth century, when Boemus recognised the Brahmins in India as the proto-Christian heathens, he illustrates the endurance of the analytical categories with which the Christian thinkers and apologists of the Church had since late antiquity understood their own traditions and those of others.101 The wide popularity of his compendium guaranteed the Brahmin’s special place in the literatures of Europe.102
2.5. Conclusion Other cultures featured prominently in the western descriptions of the world from the early-Christian era onwards. They either functioned as examples of the remnants of true religion (proto-Christianity) or as cultures which had forsaken true religion and turned towards idolatry or false religion. This is the context in which the Brahmins were domesticated and assimilated into the literary genre of the exemplum. Like the priest safeguarded good morals, chastity, moderation and true religion at home—in word if not always in deed—the Brahmins were believed to strive for the normative ideals of the Gregorian Reforms in the East. Pliny’s monopod and headless nations represented the exotic Other. Regarding the Brahmins, Europe saw no Other: they were transformed into an edifying and almost ideal representation of ‘the Christian self.’ The Brahmin performed two clearly defined roles. As the archetype of the proto-Christians, he illustrated theological reason about questions on salvation. As the most lucid embodiment of virtue and holiness, 101 At the time when Boemus was writing his essay, these ideas were still reproduced in a powerful Renaissance trend that stressed the extent to which Greco-Roman heathens approximated the truth of Christianity, often associated with the revival of Platonism under the Florentine Medici. See Charles B. Schmitt, “Perrenial Philosophy: From Agostino Steuco to Leibniz,” Journal of the History of Ideas 27, no. 4 (1966): 505-532. 102 The Latin edition appeared (at times with different title pages) at Lyon in 1536, 1539, 1541, 1576 and 1570, at Freiburg im Breisgau in 1540, at Venice in 1542, Antwerp in 1571, Pavia in 1596 and at Genua in 1604 and 1610. The French translation was issued at Antwerp, twenty years after the Latin original came out. Other French prints appeared at Paris in 1542, 1545 and 1547. The Italians could read the work in their vernacular from 1542 onwards. The Italian edition appeared at Venice, followed by Venetian prints in 1549, 1558, 1560, 1564, 1566 and 1585. Boemus’ work soon found translation into Spanish, issued at Antwerp in 1556.
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he performed a didactic role for the moralists and educators. His geographical distance thus served as a perspective from which satire and criticism could be directed at the Christian West. In other words, the prominent place of the Brahmins in the European imagination does not stem from purely ethnographic interests but tracks a polemical argument in defence of faith, which was further propelled through the cultural history of Europe as an edifying motif. Europe appreciated its idealized mirror image for so long as it was not too much distorted by the Prince of Darkness. As shown in the following Chapter, the reports of travellers and merchants from the early 1500s would shatter the idyllic vision of a proto-Christian nation outside the Christian world. Like the savants built upon the Alexander material, sixteenth-century scholars would draw from the reports that came back during the first few decades of Portuguese activity in the East to construct a second stereotyped image. The agents of corruption at home—the Devil and his priestly minions—also facilitated the move towards false religion elsewhere. This second image says the following: the Brahmins are crafty friars and priests.
Chapter Three
False Religion and the Crafty Priest
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he medieval reformers directed their critiques at the priests and at a vast range of clerical abuses, not to repudiate but to emphasize the priestly ideal in the daily lives of the believers. If not in deed then in word at least, the priest embodied religion and the spiritual life of Christ. It was in this context that the Brahmins were defined as the Oriental embodiment of the sacerdotal ideal—promoting frugality, modesty and the inner spiritual life. Their legendary asceticism and ‘saintly’ way of life motivated the decision to single out the Brahmins as the prototypical clerical estate.1 For twelve centuries or more, this favourable yet theological representation of India dominated the European imagination. With the Portuguese expansion in the sixteenth century and the attendant proliferation of eyewitness reports, Europe gained further and deeper insights in ‘the false religion of the East.’ From the Church Fathers to the late medieval period, Western Christianity was seeped in several debates about the sin of idolatry. The sixteenth-century reports about the cultural traditions of Asia were mapped onto the conceptual framework shared by these debates. That is, the empirical data produced by the travellers to the East was used to illustrate, reinforce and elaborate the common Christian understanding of idolatry and false religion. Merchants, missionaries and government officials returned from India, with stories of idolatrous practices and customs not entirely suited for the sensibilities of pious readers. The earlier knowledge of their ‘asceticism’ had shaped the conviction that the Brahmins were an Indian community that strived to live up to the sacerdotal ideal; eyewitness reports noted the patent failure of the Brahmins to live up to this ideal and thereby, laid the foundations of the second Brahmin image. The latter image arose on the ancient foundations of the first: Henceforth, the Brahmin protagonist became a crafty
The legendary image of the Brahmin ascetic even carried over to descriptions of the New World. See Thomas Hahn, “Indians East and West: Primitivism and Savagery in English Discovery Narratives of the Sixteenth Century,” The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 8, 1 (1978): 77–114. Also the ideal state that Thomas More had in mind (Utopia, 1516) can be traced back to the medieval formulations about the Brahmins and the Gymnosophists. See Donald F. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. 2 (Chicago, 1970), 364–65.
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friar and priest. Much like the medieval representation, this second mode of representation developed within a religious context defined by anticlericalism: the Protestant Reformation. As this Chapter will shortly demonstrate, these two images reveal but two ends of the same theological continuum. That is to say, the cognitive limits of what could be said about Indian traditions were drawn thus: they either reflected aspects of true religion (Christianity) or they embodied its corruption. As previously outlined in Chapter 2, this understanding of non-Christian traditions goes back to the apologetics of the early Church. The more Europe learned about the contemporary Brahmins, the more they moved to the other side of the spiritual spectrum. This Chapter looks at the other side of this equation and outlines the intellectual milieu in which the Brahmins were designated as the crafty priests, paralleling the wickedness of the Catholic priests of Rome. It presents a reading of sixteenth-century Protestant sources in order to demonstrate the wide distribution of this second mode of representation in the theological circles and popular imagination, in Germany, the Low Countries, France and England. For the first thing that sixteenth-century Europe learned about these ‘Indian priests’ is this: they tend to deflower queens.
3.1. The Theology of Idolatry Debates concerning the nature of idolatry had been central to Christian thought from the time of the early Church Fathers. Theologically, the objections against idolatry can be explained in relatively simple terms. There can be only one true God who is the sovereign Creator of the universe—whose will governs all that has been, is and shall be. To be Christian is not only to recognize this true God as the sovereign Creator, but also, through one’s acts of worship, to confirm that God’s plan or will is expressed in the world, and that one’s own existence is a part of His plan and in submission to His will. When one gives this status to anything other than the true God and worships any such object, it amounts to idolatry. It is to worship the creature instead of the Creator, the worst of mortal sins: “For it is, by definition, an inroad on God’s sovereignty over the world, an attempt on His Divine majesty, a rebellious setting up of a creature on the throne that belongs to Him alone.”2
Joseph Wilhelm, “Idolatry,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1910); Retrieved July 13, 2009 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07636a.htm.
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Idolatry in Scripture For the sake of the present argument, a convenient way of characterizing the problem of idolatry in Christianity is to distinguish between its biblical or theological aspects, on the one hand, and its social aspects, on the other. With regard to the first aspect, the concern about idolatry as the worship of idols or images traces back to the Old Testament. There is the well-known injunction against idol worship in the first table of the Decalogue: “Turn ye not unto idols, nor make to yourselves molten gods: I am the lord your God” (Leviticus 19:4) or “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the lord thy God am a jealous God...” (Exodus 20:4-6). Throughout the trials of the nation of Israel, this divine commandment against idolatry returns over and over again, especially, in those circumstances where it has been violated. Any act of reverence towards other gods is condemned as idolatry, because these gods are idols, who do not deserve the worship that is due to the Creator: “For all the gods of the people are idols: but the lord made the heavens” (Chronicles 1:6). One of the most typical charges that we find in the Old Testament is that idols have been created by human hands and it is blasphemous therefore, to worship man-made gods: “The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands” (Psalms 135:15) and “Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made” (Isaiah 2:8). The contrast is drawn between idols as impotent creations brought forth by human hands and the Sovereign who has created the universe. In the tale of Bel and the Dragon, when king Cyrus of Persia asks Daniel why he will not worship Bel, Daniel replies: “Because I may not worship idols made with hands, but the living God, who hath created the heaven and the earth, and hath sovereignty over all flesh” (Bel 1:5).3 In the New Testament, the second or ‘social’ aspect of the sin of idolatry becomes central, particularly in the Apostle Paul’s Letters. This aspect esssentially, revolves around the problem of demarcating the boundaries of the Christian community. The early Christians faced all kinds of practical questions concerning the scope of their interaction with the pagans and paganism. In The First Epistle to the Corinthians, for instance, Paul responded Stuart Weeks, “Man-Made Gods? Idolatry in the Old Testament,” in Idolatry: False Worship in the Bible, Early Judaism and Christianity, ed. S. Barton (London & New York, 2007), 7-21.
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to a question that had arisen amongst the Christian inhabitants of Corinth about touching or eating the things offered to the idols. Did this make one complicit in idolatry? Similar questions were raised about attending dinners or banquets organized by idolaters. Because the early Christians were not a separate ethnic community, but included members from several such communities, the question of demarcating the communal boundaries between the Christians and the pagans was more crucial than it ever had been to the Jews in relation to the Gentiles. The notion of idolatry thus played a central role in demarcating the boundaries of the Christian religious community. This explains why the biblical passages often established a connection between “food rules, sex rules and the prohibition of idolatry,” as Stephen Barton (2007) finds.4 Such demarcations of the social interactions between Christians and ‘idolaters’ became pertinent in those areas of life concerning food and sexual conduct. The Jewish tradition had equated idol worship to fornication and adultery, because the relationship between Israel and God was imagined in terms of a marriage covenant. In Christianity, this connection between idolatry and promiscuity became increasingly important, as the Christians distinguished themselves from the pagans in these terms: “Lacking the clear ritual boundaries provided in Judaism by circumcision and dietary laws, Christians tended to make their exceptional sexual discipline bear the full burden of expressing the difference between themselves and the pagan world.”5 In addition to the worship of images, sexual promiscuity and perversity became one of the defining characteristics for Christians to recognize false religion, identify the idolaters and stay clear from idolatry. In the medieval period, this was also considered to be one of the markers of heresy: the religious groups identified as heretics were all too often accused of a variety of grotesque and perverse sexual acts and of losing themselves to worldly pleasures.6 Similarly, when the Europeans explored the world, they not only looked for the idols of the heathens they expected to find, but in addition scrutinized their sexual mores in minute detail. One of the popular ways for European Christians to distinguish themselves from the ‘heathens’ of Africa, Stephen Barton, “Food Rules, Sex Rules and the Prohibition of Idolatry: What’s the Connection?,” in Idolatry: False Worship in the Bible, Early Judaism and Christianity, 141-62. 5 Peter Brown, “Late Antiquity,” in A History of Private Life: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium, ed. P. Ariès and G. Duby (Cambridge, MA, 1987), 263. 6 R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250 (London, 1987); and Jeffrey Richards, Sex, Dissidence and Damnation: Minority Groups in the Middle Ages (London & New York, 1991). 4
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Asia and America would be to report their bizarre sexual behaviour and general obsession towards worldly pleasures. De Idololatria The social aspect of the sin of idolatry took centre stage in the writings of Tertullian, the Latin Church Father, when he explained the origins of idolatry in his De Idololatria. On the one hand, Tertullian emphasized that the Devil seduces us to worship idols. The objects of false worship were therefore also “the devil and his angels.” On the other hand, Tertullian explained that “all idolatry is worship done to a human being, since it is an established fact, even among their own worshippers, that the gods of the heathens have formerly been men.”7 This explanation of idolatry would remain popular in Christendom for a long time to come. The gods of the heathens had originally been men and women of exceptional status, who had been deified after death. Whatever its origins, the presence of idolatry reaffirmed to the Christians the essential difference between themselves and the heathens, who worshipped the human in place of the divine. As such, the primary concern of De Idololatria lay elsewhere. The editors of a recent edition explain it as follows: “The heathen religion has a great number of ramifications in social life, and wherever the Christian comes into contact with these ramifications he is in danger of perpetrating idolatry.”8 Tertullian warned his readers that idolatry is most dangerous when one is unaware of its presence and nature. A Christian community always lived in a larger social context, which harboured practices that were indifferent to religion, on the one hand, and those practices connected to false religion, on the other. Given the proscription on idolatry or false worship in any form, it was thus essential to determine which practices were indifferent and which practices amounted to actual idolatry. Briefly put, Tertullian’s concern was the following: “Most people simply think that idolatry is only then to be assumed, if somebody makes a burnt offering or brings a sacrifice or organizes a sacrificial banquet or makes himself guilty of certain other sacred actions or priesthoods.” These people were mistaken: “Otherwise the devil’s ingenuity in wickedness would have but a limited extent, as would the ingenuity of the Tertullian, De Idololatria: Critical Text, Translatation and Commentary by J.H. Waszink and J.C.M. van Windern, ed. J. H. Waszink and J. C. M. van Winden (Leiden & New York, 1987), 6.2, 31 and 15.2, 53. 8 J. H. Waszink and J. C. M. van Winden, “Introduction,” in Tertullian, De Idololatria, 9. 7
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Lord God in the discipline by which he fortifies us against the depths of the devil, if we were to be judged only for those crimes which the heathens, too, have decreed punishable.”9 To show the true depths of the Devil’s fabrications, Tertullian intended to reveal how many practices and professions in the Roman Empire involved idolatry and hence, should be anathema to the Christians. Idolatry may be practiced outside a temple and without an idol—this much was clear. Magic and miracle working were cases of ‘formless’ idolatry. The followers of Christ could not participate in any such practices and any craft, profession or trade contributing to the equipment or formation of the idols. To explain the importance of the boundary established by the prohibition of idolatry, Tertullian reflected on the Epistles of the Apostle Paul, which emphasized the danger of social intercourse with the heathens.10 The notion of idolatry was thus invoked to divide the world outside the Christian religious community into a realm of false worship, on the one hand, and a realm of things indifferent to religion, on the other. The latter is where the Christians can participate in the same practices as the heathens and where they should continue to obey the secular rulers. The realm of false worship is that where no Christian can participate and remain a Christian and, importantly, it also is the realm where no secular ruler can command the Christians. In the remainder of his tract, Tertullian scrutinized a variety of practices in order to decide whether they belonged to the realm of idolatry. Attending public and private ceremonies related to betrothals, weddings and name-giving was permissible, and one could even wear a white toga at such occasions. However, one could neither participate in heathen festivals, nor in games and spectacles. One’s soul should never serve other humans, including the Caesar and his purple-and-gold-clad officials. This theological analysis accounts for the utmost significance that the European travellers would attribute to circumscribing the scope of idolatry, wherever they went. This was a genuine obsession, for any participation in practices that might turn out to be idolatrous could permanently damage their soul. In a beautiful passage, Tertullian Tertullian, De Idololatria, 2.2 and 2.3, 25. Ibid., 14.4, and 14.5, 49-50: “True, he does not forbid us to have intercourse with idolaters and adulterers and the other sinners, saying: otherwise you should have to go out of the world; but of course, he does not slacken the reins of intercourse to such a degree that, while it is inevitable that we live and mingle with the sinners, we may also sin with them. Where there is social intercourse, which is permitted by the apostle, there is also sinning, which is permitted by no one. We may live with the heathens, die with them we may not. Let us live together with all, let us rejoice together on account of the community of nature, not that of superstition. We are alike in soul and not in discipline, fellow-possessors of the world, not of error.”
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explained why the Christian should always tread carefully in these matters: Amid these cliffs and bays, amid these shallows and straits of idolatry navigates the faith, its sails filled by God’s breath, safe if cautious, secure if sharply watchful. But so perilous is idolatry that for those who have been washed overboard there is a depth from which one cannot swim away, for those who have struck the rocks there is shipwreck without rescue, for those who have been swallowed up there is a vortex admitting of no respiration. Every one of the waves of idolatry is choking, every one of its whirlpools sucks down to the depths of hell.11
The concern of carefully navigating through the shallows and straits of idolatry must have been on the mind of many a Christian visitor to the faraway ‘heathen’ lands of the Orient. Against the Worship of Idols Naturally, idolatry clearly manifested itself in the worship of idols, and travellers to foreign lands could most easily recognize its sin in this practice. The important theologians of medieval Christendom had cautioned the followers of Christ about the danger of this form of idolatry. In the Expositions of the Psalms, St. Augustine developed a polemic against idolatry that provided excellent material for sermons to fortify the believers against the seduction of the Devil and his minions. One of the obvious differences between the God of the Christians and the gods of the heathen was that the former was invisible: “We worship a God who is invisible. He cannot be seen by any bodily eye but is known only to very clean hearts, and few of us have those.” 12 Fickle hearts were attracted by visible gods, whose shapes imitated the human body, but they should be aware of the absurdity of idolatry. The only possible explanation for the absurd practice of idolatry was that the pagans believed that gods inhabited the idols or that the idols embodied the divine. Therefore, it was significant for the travellers to heathen lands to certify that the idolaters believed this to be the case. There are people who declare, Augustine warned his readers, “I worship neither an idol nor a demon, but I regard the image as a physical sign of what I ought to worship.” Such people, he said, “think themselves practitioners of a purer religion,” but they failed to realise that “by paying divine honors to the things signiIbid., 24.1, 69. St. Augustine, The Works of Saint Augustine: a translation for the 21st century, III/19: Expositions of the Psalms, ed. B. Ramsey and trans. M. Boulding (New York, 2003), Exposition 2 of Psalm 113, 313-4.
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fied they are serving a creature rather than the creator, who is blessed for ever.”13 The Church Fathers as for example Augustine were concerned about the idolatry and false religion they perceived in the ancient pagan traditions of the Roman Empire. However, theological questions concerning the belief that material images could be the seat of divine power became the subject of internal disputes in Christendom during the iconoclastic controversy, which rocked the Eastern Orthodox Church in the period 725-842 c.e. A century before, Pope Gregory I had advocated the use of images in Christian worship with the influential claim that these were libri pauperum; for the illiterate, images played the same role that the Bible played for the literate.14 This argument for the use of images simply as educational tools would remain important in the Byzantine opposition to iconoclasm. The very claim that images were necessary for the instruction of pious and uninstructed folk, as Jaroslav Pelikan (1974) points out, also led to the conclusion that the use of images was extremely dangerous, for the simple faithful could not make the appropriate distinction between lifeless matter and the divine.15 Without entering into the details of the iconoclastic controversy, it is still possible to obtain an impression of the concerns with which the Christians approached the use of images and idols in ‘worship.’ When the Roman-Catholics encountered ritual practices in Asia, the question whether the pagans truly believed that ‘images’ embodied divine forces became of supreme importance, as this would show that they were Devil worshipers indeed. Once they had been charged with the sin of idolatry, there could be no respite for them. As Thomas Aquinas confirmed, idolatry was the most grievous of sins, because it “presupposes internal unbelief ” and “includes a grievous blasphemy, inasmuch as it deprives God of the singleness of His dominion and denies the faith by deeds.”16 By the time of the first voyages of discovery, pagan idolatry had become this kind of abstract sin, which the Europeans could rarely witness in their own surroundings. Therefore, the earliest travellers to India would do a great service to European Christendom in reporting the manifold forms that idolatry could take, and in telling their fellow believers about the horrors and promiscuity that accompanied it everywhere. Ibid., 315-6. Carlos M. N. Eire, War against the Idols: the Reformation of worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge, 1986), 19. 15 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 2: The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700) (Chicago & London, 1974), 94-5. 16 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica: Complete English Edition in Five Volumes (Notre Dame, 1981), Second Part of the Second Part, Question 94, Article 3. 13 14
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3.2. Idolatry and Promiscuity: The Decades of Wonder Narratives of the first two Portuguese expeditions to India were first published in Italian by an eminent scholar of literature at Vicenza, Fracanzano da Montalboddo, resulting into the Paesi novamente retrovati (Recently discovered lands; 1507). The French translation by Mathurin du Redouer, famous under the title Sensuyt le Nouveau Monde (On the New World), appeared in Paris in about 1515. The Italian, French and German translations of this small collection of first-hand reports were widely distributed across Europe.17 The Paesi contains an anonymous report of the second Portuguese expedition by Pedro Álvares Cabral (1500-01). The author resided in Calicut for three months, where he ‘learned’ that the Indian king worshipped idols. He ‘observed’ the licentious nature of Indian women: noblemen were given to polygamy, it was commonplace to have five wives or more; the women in question were promiscuous, licentious and unchaste. Starting at the age of eight, the girls secured their gains with the ‘female vocation.’ As the author ‘learned’ to his shock and dismay, they were unable to secure a husband for as long as they remained virgins.18 More important to our purposes, this report of the second Portuguese expedition informed its readers about the Indian priests, engaged in affairs of much interest to the European sensibilities: deflowering the queen. The author ‘observes’ that the king has two wives, and each of them is attended by ten priests, who copulate with them to honour the king. Therefore, the king’s son does not inherit the kingdom, but it is passed to his nephew, the son of his sister.19 This aspect of Nair culture and matriarchal succession laws became one of the most popular tropes in the early-modern ethnographic imagination. The European fascination with sexual mores can also be seen in two other short reports. While Cabral’s fleet was being loaded with spices at Cochin, two Christian priests from Caranganore (Kodungallur, Kerala) approached the naval commander. Their request was to be taken to Portugal, from where they aspired to travel to Rome and thence to Jerusalem. One of them was Josephus Indus. In the European cities, Joseph was questioned at length 17 For a detailed analysis of the Paesi, see Max Böhme, Die grossen Reisesammlungen des 16. Jahrhunderts (Strassburg, 1904); and William Brooks Greenlee, ed., The Voyage of Pedro Álvares Cabral to Brazil and India (London, 1938). 18 Fracanzano da Montalboddo, ed., Sensuyt le Nouveau monde & navigations ... Des pays & isles nouvellement trouvez etc., trans. M. du Redouer (Paris, 1515), fol. xlviii. 19 Ibid., fol. xlviii.
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about his motherland. The report of his answers was a portion of the Paesi (1507) written by Fracanzano himself. Not surprisingly then, its relation of South Indian customs is reminiscent of the anonymous report of Cabral’s expedition: the Indian women know of no chastity—the king’s nephew inherits the throne because the queen has relations with various persons.20 Europe’s fascination with matriarchal customs is similarly indicated by a sensationalist news tract that appeared in Rome on 28 October 1505. This small booklet purported to be an Italian Copy of a Letter of the King of Portugal sent to the King of Castile concerning the Voyage and Success of India. It was issued by John of Besicken—a printer based in Rome—and described the progress made in India until 1505. While textual analysis indicates that this was not a letter to the Spanish monarch but simply an Italian news item compiled from the anonymous narrative of Cabral’s voyage, the relation of Joseph’s communications and other not yet released material, it was an important medium through which the rumours about the sexual escapades of the Indian priests were distributed.21 Although many of the early reports remained in manuscript until a much later date, they provide a first indication of the topics that aroused the European imagination. This is also suggested by the diary of a German merchant in India. Not satisfied with trading at Lisbon, the Germans attempted to circumvent the royal monopoly of the Portuguese with their own agents in India. Eventually, three German ships were fitted to sail with the fleet of Francisco d’Almeida (1505), the first viceroy of Portuguese India. On them were two German agents of the Welser Company of Augsburg: Hans Mayr and Balthasar Springer. Mayr sailed to India as a factor and kept a diary in Portuguese, known in German as Reisenbericht (Travel Report). It remained in manuscript until 1918. This was one of the first early-modern eyewitness reports about the Brahmins. Their intimate relations with the Indian queen provoked a comparison with the ‘friars of the good life’ at home. This is how Mayr described the palace of the king of Kannur: “The Brahmins are like the Friars of the Good Life, and because of their Holiness they may sleep with the king’s wife. Because of this the king’s son is not the heir, but his closest nephew is, for they
Anonymous, “Le sixiesme livre des choses de calichut conformeza la navigation de pierre aliares etc.,” in Sensuyt le Nouveau monde & navigations etc., fol. lxxxiii. 21 Anonymous, Copy of a Letter of the King of Portugal Sent to the King of Castile concerning the Voyage and Success of India, ed. J. Parker, trans. S. J. Pacifici, (Minneapolis, 1955), 18. 20
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do not know whether he is the king’s son or a Brahmin’s.”22 The original text calls them “frades de bona vida.”23 The imagery is derived from marital customs, which the author did not observe himself but might have heard of in the docks of Calicut. These were alien customs that did not need to be investigated but which—in the eyes of Renaissance Europe—resembled the custom of granting privileges to the friars at home. Stories about promiscuous monks and scandals of priestly concubinage were commonly heard in sixteenth-century Germany. The earliest reports thus testify to a climate that allowed for the construction of a second Brahmin image, far removed from the language of the proto-Christian heathens. Once again, the cognitive climate from which this imagery emerged was constituted by the theological concerns of the day. As shown below, just one report—when incorporated into the sixteenth-century religious controversies—lies at the heart of it: Ludovico di Varthema’s Itinerario (1510). Itinerario di Ludovico di Varthema Ludovico di Varthema (ca. 1468-1517), an Italian adventurer, wrote an account of his travels in the Middle East and India in which he included a comprehensive report of Calicut. This was the first detailed account of ‘the Indian religion’ that reached almost every corner of sixteenth-century Europe. Little is known about the Italian traveller, except that he was a native of Bologna or Rome. Varthema left Venice in 1502 and after travelling in the Middle East, he sailed to India, touching at Cambay in Gujarat. Further landmarks on his journey include Goa, Bijapur, Vijayanagar, Calicut and Cochin. He finally took a post in the Portuguese service under the command of Francisco d’Almeida and stayed at Cochin for another eighteen months (until mid-1507).24 The report of his travels was released at Rome in 1510 and ran into multiple editions in various vernaculars: Italian, German, French, Dutch and 22 Hans Mayr cited in Franz Hümmerich, ed., Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Fahrt der ersten Deutschen nach dem portugiesischen Indien 1505/06 (München, 1918), 147: “Die Brahminen sind wie Brüder vom guten Leben und wegen ihrer Heiligkeit schlafen sie bei der Frau des Königs und darum erbt nicht der Sohn des Königs, sondern sein nächster Neffe, weil man nicht weiß, ob der Sohn vom König stammt oder von einen Brahminen.” For a detailed analysis of early German sources related to India, see Gita Dharampal-Frick, Indien im Spiegel deutscher Quellen der Frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen, 1994). 23 Ibid., 133. 24 For Varthema see the entry in Raymond Howgego, Encyclopedia of Exploration to 1800 (Potts Point, 2003).
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English, for example. The copyright was granted to him for ten years as a special mandate of Pope Julius II. My analysis is based on the English translation (1577) with cross-references to the Italian edition of 1510. This short, yet exceptionally influential description of India in general, and Calicut in particular, remained a standard reference for centuries to come. The author made it clear that his representation of Calicut did not concern just one particular city on the Malabar Coast but also was applicable to the kingdom of Vijayanagar and to Pulicat on the Coromandel Coast. In other words, his impressions of Vijayanagar are put down in the sections on Calicut, for both are similar: “In maners and Idolatrye, they are lyke unto them of Calecut, of which we wyll speake hearafter.”25 With the authorities breathing down his neck, Varthema wrote an account of his travels that must have fascinated the Vatican. He devoted more space to Calicut than to any other place in India. The king of Calicut was said to worship idols, yet still believed in the Creator, called “Tamerani” in his language. His faith in God notwithstanding, he payed homage to the Devil, which he called “Deumo,” most likely an oblique reference to the Indian term ‘devata.’ As the Indian devatas can do both good and evil, Varthema wrote that the Calicutians explain their mishap as follows: they worship idols because God bestowed the supervision of the world upon the Devil, who rewards and punishes and thus has to be worshipped. Varthema saw a statue at Calicut that was most likely an image of the man-lion avatar of Vishnu— Narasimha—popular amongst the South Indian Vaishnavites, and referred to the Brahmins as the priests of the idol. His report contains sufficient detail for the reader to evoke an image of a monstrous demon, described as Satan or the Christian Devil. The indigenous corona in the statue of Narasimha is associated with the Triple Crown or papal tiara, part of the Vatican emblem. The Brahmins are said to be like the priests or bishops in Europe.26 Sexual mores were also ‘observed.’ The matriarchal system under which the Nair women cohabit with men other than their husbands was described in sensational detail. Varthema observed that amongst the nobility and merchants, good friends shared their wives. Even more spectacularly, the archbishop is called upon to deflower the queen. This was not a free service, but one that carried with it the promise of rich rewards: “These Bramini, are in
Ludovico di Varthema, “The Navigation and voyages of Lewes Vertomannus”, in Richard Eden, ed., The history of Travayle in the West and East Indies (London, 1577), fol. 384. 26 Ibid., fols. 387-88. 25
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place with them, as are the chiefe priestes or bishoppes with us.”27 It would not be unlikely if Varthema embellished the anonymous report of Cabral’s expedition, first issued in the Paesi (1507). Be that as it may, Varthema also wrote that the king would not eat before the priests sacrificed to the Devil, nor would he eat meat without clerical permission.28 Outside Calicut stands a church similar in shape to the St. John’s Basilica in Rome. Every 25 December crowds gather at the temple to sacrifice to the Devil after the priests anoint them with oil. The Italian traveller finally wrote that worshipping the Devil in this manner constitutes, according to the Indians, a penance for their sins.29 This report—however rudimentary—set the tone for the representation of Indian traditions in early-modern ethnography. Its success in the Italianspeaking world was immediate: the original went through nine editions between 1510 and 1535, and was translated into virtually every major European language right into the seventeenth century.30 But its impact on the popular imagination was even stronger than the multiple editions and translations suggest. Varthema quickly found a keen audience in Europe, curious about the lands in the East.31 His account of the deumo stands out for the synthesis that he provides. Calicut was considered to be the chief economic and political centre on the Malabar Coast.32 It is thus not surprising that Varthema’s Ibid., fol. 388. Ibid., fol. 389. 29 Ibid., fols. 396-97. 30 Within six months after the first release, a Latin translation by the Milanese monk Archangelus Madrignanus appeared in Milan (1511). The German translation is attributed to Michael Herr and appeared in Augsburg in 1515, followed by a second print at Strasbourg in 1516. Other German prints are dated 1518, 1548 and 1556. Another German translation was produced by the polyhistor Hieronymus Megiser, issued at Leipzig in 1610, and subsequently rendered into Dutch (Utrecht, 1654). Another Dutch edition appeared in 1655. The Spanish were able to read the work in their vernacular in 1520. The Itinerario has gone through at least forty editions in the sixteenth century alone and was included in the most important collections of voyages of the period. 31 The Venetian diarist Mario Sanudo writes that Varthema was in Venice on November 5, 1508, and calls him a “Bolognese returned from Calicut.” He writes that Varthema was commissioned as a public lecturer and “told many things about those parts, so that everyone … was astounded by the rites and customs of India.” Cited in Poggio Bracciolini and Ludovico di Varthema, Travelers in Disguise: Narratives of Eastern Travel by Poggio Bracciolini and Ludovico de Varthema, trans. J. W. Jones (Cambridge, MA, 1963), xxv. 32 See, for instance, the work by the German cartographer, Peter Apianus, or Cosmographie, ou description des quatre Parties du Monde, trans. J. Bellere (Antwerp, 1581; Latin edition 1524), 130, which saw at least 30 reprints in 14 languages. For the history of Calicut’s centrality in mercantile thought, see Richard Eaton, “Multiple Lenses: Differing perspectives of fifteenth century Calicut,” in Essays on Islam and Indian History (New Delhi, 2003), 76-93. 27 28
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sketch of the ‘Brahmin priests’ and their traditions was extrapolated into the pan-Indian standard in Renaissance ethnography. The merchants and government officials to India might have recollected jests and satires from the medieval exempla when they saw affluent temples and compared those who played a central role in them with the friars of the good life at home. For our purposes, Varthema’s importance resides in the fact that his narrative became the bedrock of the second Brahmin image: the Brahmin as the crafty priest. The Itinerario percolated into an intellectual climate that was subjected to radical change. In less than twenty-five years, it would revise the imagery of the Brahmin divine that had captivated the intellectuals and popular imagination for centuries. This is the conceptual moment of the second stereotyped image: the Brahmin protagonist grew into a lucid manifestation of satanic priestcraft. Such an expeditious transformation admits no easy explanation but suggests a change of climate, ripe for conceptual change. Idolatry, Promiscuity and the Reformation While the merchants and travellers were putting their observations of India to writ, Desiderius Erasmus was writing Stultitiæ Laus (In praise of folly; 1511). This bestseller—a satire of the faults of the upper classes and opulence of religious institutions—would become a catalyst of the Reformation. This was the cognitive milieu in which the Brahmin exemplum was called upon to serve as an edifying tool, and in which, Mandeville and Boemus upheld the Brahmin as a proto-Christian example to follow. If the Brahmin ascetic reprimanded Alexander’s worldliness and greed, surely he must have shunned the lavishness and avarice associated with the episcopates and Roman Catholic Curia. That same intellectual environment was radicalized. In short order, the Brahman protagonist entered the eye of the Protestant storm. The Protestant Reformers built on the strands of anticlericalism that had been present in western Christianity throughout the Middle Ages. Like some of the medieval anticlerical movements, they radicalized this anticlericalism by denying any spiritual authority to the priests, the bishops and the pope of the Rome. They argued for the ‘priesthood of all believers.’ Each and every individual believer had to take responsibility for his own salvation, without any possibility of mediation between the individual and God. Jesus Christ, the Reformers said, was the only mediator of our salvation and no pope or priest could ever take His place. During the Reformation, anticlericalism thus became part of a fully-fledged theological framework that opposed the true spiritual religion of (Protestant) Christianity to the ‘corrupted’ form of
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religion in the Catholic Church. This was not simply a critical attitude that blamed the priests and monks for their desire for material wealth, spiritual iniquity or lust for women. Rather, it entailed a general and much deeper critique of the theological foundations upon which the spiritual authority of the priest and the monk was based. Because the second image of the Brahmins emerged from within this climate, it is important to provide a brief outline of this Protestant theological critique of the clerical estate and the Church.33 The first point of the Reformers was that the inborn sinfulness of humankind always leads to the corruption of religion by the addition of human fabrications to God’s revelation of His will. Truth could come only from God. Idolatry in general and the many inventions of the papacy in particular were the fruits of the human tendency to corrupt the purity of religion. In his Commentary on Psalms, the French reformer, John Calvin provided one of the strongest formulations of this point, when he thus argued that all humans were born with a sense of divinity, which had been corrupted ever since.34 Central to this message was the deep-seated conviction that humanity could not contribute anything to its own justification and salvation, but existed in absolute dependence on God, the Sovereign Creator. Therefore, the only thing that humans could add to religion were corrupting elements, polluting the purity of religion through idolatry and deviations from Scripture. In this context, Carlos Eire (1986) tells us about an early Reformation tract, entitled Vom Alten und Neuen Gott, Glauben und Lehre (On the old and new God, faith and doctrine; 1521), by the pseudonymous Judas Nazarei, which explained the origin of idolatry from an anthropological perspective. Nazarei hinted at the inborn religiousness of humankind and the Fall of Man to explain idolatry. This theological anthropology located a “smoldering cinder” of sin at the very core of human nature, which brought humanity to devise its own selfish modes of worship and doctrines, instead of surrendering to the Word of God.35 The Swiss Reformer, Huldrych Zwingli, expanded on this anthropology of idolatry, when he identified the cause of religious error in humanity’s dependence on created things, which led humankind to place trust in the material world. In the first instance, this gave rise to internal This analysis draws upon Carlos M. N. Eire’s War against the Idols (1986) and chapter 7 of my fellow doctoral student, Sarah Claerhout’s doctoral dissertation, “Conversion, Religion and Secularism in India: An Inquiry into the Nature and Concepts of the Debates” (Ghent University, 2010). 34 Carlos M. N. Eire, War against the Idols, 205. 35 Ibid., 75-6. This tract is generally attributed to Joachim Vadian, the Reformer of St. Gall. 33
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idols, or “anything in man’s inner life that displaces God as an object of faith, be it money, glory, or another deity.”36 This was followed by the process of giving material shape to the idols and transforming them into external objects of worship. The material idols and images of the gods were but the externalization of the idols in our hearts and spirits. The second point in the theological critique of the Church of Rome was this: the sinfulness at the core of human nature had inspired the Roman papacy and its priests to invent a body of scholastic doctrines, laws and rites, which they falsely represented as divine Revelation. The Roman-Catholic priest was devilish, ungodly and unchristian. In The Misuse of the Mass (1521), Martin Luther argued that the mass as celebrated by the medieval priests was one example of a human fabrication inspired by the Devil.37 The true priests and the true mass had been eradicated, Luther said, and replaced by the Devil’s priests and the Devil’s mass. According to Luther, the mass of his day was nothing but a human precept and a fantasy, adding nothing in terms of faith. The only way to escape from this corruption was to turn to the divine Word of Christ.38 Other Reformers were far harsher in their opposition to the rites of the Roman-Catholic Church and the practices of medieval religion, particularly the cult of saints, the use of images in worship, the veneration of relics and the pilgrimages. Here, they objected explicitly to the libri pauperum argument that had become popular among the medieval theologians. One of the earliest Protestant thinkers who took the argument against images to its logical conclusion was Andreas Karlstadt, the former chancellor of Wittenberg University, friend of Luther, and one of the theological inspirers of the early iconoclastic riots. The use of idols and images was seen as a device of devilish priests that served to manipulate and mislead the laity, keep them away from true religion, and thus, retain a stranglehold over their supposed spiritual welfare. The resulting ignorance of the laity allowed the priests to gain material wealth and power in society.39 Ibid., 84. For Protestant critiques of the Catholic Mass, see John Bossy, “The Mass as a Social Institution 1200-1700,” Past and Present, no. 100 (1983): 29-61; and J. W. Richard, “The Beginnings of Protestant Worship in Germany and Switzerland,” The American Journal of Theology 5, no. 2 (1901): 240-253 38 Martin Luther, Luther’s Works. American Edition, ed. J. Pelikan and H. T. Lehmann, vol. 36 (Philadelphia, St. Louis, 1955), 162: “I have consoled those whose consciences are weak and have instructed them so that they may know and recognize that there is no sacrifice in the New Testament other than the sacrifice of the cross [Heb. 10:10] and the sacrifice of praise [Heb. 13:15] which are mentioned in the Scriptures; so that no one any longer has cause to doubt that the mass is not a sacrifice.” 39 Carlos M. N.Eire, War against the Idols, 59-60. 36 37
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Third, one of the common arguments of the Reformers was that human laws, works and doctrines functioned as idols in every case where the believers put their trust in them for the pursuit of righteousness and salvation. They become idols, when one believes that following these laws leads to spiritual progress and closeness to God. Therefore, a religion that depends on human laws and beliefs is false religion—all false religion consists of human laws and beliefs. True religion consists only of faith in the promise of grace that God has given to humanity by sacrificing His only Son. Such human works and precepts result into idleness, as the believers come to believe that they have done well and are working towards their salvation. They prefer a peaceful, calm and idle life to confronting the pain, agony, sorrow and travail intrinsic to a truly Christian life. According to the Reformers, right teaching primarily, consisted of two things. First, that human works could not provide spiritual merit. Second, spiritual merit could only be gained by faith. It followed then, that reliance on works was not only ineffective, but that it exhibited contempt towards the grace of God.40 Hereafter, any personal obsession with works was seen as a sign of the absence of the workings of God in the person. The believer obsessed with human works, ceremonies and sacraments was rather proving to be devoid of spirit, than progressing on the spiritual path. Their conscience was destroyed by the Catholic doctrine of good works and the absence of faith in Scripture. From this perspective, as Luther explained in The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), the sacraments, ceremonies and canon law of the Roman Church came to be seen as instruments to murder the believer’s soul.41 This not only gave rise to a condemnation of the priests as the minions of the Devil—the administrators of his ceremonies and sacraments—but also, Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 36: 42: “For God does not deal, nor has he ever dealt, with man otherwise than through a word of promise, as I have said. We in turn cannot deal with God otherwise than through faith in the Word of his promise. He does not desire works, nor has he need of them; rather we deal with men and with ourselves on the basis of works. But God has need of this: that we consider him faithful in his promises [Heb. 10:23], and patiently persist in this belief, and thus worship him with faith, hope, and love. It is in this way that he obtains his glory among us, since it is not of ourselves who run, but of him who shows mercy [Rom. 9:16], promises, and gives, that we have and hold all good things. Behold, this is that true worship and service of God which we ought to perform in the mass. But if the words of promise are not delivered, what exercise of faith can there be? And without faith, who can have hope or love? Without faith, hope, and love, what service of God can there be? There is no doubt, therefore, that in our day all priests and monks, together with their bishops and all their superiors, are idolators, living in a most perilous state by reason of this ignorance, abuse, and mockery of the mass, or sacrament, or promise of God.” 41 Ibid., 90. Also see A. G. Dickens, Late Monasticism and the Reformation (London, 1994), 87. 40
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to the castigation of the monks as hypocrites, who falsely believed that they achieved a special spiritual status through their monastic vows, rules and works of penance. The belief in a separate clerical estate of monks and priests was now understood as nothing but a false division of the community of believers, all of whom were equal in the eyes of God. In the same text, Luther (1520) stated in no uncertain terms that every occupation was of the same value to the pursuit of righteousness and salvation.42 From Luther onward, the acute distrust of the priests and monks would only increase in the Protestant world. They became the paragons of false religion and its devious belief in the efficacy of human laws, works and ceremonies. Fourth, while all the Reformers agreed on the objections to the RomanCatholic ceremonies and the use of images, they disagreed on the specific implications this had for the everyday practice of religion. Luther and most of his followers argued that one could allow certain ceremonies and the use of images, for as long as the believers were aware that such matters were indifferent to religion and salvation. Consequently, the Lutheran churches generally gave more latitude to ceremonies and matters of practice in church. Calvin, however, was convinced that all images and ceremonies of the Roman Church implicated the believers in idolatry, because they infringed upon the absolute sovereignty of God. From Calvin’s perspective, the believers had to be aware at all times that their human nature and powers had nothing to contribute; any use of images and ceremonies led humanity away from this awareness. Therefore, all the images, ceremonies and material artefacts of the Roman Church had to be rejected through aggressive iconoclastic struggle. The Lutherans, in their turn, maintained that this obsessive prohibition of images and ceremonies was yet another guise of idolatry, for it implied that omitting human fabrications could contribute to religion. To them, this was but the mirror image of the error of the Roman-Catholic Church. In this way, the different confessions within the Reformation began to accuse each other of idolatry, along with charging the Catholics with this sin. The Roman-Catholic Church responded to the Protestant accusations during the Council of Trent (1545-63). Its theologians distinguished between veneration (dulia) and worship (latria): the Catholics, they maintained, venerated images (crucifixes, saints) but did not worship them. That is to say, they did not believe that the divinity was present in an image. To the Reformers, this dulia-latria divide came across as typical scholastic wordplay, which only 42
Ibid., 78.
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role was to hide the fact that the Roman clergy and laity indeed worshipped idols.43 This confessional battle between the Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists and radical Reformation groups like the Anabaptists would dominate the cultural history of Europe for centuries to come. Strikingly, each group had the tendency to accuse the other of idolatry and heresy and throwing the accusation of priestcraft back and forth.44 The charge of pagan idolatry would stick most of all to the Catholic Church, for one could easily demonstrate some of the similarities with the Greco-Roman cults. Much like the earliest Christians had defined the pagan cults as rebellious inroads upon God’s religion, so the Protestant Reformers accused the Catholic priesthood of corrupting the message of Christ into the worship of saints, crucifixes, relics and bones, and the material exploitation of the masses through indulgences and pilgrimages, resulting into a ‘pagano-Christianism,’ a term first used by the English theologian, Henry More (1664).45 Protestant Antiquarianism The Protestants revived Greco-Roman paganism as the corruption of the original universal religion, and had it testify against its Catholic incarnation. The charges of pagano-Christianism or pagano-papism relied on the revival of antiquity and the scholarly projects of humanist antiquarians. All kinds of similarities between the Greco-Roman traditions and the medieval Church were awaiting discovery. The antiquarian projects of the Reformers resulted in extensive catalogues that chronologically listed the corruptions that had crept into Christianity. The Swiss disciple of Calvin, Pierre Viret (1547, 1560), saw the cult of saints as being derived from the deified emperors and heroes of Rome. The pope was another Pontifex Maximus or high priest of the pagan While the idolaters ascribed to images divinity and divine powers, the Council of Trent declared “that in images there is no divinity or virtue on account of which they are to be worshipped, that no petitions can be addressed to them, and that no trust is to be placed in them … that the honour which is given to them is referred to the objects (prototypa) which they represent, so that through the images which we kiss, and before which we uncover our heads and kneel, we adore Christ and venerate the Saints whose likenesses they are.” See Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, trans. H. J. Schroeder (St Louis and London, 1941), 216. 44 S. J. Barnett, Idol Temples and crafty Priests: The Origins of Enlightenment Anticlericalism (New York, 1999). Although the term ‘priestcraft’ is of late seventeenth-century coinage, it is a useful designator for the range of corruptions—ceremonial and doctrinal—which the Protestants thought to have uncovered in the Catholic universe. For a history of the term, see Mark Goldie, “Priestcraft and the birth of Whiggism,” in Political Discourse in early modern Britain, ed. N. T. Phillipson and Q. Skinner (Cambridge, 1993), 209-231. 45 Henry More, A Modest Enquiry into the Mystery of Iniquity, etc. (London, 1664). 43
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religion. The Catholic Mass derived its structures from pagan models. Its priests were as treacherous as those of Rome; their flocks as superstitious as the heathens of Rome.46 A highly polemical genre of literature appeared, with impressive sounding titles such as Heidnisches Papstthum (1607) and Papatu romano per ethnicismum (1634).47 About a century after Pierre Viret, the French Huguenot minister Pierre Mussard (1667) argued that Christianity had incorporated the pagan practices for the purpose of conversion. Travelling via its ecclesiastical orders, through the canonization of saints and the Eucharist, down to relics and holy-water stoups, Mussard arrived at his final question: “Do these Ornaments suit the chaste Spouse of Christ, whose Character it is to be all glorious within, or rather the Great Whore decked out with the Trinkets of Babylon, and described in the Revelations, as arrayed in Purple, and decked with Gold and precious Stones and Pearls?”48 The Renaissance is marked by travel in time and in space. As such, the evidences from ancient Greece and Rome and the information culled from reports of cross-cultural encounters coalesced into a single critique against the dominant beliefs and practices. While the input from the traditions in the New World to these debates has been analyzed in detail, less attention has been devoted to the contributions of India to these theological controver-
Pierre Viret, De la Source & de la Difference & Convenance de la vieille & nouvelle Idolatrie, etc. (Geneva, 1547); and Pierre Viret, De la vraye et favsse Religion, tovchant les vœs & les serme[n]s licites & illicites etc. (Geneva, 1560). For the connection between the early-modern confessional controversies and the comparative study of religion, see S. N. Balagangadhara, “The Heathen in his Blindness…” Asia, the West, and the Dynamic of Religion (Leiden, 1994), esp. ch. 2 and 3; and Jonathan Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity (London, 1990). Also see Jonathan Sheehan, “Sacred and Profane: Idolatry, Antiquarianism and the Polemics of Distinction in the Seventeenth Century,” Past and Present 192, no. 1 (2006): 35-66; Guy Stroumsa, “John Spencer and the Roots of Idolatry,” History of Religions 41, no. 1 (2001): 1-23; and F. Saxl, “Pagan Sacrifice in the Italian Renaissance,” Journal of the Warburg Institute 2, no. 4 (1939): 346-367. 47 Titles cited in Johann C. Augusti, Handbuch der christlichen Archäologie (Leipzig, 1836), 1: 55. For a critique against Catholic Christianity, emphasizing the similarities between the heathen and Catholic clergymen, see Philipp Melanchthon, Das die Fürsten aus Gottes bevelh und Gebot schuldig sind, bey iren unterthanen abgötterey, unrechte Gottes dienst und falsche lehr abzuthun etc., trans. G. Major (Wittenberg, 1540). For sermons on the pagan input into the Catholic Mass, see Wolfgang Musculus, Zwo predigt, von der Bepstischen Messe, zu Regensburg auff dem Reichstag im Jar 1541 (Wittenberg, 1542). 48 Pierre Mussard, The Conformity between modern and ancient Ceremonies etc. (London, 1745; French edition 1667), 229-30. For other French sources of the period, see Jonas Porrée, Traité des anciennes Cérémonies; ou histoire, contenant leur Naissance et Accroissement, leur Entrée en l’Église etc. (Charenton, 1662). 46
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sies.49 While cataloguing the similarities between the Catholic practices and the pagan traditions of ancient Greece and Rome, the Protestant polemicists soon turned their attention to India. The Fathers of the Church had united pagan cult and philosophy in a common frame of reference. In much the same vein, the Brahmin was assimilated as the custodian of Christian beliefs and principles. Reformation Europe continued this theological exercise and also assimilated local Indian traditions into this theological template, in order to make visible how Roman-Catholic Christianity and devilish idolatry were each other’s equals. It is in this interpretative context that a second image of the Brahmin protagonist emerges, manufactured for the local European market: the Brahmin as the cunning priest, equal in wickedness to the Catholic priest of Rome. At the heart of this polemical image lies one report: Varthema’s Itinerario (1510).
3.3. The Calicut-Motif in Continental Europe The ethnographic information that came back from the East was immediately incorporated into these theological disputations, and the deumo and the Brahmins of Calicut featured prominently in these debates. When Varthema’s travel report percolated into the world of the Protestant Reformers, the spiritual landscape of India would be altered beyond repair. Varthema’s account of the statue at Calicut reminded his readers of the Monarch of Hell, surrounded by a plethora of lesser demons. As Europe knew only too well, the architect of variety, discord and strife was indeed, the Devil. It was now time to take these observations to their necessary conclusion: the legendary ‘Brahmin priesthood’ was precisely like the crafty priesthood of Rome. As shown below, the representations of Calicut provide a glimpse of the process whereby the Europeans continued to transform the East to suit their own expectations.
For the connection between the religious controversies and the course of ethnography on the New World, see esp. Carina L. Johnson, “Idolatrous Cultures and the Practice of Religion,” Journal of the History of Ideas 67, no. 4 (2006): 597-621; Sabine MacCormack, “Gods, Demons, and Idols in the Andes,” Journal of the History of Ideas 67, no. 4 (2006): 623-647; Peter N. Miller “History of Religion Becomes Ethnology: Some Evidence from Peiresc’s Africa,” Journal of the History of Ideas 67, no. 4 (2006): 674-696; and Joan-Pau Rubiés, “Theology, Ethnography, and the Historicization of Idolatry,” Journal of the History of Ideas 67, no. 4 (2006): 571-596.
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The Calicut-Motif in Germany The introduction of Varthema’s Itinerario into the German vernacular opened the door for the Brahmins to take up this new role in the dialogue between true and false religion. Michael Herr, a reformed physician from Strasbourg, rendered the Itinerario into German (1515). It was released at Augsburg, five years before Boemus’ Omnium gentium mores was published there. Augsburg was one of the first German cities to support the Reformation. Luther was summoned there in 1518 to face the Church authorities and was greeted by large numbers of supporters. The Augsburg printers issued at least 530 of his writings during his lifetime, and the milieu in which the Itinerario was released was such that none of them was willing to publish the papal bull of excommunication (1520).50 Varthema’s Italian chapter on the multitudes who gather on 25 December outside Calicut is titled as follows: “Ca come uene gran numero de gente ad. xxv. de Dece[m]brioa passo a Calicut a pigliar il perdono” (Of the large numbers that gather at Calicut on 25 December to receive pardon).51 Michael Herr did not simply render “pigliar il perdone” into “receiving pardon” but, significantly, added the German term for indulgences, the chief point of contention when Luther initiated the Reformation: “Capitel von ainer walfart so die selben velcker thon umb gnad und ablas willen” (Chapter on a pilgrimage to the same place for the sake of pardon and indulgences).52 Similar comparisons between the Catholic world and Indian practices known from Varthema’s report reappear in a wide variety of theological and popular treatises. Varthema’s report was first included in Novus orbis (The new world; 1532), a Latin compilation of travel narratives collected by Johan Huttich and Sebastian Münster, and prefaced by Simon Grynaeus, the leader of the Reformed church in Basel. The Novus orbis distributed Varthema’s report amongst a wide audience of navigators, geographers, and all those interested in the affairs of the East.53 Another project successfully completed by Michael Herr was the translation of this compendium into German (1534). A substantial part of the translator’s dedication is devoted to Varthema’s reFor Augsburg, see the entry in Hans Hillerbrand, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation (New York, 1996). 51 Ludovico di Varthema, Itinerario de Ludouico de Varthema Bolognese etc. (Roma, 1510), fol. Lxii. 52 Ludovico di Varthema, Die Ritterlich vn[d] lobwirdig rayss des … Ludowico Vartomans etc., trans. M. Herr (Augsburg, 1515), fol. Liiii. 53 Other Latin editions were issued at Basel in 1537 and 1555. A selection made by Balthasar Lydius from the 1555 edition included Varthema’s relation of Calicut (Rotterdam, 1616). For a detailed analyses of the Novus orbis, see Böhme, Die grossen Reisesammlungen, 46-69. 50
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port and paraphrases his narrative in anticlerical terms. The priests of India and Cuba are skilfully connected with the penitential agents of the Devil. The translator introduced them as follows: But those below who worship the Devil, like those at Calicut, cannot offer an explanation for their faith, like the people in Hispania and Cuba, than that this is the way it was taught to their priests. Yet, the Devil’s reward to his apostles is such, like you will read about the religion of Calicut, that they have to martyr themselves, pierce and burn their bodies, until, by way of their hypocrisies, they have planted the Devil into the hearts of men.54
Herr dedicated his translation to the Earl of Hanau—another German city central to the Reformation—and informed his readership that the king of Calicut was not allowed by his priests to eat before the Devil had been honoured. As we have seen, the Protestant critique against Catholic practices can be put as follows: every practice that was given a religious connotation by the clergy but could not be given a biblical foundation was by definition a human addition to or a priestly corruption of the true religion. Dietary restrictions were one such.55 The method of explaining such practices in terms of doctrinal content becomes apparent in the way a sixteenth-century physician understood vegetarianism: as a diabolical corruption imposed by priests. Through Varthema’s narrative, Herr compared the king’s ordeal with that which the Germans were to suffer: as the king of Calicut was apparently forbidden to consume what his priests would enjoy themselves, so were the Germans made to eat what those who imposed it would refuse to eat: And though this is such a horrid and terrible thing, the aberration is that persistent that even this mighty king is not entitled to think differently, and suffers what we were subjected to for long, because some have also made us eat and drink the things they would not have themselves, like the priests of the king of Calicut do not permit him to eat anything that once has lived, and feed him only rice and bread, including herbs and vegetables, while they themselves will eat Michael Herr in Johannes Huttichius and Sebastian Münster, eds., Die New Welt, der Landschaften vnnd Insulen etc., trans. M. Herr (Strassburg, 1534), fols. iii-iiii: “Welche aber stracks dem Teufel dienen, als die von Calechut, die künden auch kein andere ursach ires thüns geben, gleich als die aus Hispaniola oder Cuba, dan[n] das sie ire Pfaffen also leren, doch so lont der Teufel seinen Aposteln auch nach irer arbeit, wie Ewer G. wol lesen mag bey der religion des königs von Calechut, wie greülich sich die pfaffen dem teuffel auch martern müssen, ire eygne leib zerhawen, und verbrennen zum theil biss sie den leydigen teuffel in der menschen hertzen pflantzen mögen durch ire gleissnerey.” 55 See, for example, the pamphlet by the reformer and associate of Martin Luther, Nikolaus von Amsdorf, Horas Canonicas in Klöstern un[d] Stifften Singen, und gebotene Adiaphora Halten, ist eben so wol Abgötterey etc. ( Jhena, 1562), fols. Biiij-C. 54
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what they please. And still the king remains obedient to them, though he knows that this only serves the Devil, and not his rewards in the life hereafter.56
The comparison is arguably an implicit reference to the Catholic fast, another practice fervently disliked by the Reformers, for good works were not only ineffective but also displayed contempt towards the grace of God. Just as the king was forbidden from eating what his priests could, the Germans were told to abstain from meat and obliged to eat fish during Lent and the Friday fast. Distrustful members of the Catholic fold suspected that the priests did not follow this conscientiously: they made the laity eat what they would not. For the Reformers, Indian vegetarianism was thus not simply vegetarianism, but a sacerdotal corruption of true religion.57 As one of the most popular travel reports of the period, the Itinerario had an impact on the perception of India of gargantuan proportion. As Donald Lach (1994) observes, his appearance on the world maps indicates that he became a symbol of the traveller for the German readers, and his work was more likely to be found in the German bookshops than any other contemporary travel report.58 It would come as no surprise then, if the motifs extracted from his work also found home in a variety of German sources. In 1523 the preacher Heinrich von Kettenbach wrote an acerbic piece against popery, ranking the pope and the Catholic priests of Rome amongst the false apostles of Antichrist. The German text was intended as a sermon to be delivered to the citizens of Ulm, but as the title page states, Kettenbach was prevented by Catholic partisans from delivering his sermon and hence, Michael Herr in Huttichius and Münster, eds., Die New Welt, der Landschaften vnnd Insulen etc., fol. iiii: “Und wie wol solchs ein schwerlich un[d] greülich ding ist, noch so haft der irtumb so hart, das auch der mechtig könig nit anders gedencken darff, und geschicht im eben, wie uns lang geschehen ist, dan[n] etlich habe[n] uns auch vil von speis und tranck gebotten, das sie selbs nit gehalten haben, wie die pfaffen des königs zü Calechut, die verbietten im alles was gelebt hatt, unnd speisen in mit reyss unnd brodt, sambt etlichen kreütern unnd erdgewechssen, sie aber essen was sie gelust, noch ist inen ein solcher könig gehorsam, wie wol er weyss, das er allein dem teuffel doran dient, un[d] nach disem leben nichts weis zu verhoffen.” 57 Writing from Strasbourg, Herr was most likely acquainted with the Zwinglian disputation about the lack of biblical foundation for the traditional Lenten fast (Zürich, 1522). His analysis of Indian vegetarianism was thus compliant with the Zwinglian taste of Grynaeus at Basel. For Zwingli and ‘the affair of the sausages,’ see William R. Estep, Renaissance and Reformation (Grand Rapids, MI, 1986), 170-72. Herr’s invective was reproduced verbatim in the Dutch translation of Novus orbis. See Johannes Huttichius and Sebastian Münster, eds., Die Nieuwe Weerelt der Landtschappen ende Eylanden etc., trans. C. Ablijn (Antwerp, 1563), ii–iii. 58 Donald Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. 2 (Chicago, 1994), 332. Lach further notes that “an examination of the mid-century stock lists of three Leipzig booksellers reveals that they had on hand eighteen copies of Varthema in German.” (1994: 62). 56
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donated the text to a student. The written work contains forty-three anathemas (or Catholic precepts) which the preacher identified as satanic inroads into the original message of the Gospel. He carried his argument to a higher level of abstraction and concluded that the arrogant, gluttonous and greedy priests [“hochfertige, gytzige, geltsuchtige pfaffheyt”] always tried to delude the masses.59 His conclusion not only suggests the effectiveness of the method of comparative religion to illustrate this theme, but in addition indicates the wide distribution of the Calicut-motif in the popular domain. Kettenbach concluded with the priests of Egypt and Baal, who seduced the king and his people to sacrifice to the Devil, the oblations of which they used for themselves. He compared them with the Catholic priests.60 Other nations suffered more from the inventions of their priests. The German preacher continued with an illustration from India, connecting the practice of idolatry with customs that raised serious questions of decorum: The priests of Calicut maintain that it is a big honour for the king and rulers that a priest lies with his wife and sleeps with her the first night. Some of their wives, when their husband dies, jump into a fire and burn themselves. That is what their devilish priests brought them to.61
The Reformation ideologues would continue to utilize the Calicut-motif to defame their opponents. The priestcraft accusation was a powerful tool to discredit the Catholic clergy, one that the method of comparative religion could make even more acute. Varthema’s report was a permanent feature of these debates and the associated images travelled across Europe. Visual depictions of Narashimha played a central part in the distribution of these imageries. The woodcuts in the German edition of the Itinerario (1515) were by the hand of Jörg Breu the Elder, a painter at Augsburg, whose social critique of the Church of Rome became a central motif in his artistic work.62 The Heinrichs von Kettenbach, Ein Sermon bruoder Heinrichs vonn Kettenbach zu der loblichen statt Vlm zu eynem valete etc. (Bamberg, 1523), fols. Bi-Bij. Other copies were issued at Augsburg and Strasbourg. It was reissued in Otto Clemen’s collection of Reformation pamphlets: Flugschriften Aus den Ersten Jahren der Reformation. Herausgegeben Von O. Clemen, vol. 2 (Leipzig & New York, 1907), 104-23. 60 Ibid., fol. Bij. 61 Ibid., fol. Bij: “Die priester in Calicüt sprechenn, es sy dem künig vnnd den Fürsten ein gross eer, das ein priester die erst nacht by syner frawen lyg unnd sy beschlaff, das geschicht. Etlich wyber, so jn jr man gestirbt, springen in ein fewrige grüb vnnd verbrinnen. Darzü haben sy jr teüfels pfaffen bracht.” 62 For the impact of the Reformation upon the work of Breu, see Andrew Morrall, Jörg Breu the Elder: Art, Culture and Belief in Reformation Augsburg (Aldershot, 2001), 136-217. 59
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German painter followed Varthema’s account of the statue that he saw at Calicut and produced an image which anticipated the Lutheran woodcuts of the Devil, in this instance, wearing the papal crown of Rome, and devouring human souls—an allusion to the puranic asura, clawed by Narasimha in the indigenous iconography. The papal crown draws on the tradition of popes in hell; the teeth, horns and claws draw on the dragon of the Apocalypse. The Devil consuming the souls of sinners is a theme that derives from medieval European iconography. Breu’s illustration was reproduced in the German editions of 1518 and 1556, and anticipated the visual propaganda of the Reformation, which is clearly reflected in a famous broadsheet (1545) depicting the Spanish pope Alexander VI (1431-1503), the most controversial pope of the Renaissance, similarly portrayed with a triple crown, horns, claws and tusk-like teeth.63 His surname (Italianized as Borgia) symbolized the corruption of the papacy of that era. As a Reformation woodcut, it shows a striking resemblance with the later illustration of Narasimha.
1. Idol of Calicut in Varthema’s Itinerario (Augsburg, 1515)
Robert W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (Cambridge, 1981), 134, ill. 103. For the representation of Alexander VI in the Reformation, also see J. N. Hillgarth, “The Image of Alexander VI and Cesare Borgia in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 59 (1996): 119129.
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2. Idol of Calicut in Varthema’s Itinerario (Leipzig, 1610)
This tradition of visual representation was soon to be standardized and would come to inform that which the future travellers actually saw in India. The female shapes in Breu’s woodcut culminated in the full-blown she-devil in many later illustrations.64 The monstrous face on his belly is consistent with the European Devil tradition in which additional faces on the chest, belly or buttocks of the Devil reflected his inner moral monstrosity.65 As late as 1689 appeared at London the English translation of a small booklet by the German Johannes Dalhusius: The salvation of Protestants asserted and defended in opposition to the rash and uncharitable sentence of their eternal damnation pronounc’d against them by the Romish Church. Dalhusius was a curate in Heddesdorf and an inspector of churches at Heimbach-Weis upon the Rhine. The German divine began his treatise with an account of his cordial relationship with the nearby Rommersdorf Abbey, a Premonstratensian (Catholic) order. He also regretted the letter he had received from Rommersdorf ’s abbot—a poisoned New Year’s gift, or an acerbic reply to the For a detailed study of the representation of monsters in early-modern ethnographic scholarship, see Katharine Park and Lorraine Daston, “Unnatural Conceptions: The Study of Monsters in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France and England,” Past and Present, no. 92 (August 1981): 20-54. Partha Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters: History of European Reactions to Indian Art (Oxford, 1977) provides leads of the visual representation of Indian images in the Christian Devil tradition. 65 Jeffrey B. Russell, Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1984), 210. 64
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wishes Dalhusius had conveyed to him. The ensuing work can be conceived of as an answer to the Catholic allegations, or an apology for the Protestants, dedicated to the pastors and members of the English Reformed Church. The author defended his Protestant brethren against various attacks that had been levelled by the Church of Rome. Were the Protestants enemies to chastity and sobriety? To this, the German divine replied that the Protestants do not believe in Catholic superstitions, such as the vow of celibacy and the fast. A brief excursion into the realm of comparative religion informs the reader that the Catholics were not alone. Here, the Brahmins are listed with other heretics: “For if it were so much a Duty to Chastize and Enslave your outward and visible Bodies, the Baalites, Brachmans, Priests of the Syrian Goddess, the Mahometan Monks, and those Whipsters which about Two hundred years ago the Roman Church numbred in the List of Heretics, have outdone and still outdo you in those Rigorous Exercises.”66 It is important to remember that the Calicut-motif is only an illustration of the mechanisms through which the Europeans continued to transform the East to suit their expectations. The application of the comparative method seems to know no bounds in Protestant thought. Fallacies of all kinds could be expected from the baneful effects of priestly policies, and the method of comparative religion was unmatched in denouncing the inventions concocted by crafty priests. While the Calicut-motif remained a dominant illustration in these polemics, with an increase in travel literature, the comparative method became more concerted, supported by a vast amount of ethnographic evidence. This is illustrated by a massive encyclopaedic Baroque manual on exotic lands and customs produced by the German polymath, Erasmus Francisci, in the second half of the seventeenth century. This is an impressive and lavishly illustrated folio volume composed of six books spread out over 1,550 pages, and issued at Nuremberg in 1670. While the second book concerns the modes of government, military powers and customs of foreign nations, the third book enters the realm of comparative religion, not in the dispassionate style one would expect from an academic work, but rather to uplift the morally degraded Europeans by holding up to them the mirror of heathendom [“den spiegel eines erbaren Heidenthums”]. Though formulated in general terms, the German scholar directs his attention mainly to the Catholics, and sets out Johannes H. Dalhusius, The Salvation of Protestants Asserted and Defended, In Opposition to the Rash and Uncharitable Sentence of their Eternal Damnation Pronounc’d against them by the Romish Church. etc. (London, 1689), 25. This work was distributed across the British Isles: it was also issued at Edinburgh in 1691, at London in 1692 and at Dublin in 1694.
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to shame them by uncovering the satanic connections between the heathen and Catholic practices. The chapters are structured according to the practices Francisci analyzed, the information on which was drawn from multiple travel reports about the East and West Indies. Francisci began with the practice of baptism, followed by different modes of anointment. The chapter on anointments described the anointing of the Old Testament and contemporary kings. The author continued with a description of this practice in the Indies, known as the witches’ Sabbath [“Hexen-Geschmeiss”]. The mirror of the heathens was thus called into service in order to show the Christians that this (Catholic) practice was indeed a satanic invention.67 By and far the largest portion of his anathema went out towards the practice of oracular confession, similarly located in the Catholic universe and among the heathen nations.68 The so-called hermits of Gujarat in India, the inhabitants of the New World, their vows of poverty and confessions to the Devil, together with the self-flagellations, fasts and other Catholic works of penance, were heaped up as compelling and irrefutable evidence of paganism.69 The Calicut-Motif in France The Reformed scholars set out to uncover the connection between the ‘new idolatry’ and ‘the old.’ Originally cataloguing the similarities between Catholicism and the pagan milieu in which it matriculated, the Calvinists soon turned their attention to India. As we have seen, the French Calvinist, Pierre Viret—the most important preacher at Lyon in the 1560s—produced one of the earliest works that documented the momentum of corruption in a strict chronological order (1547). When Viret observed that the Monarch of Hell knew ingenious ways to have the Children of God worship him, a brief reference to Calicut found mention.70 This Indian city not only featured in print Erasmus Francisci, Neu-polirter Geschicht-Kunst- und Sitten-Spiegel ausländischer Völcker etc. (Nürnberg, 1670), 964-65. 68 Ibid., 965-67. 69 Ibid., 967-71. The chapters on false religion provide detailed accounts of the traditions of the West and East Indies, derived from numerous late sixteenth and seventeenth-century travel accounts. Amongst others, Francisci takes recourse to the Dutch reports by Jan Huyghen van Linschoten (1596), Pieter van den Broecke (1634) and Johan van Twist (1645); the German report by Jürgen Andersen (1670); the English traveller William Methold (1626); and French traveller Vincent Le Blanc (1648), muddling facts, myths and first-hand observations into a universal mix of Devil worship. These facts are subsequently placed in the larger structure of a pan-Asian diffusion of Brahmanic idolatry, drawn from Athanasius Kircher’s China Illustrata (1667), to which I shall return below. As late as 1670, Francisci reproduces the account of Calicut and the deumo in the German vernacular. The work is illustrated with pen drawings of the Mexican, Indian and Chinese deities. 70 Pierre Viret, De la Source & de la Difference & Convenance de la vieille & nouvelle Idolatrie, 74. 67
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but also in the visual propaganda of the Reformation: it appeared prominently on the Mappe-Monde Nouvelle Papistique (The new papal world map; 1566). This satirical broadsheet and allegorical map depicts the ceremonial and ecclesiastic components of the Catholic universe, submerged inside the Devil’s mouth. The intricate illustration is surrounded by accompanying letterpress, attributed to the French Calvinists, Théodore de Bèze or Pierre Viret. From outside the walls of the papal kingdom, merchants imported not only barrels of commodities, from the New World, Africa, the Middle East and Calicut, but also heathen ceremonies, festivals, idols and relics, the latter representing the spiritual corruption of the papal universe.71 The metaphor was reproduced in an accompanying book, known as Histoire de la Mappe-Monde Papistique (History of the papal world map; 1566), dedicated to the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I of England. Published under a pseudonym, it contains various comparisons between the papal world and the West and East Indies. Much like the kings of Portugal and Spain prospered from importing goods from the newly discovered worlds, the Catholic pope is said to make profit from the ceremonies and customs imported from the West and East Indies.72 The Reformation pamphlets exhibit the sense in which the Protestant writers recognized firm connections between the Catholic priesthood and the Brahmins at Calicut. This can be illustrated by another striking example, that is, a pamphlet authored by the Huguenot Théodore-Agrippa d’Aubigné, and entitled Confession Catholique du Sieur de Sancy (Sancy’s Catholic confession; 1598). The French pamphleteer attacked the Protestants whom he felt had betrayed the Calvinist cause in the aftermath of the conversion to Catholicism by Henry IV of France (1593). Written under the name of an actual convert, the Huguenot author contested various articles of Catholic faith and also reproduced a fictitious dialogue between two Catholics, said to be a recently found piece of modern theology.73 After a display of the sexual escapades of Catholic monks and priests, one of the interlocutors remarked upon To avoid ambiguities, the letterpress spelled this message out. See Mappemonde Nouvelle Papistique, 28 lose sheets, 1566, Mic.A.8793, British Library. For this allegorical broadsheet, also see Dror Wahrman, “From Imaginary Drama to Dramatized Imagery: The Mappe-Monde Nouvelle Papistique, 1566-67,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 54 (1991): 186205. 72 M. Frangidelphe Eschorche-Messes [pseud.], Histoire De La Mappe-Monde Papistique etc. (Geneva, 1566), fols. i, ii, iii. 73 Théodore Agrippa d’Aubigné, “Confession catholique du sieur de Sancy etc.,” in Oeuvres complètes de Théodore Agrippa d’Aubigné etc., ed. E. Réaume and F. de Caussade (Paris, 1873), 307. This pamphlet was printed posthumously in 1660, and reissued in multiple editions of the Recueil de diverses Pieces, servant a l’Histoire de Henry III (Cologne, 1663). 71
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his relationship to his siblings and mentioned his submission to his brother’s authority—a Catholic bishop—by virtue of their age difference. Here, the Calicut-motif can be read as a protest against the authority of the Church in matters divine. His respondent was emphatic about curtailing the papal power: Don’t you know that the ceremonies of the Catholics at Calicut, where the Church visibly adores the Devil, are like the ceremonies of the Church of Rome, regarding their monks and nuns, their auricular confessions and their fasts, even their chief Pontiff is likewise called Papa, also carrying a papal crown, with not one nail less than St. Peter’s? The Jesuits reply that the Devil is God’s ape on earth. Yet, the Huguenots maintain that the pope is in all respects the Devil’s ape, for the same reason as you maintain, because the Devil is the oldest.74
India continued to serve a propagandistic function in the ongoing battle with Catholicism. In 1667 Pierre Mussard, a Huguenot minister at London, similarly argued against Catholic beliefs and practices by drawing analogies with ancient Rome. For the Calvinists, redemption was not possible through human efforts like works of penance but required the grace of God. Luther’s reading of St. Paul had deprived man of the power to save himself. As we have seen, the outcome of the original sin was that humanity was always caged by its sinful nature. The Calvinists thus identified ‘good works’ and any such outward display of spirituality as short-sighted corruptions of religion, and much like the indulgences, superfluous when it came to the healing grace of God (sola f ide). This theology is manifested in Mussard’s chapter on monks and hermits: their vows of celibacy were inspired by the heathen priests of Egypt, introduced by the Devil in order to propagate obscenity. Their abstinence from flesh was similarly an imitation of paganism. Once again, the Brahmin diet was thus not simply vegetarianism, but a priestly corruption of true religion: Abstinence from Flesh is likewise a mere imitation of Paganism. ‘The Indian Brachmans, says Du Choul, receive none into their Order but those who are willing to abstain from Flesh-Meat and Wine’ … The Ægyptian Priests … for ever
Ibid, 318: “Sçais-tu pas ... que toutes les ceremonies des Catholiques de Calicut, desquels l’Eglise adore le Diable visiblement, sont toutes semblables aux ceremonies de l’Eglise Romaine, en diversitez de Moynes et Moinesses, de jeusnes, confessions auriculaires, … jusques au nom de leur souverain Pontife, qui s’appelle Pape, et a la tiarre du Pape, qui n’a pas un clou moins que celle du Sainct Pere? Les Jesuistes disent là dessus que c’est le Diable, qui est singe du bon Dieu en terre, t les Huguenots au contraire maintiennent que ce sont les Papes, qui ont esté en tout et par tout les singes du Diable, par la mesme raison que tu as dite, c’est que le Diable est le plus vieux.”
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abstained from Flesh and Wine; they eat neither Eggs nor Milk, calling Eggs liquid Flesh, and Milk, Blood of another Colour; they lay upon the Ground; having the Leaves of Palms for their Bed, and a Bench for their Pillow, and sometimes fasted without taking any thing for two or three Days. The Indian Gymnosophists had only Apples, Rice, and Meal for their Diet. The Priests of Jupiter, in the Isle of Crete (now Candia) abstained from Flesh, and all boiled meat.75
Mussard trenchantly criticized the corruptions of the Church deploying a volley of similarities between paganism and the Catholic universe. He concluded not differently from Michael Herr in his dedication to the German edition of Novus orbis (1534): “It is plain from these Passages, that abstaining from certain kinds of Meat, in which the Church of Rome makes Holiness and the Merit of Fasting to consist, is a Piece of Superstition derived from Paganism.”76 As we have seen, the Calvinist fascination with Calicut on the European Continent unravelled various aspects of Varthema’s report. These were itinerant anecdotes, employed to attack different aspects of Catholic doctrine and worship. The Calicut-Motif in Catholic Discourses What is remarkable was that the same images were evoked by a variety of scholars pursuing divergent political and theological agendas. Varthema’s work was employed by the Catholic French royalist, Loys Le Roy, to write commentaries in the French translation of Aristotle’s Politics (1568). In the third book, where the Greek philosopher discussed government, Le Roy interpolated a section on the hereditary modes of governance. The theme elicited a reference to the matriarchal customs of Calicut. The following quotation is taken from the English translation (1598), the first English translation of the Politics, presumably by John Dee, the geographer, mathematician and sometime advisor to Elizabeth I:
Pierre Mussard, The Conformity Between Modern and Ancient Ceremonies, 52 (emphasis in the original). Mussard’s French work remained popular throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The German translation was issued in 1680 at Zürich and in 1695 at Leipzig. The English edition was issued at London in 1732, 1745, 1848 and 1889. Another French edition was issued in 1744. 76 Ibid, 53. Similarly, in 1701 the Church of England clergyman, John Edwards (1637-1716), warned his readers for giving too much weight to authority in matters of faith. He observed that many follow virtuous men, though the latter only appeared virtuous from the outside, like the king of Calicut, who “eats no Meat till it be first offer’d to his Idol.” John Edwards, A free Discourse concerning Truth and Error, especially in Matters of Religion (London, 1701), 154-55. 75
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The which so strange and unused custome is only observed in this state, the reason therof being founded upon a certain foolish superstition which they have, namely, because the young Queene is defloured first by some young Priest called a Bramin, and that whe[n] the king goeth abroad, the Bramins have the continuall guard and oversight over her. Therefore they suppose, that the children borne of such a dame, smell more of the Bramin, then of the king.77
The connection which Europe saw between idolatry and promiscuity is indicated by another French book that became popular in Elizabethan England: L’Academie Française (1577) by the French Huguenot, Pierre de La Primaudaye. Dedicated to Henry III of France, this treatise on ethics, politics, history and religion became popular in English translations (1586). Certainly not a royalist, de La Primaudaye reviewed governance through the polarities of monarchy and tyranny. In his discussion of the hereditary modes of governance, he repeated Le Roy’s interpolation in Aristotle’s Politics verbatim: the matrilineal society of Calicut resulted from a superstitious custom by which the queen was deflowered by the Brahmin priest, and with whom she cohabited whenever the king sojourned to a distant land.78 It is important to remember that the method of comparative religion was not exclusive to the Protestant polemics: in turn, Rome characterized Protestant doctrine as heresy—an idolatrous deviation from the true religion, inspired by Antichrist and facilitated by the industry of priestcraft.79 It should come as no surprise then that the Calicut-motif travelled across denominational boundaries. In 1610, the French humanist and Jesuit controversialist, Louis Richeome, produced Le Pantheon Huguenot Decouvert et Ruiné (The Huguenot Pantheon Discovered and Ruined). This was part of an ongoing discussion with the Calvinists. Richeome reproduced the antiquarian projects of the Protestants and set out to identify the similarities between Protestantism and paganism, which in 1608 resulted in the release of L’Idolatrie Huguenot f igurée au patron de la vieille payenne (Huguenot idolatry represented in the patron of the ancient pagans). His polemic was met by L’Idolatrie papistique Opposée (Papist idolatry opposed; 1606), produced by the Reformed
Loys Le Roy in Aristotle, Aristotles Politiques, or Discourses of Government etc., trans. J. Dee (London, 1598), 170. 78 Pierre de la La Primaudaye, Academie Françoise. En Laquelle il est Traicté de l’Institution des Mœurs & de ce qui Concerne le bien & heureuseme[n]t Vivre etc. (Paris, 1577), fol. 194. The Puritan writer, Thomas Bowes, translated the first two volumes into English, issued at London in 1586 and 1594. The English editions were reissued in 1602-1605, 1614 and 1618. 79 S. J. Barnett, Idol Temples and crafty Priests, 6. 77
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minister of d’Aigues-Mortes, Jean Bansillon.80 The idolatry accusation was bandied around, and Richeome’s work on The Huguenot Pantheon (1610) was a counter-response to Bansillon. The dedication to Henry III of France suggests that the pantheon mentioned in the title indeed refered to the Protestant heresies and the gods and idols worshipped in the name of reformed religion. As we have seen, for the Protestants there was a pantheon of false gods to be found in the Catholic churches. Richeome reconstructed this argument to argue against the French Huguenots. His work makes up for an exhaustive list of arguments against Protestant doctrine, and suggests the multiple ways in which the comparative method could either be used or refuted. Richeome was familiar with the Protestant tactics and locked horns with the accusation of paganism. The alleged similarities between Catholic modes of worship and pagan practices, Richeome argued, do not warrant the claim that Catholicism equals paganism. After all, the Devil had aped the Christian religion, and the Chinese, Japanese and Mexicans simply imitated Catholic worship. Although the Turks believe in one God, so he concluded, one would not deny monotheism from fear of becoming a Turk.81 Comparative religion remained a formidable weapon against theological opponents, and not exclusive to the Protestant polemic. Throughout the Counter-Reformation period, the Protestants were depicted as impostors and the charge of idolatry was directed back at them. Not only the content of this polemic is of interest, but also its comparative form: Protestant thought was compared to Islam and Judaism, like the Protestants had done for Catholicism. This line of argument was being developed in France at the time of Richeome’s writings, as is indicated by the publication of the CalvinoTurcismus (1597) by the priest William Rainolds and archbishop William Gifford. In other words, a culture of comparative religion was developing in both theological camps long before the appearance of deism in late seventeenth-century Britain, generally considered to be at the origin of comparative religion.82 Richeome devoted several chapters to the manner in which the Huguenots revived the worship of the Greco-Roman deities. But the New was made For Bansilion, see Eugène Haag, La France Protestante, ou Vies des Protestants Français etc., vol. 1 (Paris, 1846), 224. 81 Louis Richeome, Le Pantheon Huguenot Decouvert et Ruiné contre l’Aucteur de l’Idolatrie Papistique, Ministre de Vauuert, cy Deuant d’Aigues Mortes etc. (Valenciennes, 1610), 142. 82 S. J. Barnett, Idol Temples and crafty Priests, 32, 39, 105. 80
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to conform to the Old, and Richeome set aside an entire chapter for The deformed Indian Idol, Renewed by the Ministry in Huguenotism [De l’Idole des indiens tres difforme, renouvellee par le Ministre en l’Huguenotisme]. Not surprisingly, he refered exclusively to Calicut, when he stated that the Devil— previously worshipped by the Babylonians, Greeks and Romans—was still adored in the East in the form of a hideous statue—a clear reference to Varthema’s report of the deumo of Calicut.83 Richeome went on to discuss the worship of the Devil in the New World, and advised those who felt attracted to the Reformed doctrine to think twice before they followed the Protestant ministers and priests who in the name of Reformed religion preached similar corruptions and immoralities.84 As must be clear, the priestcraft accusation was thrown back and forth, and the new information about a legendary Brahmin nation and their present traditions could make the charges more acute. Saintly Heathens or crafty Priests? While the works previously referenced in Chapter 2 were reissued, bought and still read, Boemus’ Omnium gentium mores (1520) embarked on the long road to fame. The imagery of the divine Brahmin still retained currency, but henceforth would jostle against a second image: the Brahmin as cunning priest. Both theological representations of the Indian Brahmin lived sideby-side and the polemicists could take recourse to either image, according to the necessity of the moment. For instance, the French writer and editor Pierre Boaisteau became famous for his collections of curiosities. His Histoires Prodigieuses was a collection of marvels, which appeared at Paris in 1560 and was issued in English translation under the title Certaine Secrete Wonders of Nature (1569). From the translator’s dedication we learn that the ancient philosophers had been aware of the Creator, the immortality of the soul and other such Christian tenets which they learned by “some divine inspiration” and natural reason.85 In other words, the apologetic argument that traces to the Fathers of the Church continued to guide Europe’s understanding of non-Christian traditions. However, Boaisteau’s collection of marvels starts with a chapter on the “Sundry Abuses and Wonders of Sathan,” in which
Louis Richeome, Le Pantheon Huguenot Decouvert et Ruiné, 245. Ibid., 245-46. 85 Pierre Boaistuau, Certaine Secrete wonders of Nature, containing a descriptio[n] of sundry strange things, seming monstrous in our eyes and iudgement, bicause we are not privie to the reasons of them etc., trans. E. Fenton (London, 1569 [French edition 1560]), fols. Aij-Aiij. 83 84
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the author observed that the Devil built his reign in most provinces, yet governed with a strong hand in two places particularly. The first was at the Oracle of Apollo; the second at the temple of Calicut. The people of Calicut were blinded by the Devil, because they still believed in God, yet worshipped Satan with incense and perfume.86 The first page of the English edition features another print of the spectacular illustration of Satan which first appeared in the original French: They call him by the name of Deumo, whose portraite the King kepes with gret devotion in his Chappel, as a sanctuarie or holy relike, placed in a stately chaire with a Crowne upon his head after the forme of a Méetre, with a garnish of foure hornes, foure huge téeth growing out of a monstrous mouth, a nose and eyes of the like proportion, his handes like to the pawes of an Ape, and feete fashioned like a Cock, whose forme … is both fearfull and monstrous.87
The illustration typically represents Narasimha as the Devil, a satyr-like creature with a beard, goat’s horns and hairy legs; his fingers are talons, his feet those of a bird of prey, he has a second horned face in place of the belly, illustrating the inner corruption of the Devil. Boaisteau went on to continue that the priests of this devil are called Bramynes. They were in charge of the oblations to the idol and regulated the diet of the king. The author also reproduced Varthema’s account of the pilgrimage to Calicut and the sacrifices to the Devil under the direction of the Brahmins. Interestingly, this reproduction of Varthema’s Calicut report had a clear purpose. The French author gave weight to his narrative by quoting its source—Vartema, who had seen it with his own eyes—and concluded that his observations were a warning for those who had access to the Gospel, yet followed it not: … this enemie to mankinde hath so enchaunted, with illusions [the worshippers at Calicut], that they beleve their sacrifice is done to God, & merites pardon at his hande, where in deede they honor the chiefe enimie to their own salvation: which ought to serve for exa[m]ple to such as participate with the light of God & his Gospel, to the ende they labour to make appeare their talent, and make a special treasure of the grace wherewith he hath endued them, seeing that the servant which knoweth the wil of his Lord, and doth it not, standeth in more daunger of blame before God, than he that is ignorant of it.88
Ibid., fol. 2. Ibid., fol. 3. 88 Ibid., fol. 3. 86 87
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This fascinating collection of marvels was one of the sources through which the standardized representation of the deumo and its ‘satanic Brahmin priesthood’ was widely distributed.89 The social and religious context in which Boaisteau collected his marvels was such that the example of Calicut functioned as a warning to those “who participate with the light of God and his Gospel,” yet did not follow His will. That Boaisteau would include in this category the Roman-Catholic priesthood becomes obvious in later works.
3. Idol of Calicut in Boaisteau’s Certaine Secrete Wonders of Nature (London, 1569)
The collection went through ever more voluminous editions with contributions by other French humanists. The second French edition was issued at Paris in 1566, followed by further editions in 1571, 1575, 1582, 1594 and 1598. The Dutch translation appeared at Antwerp in 1576. From the 1571 edition onwards, the French cosmographer François de Belleforest became one of the most prominent contributors of marvels. The Dutch translations of the editions to which Belleforest contributed appeared in 1592, 1608 and as late as 1670. A Spanish translation was issued in 1603.
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Boaisteau is known as the editor of the works of Marguerite de Navarre, the queen consort of Henry II of Navarre. As a patron for humanists and Reformers, Marguerite mediated between the Catholics and the Protestants. Like Erasmus of Rotterdam, she favoured reform, but this was a call for reform from within and not outside the Church as advocated by the Protestants. If Boaisteau took up the work of editing her writings, it would come as no surprise if he shared her sympathy for many of the issues the Protestants raised. These sympathies were clearly embodied in another collections of marvels, issued two years before the Histoires Prodigieuses (1560). In 1558 Boaisteau published Le Theatre du Monde ou il est Fait un ample Discours des Miseres Humaines (Theatre of the world, wherein is contained a discourse on human miseries). In contrast to his later collection of wonders, the topics discussed are of a much more calamitous nature. Having outlined the misery of the kings and the princes, Boaistuau continued with the depressed state of the clerical estate. The range of afflictions Boaistuau identified in the realm of the ecclesia indicates that Catholic anticlericalism was no less ardent compared to the anticlerical ethos of the Protestant Reformers.90 The extraordinary popularity of the Theatre du Monde suggests that it became an important vehicle through which these sentiments spread. The French editions were published in small and affordable pocket volumes in 1558, 1559, 1561, 1562, 1571, 1577 and 1595, and it was reissued in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in more than twenty editions, besides translations into Latin, Dutch, English, German and Spanish.91 The author reemployed the theme of the proto-Christian heathen and compared their condition with the depraved state of the western popes and ecclesiastics. The condition of the European priesthood required no less than a comparison with the heathen priests, a theme that brings us right back to the exemplum tradition. The French author proposed to “consider those who were the priests of the heathens and gentiles, and compare them with ours, to the end that those who are illuminated with the light of the Gospel and instructed in a much better school may blush from shame and learn from
Pierre Boaistuau, Le Theatre du Monde ou il est faict un ample Discours des Miseres humaines, etc. (Paris, 1562 [1558]), fols. 51-54. 91 The Latin translation by Laurentius Cuperus appeared at Antwerp in 1589. The German edition was produced by Rotmund Laurentius and released in 1606. Perez del Castillo Baltasar produced a Spanish translation, first issued in 1593. The English translation was produced by John Alday and released at London in 1566, followed by reprints in 1574 and 1581. Another English translation, based on the Spanish edition, was produced by Francis Farrer in 1663. 90
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them to reform their lives.”92 The theme and wording resonate with the warning Boaisteau cast in the Histoires Prodigieuses (1560). At variance with the ethnographic imagery used in this later collection to make the warning more acute, the Theatre du Monde (1558) takes recourse to the imagery of the proto-Christian Brahmin. Boaisteau observed that the priesthood of Egypt, Babylon and Persia excelled in admirable deeds, and recapitulated a popular trope from the medieval tradition: the Brahmin exemplum. The Indians had priests—known for their exquisite doctrines and manners—such that they confuted with their eloquence the tyrant Alexander, who intended to ruin their country. As Plutarch observed, not only did Alexander leave them in peace, he also honoured them with an infinite amount of treasures.93 Boaistuau concluded that the condition of the heathen priests bore a striking contrast with the wicked ways of the priests in Europe, more skilled in courtly fashions than in the message of Christ—the ethnographic imagery equally, bore a striking contrast with the representation of the Brahmins employed in his later collection, used to make exactly the same theological point. As shown below, the same images resurfaced in the theological debates all over Europe. The Calicut-Motif in the Low Countries Taking an example from Flanders, during the time that the Dutch campaign against the Spanish Empire was turning into a success, the Burgomaster of Antwerp, Marnix of Thoulouse, wrote cutting satires against the Church of Rome, Le Tableau des Différens de la Religion (Table of religious differences; 1599). Marnix had studied theology under Calvin at Geneva, after which he became involved in the politics of the Low Countries. Calicut featured prominently when he questioned the divine apostolic lineage that would make the pope the Vicar of Christ on earth. The pope in Rome was more easily connected with the deumo of Calicut than with the Apostle Peter of Galilee, Pierre Boaistuau, Le Theatre du Monde, fol. 50: “Considerons un peu quelz ont esté les prestres des Ethniques & Gentiles, & les conferrons avecques les nostres, afin que ceux qui sont illustrez de la lumiere Evangelique, & qui sont instruictz en trop meilleure escole rougissent de honte & apprennent d’eux à reformer leur vie.” 93 Ibid., fol. 51: “Les Indiens ont eu semblablement leurs prestres (qu’ils appelloyent Gymnosophistes,) de doctrine si exquise, & de mœurs si bien reiglées, qu’eulx seulz entre tous les hommes rendirent confuz par leur eloquence ce gra[n]d tyran Alexandre, lequel ayant en deliberation de les ruiner, & saccager leurs pays, fut si bien abaissé apres les avoir escoutez (ainsi que Plutarque escrit) que non seulement ilz ne receurent aucune offence de luy, mais ayant leur prudence en admiration, & les honora d’une infinité de tresors, & presens magnifiques.” 92
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the radix of the papal tradition. This reference to the deumo is made in passing, as if it were common knowledge in the Low Countries at the end of the sixteenth century. The cathedra or throne of the pope in Rome, the paraphernalia associated with the deities of Greco-Roman antiquity and the deumo of Calicut all coalesce into a single antiquarian frame of reference: The same emblem, that she alone wears the Triple Crown, does not displease that great fool, the devil of Calicut, who also has come to wear the triple tiara. In a fit of insanity, he forgot that in the Olympic Pantheon there is only one Jupiter who holds a threefold lightning, that in the ocean, on the seat of Triton, sits only one Neptune with a triune, that in Pluto’s underworld, there is but one three-headed Cerberus, and on earth, in the kingdom of the maniacs, one Pope with a triple crown.94
This similarity between the deumo’s crown and the papal tiara is remarked upon in a variety of sources. It bears traces of the manner in which the heraldry of the Holy Metropolis was understood in popular Reformed thought. According to The Temptation of Christ (Matthew 3-4), the Saviour turned down the Devil’s crown when presented with the kingdoms of the world. The Protestants felt that the popes had fallen miserably and lain prostrate, accepting the Devil’s crown in turn for the glory of the kingdoms of the world.95 The attitudes towards Calicut were not only framed in the disputes between the Christian factions, but were also apparent in the protests that constitute the local history of reform. Before the Duke of Parma recaptured Bruges, Ghent, and finally Antwerp in 1584-85, Luther and Calvin had found a sympathetic audience in the Flemish cities. In pursuit of a policy of removing all statues and images from the local churches, the Calvinists argued that the Ten Commandments forbade the worship of idols, and from the 1530s onwards, Ghent was divided by this discord. The iconoclastic fury (Beeldenstorm) in August 1566 left no church or monastery undamaged. Writing from Marnix van St. Aldegonde, Le Tableau des Différens de la Religion etc. (Leyden, 1603 [1599]), fol. 124: “Aux mesmes enseignes, qu’elle seule est paree d’une triple couro[n]ne, n’en desplaise au Deumon de Calicut le grand sot, qui vouloit aussi se mesler de porter tyare tripliquee, faute de sens, & de n’avoir bien entendu, qu’en l’Olimpe au royaume des Dieux n’y a qu’un seul Iupin à triple foudre, en la mer au siege der tritons un seul Neptunus à triple fourche, en enfer au destroict de Pluton un seul Cerberus à triple teste: & en terre au regne des fols un seul Pape à triple couronne.” Marnix was familiar with previous sources that employed the Calicut-motif and had read the Histoire de la Mappe-Monde Papistique (1566) by the French Calvinists. See J. G. Sterck, Bronnen en Samenstelling van Marnix’ Biënkorf Der H. Roomsche Kercke (Leuven, 1952), 172-74. 95 See Martin Luther in A. Probus, ed., Renovalia Lutheri. Von der gnadenreichen Offenbarung des Heiligen Evangelii, Und der grewlichen Abgötterey des Bapsthumbs ( Jena, 1590), fol. H.iiij. 94
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Ghent, the Catholic historian Marcus van Vaernewijck documented the turbulence that rocked the city between 1566-1568. He observed the damage done to St. Jakob’s and St. Michael’s churches, and other places of Catholic worship. His diary was issued at Ghent, between 1872-81. The Flemish writer narrated how the statues in St. Peter’s Abbey remained relatively intact, with the exception of a life-seize statue of the Apostle Peter. The image would have survived the attacks, were it not for the three crowns on St. Peter’s head that had been cast to the ground. Even in war-ravaged Ghent, the ‘devil of Calicut’ made an appearance: Marcus quoted the iconoclasts saying that they had seen a golden statue of the devil of Calicut, with three crowns on its head, a vision that led the rioting mobs to mock the papal tiara.96 That a Calvinist reading of Varthema’s report, or of a graven image offloaded in the harbour of Antwerp, was manifested in the history of the Reformation in the Low Countries further indicates the propagandistic frames through which the ethnographic information was structured and understood.97 The Calicut-motif was present in the popular domain by the middle of the sixteenth century. The resulting imagery of the Brahmin, his so-called idolatrous traditions and promiscuous customs were—just like the first composite image—framed from within the theological issues of the day. This is also indicated by a Dutch work—known as Visboock, or Fish Book—authored in the second half of the sixteenth century by a Dutchman, Adriaen van Coenen. The few people who have studied this manuscript, note the little influence it enjoyed outside the limited circle of people with the opportunity to see it. It is nevertheless an invaluable source to study the distribution of the Calicut-motif, providing insights into how the novel knowledge of exotic places was received and reconstructed by Europeans without an academic training. As a wholesale purveyor in fish in the coastal town of Scheveningen, Marcus van Vaernewyck, Van die beroerlicke Tijden in die Nederlanden en voornamelick in Ghendt 1566-1568 etc. (Gent, 1872), 2: 158: “Sommighe hebben ooc ghezeijt, dat zij den duvel tot Callicoeten alzoo hebben ghefigureert ghezien met drij croonen up thooft, te weten een duvelkin van fijnen ghaude, dat van daer ghebracht was, ende wilden alzoo met der paus croonen haren spot hauden.” I am indebted to the discussion on visual propaganda in Robert Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk, 8-9. On the Reformation in Antwerp, Ghent, and the Low Countries generally, see Phyllis Mack Crew, Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands, 1544-1569 (Cambridge, 1978). 97 Van Vaernwijck himself was familiar with the entire text of the Itinerario. His work on the history of the Low Countries (1574) contains several ethnographic sections and reproduces Vartema’s account of sati practices in India verbatim. The section is entitled “Vande gruwelicke begravinghe der Gallen, ende der Indiaenscher begravinghe.” (On the dreadful funerals of the Gaul and the Indian funerals). See Marcus Van Vaernewijck, Die Historie van Belgis, diemen anders namen mach: den spieghel der Nederlantscher audtheyt etc (Gent, 1574), fols. lxxv-lxxvj. 96
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Coenen devoted his work to matters related to the sea and its produce. He embellished his treatise with ethnographic relations, focusing on diet and dress, religions and customs. He was by no means a scholar, yet illustrated “what constituted the ethnographic imagination among the large number of people who did have access to some learning, who could read but did not have much Latin, who owned a few books themselves and could borrow some of the more expensive foreign publications, and who at the same time had access to practical folk knowledge, to the so-called savoir prolétaire.”98 The second manuscript, compiled from several classical and contemporary sources between 1577-79, contains 412 folio pages with detailed illustrations of monstrous races, copied from such works like Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia (1540).99 Also Varthema’s Calicut report (1510) features prominently. It is not hard to see why Coenen included another description of the ‘devil of Calicut’ in his work: on the one hand, it had a place amongst the strange and wondrous monsters in his Visboock; on the other hand, it also fitted the theological message the fishmonger set out to convey. The many examples of sea monsters and dragons demonstrate the author’s reliance on biblical sources. Immediately following a quotation about the seven-headed monster (Revelation 12:3), Coenen touched upon the topic of religion, and discussed the futility of quarrels about ceremonies and modes of worship.100 He positioned himself in the camp of moderate Protestants, yet was clear on the origin of such debatable practices: These are only conflicts about the ceremonies connected with images, altars. O let us not follow the heathen who are surrounded by manifold ceremonies and diverse observances and know no better. They are induced to such practices by their priests, just as we have been coaxed for a long time by the Roman popes until it pleased God Almighty, who as I hope will also redeem the errors and ignorance of the heathen and all their false beliefs, to which they were brought by their priests.101
Coenen recounted as a wondrous mystery that the Calicutians represent the Devil with the crown of the pope, and reproduced Varthema’s passages on the king’s chapel and the deumo. The coloured drawing below the text represents Florike Egmond and Peter Mason, ““These are people who eat raw f ish”: Contours of the Ethnographic Imagination in the Sixteenth Century,” Viator 31 (2000): 311-360 [318]. 99 This manuscript (Haag 78 E 54) has been digitised by the National Library in The Hague, and can be consulted at http://www.kb.nl/visboek. All quotations in English are taken from Florike Egmond and Peter Mason, “These are people who eat raw fish.” 100 MS Haag, fol. 235. 101 Ibid., fol. 235. 98
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Narasimha in the Christian devil tradition and is taken from the woodcut illustration to Münster’s Cosmographia (1540), which had already appeared in more than ten German editions, five Latin editions and Italian and Czech editions. The text itself reproduces the Itinerario (1510). The Dutch fishmonger exhibitted a practical application of comparative religion and reproduced the Calicut-motif when he suggested an analogy between the pope of Rome and the priest of Calicut. This is how he continued his plea for religious concord, and also introduced the deumo of Calicut: Now I will write a little about the bad ceremonies which those of Calicut were induced to observe, honoring the devil so that he would harm them less. O mysterious errors, O God Almighty please have mercy on them and instruct them about your dear son Jesus Christ our lord, Amen.102
On the one hand, we have Varthema’s narrative, released at Rome in 1510. On the other, we have the Calicut-motif extracted from this narrative, which carries at its heart a radically novel perception of ‘the Brahmin religion.’ Not only was it constructed from an amalgam of misunderstanding and religious imagination, its origin has to be located in the sixteenth-century theological debates, where the Brahmins were once more domesticated for the local European market. As the Renaissance humanists had additional material about the Brahmins available, it became possible to do more with them in the service of Christianity. The images of the crafty and the saintly Brahmins emerged within a theological conception of non-Christian traditions that draws upon the apologetics of the primitive Church: other traditions were either conceptualized as remnants of the original religion, embodied in Christianity, or as corrupted manifestations of the original religion. Their protagonists might have strived for the clerical ideal of the Gregorian Reforms—in word, but like the European priests, certainly not in deed. The composition of the Brahmin as the custodian of false religion in the East was not only a continental affair. Also across the English Channel, the ‘devil of Calicut’ became a rallying cry for the reformers in their war against the Church.
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Idem.
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3.4. The Calicut-Motif in English Controversies In the sixteenth century, England, Germany, France and the Low Countries were more removed from the new worlds opened up by the discoveries, than were the Iberian powers. As we have seen, this did not imply that the geographical discoveries did not have an impact on western European thought. The English similarly responded to the cross-cultural encounters, drawing from the new information revealed by the continental presses as to widen the scope of their criticisms of the vested powers. The Calicut-motif thus also became a feature of Tudor learning. For example, the Cosmographical Glasse by cartographer William Cunningham (1559), said to be the first book on geography in English, contains a brief account of Calicut dealing primarily with its spices. This pithy tract informed the reader about the habits of the priests: the Calicutians “have thys use that whan any manne marieth, he must commit his wife to the priest to be defloured.”103 Another English geography was the Geographia (1540-41) by Roger Barlow, an associate of Thomas Cromwell and close friend of the Reformation. Much of this work was translated from Encisco’s publication on the New World, the Summa de Geografía (1519). Yet one of Barlow’s original contributions was an extensive section on Calicut, reproduced ad verbatim from the Itinerario.104 By the turn of the seventeenth century, the sections on the deumo and its priesthood came to live a life of their own in English learning. The English translator, John Thorie, contributed to the novel genre of geographical dictionaries. His work alphabetically lists short passages on the towns, cities and countries of the world, providing a range of geographical and topographical data, faithfully entitled The Theatre of the Earth (1599). Two entries concern India: one under the general heading of India, the other under the entry on Calicut. Without a reference to Varthema, but to the explorer Ferdinand Magellan instead, Thorie testified to the chief importance of Varthema’s narrative to the representation of India in the Tudor disciplines. The entry on Calicut is a condensed summary of Varthema’s report.105 At a time when witch-hunting was still an acceptable moral and intellectual pursuit, the future James I of England ( James VI King of Scots) wrote on witchcraft, necromancy and deWilliam Cunningham, The Cosmographical Glasse, conteinyng the pleasant Principles of Cosmographie, Geographie, Hydrographie, or Navigation etc. (London, 1559), fol. 196. 104 Roger Barlow, A Brief Summe of Geographie etc., trans. E. G. Taylor (London, 1932), 139-48. 105 John Thorie, The Theatre of the Earth Containing very short and compendious Descriptions of all Countries etc. (London, 1599), no pagination. 103
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monology in the form of a dialogue (1597). Calicut now featured in popular superstition. James—reputed for his finer style and taste—gave weight to the stories about the Devil’s travesties: But further, Witches oft times confesses not only his conveening in the Church with them, but his occupying of the Pulpit: Yea, their forme of adoration, to be the kissing of his hinder partes. Which though it seeme ridiculous, yet may it likewise be true, seeing we reade that in Calicute, he appearing in forme of a Goate-bucke, hath publicklie that un-honest homage done unto him, by everie one of the people; So ambitious is he, and greedie of honour … that he will even imitate God in that parte …106
The Calicut-Motif in English Scholarship The cultural milieu in which Varthema’s narrative percolated was characterized by the socio-religious processes through which the Church of England departed from the authority of the Catholic Church. When Henry VIII divorced from Rome in 1534, England opened its gates to the Reformation and with it, to the polemics and ethnographic imageries that accompanied it. In 1537 the radical advocate of reform and bishop of Exeter, Miles Coverdale, translated an anonymous work from the High Dutch, The Original & Sprynge of all Sectes & Orders. This small volume is essentially a list of Catholic sects and orders. After a description of the practices and austerities of the Carthusian Order, the ‘monks of Calicut’ were evoked to ridicule such outward display of Catholic spirituality: Lo good reader these develysh practyses upon what fundament they are grou[n] ded. The devell thought this shalbe my devyse: For the worlde can not judge or discerne this lyuynge, they shall estyme it an holy lyuynge, all is golde with them [that] shyneth, chefly in spiritual matters. Yf this lyuynge be of value, then are the Heithen, Turkes, & Calicutes vertues me[n]: for they have mo[n]kes of strayghter lyuynge. But whosoever the matter be, the worlde wyll have monkes and freres.107
The polemical imagery about the Indian traditions entered into English circulation three years after the break with Rome—the ideal commonwealth James I, King of England, Daemonologie in forme of a Dialogue (Edinburgh, 1597), 37. The account of the deumo was a popular trope in contemporary works on demonology. Also see Pierre Nodé, Declamation contre l’Erreur execrable des Malef iciers, Sorciers, etc. (Paris, 1578), 39-40. 107 Anonymous, The original & sprynge of all sectes & orders by whome, wha[n] or were they beganne etc., trans. M. Coverdale (London, 1537), fol. 9. 106
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was thus no longer located in the land of the Brahmins. In his commentary upon the Apocalypse (Antwerp, 1545), John Bale, another notable radical of the first generation, could therefore identify Apollyon, the angel of the bottomless pit released at the battle of Armageddon, as a papist, equal in turn to Mahomet and the idolater of India.108 The imagery surrounding Calicut was associated with different aspects of the Catholic universe: different instances, different stories and different customs were employed in this set of identification with Catholic Rome. Being part of the rhetoric against the pope and Roman primacy, the worship of images, the cult of saints and the traditional fast, Varthema’s report could also be brought to ridicule the doctrine of transubstantiation, or the belief in the transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ at Eucharist. In 1579 the radical puritan theologian William Fulke published a blazing confutation of the Catholic controversialists. One of them was Thomas Heskyns, a priest who had moved to Flanders after the accession of Elizabeth I (1558). Heskyns’s The Parliament of Chryste (1566) contained a strong defence of the doctrine of transubstantiation. In Fulke’s riposte, the very notion of sacrifice as part of the priestly vocation was said to lead to the false worship of the idolaters, “especialle those of Calechut, who beside the bloud of a cocke which they sacrifice to the Idole of the divel, do offer unto it all meat that the king eateth.”109 The allusion to the blood and meat sacrificed by ‘the Brahmin priesthood’ to the Devil at Calicut neatly maps onto the Eucharistic sacrifice of the blood and flesh of Christ.110 The city of Calicut served a common polemical purpose in Stuart England, where it was employed against the pope’s usurpation of the throne of Christ. Thomas Jackson, the president of Corpus Christi, reconstructed it in the third book of his commentaries on the Apostles’ Creed (1614). This work was directed against the Jesuits and “other later Romanists” who accepted the authority of the Catholic Church in matters divine. To demonstrate that the absolute power of the pope implied the rejection of the Word of God, John Bale, The Image of both Churches, after the most wo[n]derfull and heavenlye Revelacyon of Saynt Johan the Evangelyst, etc. (Antwerp, 1545), fol. 13. 109 William Fulke, D. Heskins, D. Sanders, and M. Rastel, accounted (among their faction) three pillers and Archpatriarches of the Popish Synagogue … overthrowne etc. (London, 1579), 119. 110 The city of Calicut also featured in Protestant commentaries upon the New Testament. In particular, in a Reformed exegesis of The Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle to the Romans (1611), the most favourite piece of the Reformers to argue against Rome: Willet Andrew: Hexapla, that is, A six-fold Commentarie upon the most Divine Epistle of the holy Apostle S. Paul to the Romanes etc. (London, 1611), 72. 108
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Jackson invoked the Calicut-motif, and thus drew a comparison between the doctrines of Rome and those that were thought to be professed at Calicut: But if when the Pope shall teach the doctrine of Divels, men absolutely believe it to be Christs, because his pretended Vicar commends it to them: in thus beleeving, they commit such preposterous Idolatry, as those of Calecut, which adore the Devill, upon conceit, doubtlesse, of some celestiall or divine power in him; as the absolute Papist doth not adore the Pope, but upon perswasion he is Christs Vicar, and teaches as Christ would doe, viva voce, were hee again on earth.111
The idol of Calicut became a powerful symbol, a spectre that haunted the pope in Rome. Taking recourse to florid prose, Jackson equated the pope and the spirits of Calicut with Satan’s incarnate agents: And lesse it were to bee lamented, did these Pseudo Catholiques professe their allegiance to Sathans incarnate Agent, as to their supreme Lord, by such solemne sacrifices onely as the inhabitants of Calicute performe to wicked spirits. But this their blinde beliefe of whatsoever hee shall determine upon a proude and foolish imagination he is Christs Vicar, emboldens them to invert the whole law of God and nature, to glory in villany, and triumph in mischiefe, even to seeke prayse and honour eternall; from acts so foule and hideous, as the light of nature would make the Calicutians or other Idolaters blush at their very mention. It is a sure token hee hath not yet learned the Alphabet of their religion, that doubts whether Iesuiticall doctrine concerning this absolute beliefe, extend not to all matters of fact.112
This polemical motif was used for popular consumption and—much like on the Continent—also appears in the project of translation. Richard (Rycharde) Eden was commissioned to translate the European travelogues in order to warm his countrymen towards the prospect of overseas expeditions, which gained him a prominent position in the treasury during the reign of Mary Tudor (1553-58). However, towards the end of 1555 he had come under suspicion of heresy, and was forced to resign from office.113 That his loyalty to the Catholic queen became suspect is little surprise. Already in 1553, Eden had translated parts of book five of Sebastian Münster’s famous Cosmographia (1544), the German original of which included Varthema’s detailed sections on the Calicut deumo. Eden betrayed his affiliations in the margins, next to
Thomas Jackson, The third Booke of Commentaries upon The Apostles Creede, Contayning the blasphemous Positions of Iesuites and other later Romanists etc. (London, 1614), 292-93. 112 Ibid., 292-293. 113 For Richard Eden see David Gwyn, “Richard Eden: Cosmographer and Alchemist,” Sixteenth Century Journal 15, no. 1 (1984): 13-34. 111
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the description of Narasimha’s crown. His annotation to the left of the printed text reads: “The bishop of Romes vicar at Calicut.”114 It is one thing to observe the similarities between the statue’s coronal and the papal tiara, but quite another, to describe the satanic idol of Calicut as an Indian substitute for or an agent of the pope in Rome. The last work Eden translated was the entire text of the Itinerario (1577). This was during the Protestant reign of Elizabeth I and Eden could now freely express his anti-Catholic ethos in marginal annotations. Where Varthema writes that the devil of Calicut wears a triple crown with four horns, Eden read the “Difference betweene the Popes crowne and the devylles.”115 The Brahmin priest was praised as “A goodly priest the devylles Chaplen.”116 That the priests deprived the queen of her virginity elicited the following remark: “A goodly office for a byshop.”117 Eden must have seen the similarities with the Catholic priests shining forth from Varthema’s pages: where Varthema wrote that the Brahmins apply oil on the heads of the pilgrims, Eden added “Holy oyle in the steade of holy water,” yet another Catholic custom that the Reformers saw to be a priestly fraud.118 Where he observed a funeral cortège in Tangasseri (Quilon), and noted “a great noyse with Trumpettes, Pipes, Drummes, Tambarells,” Eden was reminded of the “Canonisyng of saintes,” another Catholic institution fervently disliked by the Protestant Reformers.119 These marginalia disclose just how the ‘facts’ in the Itinerario (1510) were absorbed into the cognitive make-up of the editors and translators. This process of cultural translation into the framework of the Protestant polemic is multiplied in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and not only in scholarship that deals specifically with India. In 1572 John Bossewell released his Workes of Armorie, a collection of armorial bearings. Though the author drew heavily from Gerard Legh’s The Accedens of Armory (1568), one of his original contributions is worth mentioning. Bossewell illustrated the text with woodcuts to clarify the technicalities of heraldry. One of the coats of armour is a triple crowned goat. At variance with the papal emblem, this heraldic crown also bears four horns. This imagery must have rung a bell. In-
114 Richard Eden in Sebastian Münster, A treatyse of the newe India with other new founde Landes and Islandes, trans. R. Eden (London, 1553), fol. Cv. 115 Eden in Varthema, “The Navigation and voyages of Lewes Vertomannus,” fol. 387. 116 Ibid., fol. 388. 117 Ibid., fol. 388. 118 Ibid., fol. 397. 119 Ibid., fol. 407.
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deed, Bossewell wrote that the goat is “adorned Diademate modo Romanorum Pontif icum” (with the diadem of the Roman-Catholic pontificate). The shield might thus belong to some “Romishe bishoppe,” fraudulently aspiring a higher status.120 Bossewell commented in an anti-Catholic spirit that describing the image any further would be redundant to his readers who abhorred “the tyranny of that Romishe sea.” Nevertheless, one final observation must have truly fascinated his audience: a summary narrative of Varthema’s description of Calicut and its priesthood, derived from Münster’s Cosmographia (1540): But note heare, touchinge the saide tripled Crowne, wherewith the Goates head is ensigned, I reade, that the kinge and people of that famous citie in Indie the more, called Calechut, worship the devill in a wodderfull and horrible forme, moste lothsome to be recited, and having a Diademe on his hed, as the popishe prelates usethe, and that whiche is more, Ternis insignitur cornibus [with three horns on it]. And this devill hathe also hys priestes called Bramini, whiche do make cleane and take awaye the spottes of his bodie with Rose water and such odiriferous licour, and perfume him kneelynge) varijs odoramentis [a variety of odours], yea with every thing that savoreth well: and many moe other devilishe ceremonies, whereof yea may read in the Cosinography [sic.] of Munstre, lib. 5-de terris Asiae maioris.121
The Calicut-motif flowered in the English Reformation, where it was recomposed in multiple sources, from the first stirrings of radical dissent to the very end of the Elizabethan era. Donald Lach (1994) notes that during Henry’s reign (1509-47) the novel knowledge of the East remained strictly confined to intellectuals concerned with geography and navigation. He also observes that in the first few decades of Elizabeth’s reign, little was added to the store of knowledge of the East.122 Nevertheless, the spectacular passages from the Itinerario had begun to infiltrate English learning from as early as 1537, when they soon became a source of theological ammunition. In other words, ideas travelled rapidly through the intellectual channels between Germany, France, the Low Countries and England—perhaps with greater efficiency than in the
John Bossewell, Workes of Armorie, devyded into three bookes, entituled, the Concordes of Armorie, the Armorie of Honor, and of Coates and Creastes, etc. (London, 1572), fol. 133. 121 Ibid., fol. 134, About a century later, the deumo featured in another work on heraldry. In 1688 the heraldic painter, Randle Holme (1627-1700), wrote an eclectic work disguised as a book on heraldry, which included an extensive list of country gods and goddesses. Holme described the deumo as “the Devil, or a Devilish Idol, most superstitiously adored by the Painims of Calicut.” See Randle Holme, The Academy of Armory, or, A Storehouse of Armory and Blazon etc. (Chester, 1688), book 2: 7. 122 Donald Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. 2: 370. 120
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present day.123 The swift proliferation of the Calicut-motif suggests the speed with which intellectual thought crossed the English Channel, and further demonstrates that ethnographic learning performed the same polemical purpose in England as it did on the Continent. The Calicut-motif—distinctively at odds with the traditional, pre-Renaissance formulation—was even common enough to function as a rhetorical device in the sermons delivered from the pulpits of Elizabethan and Stuart England. Calicut and the Art of Sermons On the Continent, the Calicut-motif also surfaces in the more local history of the Reformation, as evident in the iconoclastic fury at Ghent. The associated method of comparative religion also received a less scholarly or commonsense application in the work by Adriaen van Coenen (1577-79). The deep theological nature of its imagery is suggested by its popularity in Reformed sources and by its compliance with the taste of their intended audiences. The Calicut-motif also penetrated oral modes of communication, the traces of which we can find in print, specifically in the sermons that were delivered on the pulpits of late sixteenth-century England. In England, too, the vision that Catholicism was tantamount to Indian heathenism was used to excite the masses at crucial public events. When the Reformation ideologues attempted to transcend the audience of court officials and members of the universities, they were compelled to make their message intelligible to those who did not reap the benefits of a humanist education. Sermons were especially effective in urban areas. They show the mechanisms by which radical ideas were made available to the unlettered masses; the ideas themselves suggest that the Calicut-motif became part of the stock repertoire of Protestant abuses, recognized by a wider audience that could find its imagery convincing. On 3 June 1571, the bishop of Oxford, John Bridges, delivered a denunciation of popery at St. Paul’s Cross, besides the St. Paul’s Cathedral. The sermon was printed with a dedication to Sir William Cecil, the principal secretary of Elizabeth I. Bridges noted the many requests he received to publish his discourse, for sensational it surely was: the bishop went so far as to argue that the Catholics did not believe in Christ, because they worshipped
F. J. Levy, “How Information Spread among the Gentry, 1550-1640,” The Journal of British Studies 21, no. 2 (Spring 1982): 11-34.
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other creatures besides Him: the Catholic saints.124 Bridges dismantled the Catholic distinction between veneration (dulia) and worship (latria), and was not even prepared to accept the claim that the Catholics believed in Christ. He compared their worship of saints with “the fayth at Calecute,” where the Devil was “inthronized and crowned like the Pope.”125 The anecdotal nature of this “fayth at Calecute” surely fitted a homily intended to incite the crowds in St. Paul’s Churchyard. The controversies that surrounded the speech testified to its extensive readership, suggesting that many copies were sold in the bookstalls at St. Paul’s. Nevertheless, it is difficult to ascertain with any degree of certainty the precise influence of the Calicut-motif in English popular culture. In an age without press, pamphlets and broadsheets raised the issues of the day. Very little of it survived the turmoil that initially motivated the pamphleteers, so that the very survival of the Calicut-motif might bear witness to some kind of popular reception. A sermon about which we can assert with more certainty that the printed text represents the spoken word was delivered on 24 March 1613, at the tenth anniversary of the accession of James I. The historical nature of this event indicates that many people possibly gathered at St. Paul’s Cross, then the most famous pulpit of England. The orator was the bishop of Norwich, Joseph Hall. His introduction to the court life of James I had made Hall the most noted preacher of the century. In his address to John Swinerton, the lord mayor of London, Hall insisted on the accuracy with which he reproduced the sermon.126 While prompting his audience to fear and serve the Lord, Hall severely attacked the Catholic worship of the saints. What appeared to be an intellectualist division between the veneration of images (dulia) and the worship of the divine (latria) was skilfully dismantled when it faced the tribunal of English commonsense. The Calicut-motif was a powerful catalyst in this exercise: Every worldling is a Papist in this, that he gives service, to the creature, which is the lowest respect that can bee; Yea so much more humble then (latria) as it is more absolute, and without respect of recompence. Yea, I would it were uncharitable to say, that many besides the savages of Calecut, place Satan in the throne, 124 John Bridges, A sermon, preached at Paules Crosse on the Monday in Whitson weeke Anno Domini. 1571 etc. (London, 1571), 152. 125 Ibid., 154. 126 Joseph Hall, An holy Panegyrick. A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse upon the anniversarie Solemnitie of the happie Inauguration of our Dread Soveraigne Lord King James, Mar. 24, 1613 (London, 1613), fol. A3. For Hall see the entry by McCabe in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (hereafter dnb).
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and God on the footestoole. For as Witches and Sorcerers converse with evill spirits in plausible and familiar formes, which in ugly shapes they would abhorre; so many a man serves Satan under the formes of gold and silver, under the images of Saints and lightsome Angels; under glittering cotes, or glorious titles, or beauteous faces, whom they would defie as himselfe.127
The comparison between the Calicut deumo occupying the throne of the King of Heaven and the cult of the saints resonated with the anti-Catholic sentiments of his audience. In 1615 the English capital once more heard about the satanic role reversals at Calicut, this time in a sermon by the Church of England clergyman, Thomas Adams, praised for his homiletic repertoire. This sermon was entitled The Sacrif ice of Thankfulnesse and also delivered at St. Paul’s, on 3 December 1615. Adams thundered against those who served the flesh and reiterated an imagery ever-popular in the anti-Catholic polemics: Iudge then how horryble it is, that men should set (as the Savages of Calecut) the Divell, or his two Ingles, the world and the flesh in the Throne; whiles they place God in the foote-stoole. Or that in this Common-wealth of man, Reason which is the Queene, or the Princes the better powers & graces of the Soule, should stoupe to so base a Slave, as sensuall lust.128
The savants wrote about Calicut as the principal city and marketplace of India. Henceforth, this coastal entrepôt was built anew on the pulpits of England: Calicut became the Oriental sister city of the papal metropolis, from where the Devil’s religion spread in concentric circles of sacerdotal corruption. The pope—usurping the position of Christ in Rome—found his equivalent in Calicut, where the deumo occupied the throne. In the Protestant’s war for souls, Varthema’s already coloured passages were thus not simply a matter of ethnography—they became the heavy artillery. As part of a distinctly Protestant formulation, these sources exploited the motif of heathen priests and practices to explore internal Christian divisions. As shown in the following Chapter, Calicut—its statues and its imaginary priesthood—remained a popular trope in the English controversies.
Ibid., 31-33. Thomas Adams, The Sacrif ice of Thankefulnesse. A Sermon preached at Pauls Crosse, the third of December, being the f irst Adventuall Sunday, anno 1615 etc. (London, 1616), 6. Other aspects of the Calicut-motif were used to heap scorn on the French. In his guide for travellers, Sir Thomas Palmer compared the “luxuriousnesse and superfluitie of uncivilitie, in fashions and apparel,” of his overseas neighbours with the bedroom practices of the king of Calicut. See An Essay of the Meanes how to make our Travailes, into forraine Countries, the more prof itable and honourable (London, 1606), 66. 127 128
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3.5. Conclusion The first few decades of the sixteenth century constitute a transition period in the ethnographic discourse on India. This is the time at which Boemus’ Omnium gentium mores (Customs of all nations; 1520) achieved popularity and many of the medieval books discussed above received a wider audience by means of the printing press. As we have seen, Boemus continued to register the facts as if the Portuguese had never been to India, and also reproduced the utopian discourse of the proto-Christian Brahmins.129 While writing in the first few decades of the sixteenth-century, Boemus stood at the watershed between two ethnographic imageries of the Brahmins, which have dominated the European imagination vis-à-vis India ever since. When Varthema’s report penetrated into the anticlerical universe of the Protestant Reformers, the Brahmins were once more absorbed in the Christian controversies. This second mode of representation has to be understood as a Protestant footnote to the apologetic works of the Fathers of the Church: like the Greco-Roman practices had been assimilated as corrupted instances of a monotheistic core, the Brahmins became part of a polemical vocabulary directed against the dominant strand of Christianity.130 The image of the proto-Christian Brahmins reflects the preoccupations of primitive Christianity, propelled throughout the European Middle Ages as an edifying motif in a social and religious context defined by anticlericalism. The image of the crafty Brahmins in addition echoes the preoccupations of early-modern Christianity, also defined by the European context of anticlericalism. Both imageries were continuously reconstructed in the theological discourses of late seventeenth-century England. On the one hand, for as long as the confessional conflict between the Catholics and Protestants continued, the same line of argument was to be repeated, with the method of comparaFor a possible explanation of Boemus’ dismissive attitude towards contemporary sources, see Klaus A. Vogel, “Cultural Variety in a Renaissance Perspective: Johannes Boemus on “The manners, Laws and Customs of all People” (1520),” in Shifting Cultures: Interaction and Discourse in the Expansion of Europe, ed. H. Bugge and J. P. Rubiés (Münster, 1995), 3-34, 130 The interchangeability between both modes of paganism was expressed in many ways, such that the Indian devas even found home in the popular manuals on Greco-Roman iconography. In 1615 the Italian antiquarian, Lorenzo Pignoria, added a discorso on the Indies to Vincenzo Cartari’s engravings of the Greco-Roman pantheon (1556). The compulsion to make the New conform to the Old is indicated by an illustration of Ganesha, portrayed here as a classical Greek figure, but with three legs, three arms, carrying three elephant heads, yet in clear contrapposto style. See Vincenzo Cartari, Le Vere e Nove Imagini de gli Dei delli Antichi etc. (Padoua, 1615), xxviii. 129
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tive religion used to discredit theological opponents and perpetuate a deep theological vision of the Indian reality. On the other hand, those who sought to defend confessional interests and demonstrate the universality of what was considered to be true religion—at any given point of time—carried on with the pre-Renaissance formulation.
Chapter Four
The Brahmin in England: A long theological Career Natural Religion was easy first and plain, Tales made it Mystery, Offrings made it Gain; Sacrifices and Shows were at length prepar’d, The Priests ate Roast-meat, and the People star’d. —John Toland1
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hereas the previous Chapters threw light on the theological contexts that defined two distinct interpretations of the Brahmin figure, this Chapter will demonstrate that both ethnographic images were propelled through the cultural history of Europe by internal Christian disputes. In so doing, it illuminates the ongoing theological struggles in Restoration Britain and the early Enlightenment, and demonstrates that the combative theologians continued to vacillate between both modes of representation. The conception of the history of religion that lies behind both Brahmin images continued to find concrete manifestation in the theological debates through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On the one hand, the English Protestants who lay stress on the universal nature of Christianity reproduced the imagery of the proto-Christian Brahmin as an illustration of their case. From the apologists of the primitive Church, through the spiritualist reformers of the Reformation, to the Enlightenment theologies of natural religion, all agreed that knowledge of the Creator could be found (and had indeed been found) outside the realm of Christian Revelation. Though they disagreed as to what constituted the source of true religion (the Spirit for the spiritualists; Nature for the deists), they projected their theologies beyond the geographical boundaries of corpus christianum on earth and thus, continued to domesticate other cultures for local consumption. In other words, the Brahmin never lost his central place in the Christian drift toward universalization. On the other hand, the Protestant denominations that reconstructed the image of the proto-Christian Brahmin also shared in a common critique against the Catholic doctrine and clerical institutions and thus, continued to reproduce the second representation of the Brahmins—not as a nation that 1
John Toland, Letters to Serena (London, 1704), 129-30.
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strived for the sacerdotal ideal, but as a community of crafty priests that had given up on their ideals. In addition, the second mode of representation could be called upon to discredit theological opponents within the realm of Protestant thought: the orthodox theologians tempered the universalistic proclivities of the Protestant parties that recapitulated the imagery of the saintly heathens. The mainstream thinkers emphasized the necessity of supernatural Revelation (the Message of God as particularly revealed in Christ) for the purpose of salvation, the absence of which was said to lead to false religion or heathen idolatry. As shown below, the method of comparative religion—or the associated image of the deumo and its priesthood—came to play a role in these internal Protestant disputes. The long theological career of both Brahmin images can be documented from a variety of popular, scholarly and theological sources. Our focus on late seventeenth-century England is particularly relevant for a genealogy of colonial discourse. By this point, England was well on its way to becoming the most important European power in South Asia. The reproduction of both Brahmin images in its theological discourses is important: as shown in Chapters 5 and 6, both theological images constitute the outer limits of the representational structure that came to be known as ‘Hinduism.’ Because this essay takes the first step in reconstructing the historical and cultural processes through which ‘the Indian religion of the priest’ (subsequently known as ‘Hinduism’) became a theoretical entity in the European discourses, it is necessary to continue tracing the chronicle of both images that constitute its outer limits. Our purpose here is to establish that whatever Europe—at any given point of time—wrote about the Indian traditions took shape from within a consistent theological system, in which the Indian reality was reduced to the religious disputes that mark the cultural history of Europe. The internal logic of this system ensured that both imageries could be perpetually reconstituted in divergent theological settings.
4.1. Universality and Particularity in Christianity Many have noted the peculiar interplay between universality and particularity in the history and theology of Christianity. On the one hand, the religion of Christ is said to be the religion for all of humanity. Its aim is to be the universal religion. In this sense, the theological specificities of the Gospel pose clear obstacles to the diffusion of Christianity. On the other hand, the uniqueness of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ and of Christ’s role as the Sav-
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iour lies at the heart of Christianity. Without these theological specificities, Christianity begins to lose its identity and dissolves as a distinct religion. S. N. Balagangadhara (1994) conceptualizes this tension between the universal nature of Christianity and the particularity of its message in terms of the Christological dilemma: [I]t appears to me that this Christological dilemma sums up the problem of Christianity: with the emphasis on the uniqueness of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ, Christianity can never become truly ‘Catholic’ (in the sense of ‘universal’), but must remain content with being one conglomeration of sects among others. This, of course, means giving up its universalistic pretensions to being the ‘true religion’ even if, paradoxically enough, it cannot but claim universality precisely on the grounds of its exclusivity. Alternatively, it does not put that emphasis, in which case it could become universal; the cost, however, is that it will cease being specifically Christian.2
The Christological dilemma could be called one of the theological ‘motors’ that propel historical developments within the Christian religion as a whole. Throughout its history, Christianity has been embroiled in two interrelated tendencies: on the one hand, it seeks to disseminate itself amongst different cultures and ethnic groups by relinquishing some of its theological particularities; on the other, it retains the particularity of its message concerning the will of God by putting emphasis on the necessity of certain theological principles about Christ the Saviour. These two movements interact with another aspect of Christianity: the notion of divine Providence. The Christians claim that the world—everything that was, is and shall be—embodies the will of the Creator, the biblical God. Since God is perfect, the world produced by His will also must be perfect: it must be the best of all possible worlds. In this sense, as De Roover and Balagangadhara (2009) argue, the factual and the normative—the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’—are united in the will of God.3 The very nature of this unity is impossible for humankind to comprehend, for in our limited understanding, the factual and the normative always fall apart. In consequence, humanity can never fully understand either the Sovereign or His will, because it cannot fathom the unity between ‘is’ and ‘ought.’ At the same time, however, Christianity continues to profess that God’s will operates in human history and S. N. Balagangadhara, “The Heathen in his Blindness...”: Asia, the West, and the Dynamic of Religion (Leiden, New York, 1994), 185. 3 Jakob De Roover and S. N. Balagangadhara, “Liberty, Tyranny and the Will of God: The Principle of Toleration in Early Modern Europe and Colonial India,” History of Political Thought 30, no. 1 (2009): 111-139. 2
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that, if one wants to understand historical events, one has to decipher what He intends for human beings. From the early Middle Ages, certain institutions—first the monasteries, later the Church and, much later, the several confessional churches—were seen as the embodiment of God’s will. This implied that they had to embody the unity of the factual and the normative. However, human beings inevitably failed to express this unity. They noted the disjunction between the ‘ought’ and the ‘is’ in the monasteries and the Church: corruption and injustice prevailed; monastic codes and canon laws were violated over and again. From the human viewpoint, the factual and the normative always fell apart: the institutions were a testament of sin. The normative took the form of ideals they had to live up to. This led to new attempts to realise the unity of fact and norm: first the monastery and later the Church were perpetually reformed according to ever stricter rules and laws. The history of western Christendom exemplifies this dynamic. Embodying the will of God, certain institutions were supposed to unite the factual and the normative. Yet, human attempts to realise this unity could not but fail to do so. These failures generated novel attempts, which failed yet again, and so on. In Christian Europe, the belief that God’s will unfolds in human history generated a specific attitude towards society and its development. The existing institutions were never what they ought to be. This informed the widespread tendency in western societies to reform the Church or society according to a normative image, as specified by the divine purpose. In their study of toleration in early-modern Europe, De Roover and Balagangadhara show that historical attempts to have human institutions embody the will of God interacted with the tension between particularity and universality that exists at the very heart of Christianity. During the Reformation, two models concerning the manner in which the community of believers ought to embody the will of God crystallised. The first manifested itself in the dynamic of ‘confessionalisation,’ discussed by historians of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation; the second expressed itself in a widespread ‘anti-confessional’ and anticlerical attitude, present in all the Christian churches and movements of early-modern Europe. In the first dynamic, each confessional church pursued a kind of purity and doctrinal particularity that opposed it to other denominations. Here, a particular denomination identified the will of God with a confessional system of doctrines imposed by a clerical institution. The many denominations that divided Europe were preoccupied with demarcating their doctri-
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nal boundaries. In the second, anti-confessional movements argued that the main message of Christianity was that of spiritual unity and Christian liberty. They equated God’s will with a condition where the believer was free from all clerical authority. The tentacles of sacerdotal tyranny, its hierarchical laws and additions to the revelation were to be spotted everywhere. The interplay both dynamics took various forms in different parts of Europe, accordingly as local conditions gave shape to Christian institutions and movements. In the English Reformation, this interplay between universality and particularity acquired a peculiar form. Originally, the Anglicans accused the Roman-Catholic papacy of imposing spiritual tyranny and idolatry upon the English nation. According to some theologians and pamphleteers, the ‘papists’ were guilty of misleading the king and tried to usurp his power over the secular realm. They accused the priesthood of dividing the community of believers into several estates. In short order, other denominations emerged that called for a true spiritual Reformation and accused the Anglican Church of being but another manifestation of ‘popery.’ The latter continued to neglect the spiritual liberty of the believer—the universality of the principle of toleration—and had cast Christianity again into suffocating temporal-political structures. Some Puritans thus began to build their own ecclesiastic structures. Once the Presbyterian Churches were established, other dissenters, such as the Baptists, the Quakers and the radical Puritans, began to challenge the Puritan churches on the grounds that they still failed to embody the will of God: spiritual unity and Christian liberty. The same charges were thus repeated: the Church imprisoned the universal message of Christ within the constraints of temporal-political institutions; it separated the community of believers into factions and churches; it established tyranny over the minds and souls of men.4 De Roover and Balagangadhara, “Liberty, Tyranny and the Will of God,” 131-2: “On the one hand, the confessional party identified the divine purpose with a particular confessional system of doctrine and discipline imposed and protected by a clerical authority. The result divided Europe into distinct confessions, each of which was obsessed with fixing doctrinal boundaries and concerned about the violation of its church laws. The Protestant confessions allowed Christian liberty, but only if it remained within the confines of church law and doctrine. The anti-confessional opposition, on the other hand, equated God’s will with the universality of toleration and liberty of conscience. This entailed an attack on the clerical structures: they became instances of the worldly disruption, division and destruction of true spiritual faith undertaken by the priesthood and its doctrinal fabrications ... Everywhere, they espied the religious tyranny of an evil priesthood, its hierarchical laws and human additions to divine revelation. Consequently, they never ceased in their attempts to achieve the normative goal of liberty.” Also see Jakob De Roover, “A Kingdom of another World: Christianity, Toleration and the History of Western Political Thought” (Doctoral thesis, Ghent University, 2005).
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The present Chapter demonstrates that this interplay of universalizing and particularizing tendencies within the English Reformation provides the context in which both Brahmin images were recapitulated. On the one hand, the Brahmin protagonist was once more glorified as the proto-Christian ascetic, who demonstrated that the universal spirit and message of Christ had been known well beyond the boundaries of Christendom. Here, the Brahmin figure continued to perform the pedagogic role of the spiritual ascetic. On the other hand, the Brahmin was also denounced as the crafty cleric, who misled the believers and imposed a spiritual tyranny, like his Roman-Catholic, Anglican or Presbyterian counterpart. Here, the Brahmin exemplified the route that the Christian should not follow: the path towards false religion. The theological dilemmas in Protestant Christianity thus continued to determine the reproduction of the canonical imageries associated with ‘the Indian religion’ in Great Britain. Proto-Christian Brahmins and the Universality of Christianity Throughout the cultural history of Europe, various confessions reproduced the image of the Brahmin divine to show that fundamentally Christian principles transcended the particularity of revelation in Jesus Christ. In 1569, for example, the Protestant thinker Joachim Camerarius prepared another Latin translation of the Palladius, entitled Libellus gnomologicus (Collection of Sayings), reproducing several supporting passages about the virtues of the Brahmins. While they were simultaneously reconstructed as crafty and idolatrous priests in the anti-Catholic polemics, this was also the time when Boemus’ Omnium gentium mores (1520) and the utopian imagery of the protoChristian Brahmins enjoyed tremendous popularity in all parts of Europe. Little is known about Camerarius’ manuscript, yet the German translator was fascinated by classical testimonies to perennial truths and celebrated the Brahmins as followers of the ascetic life.5 Camerarius’ concerns are closely related to those of later Protestant denominations.6 In about 1630-46 the Orientalist John Gregory prepared another Latin translation of the Palladius. As a fellow of Christ Church, Gregory ranks as Donald Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. 2 (Chicago, 1994), 95; and J. Duncan M. Derrett, “The History of Palladius on ‘the Races of India and the Brachmans’,” Classica et Mediaevalia Revue Danoise de Philologie et d’Histoire, no. 21 (1960): 64-99. 6 His reputation as a scholar and man of religion gained him an entry in a collection of biographies by the French Calvinist Théodore de Bèze: Les vrais Pourtraits des Hommes illustres en Piete et Doctrine, trans. S. Goulart (Geneva, 1581; Latin edition 1580), 42-43. 5
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one of the finest Hebraists of his day. His translations passed after his death to Edward Byssche who released them under his own name (1655) and prefaced them with ancient evidences on the virtues of the Brahmins.7 As was the case with Camerarius’ translation of the Palladius (1569), this work was issued with a clear theological intention: Byssche’s objective was to present the wisdom of the Brahmins as being consistent with Puritan thought. Again, the Brahmin was transformed into a mirror image of what was considered to be the true Christian self. The idea that aspects of true religion—or what was considered to be true religion at any given point of time—were known outside the geographical realm of Christendom carried the first Brahmin motif across the history of European thought. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the Quakers (also known as the Society of Friends) revitalized this process. Quaker theology is known for the central position given to Christ as the Inner Light that shines in the heart of humankind. They attributed universal knowledge of the Creator to spiritual contemplation, or the Inward Light of God shining forth from the lineage of Adam and Eve into the hearts of all human beings—a notion that brings us right back to the theology of the spiritualist reformers in the 1500s, through the piety of medieval lay movements, to the apologists of the primitive Church. Like the previous attempts to transcend the particularity of scriptural Revelation (the Gospel), the Quakers saw virtue in the method of comparative religion.8 The Brahmin in the Pamphlet Wars From the early 1650s, the Society of Friends contributed voluminously to the accumulation of controversial writings. They made a case for their theology in broadsheets and pamphlets, rejected what they conceived to be the corruption of the establishment—which failed to live up to the will of God—and rebutted the charges of their opponents, thus contributing to the pamphlet
Edward Byssche, Palladius De Gentibus Indiæ et Bragmanibus etc., trans. J. Gregory (London, 1665). Coleman-Norton, “The Authorship of the Epistola de Indicis Gentibus et de Bragmanibus,” Classical Philology 21, no. 2 (1926): 154-160, shows that Bysshe was the first to establish that the Palladius was produced by bishop Palladius. Also see J. Duncan Derrett, “The Theban Scholasticus and Malabar in c. 355-60,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 82, no. 1 (1962): 21, ff. 4. 8 Henry Cadbury, “Early Quakerism and Uncanonical Lore,” The Harvard Theological Review 40, no. 3 (1947): 177-205. 7
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wars.9 More significant to our purpose, the Quakers reintroduced Dindimus in the theological pamphleteering in which they soon were embroiled. They took recourse to the vernacular to make their case and distributed the imagery of the proto-Christian Brahmin in the popular religious discourses of Restoration Britain. In 1683 the Quaker bookseller at London, Andrew Sowle, issued an English translation of the Palladius.10 The Alexander-Dindimus encounter is reproduced in this anonymous tract, testifying to the Brahmin’s divinity. The translator has the ascetic bring the exchange to a close with a Hymn to God. Compared to the single sentence in St. Ambrose’s original edition, Dindimus has become far more verbose.11 It must be remembered that what we are dealing with here are but commentaries on the history of religion developed in the earliest ages of Christian thought. It is not surprising, then, that the patristic Fathers continue to feature in these debates. From several Church Fathers the reader learns that the Brahmins believe in the life hereafter and in judgement after death. The English translator adds that they are “very Religious,” are not given to sacrifices, and believe that God “delighteth in Man in his own Image.”12 He directs his readers to a work by Thomas Tryon, issued at London that same year under the title of A Dialogue Between An East-Indian Brackmanny or Heathen-Philosopher, and a French Gentleman (1683). This booklet was similarly cast in the monastic and ascetic, if not Quaker idiom that characterizes the translations of the Palladius.13 Not surprisingly, it was released by Andrew Sowle, the chief Quaker publisher at London. Tryon was deeply influenced by the mystical writings of the German Protestant, Jakob Böhme, and advocated vegetarianism as the truly Christian way of life. While he did not admit allegiance to a specific denomination, he did form links with Quaker thought.
For the Society of Friends, see Rosemary A. Moore, The Light in their Consciences: The Early Quakers in Britain 1646-1666 (University Park, PA, 2000). 10 The date of publication is neither given on the title page, nor in the colophon, but in a MS. note in the British Library copy. It seems to be accepted in the relevant literature. On Sowle’s religious affiliations, see the entry by McDowell in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (hereafter DNB). 11 Anonymous, The upright Lives of the Heathen Briefly Noted (London, 1683?), 8. 12 Ibid., 9. 13 Thomas Tryon, A Dialogue Between An East-Indian Brackmanny or Heathen-Philosopher, and a French Gentleman (London, 1683), 3-4, and 7-8, 13-17. For Tryon, see the entry by Smith in DNB. 9
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These works have been reproduced in a recent collection of pamphlets.14 But little or no information can be found about the following three booklets. The first one was produced by T. Raicroft, entitled A Discourse betwixt Alexander the Great, and Dindimus (1668). Its preface bears witness to the fact that the same imageries were being reconstructed on the European Continent, for the English work was derived from a German text issued in 1642, which was itself another edition of an older German work.15 The translation illustrates just how well the Brahmins continued to serve the cause of true religion. The English translator called attention to Dindimus’ discourse or the “excellent and Christian Evangelical lessons given by the said Dindimns [sic] to Alexander.” He furnished his work with leading passages from St. Ambrose’s De Moribus Brachmanorum and concluded with a Brahmin prayer to the biblical God.16 On the other side of the Atlantic, the Settlers could also read about Brahmin virtues. In about 1740, two pamphlets that previously had been issued at London (1682-83) were republished at Philadelphia under the title of The Upright Lives of the Heathen briefly Noted. While the first contains the wisdom of “Dindimus King of the Brachmans,” the second reveals the insights of Ockanickon, a king from the West Indies. The editor prefaced both pamphlets with a moral lesson: “Though under the name of Heathens, I could wish some of our professed Christians would take pattern by their good Example.”17 A similar short work was issued at Philadelphia in 1752 under the title Religion of the ancient Brachmans. It starts with the episodes from the medieval Collatio correspondence and moves on to St. Ambrose’s translation of the Palladius. The editor continued with accounts of the Brahmins taken from the patristic Fathers.18 He concluded as follows: “Thus the Gentiles, who know not the Law, do by Nature the Things, contained in the Law, which shew the Work of
Thomas Hahn, ed., Upright Lives: Documents Concerning the Natural Virtue and Wisdom of the Indians (1650-1740) (Los Angeles, 1981). 15 The German booklet was entitled Historie van dem grossen Konig Alexander, etc. yetzo auss new aus der alten Teutschen Sprache in Druck Gebracht (s.l., 1642; History of the great king Alexander, etc. Newly printed from the Old German). I have not been able to locate any extant copies or references to either of both German editions. 16 T. Raicroft, A discourse betwixt Alexander The Great, And Dindimus King of the Brachmans, etc. (London, 1688), no pagination. 17 Charles Woolverton, ed., The upright Lives of the Heathen briefly noted (Philadelphia, 1740), iii-iv. 18 Anonymous, Religion of the ancient Brachmans; manifested, in epistles and discourses between Alexander the Great, and Dindimus King of the Brachmans etc. (Philadelphia, 1752), 11-14. 14
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the Law written in the Heart.”19 The postscript informs the reader that this essay on education is recommended to the Quakers. The Brahmin in Quaker Scholarship
The tension between universality and particularity could return in any Protestant denomination. One of the striking instances of this dynamic is to be found in the Keithian schism, which divided the Quakers in North America. In this conflict, the confessional and anti-confessional forces alternated. George Keith (ca. 1638-1716) was a Quaker, deeply troubled by the doctrinal laxity of the colonies. The refusal to publicly confess the Christian doctrine was common, and Keith understood this as a peril both to the salvation of the individual believer and the entire community of believers. Originally, he endeavoured to have rigid statements of belief adopted by the Meetings of the Quakers of the colony of Pennsylvania. His plans included a catechism and the inclusion of the elders into a formalized institutional structure.20 The main body of Quakers, however, resisted his programme, soon to be condemned by the Public Friends, one of the Quaker institutions. Keith subsequently shifted into the anticlerical mode and accused the Public Friends of popery. They acted as tyrannical priests, mixing magistracy and ministry in their prosecution. As Andrew Murphy (2001) notes in his stimulating analysis of the rift amongst the Pennsylvania Quakers, “many of Keith’s complaints rehearsed standard anti-Catholic and anticlerical views about priestly imposition, excessive hierarchy, and the stifling of individual conscience.”21 The Keithians would repeat time and again that the opprobrium of the Pennsylvania Friends was foul popery. Much like the Roman papacy, they argued, the Public Friends violated the universal principles of Christian liberty.22 The Friends, however, were not easily convinced and took Keith to court. At their civil trial, Keith and his allies defended themselves by pointing out that their actions were of a religious nature and fell under the realm of conscience. As had been the case in similar conflicts, the opponents turned the tables and replied that the Keithians were in fact the ones who abused Christian liberty by committing their crimes under the pretence of conscience and religion. Ibid., 24. Andrew Murphy, Conscience and Community: Revisiting Toleration and Religious Dissent in Early Modern England and America (University Park, PA, 2001), 187-205. 21 Ibid., 197. 22 Ibid., 198. 19 20
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The Keithian schism suggests that the tension between the confessional and anti-confessional moments of the Reformation dynamic recurred in each of the manifold Protestant denominations. The potential of both forces was always at hand. In consequence, even the most ‘tolerant,’ ‘liberal’ movement of Protestant Christianity could shift to a hard-line anticlerical stance and accuse its foes of popish tyranny. The fight for spiritual liberty in the seventeenth century was at once a battle against clerical religion. It is within the framework of these religious conflicts that the Brahmin was called upon as a witness for each of the parties. The leading apologists of the Society of Friends took recourse to the Brahmin protagonist to advocate the workings of the Inner Light in all human beings, thus denying the necessity of particular Revelation for the existence of true religion. George Keith gives the Brahmin a central role in The Universall free Grace of the Gospel Asserted (1671). In order to absorb ever more members into the Christian fold, Keith undressed Christianity from its particularities, only to be left with a moral code—and this code was true religion: “that supernatural light, which God gave Adam before the fall,” or the “Breath of life breathed into man.”23 Keith had access to Byssche’s 1668 edition of the Palladius and also quotes S. Ambrosius de moribus Brachmanorum to highlight “the excellent and Christian Evangellical lessons” taught by the Brahmins.24 He also recapitulated the famous correspondence between Alexander and Dindimus in the Christian idiom (previously outlined in Chapter 2), which led him to conclude with a rejection of the Calvinist notion of exclusive selection.25 Keith cited many more examples of good morals, some still present amongst the contemporary Indians, in order to show that the heathen nations understood the will of the Christian God, even if they were “not befriended with the glorious testimonies of the Scriptures.”26 What again seems to be a tolerant attitude towards other traditions is only tolerant in so far as the Brahmin was transformed into a mirror image of what was considered to be—at any given point of time— the true Christian self. The same ethnographic images were continuously reconstructed and also continued to edify the reader in the eighteenth century. In 1712 John Bockett wrote Gentile Divinity and Morality Demonstrated, which was issued together George Keith, The Universall Free Grace of the Gospell Asserted (London, 1671), 95-96. For the presence of this Light amongst the gentiles, also see his 1671: 114-16. 24 Ibid., 125. 25 Ibid., 128. 26 Ibid., 131.
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with an apology by the Quaker minister Richard Claridge. Bockett’s apologetic work is essentially a list of precepts and sayings by the ancient philosophers, composed with a clear educative purpose. The author wrote in his preface that the reader would find these precepts “generally concurrent with Scripture, and Consonant to Christianity, both as to the Divine and Moral Duties thereof; and some Professed Christians, ‘tis to be doubted, fall short of many of these Gentiles, both in Piety and Vertue.”27 He continued that the Europeans had the advantage of Christian education and “the Help of the Holy Scriptures, which are Superior to all other Books…”28 In a language that leaned towards the idioms of contemporary Quakers, Bockett added that “the Lord’s Love was so universally extended towards them [the heathens], that he did manifest so much of his Light, Grace and Spirit in them, that (giving heed, and submitting thereunto) was sufficient to Guide and Direct them to eschew Evil, and embrace Vertue in this Life.”29 Although one could find salvation only in Christ, those who did not receive the “Literal Knowledge of the Name of Christ” were nevertheless aware of the virtue that emanated from Him. While most of his chapters are made up of examples from GrecoRoman antiquity, the end of Gentile Divinity and Morality Demonstrated contains an alphabetical list of heathen philosophers. Between Demosthenes and Diogenes, we also find Dindimus, the king of the Brahmins: Dindimus, a King, or one as chief among the Brachmans, which were a sort of Indian Philosophers, or Wise Men, who liv’d retiredly, chiefly upon Herbs, Roots, Fruits, &c.) whom Alexander the Conqueror hearing of, sent for him with Threats to come to him; but Dindimus refused, not regarding his Threats. Alexander comes to him, and after some Conference, Alexander said, O Dindimus! thou true Teacher of the Brachmans, thou comest of God; I have found thee the most excellent among Men; I know all that thou hast spoken is true: God hath brought thee forth, and sent thee into this Place, in which thou art Happy and Rich, wanting nothing, enjoying much Rest and Peace, &c. He lived about 350 Years before Christ.30
Bockett located his work in the educative tradition that traces to the medieval exemplar. Another edition of this work appeared at London in 1767. In 1767 also appeared at London an apologetic work that answered the objections levelled against the Society of Friends. The author was the Quaker writer John Bockett, Gentile divinity and morality demonstrated, in a brief collection of sayings, precepts, counsels, sentences and exhortations of several eminent gentile philosophers etc. (London, 1712), preface. 28 Idem. 29 Idem. 30 Ibid., 174-75 (emphasis in the original). 27
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Joseph Phipps. His work, produced between 1754 and 1782, consists mainly of apologetic treatises in defence of the Quakers and replies to the assaults of Samuel Newton of Norwich.31 In one of his apologetics (1767) Phipps not only rejected Newton’s objections but also intended to show the workings of the Holy Ghost on the basis of numerous examples from history. It was Phipps’ firm belief that mankind in general could benefit from the workings of the Holy Spirit: “Mankind in general might be enabled to understand the most necessary part of Scripture Instruction, it hath pleased the Holy Ghost, through the inspired Writers to deliver its Instructions, &c. in the common Style and Language of Mankind.”32 In other words, the Holy Ghost had been the teacher of humankind, or “the Grace of God which bringeth Salvation in it, and offers it to all Men.”33 As with Keith (1671) before him, Phipps understood the content of true religion mainly as a moral code, undressed from Christian particularities. Where his interlocutor remarked that there had never been a barbarous Turk, Hottentot or pagan who actually received this universal Revelation, Phipps took recourse to the repertoire of comparative religion, from the stories about the ancient Greeks and Romans, to Dindimus the king of the Brahmins. He thus recast passages in a Quaker idiom: Dindimus, King of the Brachmans, when Alexander, called the Great, made him a Visit, advising him to cease warring against Men without, and engage his Enemies within himself, his Lusts, and inordinate Desires, if he would be a true Conqueror, “If thou wilt hearken to my Words,” said he, “thou shalt profess of my Good, who have God to my Friend, and whose inspiration I enjoy within me. Thus thou shalt overcome Lust, the Mother of Penury; which never obtains what it seeks. Thus thou shalt, with us, do thyself Honour, by becoming such as God had created thee.34
Phipps continued the exemplum tradition, and wondered how those who professed themselves to be Christians could boast about their superiority, yet fell short of these virtuous and intelligent heathens, the Brahmins. It is within the framework of the confessional disputes that mark the history of Protestant thought that the imagery of the saintly Brahmin, who lived a spiritual life without access to direct Revelation, or the particular Revelation of God in Christ, always could be evoked. For Phipps, see the entry by C. Fell-Smith in DNB. Joseph Phipps, Observations on a late anonymous publication, intituled, a letter to the author of a letter to Dr. Formey, &c. In vindication of Robert Barclay, and the principles of the people called Quakers (London, 1767), 22 (emphasis in the original). 33 Ibid., 48-49. 34 Ibid., 54 (emphasis in the original). 31 32
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4.2. The Brahmin in the Religion of the Enlightenment The Quaker works suggest that the notion of revealed religion came under serious scrutiny in seventeenth-century England. Among the foremost advocates of its demise were the deists. Though they defy an easy definition, the deists generally argued that the principles of true religion could be discovered through natural reason.35 The emphasis put on the universality of Christianity—or on religion tout court—would be taken further than ever before. The theological particularity of the message of the Gospel was relinquished in favour of the suggestion that a natural religion existed which was shared by all human beings and nations. In this sense, the idea of a specific revelation by God was renounced. This concept of natural religion became central to the forms of ‘ecumenical’ Christianity and deism that emerged in the seventeenth century. The advocates of these movements maintained that all nations shared a kind of minimal religion that resembled biblical theism, but without the specifics about the Lord God, His Revelation and His covenants with the Jews and the Christians. Natural Religion in early-modern England The vision that religion—in the singular—existed in all nations emerged amongst the Church Fathers as the notion of the original religion granted by God to His rational creature. This was sometimes conceived of as a property innate to human nature. In his Contra Celsum, Origen wrote that “God has implanted in the souls of all men the truths which He taught through the prophets and the Saviour.”36 During the Reformation, this inborn sense of divinity acquired a central role in the Christian scheme of things, when it was argued that the intrinsic desire to worship the true God had been corrupted by priests. The notion of natural religion emerged against this background, which, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ‘naturalized’ the Patristic notion of the original religion and the Protestant theology about its satanic degeneration. As several scholars studying this period observed, these explanations of religion reproduced the basic framework of the Christian historiography of religion but ‘disenchanted’ it by disregarding or denying For the difficulties in defining deism as a distinct movement, see S. J. Barnett, The Enlightenment and Religion etc. (Manchester, 2003), chaps. 1-2. 36 Origen, Contra Celsum, Translated with an Introduction & Notes by Henry Chadwick, trans. H. Chadwick (Cambridge, 1953), I: 4, 9. 35
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the agency of the Devil, demons and divine revelation. Instead, the deist theologies emphasized human agency. The idea of ‘natural religion’ had several meanings in the seventeenth century, but its most stable reference was to the religion that could be discovered through the use of reason and observation of the order of the universe.37 In Restoration Britain, the Cambridge Platonists (1630s-80s) stressed once more the belief that the basic principles of true religion (Christianity) were innate to humanity. In the years immediately following the restoration of Charles II, this circle of clergymen, mainly associated with the Cambridge colleges, contributed to a policy of toleration in the Church of England. There is no clear boundary between them and the movement known as latitudinarianism, which emphasized tolerance or freedom of thought on issues of religion.38 For our purposes, what is important is their emphasis on prisca theologia, the original religion, distributed via Moses to the Egyptians, and thence to Plato and the Greeks. In 1675 Richard Burthogge, a philosopher associated with the latitudinarian movement, was in agreement with the Cambridge Platonists, when he referred to Clement of Alexandria to explain the “Ray or Beam of Jesus Christ, the Original Light, [the light that enlightneth every one that comes into the World] afforded to the Gentiles to conduct and guide them to God.” 39 Several gentile nations had came into contact with this truth through the Original Light, but also by communication via tradition. Through Abraham and the tribes of Israel, the insights of true religion had been introduced to Egypt. And thus they went to India: It is that the Brachmans and Gymnosophists, men of so fair a Reputation thoroughout the whole Universe for Knowledge and Philosophy, were the Off-spring of the Voyage to Ophir, and that the Jews that fetched Gold from India (for Ophir is in India, beyond Ganges, where Chryse was of old, and now the Kingdom of Pegu) left behind them in that Golden Countrey, Doctrines much more precious than the Metals they went for. Those were the Institutions for which so many ages after, these Philosophers of India were so Venerable; whose very way and Peter Byrne, Natural Religion and the nature of Religion: The Legacy of Deism (London, 1989); Peter Harrisson, ‘Religion’ and the Religions in the English Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1990); and David A. Pailin, Attitudes to other Religions: Comparative Religion in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-century Britain (Manchester, 1984). 38 Tod E. Jones, ed., The Cambridge platonists: A brief Introduction with eight letters of Dr. Anthony Tuckney and Dr. Benjamin Whichcote, trans. S. E. Phang (Lanham, 2005), 3. 39 Richard Burthogge, Causa Dei, or, An apology for God. Wherein The Perpetuity of Infernal Torments is Evidenced, and Divine both Goodness and Justice (that notwithstanding) Defended etc. (London, 1675), 192. 37
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method of Philosophizing, which as Laertius notes, was Ænigmatical and Sententious [... Worship God: Do no Evil: Exercise Fortitude:] was as conformable to that of Moses, as was the Matter of their Philosophy. Such was the Rise and Origin of the Brachmans and Gymnosophists.40
However, once John Locke and others began to dispute the existence of innate principles, the concept of original religion was in need of modification. Natural religion could no longer be assumed to be innate, but had to be discovered by the use of reason. In spite of its corruption by human sin, human reason was granted the ability to discern the basic principles of the will of God. God had revealed His will in ‘the Book of Nature’ and in ‘the Book of Revelation,’ and the study of the first gave rise to natural religion, as opposed to revealed religion. In 1675, bishop Wilkins of Chester baptized “Natural Religion” as that “which men might know, and should be obliged unto, by the meer principles of Reason, improved by Consideration and Experience, without the help of Revelation.” This knowledge consisted of three things. First, the acknowledgement of and belief in the divine Existence. Second, an understanding of His perfections. Third, suitable affections and demeanour towards Him.41 Different types of Protestants and deists disagreed about the efficacy of natural religion to the attainment of salvation. Some argued that natural religion was equal to the Christian religion. One of the most influential proponents of deism, Matthew Tindal (1657-1733), reformulated this theme as Christianity as Old as the Creation; or, the Gospel a Republication of the Religion of Nature (1730). For Tindal, the revealed religion as manifested in Scripture was a reproduction of the universal religion of nature or reason. Others emphasized that the direct and particular revelation of God was indispensable, because both the heathens and the Jews had corrupted the laws of nature. Whether Protestant or deist, however, it was common knowledge that the clergy was responsible for the degeneration of religion and thus, for “the Multiplication of Divinities, or Objects of Adoration and Worship.”42 In a period sceptical of miracles and supernatural interventions, the vision that the Devil lured humanity away from the true religion was being reformulated into a historiography of religion that attributed religious decline to priests
Ibid., 374-75 (emphasis in the original). John Wilkins, Of the Principles and Duties of Natural Religion (London, 1675), 39-40. 42 Robert Howard, The History of Religion (London, 1694), 5-6. 40 41
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and human agency.43 The Reformation critique of Catholic ‘priestcraft’ was expanded and adapted to explain all forms of ‘false religion.’ The primitive natural religion had been corrupted by the accumulation of human inventions, as a conniving priesthood added doctrines, laws and rites in the pursuit of self-interest. The seventeenth and eighteenth-century historiography of religion in general followed this outline, as it came to development in the works of Herbert of Cherbury, Anthonie van Dale, Bernard Bovier De Fontenelle, John Toland, Matthew Tindal, and many others.44 Even as the essays on natural religion continued to appear throughout the eighteenth century, the basic message would not alter in any tangible way. The framework behind this Protestant and deist historiography of religion was the old Christian philosophy of history, developed by the Greek and Latin Church Fathers. The notion of natural religion allowed this framework to be naturalized and its theorems to be presented as simple facts about human nature. The belief that the original religion of humanity had been a protoChristianity implanted in the soul by the biblical God now took the form of a religion of nature, naturally discovered by human reason. The claim that the Devil had lured humanity away from the original religion turned into a ‘secular’ historiography of religion, which attributed the corruption of religion to the priests, lawgivers and human cheats. These claims about natural religion derive their coherency from a latent Patristic background framework. Without its theological certainties, there is no reason to assume that humanity has any such thing as natural religion. In other words, seventeenthcentury radicals laid the foundations of the modern historiography of religion by combining the Patristic notion of an original religion with the Protestant theology of the clerical corruption of religion. They pushed the Devil and divine providence to the background, yet clothed the theological historiography of religion in the guise of a naturalistic discourse. From now on, one could question the content of natural religion and challenge the assumption that all nations knew of the biblical God, but the outer limits of the Christian historiography of religion had become fact: all human nations had religion; 43 Matthew Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Creation: Or, the Gospel, a Republication of the Religion of Nature (London, 1730), 91-92, 94, 107-08. 44 Also see Charles Blount, Anima mundi, or, An historical narration of the opinions of the ancients concerning man’s soul after this life: according to unenlight’ned nature (London, 1679), 4-6, 119, 121; Charles Blount, Great is Diana of the Ephesians: or, The Original of Idolatry, etc. (London, 1680), 3-4, 11; and Charles Blount, Religio Laici: Written in a Letter to John Dryden Esq. (London, 1683), 26. For Charles Blount, see J. A. Redwood, “Charles Blount (1654-93), Deism, and English Free Thought,” Journal of the History of Ideas 35, no. 3 (1974): 490-498
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which had a common nature everywhere; and there was a universal logic to its historical evolution. The Brahmin and the Religion of Reason Both standardized images of the Brahmin protagonist continued to play a central role in this inter-confessional dispute. A lucid manifestation of the resilience of these ethnographic imageries can be found in Herbert of Cherbury’s De Religione gentilium (The religion of the gentiles; 1663), one of the most important works of comparative religion in the seventeenth century.45 Herbert of Cherbury drew upon the old Christian belief concerning the primitive religion that was embedded in the human soul, in order to identify five articles of faith that he supposed to be common to humanity: the belief in the existence of God; the obligation to worship Him; the identification of worship with virtue; the obligation to avoid and repent sin; that rewards and punishment are administered in the next world.46 This list is, of course, identical to Christian beliefs. Herbert presented a history of religion to demonstrate that all traditions in the world were grounded in these truths; that contemplation of the order in the universe led to knowledge of the Creator.47 Herbert’s famous work points to the fact that Europe continued to incorporate the New into the Old: the Chinese, Indian and Amerindian traditions, alongside the deities of Greco-Roman antiquity, continued to sit on the tribunal for truth. The Brahmins were witnesses to the first and final principles: they were aware of the Creator, and the notion of the immortality of the soul survived in their doctrine about the “Transmigration of Souls into new Bodies.”48 Herbert relied on the leading scholarship in comparative religion available at the time, to demonstrate the existence of this universal religion. Once its content had become clear, the question remained what had happened to it in light of the contemporary variety of doctrines and rites. In Herbert’s 45 For the influence of Herbert upon his contemporaries, see R. W. Serjeantson, “Herbert of Cherbury before Deism: The Early Reception of the De Veritate,” Seventeenth Century 16, no. 2 (2001): 217-238. 46 Edward Herbert of Cherbury, The antient Religion of the Gentiles, and Causes of their Errors Consider’d etc., trans. W. Lewis (London, 1705; Latin edition 1663), 3-4, 356. 47 Ibid., 259-60. Also see 267, and esp. chap. 15. 48 Ibid, 178. Herbert concluded this paragraph with a reference to the Dutch humanist, Daniel Heinsius (1580-1655), and related the Brahmins to the Patriarch Abraham: “There is a place of the Learned Heinsius, in his Annotations on Abraham and Lazarus in the New Testament, where he Learnedly discusses many things on this Subject.” This is a reference to Heinsius’ New Testament commentary, or the Sacrae Exercitationes ad Novum Testamentum (1639).
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schematic, the plurality of traditions was made sense of via the concepts that guided the orthodox Protestant discourse. His study was thus not simply a glorification of pagan religion, but also contained A censure of the religion of the Heathens and the occasion of it (chapter 16). To explain the rise of polytheism, Herbert argued that the priests and philosophers had transformed the stars and planets into gods and attributed intentional behaviour to them. While the study of nature and the human desire to worship the Creator had produced a monotheistic belief in God, the universal priesthood fabricated “theological systems” and corrupted the original and true religion “with the most horrendous rites and ceremonies.”49 Herbert thus put down the foundations of the modern historiography of religion by reformulating the Patristic notion of the original religion into the religion of reason, and combining it with the Protestant account of the clerical corruption of religion. The ethnographic ‘evidences’ which the travellers brought back from the East could now demonstrate that the Indian traditions could be derived from a natural religion common to humankind. In 1681 the natural philosopher Thomas Burnet published his Theory of the Earth (Telluris theoria sacra), a controversial work that engaged with the origin of the world, the natural history of the earth and the impact of the Flood as described in the first ten chapters of Genesis 1. Burnet exemplifies the impact of the scientific method on the interpretations of the Bible. One of his arguments was that Moses had simplified the language and concepts of Genesis to suit the ears of the ignorant. In this context, Burnet also constructed a historiography of religion, tracing the transmission of the divine moral teaching and accounts of the Fall—first known to Noah and his progeny—via Egyptian civilization to the Israelites and the gentile world. It is thus not surprising that his arguments were taken up by deist thinkers like Charles Blount (1693).50 Burnet’s close affinity with natural religion led him to incorporate in the 1694 edition of Telluris theoria sacra an appendix on the Brahmins and their
Ibid., 297. Also see 16, 73, 112, 160, 180, 208, 269, 271, 299, 318 and 358. The same argument was developed in his posthumously issued A Dialogue Between a Tutor and his Pupil. By Edward Lord Herbert of Chirbury (London, 1768). While it is certain that the work was produced within the context of Herbert’s five common principles of natural religion, its authorship has not yet been established with certainty. See Justin Champion, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken. The Church of England and its Enemies (Cambridge, 1992), 144. 50 Charles Blount, The Oracles of Reason (1693), engaged with Burnet’s Archaeologiæ philosophicæ (1692), reproducing large sections of it in the English vernacular. For Burnet, see the entry by Scott Mandelbrote in DNB. 49
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opinions on “the Original and Revolutions of Things.”51 Burnet drew from the reports of the seventeenth-century travellers (such as François Bernier, Roberto de Nobili, Henry Lord and Abraham Rogerius) and the Jesuit works of Heinrich Roth and Athanasius Kircher (to which I will return in the following Chapter). He started his supplement with a statement on ‘the religion of the Brahmins,’ arguing that they clouded the truth with fables.52 They had “a certain Cabala, or Body of Learning, which they receive by Tradition from one to the other.”53 Burnet observed that their learning—like the natural theology of the ancients—treats of God and the original and end of the world. Reminiscent of the manner in which the anticlerical image of the Brahmins was reproduced in deist thought, Burnet thus concluded: “All of which Opinions are by some more plainly, by others more obscurely and fabulously delivered; but that they were of old spread amongst these Nations, is plain from several Footsteps of them at this day remaining.”54 To provide illustrations to his thesis, Burnet wrote that the Indian priests still had sacred books which were reportedly bequeathed by God to their prophet Brahma, “as formerly the Law of the Israelites was to Moses.”55 They discussed the origin and final conflagration of the world, “But this they propound in a Cabalistical or Mythological way.”56 Burnet concluded his appendix on the Brahmins as follows: This must be observed in General, of the modern Pagans, that there are (it is true) now remaining among them some Footsteps of the most ancients Tenents, which come to them by Tradition from their Ancestors, but quite overwhelmed with Trash and Filthiness, being for the most part clogg’d with fabulous Additions, even to the degree of being nauseous … I cannot but pity the Eastern World, that the place which was the first Habitation of wise men, and one day a most flourishing Emporium for Learning should for some ages past have been changed into a wretched Barbarity.57 The appendix was printed at the end of the Latin edition of 1694. I have not been able to locate it in any previous edition. However, Charles Blount was able to reprint the appendix in his Oracles of Reason, which appeared in print one year earlier (1693). I have used the English translation by the hand of Blount. The on the Brahmins appendix was reprinted in the English edition of the Telluris theoria sacra issued in 1729. It was also rendered into Dutch and printed at the end of the Dutch edition of Telluris theoria sacra (Heilige Beschouwinge des Aardkloots), issued at Amsterdam in 1696. 52 Thomas Burnet in Charles Blount, The Oracles of Reason etc. (London, 1693), 78. 53 Idem (emphasis in the original). 54 Ibid., 78-79. 55 Ibid., 79 (emphasis in the original). 56 Ibid, 80. 57 Ibid., 85-86 (emphasis in the original). 51
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The first scientific journal published in Europe, Le Journal des Sçavans, issued in 1695 a book review of the 1694 edition of Telluris theoria sacra, with an analysis of its appendix. The French reviewer observed that the Brahmins had a hidden tradition of natural theology concerning God and the origin of the world.58 On the one hand, Burnet’s work reminds us of the theories of the noble savage, found in such early works as the Omnium gentium mores (1520). On the other hand, the standard explanation of priestcraft continued to explain the deviations from the universal core. The idea that Christianity—in whichever way it was understood—was the original religion of mankind, grafted on the soul by divine intervention, was now reformulated into a universal religion of reason. By relocating the Devil and divine providence into the background, and by transforming them into redundant variables, the proponents of the religion of the Enlightenment clothed an inherently theological understanding of religion in the guise of what seemed to be a naturalistic discourse. While the proponents of natural religion thus ‘disenchanted’ the patristic history of religion, this did not imply a paradigm shift in the study of religion. As far as India was concerned, the ‘disenchantment’ of the world by the proponents of reason consolidated the formats through which the ethnographic information had always been structured and understood. The disenchanted Brahmin A preeminent example of this process can be found in the influential work by the Dutch preacher Balthasar Bekker (1634-98), entitled De Betooverde Wereld (The Enchanted World; 1691). This was the most influential attack on the Devil and one of the key books of the Early Enlightenment, published in the Dutch Republic. While his central thesis was that all the references to Satan, demons and angels in Scripture were nothing but allegories of good and evil, and of the power of God, “Bekker held back from asserting categorically that Satan, demons and angels do not exist.”59 Nevertheless, his controversial work questioned the agency of supernatural forces in the world. This made it a key text at the end of the witchcraft persecutions, with ramificaAnonymous, “T. Burnetti Telluris Theoria sacra, originem & mutationes generales orbis nostri, etc.,” Le Journal des Sçavans, no. 29 (1695): 337-344: “Ils ont une tradition cachée au vulgaire, que ne contient pas un corps regulier de science, mais une espece de Theologie naturele, où il est traité de Dieu, du monde, & de sa premiere origine.” 59 Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic. Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477-1806 (Oxford, 1995), 925. For Bekker, also see Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750 (Oxford, 2001), ch. 21. 58
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tions that extended across the English Channel.60 The fight against superstition had started, and Bekker’s book soon became one of the most controversial works in the Dutch Republic. The scale of controversy is reflected in the amount of books that were printed. The first two volumes were issued in 1691 and sold as many as 5,750 copies in the first two months alone.61 The author writes that an unfinished manuscript had previously been issued without his consent that same year at Leeuwarden. The 750 prints soon became difficult to procure.62 Bekker envisioned a world without magic, yet reinforced the conceptual formats through which the information on non-Christian traditions always had been structured and understood. Bekker argued that the power of the Devil neither had foundation in Scripture, nor in reason.63 In the words of Jonathan Israel (1995), “Neither Job, Paul, Christ, nor anyone else described in the Bible had really ever encountered the Devil.”64 Bekker reviewed the notions of gods and spirits held by the nations in the world, from the ancient Greeks, through the Peruvians, to the Africans and the Chinese. He added several detailed sections on ‘the spirits’ of the Indians, derived from the Dutch preacher in South India, Abraham Rogerius (1652). The ‘spirits’ which Bekker discussed are the devatas, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.65 Bekker concluded that the spirits in which the heathen nations believed only differed in name. Not different from what Varthema wrote in 1510, he added that the Indians believed in God, but also maintained that God had delegated his powers to these lesser divinities. The natural light that illuminated the world taught that there was but one God. However, their error was to believe that spirits impacted on the events in this world.66 According to Bekker, Christianity also incorporated this belief in demons and spirits. The Christian clergy abused the credulity of the masses by attributing faculties to the Devil. Even the Protestants had not liberated them-
For Bekker’s role in the English witchcraft trials, see Annae C. Simoni, “Balthasar Bekker and the Beckington Witch,” Quaerendo 9 (1979): 135-142. 61 Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 383. The German edition was issued in 1693, followed by a French translation in 1694. An English translation of the first part of Bekker’s book appeared in 1695, entitled The World Bewitched. 62 Balthasar Bekker, De betoverde Weereld, zynde een grondig Ondersoek van’t gemeen gevoelen aangaande de Geesten etc. (Amsterdam, 1691), dedication. 63 Ibid., 128-37. 64 Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic, 926. 65 Balthasar Bekker, De betoverde Weereld, book 1: 27-29. 66 Ibid., 49-54. 60
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selves from this superstition.67 Their emphasis on the Devil as the primary cause behind the corruption of Rome misled the people, and made them believe that religious corruptions resulted from supernatural forces, instead of the plain and natural abuses of the priests.68 Bekker’s emphasis on reason and natural causes had Jonathan Israel (2001) conclude that it “had indeed become Bekker’s life-mission to disenchant the world.”69 However, Bekker disposed off the agency of the Devil, yet kept in place the structures through which non-Christian traditions had always been understood. While the heathens were said to seek for the Creator (the Christian God), natural notions of God had been combined with the fears of the masses, and abused by crafty philosophers and priests. In the case of India, religious decline could therefore still be attributed to an imaginary priesthood. In the case of Japan, Bekker referred to the Bonzi, the alleged priests of Japan, who similarly kept the true religion hidden: “Those who should teach them better, don’t want to, and rather keep the secret for themselves to rise in the people’s admiration, like the Magi of old, and today the Brahmins and the Bonzi still are.”70 The Protestant historiography of the priestly corruption of religion was now reformulated as a natural fact about all traditions in the world.71
The Naturalized Brahmin in popular Sources The debates on natural religion had ramifications outside the strict boundaries of theology. This is clearly visible in a philosophical primer of the period (1692), first issued by the English bookseller John Dunton. This textbook begins with items on the several sciences. The section on divinity informs the students that the law of nature adds up to a précis of Sacred Scripture. If the student were to examine nature and “peruse the works of the ancient philosophers,” or even the works of “the Brahmins and the Chinese,” he would arrive at “a Compendium, an Abstract of all together in the sacred Writ.”72 Ibid., 77-118. Ibid., 316. 69 Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 379 70 Balthasar Bekker, De betoverde Weereld, book 1: 130: “Die hen beter leeren souden, willen ‘t sommige niet doen: maar ‘t geheim voor sich behouden, om te groter voorwerp van ‘s volx achtinge en verwonderinge te zijn; gelijk by ouds de Magi waren, en hedendaags de Bramines en Bonzii noch zyn.” 71 For a similar argument, illustrated by the Brahmins, see John Webster, The displaying of supposed witchcraft wherein is aff irmed that there are many sorts of deceivers and impostors and divers persons under a passive delusion of melancholy and fancy etc. (London, 1677), 29. 72 John Dunton, The Young-Students-Library etc. (London, 1692), iii. 67 68
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As we have seen, Christianity was often equated in this context with the belief in God and a universal moral code. In the latter part of the seventeenth century, the French novelist and salonnière, Madelein de Scudéry (16071701), issued an extraordinary popular series of moral and social treatises, published anonymously at Paris in several pocket volumes. While her novels had gained her prestige and popularity all over Europe, Scudéry’s treatises on moral issues suggest her role as a pedagogue during the reign of Louis XIV. As expected, she would become a popular reference point for later scholars concerned with gender politics.73 As one of the most recognized writers of conversations of her time, Scudéry styled her Nouvelles Conversations de morale (1688) in dialogue form. The conversation is set in a country house where her characters—Zénobie, Amérinte and Bérénice—enjoyed each other’s company, conversing, promenading and entertaining guests, upholding the standards of polite society. After a prolonged conversation on hypocrisy, the second day is filled with conversations on the history of morality, in which the French garden that hosts the constitutionals seems to symbolize the standards of virtue. The source of morality is identified as the natural morality which God implanted in the heart of humankind. If not corrupted, it would have survived without the need for laws. As one of the conversationalists concluded, the essence of morality could be found in the hearts of men, and their actions were guided by natural reason, prior to the invention of laws.74 The theme sounds familiar. At the time that the deist movement was spreading its wings over England and western Europe, Scudéry had the Frenchman illustrate his claims with examples from the biblical Patriarchs, the philosophers from Greco-Roman antiquity, and the prophet of the Muslims.75 The vices known from antiquity led him to conclude that without true religion there could be no perfect morality. This perfection was, not surprisingly, manifested in Christianity.76 While Scudéry guided her characters through the territory of comparative religion and Greco-Roman reflections on the good life, one of the most popular examples of proto-Christian virtue was reserved for a later act: the Brahmin protagonist. When his interlocutors pointed out the flaws For Scudéry and her impact on French literature, see Dorothy McDougall, Madeleine de Scudéry: Her romantic Life and Death (New York: Ayer Publishing, 1972). 74 Madeleine de Scudéry, Nouvelles Conversations de Morale. Dédiées au Roy, vol. 1 (La Haye, 1692), 43-46. 75 Ibid., 50, 52. 76 Ibid, 54-55. Also see 1692: 66, 70 and esp. 143-46. 73
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in Epicurean thought and asked about the philosophy of China, the Frenchman first touched upon the Brahmins: I should first say in a few words, he replied, that prior to Confucius, or the Socrates of China, there were philosophers in India called Brachmanes, the most wise and modest of antiquity. They believed in one God to whom they prayed and worshipped continuously. They lived in solitude, ate little, and desired death in the hope of a second life. And if their belief had not been damaged, they would have resembled the Fathers of the desert, by the purity of their morals, and by their detachment from all interests and ambitions. They move well beyond the Epicureans and Cynic promotion of ignorance, for they gave tutors to pregnant women, so that they were capable of giving her child the first teachings.77
The Brahmins came to perform a role in the French salons as well. Interestingly, the Frenchman added that amongst these Indian philosophers (the Brachmanes) existed another sect, known as the “Bramins.” They received less attention from polite society, for they were less strict in their dealings. Méliton added that those ancient times were clouded in obscurity, and to avoid telling lies, he urged his audience to move on to the Socrates of China.78 The ancient Brahmins were better than the Epicureans and Cynics, yet some of them (one suspects the contemporary Brahmins) not as close to the truth as Confucius. Scudéry added a section devoted to The Sentiments of Confucius on diverse Subjects (Sentimens de Confusius sur différens Sujets), or a collection of sayings and Chinese maxims agreeable to her audience.79 In other words, seventeenth-century thought continued to exemplify the uninterrupted dialectic between universal aspirations, on the one hand, and the particularity of Christianity as manifested in Christ’s Revelation, on the
Ibid., 114: “Il faut auparavant, reprît-il, vous dire en deux mots, qu’auvant Confutius qui a été le Socrate de la Chine, il y avoit eu aux Indes des Philosophes appellez Brachmanes, les plus sages & les plus modestes de tous ceux de l’antiquité, croyant un Dieu unique qu’ils prioient & adoroient continuellement, vivant en solitude, mangeant peu, & desirant la mort dans l’espérance d’une seconde vie; & si leur croyance n’avoit pas été déféctueuse en beaucoup de choses, ils auroient eu quelque ressemblance aux Peres des deserts qui sont venus depuis, par la pureté de leurs mœurs, & par le détachement de tout intéret & de toute ambition. Ils étoient même bien éloignez de favoriser l’ignorance comme les Epicuriens & les Ciniques: car dés qu’une femme étoit grosse, ils lui donnoient un précepteur, afin qu’elle fut capable de donner les premiers enseignemens à l’enfant qu’elle portoit.” 78 Ibid., 115: “[M]ais comme ces temps-là sont fort obscurs, & qu’il y avoit entre ces Philosophes une autre secte qu’on appelloit Bramins, moins considérable en toutes choses, il faut passer tout cela légérement pour ne s’exposer pas à dire des mensonges, ou du moins des choses fort douteuses, & venir tout d’un coup à Confutius, qui passe, comme je l’ay déja dit, pour étre le Socrate de la Chine.” 79 Ibid., 116-127. 77
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other. This interplay of universalizing and particularizing tendencies within the Reformation propelled both Brahmin imageries through the religious discourses of late seventeenth century, and into eighteenth-century Britain. The pre-Renaissance image of proto-Christian Brahmins was called upon in matters of universalism. While the Calicut-motif was recapitulated to fight the common enemy—popery and priestcraft—henceforth, it found relevance and potency in the internal debates that divided the Church of England. Indeed, those who challenged the universalistic tendencies stressed the necessity of particular Revelation in matters of religious truth—the absence of which was said to lead to heathenish idolatry—and found in the Calicutmotif an illustration of their case.
4.3. The crafty Brahmin in seventeenth-century Controversies The battle between the conservatives and the advocates of natural religion was evident across Europe. The conservative view was supported by the ageold instruments that the Protestants used to counter the Catholics: the leading minds of the seventeenth-century who argued against the radical positions found their inspiration at Calicut. The Church of Scotland clergyman, Thomas Halyburton, stood central to this dispute that spilled over into the eighteenth century. His Natural Religion Insuff icient, and Revealed Necessary (1714) set out to criticize the views which Halyburton discerned in Herbert of Cherbury, Charles Blount and deists of the first generation. His position was that reason could not adequately show the true nature of morality and the divine, or the preconditions for the afterlife.80 While he thus argued that the best things in the heathen traditions were not arrived at through reason, but were distributed via the Judaic tradition, Halyburton questioned the universality of Herbert’s articles. The “inhabitants of Calecut” indicated that “It was not universally agreed that the One True God is to be worshipped.” After all, they “are so absurd as to imagine that the devil is God’s deputy, to whom the government of the world is committed.”81 This absurdity additionally applied to Vijayanagar and the kingdoms of southern India. Halyburton reproduced the description of the king of Calicut’s shrine for the Devil, derived For Halyburton, see the entry by Stewart in DNB. Thomas Halyburton, Natural Religion insuff icient, and Revealed necessary, to Man’s Happiness in his Present State etc. (Philadelphia, 1798 [1714]), 316. While the first edition was issued at Edinburgh, other editions appeared at Montrose (1798) and Albany (1812).
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from Louis Moréri’s Historical, Geographical and Poetical Dictionary (1694; first French edition 1674), yet ultimately derived from Varthema’s Itinerario, issued more than two centuries before. The deists did not find themselves at the extreme end of the confessional divide. As we have seen, during the Commonwealth era (1653-58), the Quakers were the most prominent new sect in England. As part of a broader attack on religious authority and Revelation, they promoted a subjective sense of the divine. This private experience of divinity was antithetical to the idea of universal reason, and did not sit well with the Cambridge Platonists, who were scornful of the Quaker position. Their most prolific writer, Henry More issued An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness (1660). The work attempted to formulate a minimal common doctrine for the Church of England, but was also directed against the English Quakers and their principle of immediate inspiration. According to Henry More, knowledge of Christ the Saviour was a prerequisite for salvation.82 The third book of his work ventures deep into the realm of paganism to demonstrate the tyranny of the Devil in the absence of direct Revelation. Although he would have liked to add more detail to the words uttered by the patristic Fathers on this issue, More did not wish to distract the reader with this detail. Those that wished to “travail further in this mire” could pay a visit to “Calecut in Malabar, where the King strains courtesie with the High Priest, and will needs have him reap the primitiæ of the pleasures of his new-married Bride …”83 In other words, the Calicut-motif was not only applied to argue against the positions of Rome: in Restoration Britain, the method of comparative religion was also employed within the realm of Protestant thought in order to stress the necessity of supernatural Revelation. The Brahmins and their traditions were a starting point to measure the distance of Catholic Rome from the original precepts of Christ; equally they were employed to discredit other Protestant Churches. Varthema’s account was repeated by preachers articulating a range of political and theological agendas. The bishop of Salisbury, Martin Fotherby, published in 1608 an anthology of his sermons delivered at Cambridge, Canterbury, St. Paul’s and at Court. Fotherby added an appendix to this collection, entitled An answere unto certaine objections, of one unresolved, as concerning the use of the Crosse in Baptisme. At the heart of this work was the debate over adiaphora, or things indifferent to religion. The English puritans had Henry More, An Explanation of The grand Mystery of Godliness etc. (London, 1660), ix, also see 55-56. 83 Ibid., 83 (emphasis in the original). 82
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identified High Church practices as the remnants of Catholicism and manifestations of idolatry. Examples of their attitude towards ceremony can be found in their refusal to wear the surplice (the white linen vestment worn by the clergy at services) and their rejection of the sign of the cross during baptism. Fotherby outlined the various objections against the sign of the cross, yet emphasized its neutrality. He did not deny the charge that the sign is not sanctioned by Scripture, but took issue with the objection that “no invention of man, having once beene abused unto idolatrie, may ever after bee used in the actions of piety.”84 Fotherby agreed that the Catholics indeed worshipped the cross like an idol, yet emphasized the contingent nature of idolatry. That is to say, while the Catholics worshipped the cross, its presence in English churches did not necessarily imply an idolatrous abuse.85 Fotherby wrote that those who reject the sign of the cross nevertheless continue other human inventions, such as kneeling and sitting during Holy Communion, which similarly had been abused into idolatry. The Protestants had recognized the efficacy of the comparative method to undermine the Catholics, and the Calicut-motif could thus become a polemical tool in internal Protestant arguments. When his interlocutor observed that sitting during Mass had never been so wickedly abused into idolatry as kneeling had, Fotherby ventured into comparative religion: the practice of sitting had in fact been abused into a much more horrible idolatry than kneeling. The Catholics kneeling at Church reminded him of the illustrations of Narasimha: “For in the kingdomes of Calecute and Narsinga, and in diverse other provinces of the East and West India, where they worship the divill in a most deformed image they represent him alwayes sitting: and they worship him, not kneeling, but prostrate.” Those who reject kneeling during Mass, yet continue the practice of sitting, thus “imitate the iesture of Heathen idols.”86 As a consequence, “where sitting is allowed, I know not, why either kneeling, or crossing, should be abolished.”87 Part of a larger comparative method, the Calicut-motif became the baseline by which the level of religious deviance—Catholic as well as Protestant—thus could be measured.
Martin Fotherby, Foure sermons, lately preached, by Martin Fotherby Doctor in Diuinity, and Chaplain vnto the Kings Maiestie etc. (London, 1608), 20 [separate pagination]. For Fotherby, see the entry by P. Rundle in DNB. 85 Ibid., 24-25. 86 Ibid., 29 (emphasis in the original). 87 Idem. 84
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Dindimus continued to play a prominent role in the religious discourses of seventeenth and eighteenth-century England—as did the deumo. It is often difficult to draw a sharp line between the Protestant factions, especially during the years immediately prior to and after the Restoration of Charles II (1660). In a closely-knit system of thought where fine distinctions in opinion were vital to decide upon salvation or eternal damnation, the difference between the schisms often could be small. As shown below, the Protestant denominations were part of a shared critique against popery, and when they flung down the gauntlet, the Calicut-motif could always be evoked. The Brahmin in anti-Catholic Polemics Not only the imageries related to the Palladius and Collatio correspondence, but also the imageries extracted from the Itinerario (1510) continued to perform a clear polemical role in Protestant thought. As we have seen, Henry More took recourse to the Calicut-motif to suggest the tyranny of the Devil in the absence of direct Revelation (1660). In 1668, the same motif was used to discredit the ‘spiritual tyranny’ of the Roman-Catholic priesthood. More made the characters in his Divine Dialogues (1668) on the attributes and providence of God discuss “secular Barbarity” or the “Political Government of the Barbarians.” This enabled him to speak to the temporal interests of clergymen far and wide. The matriarchal practices of Calicut—commented upon by Varthema and others before him—are explained here as sacerdotal schemes to usurp the civil power. As one of the interlocutors explained: “I think that his [the Brahmin’s] lying with the Queen the first night pretends to an auspicious Consecration of her Womb to future Fertility…”88 The English theologian further observed that the Christian priests were similarly buzzing with worldly ambitions: The Priest does not intend to commit Adultery, but to consecrate the Womb. But what blemish is this in Providence, that Paynim-Priests are as crafty as some of the Christian, who upon Spiritual Pretences too often promote an Interest of the World and the Flesh, as these Calecut-Priests seem to doe, they both reaping the pleasure of lying with the Queen, and strengthening the Interest of the Priesthood by mingling the Sacerdotal with the Royal seed, the first-born of the Queen being in all likelihood as much the Son of a Priest as Heir to the Crown?89
Henry More, Divine Dialogues, Containing sundry Disquisitions & Instructions Concerning the Attributes and Providence of God etc. (London, 1668), 381 (emphasis in the original). 89 Idem. 88
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When the characters in his dialogue suggested similar ‘barbarities’ in the religious realm, More referred to Varthema as an authority on the subject. The philosopher concluded with a detailed account of the most iniquitous seat of evil, “the most horrible description of a Temple,” and rehashed the standardized account of the Calicut deumo in its entirety.90 In 1676 the Anglican scholar Edward Stillingfleet issued his Defence of the Discourse Concerning the Idolatry Practised in the Church of Rome. This was an acerbic answer to the Catholic controversialist, Thomas Tylden, who previously issued Catholicks no Idolators (1672). While analyzing Tylden’s claim that the Catholics were not given to idolatry for they believed in God, Stillingfleet drew attention to the fact that many heathens believed in God, yet were idolaters all the same.91 The Calicut-motif offered Stillingfleet a powerful illustration of his case. If pious beliefs could indeed have idolatrous consequences, the Catholic edifice of veneration (dulia) versus worship (latria) had to be dismantled. The Anglican scholar wrote that the Indians believed in the God of Heaven, yet he had Varthema testify about the idol which they also worshipped, “having on his head … a Crown as the Popes of Rome have, only it hath three horns upon it.”92 Other regions in the East Indies could be used for the same polemical purpose. After a description of Siam—taken from the Dutch East India Company surgeon Wouter Schouten—Stillingfleet concluded his invective thus: The Ceremonies of their worship, the nature of their Images, the manner of their Oblations, the customs of their Talapois, (or Friers) are such, that, some few things excepted, one would imagine no great difference between the Varelles of Siam, and the Jesuits Church and devotions there.93
The Brahmins were even called to service to bring Catholic converts back into the Church of England. In 1697 appeared at London a collection of four tracts by the canon at Westminster, Anthony Horneck. The final treatise was A Disswasive from Popery, being a Letter to a Lady to preserve her from Apostacy from the Communion of the Church of England. Horneck started with the wonted claim that the Catholic priests added multiple doctrines and superstitious customs to the apostolic creed, an argument to persuade the lady to Ibid., 405-07, 380. Edward Stillingfleet, A Defence of the Discourse Concerning the Idolatry Practised in the Church of Rome etc. (London, 1676), 145. 92 Ibid., 153. 93 Ibid., 155. 90 91
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whom he directed his discourse to return to the Anglican fold. The relevant sections of the text are worth quoting in some detail, because they reveal that the Brahmins featured conspicuously when Horneck discreditted an argument in favour of the Catholic faith. Horneck first summarized the Catholic justification as follows: If there be any thing true, this must be true, that there is a God; if there be a God, there must be a true Religion; if there be a true Religion, there must be a true revealed Religion; if there be a true revealed Religion, the Christian Religion must be that true revealed Religion; and if the Christian Religion be true, then the Religion of the Church of Rome must be true; for the Argument that proves the Christian Religion to be true, proves the Religion of the Church of Rome to be true.94
The argument that proved the Christian religion and the religion of the Church of Rome to be true was that the former was propagated either without miracles or by miracles. If the Christian religion was propagated by miracles, then it must be divine; if propagated without miracles, then it is short of a miracle that such a religion—contrary to flesh and blood—should prevail amongst sensual men. The same applies to the religion of Rome, so the Catholics say: if propagated by the miracles, it certainly is divine—if not by miracles, it must likewise be divine, for the penances and austerities it prescribes (contrary to the flesh) are followed by thousands. Horneck skilfully discredited this line of reasoning by the method of comparative religion: by virtue of this Catholic apologetic, Horneck observed, the heathen traditions—with penances and austerities contrary to the sensuality of man, but followed by many nevertheless—should also have been divine: He that is no stranger to History, must needs know what Severities, what Austerities of Life the Brachmans, or the Heathen Friers in the Indies, do both prescribe and practice, and what Proselites they make, and how full the Kingdom of the great Mogul is of them; how some wallow in Ashes day and night, how others go charged with heavy Iron Chaines all their days; how others stand upright upon their Leggs for whole Weeks together, &c. How in Japan, and other places of the Indies, the Priests perswade the People to fast themselves to death, to go long Pilgrimages, to give all they have to the Priests, to throw themselves down from steep Rocks, and break their Necks, and all to arrive the sooner to the Happiness of another World, &c. I think there cannot be things more contrary to Flesh and Blood, than these, and yet we see these Doctrines are propagated daily without any force of Arms, only by Example and Perswasion, to be sure without any Miracle; but, I hope, that doth not prove their Religion to be Divine. It’s a
Anthony Horneck, Four Tracts … IV. A Disswasive from Popery, being a Letter to a Lady to preserve her from Apostacy from the Communion of the Church of England (London, 1697), 117. 94
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dictate of the light of Nature, that the way to Heaven is straight, and therefore People that are religiously inclined, are easily won over to those Men, whom they see exercise such Severities upon themselves.95
This process of cultural translation into the world of Protestant polemic was also at work in the representations of the Americas. India was not singled out for special treatment and the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli (Vitzliputzli) received a similar role in the Protestant imagination as the Calicut deumo.96 Many of the iconographic attributes of the woodcuts of the deumo—fingers as talons, feet like those of a bird of prey—are also found in the standardized representations of Vitzliputzli. The dean of Edinburgh, William Annand, took recourse to Vitzliputzli and to the deumo to write his commentaries on the Lord’s Prayer. Annand was a Scottish Episcopalian and released in 1670 a collection of sermons: Pater Noster, Our Father, or, The Lord’s Prayer explained. Discussing the fourth line of the Lord’s Prayer—Thy Kingdom Come—Annand explained to his audience that it was directed against the dominion of sin and the kingdom of Satan. Vitzliputzli and the deumo entered the stage when Annand further observed that the missionary project in the newly discovered worlds was curbing the Devil’s influence: … as in the America Islands, the inhabitants whereof, as a learned man conjectures, being drawn from the north places of the world, (after the Gospel begun to shine among these barbarous Nations) their God, Vitzililiputzli, or Vitzliputzli, the Image of which Idol they carried in a Coffer of Reeds, supported by four principal Priests, unto whom also he gave directions, and in apish imitation of the Israelits cloud, so this devil signed their advance, or stay, being still in the midst of their Camp, and having alwayes a Tabernacle erected for his worship, where they rested, which at last, was at the place where Mexico now stands, so called from their chief Captain, Mexi, whom they followed: But God found them out, and affronted the devil in his own territories, where he was worshipped (untill of late) so eminently, that the King of Callicut eat not his meat, untill it was offered unto the devil, by the name, Deumo, (as being the great Gods Viceroy, and the government of all the lower world, for conveniency and ease, deputed unto him;) and the fragments given to Crows, which for that were accounted holy, &c.97 Ibid., 119-120 (emphasis in the original). For detailed descriptions of Huitzilopochtli in the Christian devil tradition, see esp. José d’Acosta, The naturall and morall Historie of the East and West Indies etc. (London, 1604; Latin edition 1572), 394-98. Also see Elizabeth Boone, Incarnations of the Aztec Supernatural: The Image of Huitzilopochtli in Mexico and Europe (Philadelphia, 1989), 55-83. For a detailed study of European representations of the Americas, see Peter Mason, Deconstructing America: Representations of the Other (London & New York, 1990). 97 William Annand, Pater Noster, Our Father, or, The Lord’s Prayer explained etc. (Edinburgh, 1670), 204-05 (emphasis in the original). 95 96
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4. Vitzliputzli in Jürgen Andersen’s De Beschryving der Reizen van Georg Andriesz; deur Oostindiën en d’Eilanden (Amsterdam, 1670)
The ethnographic material draws from the works of José d’Acosta (1572) and Samuel Purchas (1625). The purported Indian belief in the Devil as the mediator between the believers and God received Catholic connotations in the Protestant universe. Purchas—a Church of England clergyman—reapplied this process of cultural translation in the context of the New World, when he referred in the margins of his account of Vitzliputzli to the “Popish mediators of intercession.”98 Having outlined the dominion of the Devil in the West and East Indies, William Annand similarly focused his attention to the Old World, and went on to enlist the servants of the Devil at home. As a Scottish Episcopalian— true to the High Church policy of Canterbury—his anti-Catholicism was not outdone by the staunchest Calvinist polemic.99 This is how Annand explained the creed of Rome in another sermon, part of the same homiletic collection: “The ground of Romes Doctrine, touching the worshipping of Angels, is so beastly, that it is shameful to publish aresh, yet so irrational, that it may be profitable to reprint it…”100 In other words, much like the imagery of the saintly Brahmins, the Calicut-motif—which carries with it the mirror image of the saintly Brahmins—was reproduced for as long as the conflict between the Protestants and Catholics continued. Samuel Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimes. In Five Bookes etc., vol. 3 (London, 1625), 1028. See, for instance, his Mysterium pietatis (1671), an acerbic toward the doctrines of Rome. For Annand and his anti-Catholic works, also see the entry by D. Mullan in DNB. 100 William Annand, Pater Noster, 164 (emphasis in the original). 98 99
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Calicut and the Art of Sermons The Calicut-motif featured in the sermons of Tudor and Stuart England, and continued to be a popular tale narrated from the pulpits of late seventeenthcentury England. Its anti-Catholic thematic was recapitulated in a sermon by the dean of Salisbury, Thomas Pierce, delivered at Whitehall before Charles II on February 1, 1678. The king must have thoroughly enjoyed Pierce’s discourse—which intended to provide its audience with tools to distinguish between false and true prophets—for it was issued at London by his Majesty’s demand. The sermon ventures into the realm of comparative religion as an acerbic diatribe against Catholics priests (and other false prophets). To the claim that the prosperity of the Catholic ecclesia was justified by the absence of God’s disapproval, Pierce hurls back that impiety becomes no less impious when it is prosperous. After all, “the great Sultan, and the great Cham, and the great Mogul, and the great Bishop of Rome” then would have been “by an equally-found Consequence the greatest Favourites of Heaven.”101 Similar to the French preacher Pierre Mussard (1667) and the German cleric Dalhusius (1689), Pierce indentified an affinity between Catholic works of penance and Brahmin customs. The fact that the false prophets (the Catholics preachers) lived strict and religious lives was not an adequate demonstration of their piety. For instance, Montanus (the second-century founder of Montanism, a sect deemed heretic by the Catholics) was so committed to abstinence and sobriety that it turned into a disease. And of course, the Brahmins could not be absent in the list of impostors who used their pretended piety to impress upon the masses: The Heathen Brachmans also of India were so temperate, and chast, and so addicted to Self-denials, (in order to their gaining upon the opinion of the People with whom they liv’d,) that they seemed (in all appearance) to use This World as not abusing it: (exactly so as S. Paul exhorts the followers of Christ.)102
Pierce refers in the margin to the influential history of India by the Italian Jesuit Giovanni Pietro Maffei (1588). For as long as the theological battle between the Protestants and Catholics continued—throughout the cultural history of Europe thus—the same argument was to be repeated, with the figure of the crafty Brahmin and his evil customs as one of the most favourite pieces of Protestant armoury. 101 Thomas Spierce, A seasonable Caveat Against the Dangers of Credulity in our Trusting the Spirits Before we Try them; Delivered in a sermon before the King at White-Hall on the f irst Sunday in February, 1678/9 (London, 1679), 31 (emphasis in the original). 102 Ibid., 32 (emphasis in the original).
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The Virgin of Calicut It is crucial to remember that the motif derived from Varthema’s narrative is but an illustration of the mechanisms through which western Europe continued to transform the East to suit its own expectations. The report of Vasco da Gama’s first voyage to India (1497-99) served a similar polemical purpose. This work remained in manuscript until it was issued in Portuguese in 1838 as the Roteiro de Viajem de Vasco da Gama. The author was most probably the Portuguese Alvaro Velho, one of the crewmembers who attended Gama’s visit to the king of Calicut. The Portuguese historians extensively drew from this report to document the expansion of their empire. It surfaces in multiple sources, from historiographical and geographical works, to the collections of travel literature.103 At Calicut, Gama visited a temple where the Calicutians called out for ‘Mary, Mary,’ leading Gama and his crew to make the historical folly of taking a statue at the temple for an image of the Virgin Mary. The first Portuguese historian to write on Portuguese affairs in the East, Fernão Lopes de Castanheda, observed in his Historia do Descobrimento & Conquista da India pelos Portugueses (History of the discovery and conquest of India by the Portuguese; 1551) that the grandeur of the temple reminded Gama and his crew of a Christian monastery.104 Little or no research was thus needed to suggest that what the Portuguese saw at Calicut was similar to, if not the same as that which they practiced back home: the Roman-Catholic Mass. This narrative came to play a role very similar to Varthema’s Itinerario. About fifty years after Eden translated the Itinerario into English (1577), the geographer and Church of England clergyman, Samuel Purchas, edited one of the most influential English collections of voyages in the seventeenth century, that is, Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625). The collector wrote about Gama’s confusion at the temple and observed in the margins the similarity between the Catholics and the Indian heathens: “How neere a consanguinitie is in all kinds of Idolatry? How easie a passage from ye worship ye know not what, to John Green, ed., A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels, vol. 1 (London, 1745), 21, notes its occurrence in the works of various Portuguese historians, such as Fernão Lopes de Castanheda, João de Barros and Manuel de Faria e Sousa, and the travel collection by the Italian geographer, Giovanni Battista Ramusio. Also see Giovanni Magini, Histoire vniverselle des Indes Orientales etc. (Dovay, 1607), 19-20; and Melchisedech Thevenot, ed., Relations de Divers Voyages Curieux, vol. 2 (Paris, 1696 [1663]), 11. 104 Fernão Lopes de Castanheda, l’Histoire des Indes de Portugal, contenant comment l’Inde a Este decouverte etc., trans. N. de Grouchy (Paris, 1553), fol. 38. 103
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the worship of the Devill himselfe?”105 To show these affinities on the basis of various travel reports was also the objective of Purchas’ treatise on ‘world religions,’ one of the most important works of comparative religion in the early seventeenth century: Purchas his Pilgrimage (1613).106 The history of this polemical motif is further suggested by The History of the Propagation of Christianity, and Overthrow of Paganism, first published in 1723 by Church of Scotland minister, Robert Millar. Discussing the propagation of Christianity after the geographical discoveries, Millar passed comment on Gama’s adventure at Calicut, which was “A convincing Proof that Pagan and Romish idols are so like, that the Difference is hardly discernable, even by their own Votaries.”107 The data that led to this conclusion was incorporated into the comparative method and directed against Catholic practices as late as the nineteenth century. In 1830 the Scottish essayist, James Douglas of Cavers, published his Errors Regarding Religion and Thoughts on Prayer. While discussing spiritual corruption and popery, this is how Douglas still understood Gama’s adventure at Calicut: In their devout and unsophisticated minds, Popery and Paganism were completely identified. The continual shouts of Crishnu, Crishnu, they confidently mistook for the invocation of Christ; the idol temples appeared to them Romish cathedrals, and the Brahmins, Popish priests.108
Samuel Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimes, vol. 1: 29. Samuel Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimage. Or Relations of the World Religions, etc. (London, 1626 [1613]), dedication, and 547-48, 554, 629. 107 Robert Millar, The History of the Propagation of Christianity, And Overthrow of Paganism etc., vol. 2 (London, 1726 [1723]), 348 (emphasis mine). 108 James Douglas, Errors Regarding Religion and Thoughts on Prayer at the Present Time (New York & Boston, 1831; first edition Edinburgh, 1830), 94. For other nineteenth-century examples, replete with cross-references between ancient Greek and Roman traditions, contemporary Indian traditions, and the Catholic universe, see John Poynder, Popery in Alliance with Heathenism etc. (London, 1835); Alexander Hislop, The two Babylons; or, The Papal Worship proved to be the Worship of Nimrod and his Wife etc. (Edinburgh, 1862); and William Howitt, History of Priestcraft in all Ages and Nations (London, 1833). Interestingly, John Poynder, an evangelical activist, relied heavily on the influential work by East India Company official, Charles Grant: Observations on the State of Society Among the Asiatic Subjects to Great Britain, etc. (London, 1797). 105 106
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4.4. Conclusion Throughout the seventeenth and right into the eighteenth century, Christian thought continued to exemplify the dialectic between universal aspirations, on the one hand, and the particularity of Christianity as manifested in Christ’s Revelation, on the other. All through the history of Reformed thought, the Protestant polemicists recapitulated either the pre-Renaissance motif or the Calicut-motif, according to the requirements of the moment. In other words, from the earliest ages of Christian thought, the Brahmin was perpetually domesticated for local consumption in the dialectic of particularism and universalism. Those who stressed the patristic notion of an original religion—the advocates of natural religion, the spiritualists and the Quakers—turned to the pre-Renaissance images to fortify their defences. Those that emphasized the dire necessity of direct Revelation for the purpose of salvation (the particular and supernatural Revelation of God in Christ) portrayed the Brahmin as the negative mirror image of religious truth. This second ethnographic motif was simultaneously reproduced in the confessional battle between the Catholics and the Protestants. Those who sought to disarm theological opponents faithfully turned to the early-modern Brahmin figure. If discourse is to be understood in terms of the limits of representation, the first Brahmin figure—constructed in primitive and medieval Christianity—defines the limits of what can be said about the Indian traditions at one side of the spiritual spectrum. The theological figure of the crafty Brahmin priest defines the limits at the other side of the spiritual spectrum. As we have seen, both Brahmin figures illuminate two faces of the same theological coin. Both images coalesce and contribute to a rudimentary outline of the representational structure which is called ‘Hinduism’ today. They are the outer limits of this representational structure. As shown in the following Chapter, both imageries were combined at the universities and libraries of early-modern Europe into an historical outline of Indian spirituality. This edifice dovetails with the two-tiered, Orientalist representation of the Indian traditions outlined above. The conceptual limits of the European engagement with India are such that Europe always had to accept the existence of religion in India as true and that it was centred upon a priestly core.
Chapter Five
The Indian Religion of the Priest: A cosmographical Project
T
he first Chapter of this essay outlined the research hypothesis that guides our foray into the European representations of India. It proposed that the latter were not descriptions of India but of the manner in which Europe came to terms with the reality that is India. Europe built conceptual frameworks using the resources available from its own culture. In other words, an understanding of Orientalism is premissed on understanding western culture itself. The subsequent Chapters refined this thesis through a study of the close connections between the European enthnographic imagination and historical developments internal to European culture. Two distinct images of the Brahmin protagonist circulated in early-modern Europe, and were continuously reconstructed in its theological disputes. The Brahmin was an integral part of European culture and civilization. Chapter 1 proposed that ‘the Indian religion’ was constructed as a representational structure in the libraries and universities of early-modern Europe. Indeed, this edifice has to be located in the Renaissance cosmographies, where both representations of the Brahmins met. Both theoretical entities are henceforth conjugated into a unified portrait of the history of Indian spirituality: the proto-Christian religion that permeated the medieval archive is relegated to the past tense and superseded by defective Christianity. The decline is attributed to an ideated priesthood, the nodal point in this Renaissance composition. This representational structure maps onto the two-tiered notion of ‘Hinduism’ in nineteenth-century Orientalist scholarship. The reports of the new discoveries in the East and West Indies were initially passed on in a body of scholarship generally called ‘cosmography.’ The term refers to the books that claim to describe all the countries in the world. They comprise a large and eclectic body of works, devoted to the sciences and geography, on the one hand, and often with a blend of history and ethnography, on the other. As the combination of both Brahmin images into a coherent and stable structure of representation first occured in the cosmographies and the field of geography, it is important to first sketch the content, structure and popularity of these works in Renaissance Europe. The second section takes a closer look at the production of descriptive geographies on the European Continent, with a particular focus on the repre-
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sentational structure that emerged when both Brahmin imageries were united. The final section of this Chapter traces the reproduction of this structure in the English cosmographies and geographies of the seventeenth-century, taking the narrative right up to the beginnings of British imperialism, when the East India Company began the process of consolidating its economic monopoly and came to exercise territorial power over large swaths of India.
5.1. Special Geography: Outline of a Discipline In the sixteenth century, geography was developing into a field distinct from the older genre of cosmographies, or books that set out to describe all the countries in the world, though both terms continued to be used interchangeably. Whereas many a sixteenth-century scholar still attempted to cover the entire globe, at the end of the 1580s, more focused or specialized geographies started to occupy the field.1 Both kinds of sources may contain valuable ethnographic descriptions of the countries and regions that had come to occupy a more prominent place in the European imagination compared to the era prior to the Portuguese expansion. The cosmographies continued the medieval tradition of the works discussed in Chapter 2. The latter set out “to demonstrate the fundamental unity of the created universe through a synthesis of human knowledge.”2 These massive, encyclopaedic works combined several of the disciplines we know today into a single, comprehensive work.3 Much like the medieval encyclopaedias, the cosmographies brought together diverse materials around a common theme of the structure and history of the world. From the end of the sixteenth century, these large and eclectic works—covering the natural history, topography and customs of the entire globe—coexisted with more orchestrated geographies, which similarly combined history with geography and anthropology.
Frank Lestringant, Mapping the Renaissance World: The Geographical Imagination in the Age of Discovery, trans. D. Fausett (Berkeley, 1994 [first French ed. 1991]). For the various uses of the terms ‘geography’ and ‘cosmography,’ see M. Milanesi, “Geography and cosmography in Italy from the XVth to the XVIIth century,” Memorie della Societa Astronomica Italiana 65 (1994): 443-68. 2 Victoria Morse, “The Role of Maps in Later Medieval Society: Twelfth to Fourteenth Century,” in Cartography in the European Renaissance, ed. D. Woodward, vol. 1, (Chicago & London, 2007), 25-52 [32]. 3 Peter C. Mancall, Hakluyt’s Promise: An Elizabethan’s Obsession for an English America (New Haven, 2007), 20. 1
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The German geographer Bernhard Varen (1622-1650) divided geography into general and special branches, later to be known as mathematical and descriptive geography, respectively. While this schematic was codified in the seventeenth century, many of the sixteenth-century works discussed below can be characterized as special or descriptive geographies.4 The mathematical geographies derived from Ptolemy and developed into a branch of mathematics. The special or descriptive geographies derived from the classical tradition of Strabo, and from Pliny’s Historia Naturalis (ca. 77 C.E.), a storehouse of historical and ethnographical knowledge, treating the sum of what was known. Most cosmographies and geographical treatises discussed in this essay were heir to both bodies of literature. Descriptive Geography and Ethnography Renaissance cosmographers saw geography as an adjunct to historiography and their works often contain detailed and valuable ethnographic material. One could therefore speak of an “incipient” or “inchoate ethnography” that extisted in the cosmographies of the early-modern period.5 One of the pioneers of this field, the German geographer Sebastian Münster, provided his readers not only with topographical reports of the world, but in addition wrote extensively about customs, manners and religion. His Cosmographia Universalis (1544) appears to be an encyclopaedia of general knowledge, and the preface to the German edition even promises an overview of all that is significant. The art of cosmography, Münster explained, concerned itself not only with natural history, fauna and flora and so on, but also with the habits, customs, laws and government of nations.6 His work is therefore called a “tentative start to comparative anthropology.”7 Boemus’ Omnium gentium mores (1520) is similarly called “a timely marker on the long road to modern This distinction was not only made on the Continent but also repeated in English geography. See Richard Blome, The Gentlemans Recreation. In two Parts. The First being an Encyclopedy of the Arts and Sciences etc. (London, 1686), 80. For an introduction to the field of special geography and an annotated bibliography of works published in English prior to 1880, see O. F. G. Sitwell, Four Centuries of Special Geography etc. (Vancouver, 1993). 5 Florike Egmond and Peter Mason, ““These are people who eat raw fish”: Contours of the Ethnographic Imagination in the Sixteenth Century,” Viator 31 (2000): 311-360 [337]. Also see the introduction in Stuart Schwartz, ed., Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters between Europeans and other Peoples in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, 1994). 6 Sebastian Münster, Cosmographia. Beschreibüg aller Lender etc. (Basel, 1544), fol. iii. 7 Matthew McLean, The Cosmographia of Sebastian Münster (Aldershot, 2007), 249. 4
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scientific ethnology.”8 The authors of these works promoted this ‘implicit ethnography’ when they set forth their thoughts on the scope and emphasis of their craft. The French historian François de Belleforest wrote in the preface to his Histoire Universelle (1570) that his work concerned itself with historiography, geography, chorography and cosmography. As the latter related to everything that could be found in heaven and on earth, it was also imperative to include the manners and customs of the nations that populated the world.9 In his influential Introduction à la Geographie (1681), the French cartographer Guillaume Sanson similarly suggested the connection between geography and historiography, and located what is called ‘ethnography’ today within the discipline of geography.10 Perhaps it is useful to pause for a moment and outline, by way of contrast, the reason for why these cosmographies have been characterized as the forebears of modern anthropology. At the time that Andreas Vesalius was campaigning for the empirical method in anatomy, the German cosmographer Sebastian Franck (to which I shall return below) reassured his readers that he had composed his Weltbuch (Book of the World; 1534) on the basis of a limited number of classical sources. His work was based on empirical observation, rather than the legends of lore.11 The latter were the popular tales of amazons and pygmies in the East, the mythical humanoids such as the Cyclops, monopods and dog-headed nations in the lands of the East. At variance with many of his predecessors, Franck even provided the reader with a bibliography of the works he had consulted, many of which were contemporary sources. This determination to get at the facts by actual observation—instead of poetic fancy and the unbridled imagination—is a first indication of a break with the past.12 This was, after all, the period in which the printing press allowed 8 Klaus A. Vogel, “Cultural Variety in a Renaissance Perspective: Johannes Boemus on “The manners, Laws and Customs of all People” (1520),” in Shifting Cultures: Interaction and Discourse in the Expansion of Europe, eds. H. Bugge and J.-P. Rubiés (Münster, 1995), 3-34 [20]. 9 François de Belleforest, L’Histoire Universelle du Monde (Paris, 1570), fols. i-ij. 10 Guillaume Sanson, Introduction a la Geographie Premiere Partie etc. (Paris, 1681), 83. For Sanson and his programmatic outline of the field, see Walter A. Goffart, Historical Atlases: The f irst three hundred Years, 1570-1870 (Chicago, 2003), 24-25. 11 Sebastian Franck, Weltbuch, Spiegel und Bildtnisz des Gantzen Erdtbodens … in Asiam, Aphrica[m], Europam, vnd America[m] etc. (Tübingen, 1534), preface. 12 It must be remarked that the emphisis on empirical research was not entirely unique to the Renaissance. The works of Roger Bacon (ca. 1214-94) and William Ocham (ca. 1290-1349) in England already displayed an intense curiosity about the natural world, characteristic of scholarship nurtured in the Franciscan order. See David Woodward, “Medieval Mappaemundi,” in Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. J. Harley and D. Woodward, vol. 1 (Chicago & London, 1987), 286-370 [304].
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for the wide distribution of medieval books of marvels, the contents of which permeated the more serious encyclopaedias. Mandeville’s fictitious travel report—replete with fantastic tales about foreign countries—was printed in virtually every major European vernacular from the fifteenth century onwards, right into the seventeenth. While cosmographers like Münster and his like continued to reproduce the marvels and the spectacular illustrations of monstrous races, they also supplied the reader with more reliable eye-witness reports that came with the advance of exploration. But there is also a second reason for why these sources can be understood as a significant break with the past. Descriptive Geography: Organizing the World The disciplinary formations as we know them today are in fact nineteenthcentury developments, and the concomitant disciplinary borders were codified after the 1850s. The classification system used in many early-modern geographies can be understood as the forebear of later disciplinary formations. The sixteenth century witnessed the production of a large number of eyewitness reports on the regions which Strabo and Ptolemy could only speculate about. These reports percolated into the geographies and encyclopaedias, the historical compilations, and so on, which provided structure to the information culled from the reports of the newly discovered worlds. The organizing principle of these early-modern sources differed radically from medieval encyclopaedias. Clarity and logic of organization henceforth became convention, and the cosmographers organized their data under clear headings to negotiate the abundance of information, combining mathematical geography with descriptive geography (historiography and ethnography) into a single and often, encyclopaedic work. The impact of the French humanist and educational reformer Petrus Ramus (1515-1572) and the technical possibilities of typesetting allowed for each subject to be treated topically, by breaking everything down into its constituent parts. The character of the learned books and cosmographies was thus transformed: they became useful reference works or repositories of organized items of interrelated knowledge. The years of Ramus’ greatest influence on German thought coincided, significantly, with the publication of the augmented editions of Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia.13 Gerald Strauss, “A sixteenth-century encyclopedia: Sebastian Münster’s Cosmography and its Editions,” in From the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation. Essays in honour of Garrett Mattingly, ed. C. Carter (London, 1966), 145-163 [152].
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The cognitive method of Ramism, or the classifying of information in clear organizational models was also manifested in contemporary commonplace books (loci communes), that is, the notebooks in which the students organized under various headings factoids and anecdotes gathered from their lectures and the books they read.14 The influence of this method turned out to be a crucial step in the modern restructuring of university education and the establishment of the contemporary disciplinary formations. As such, the early-modern geographies were “deeply implicated in some of the most profound shifts in educative practice that post Renaissance intellectual life witnessed.”15 Both aspects of the early-modern attitude towards ethnographic material (the emphasis on factual observation and its principles of organization) feature in varying degrees in the geographies and historiographies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and developed in tandem with the method employed in other disciples. One of the best examples of this mode of organization can be found in a French cosmography by Pierre d’Avity, entitled Les Estats, Empires et Principautez du Monde (The estates, empires and principalities of the world; 1614), which remained popular all the way through the seventeenth century. Often issued under different titles, the several enlarged editions were translated into Latin, Dutch, English and German. In his preface, the French scholar set out the comprehensive plan with which he intended to classify his information. His work is divided into the four principal regions (Asia, Europe, Africa and America), which are further sectioned into their particular countries, each country described according to a strict list of headings: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Introductory section describing boundaries and geographical features. A section on fauna and flora and the produce of the country [Qualité]. Ancient customs [Mœrs Anciennes]. Material wealth, ancient [Richesses anciennes]. Military forces, ancient [Forces anciennes]. Government, ancient [Gouvernement ancien]. Religion, ancient [Religion ancienne]. Contemporary customs [Mœrs de ce temps].
Ann Blair, “Humanist Methods in Natural Philosophy: The Commonplace Book,” Journal of the History of Ideas 53, no. 4 (1992): 541-551; and Ann Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford, 1996). 15 Charles W. Withers and Robert Mayhew, “Rethinking ‘Disciplinary’ History: Geography in British Universities, c. 1580-1887,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 27, no. 1 (2002): 11-29 [19]. 14
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9. Contemporary material wealth [Richesses]. 10. Contemporary military forces [Forces]. 11. Contemporary government [Gouvernement]. 12. Contemporary religion [Religion]. Similar headings can be found in Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia (1544) and to a certain extent in the famous atlases by the Flemish cartographers Gerardus Mercator and Jodocus Hondius (1638), suggesting the establishment and wide currency of the new methods of organization.16 Distributing useful Knowledge The cosmographies were explicitly geared to disseminate ‘useful knowledge’ or practical, political and social information. The intended audience of these works constituted a wide cross-section of early-modern society: ranging from merchants and government officals, to anyone interested in overseas voyages or expansion.17 The Venetian humanist and compiler of the first great collection of voyages, Giovanni Battista Ramusio became famous all over Europe for his Della Navigatione et Viaggi (1550), which recorded, amongst others, the travels of Columbus, and Duarte Barbosa’s (ca. 1516-18) and Varthema’s (1510) accounts of India. In England, this vocation was taken up by Richard Hakluyt, whose The Principall Navigations (1598-1600) enumerated English and European discoveries in America and the East. The cosmographies and descriptive geographies offered a model for statesmen and soldiers, providing them with political and cultural descriptions of countries they were about to visit. It is thus not surprising that the development of geography was linked with imperialist concerns, and the English were eager to catch up with their Continental colleagues. In this late sixteenth-century context, the English initiated a massive project of translating the European travelogues, with the aim of urging their countrymen to unite and to challenge Spain’s empire. The audience they had in mind seems to dovetail to a large extent with the kind of students that the universities were attracting. Between the 1550s and the 1580s the number of students starting university education at Oxford Also see Laurence Echard, A most Compleat Compendium of Geography, General and Special; Describing all the Empires, Kingdoms, and Dominions, in the whole World (London, 1691); and John Thorie, The Theatre of the Earth Containing very short and compendious Descriptions of all Countries etc. (London, 1599). 17 Pierre d’Avity, Les Empires, Royaumes, Estats, Seigneuries, Duchez, et Principautez du Monde etc. (S.l., 1614), preface. 16
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increased threefold. One of the proposed reasons for this influx is that under Tudor rule university-trained graduates were sought for secular professions and for positions in government, diplomacy and the army.18 This cultured class of Elizabethan gentlemen was more concerned with practical matters than with theological issues or scholarship for its own sake. The presence of descriptive geography as part of the curriculum at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge not only shows that a wider interest in the world was part of university training, but also suggests that the accounts of foreign peoples were widely distributed. It also indicates that the theological representations of the Brahmins outlined above soon transcended the immediate ambit of the theological controversies. Descriptive Geography in Education The preface to A Brief History of Moscovia (1682) by the poet laureate John Milton bears witness to the value placed on the study of geography, and suggests what was understood as part of its subject matter: “relations of Manners, Religion, Government and such like, accounted Geographical.”19 In his work Of Education (1644), directed at the educational reformer Samuel Hartlib, Milton gave geography a central place in the curriculum.20 He also put into practice this programme of education and used Pierre d’Avity’s comprehensive cosmography (1614) as a textbook for teaching pupils.21 While it is often difficult to ascertain with any degree of certainty which cosmographies were effectively used as textbooks, we can assume that many books that were not explicitly categorized as primers were nevertheless used in the classrooms and colleges.22 Works like Münster’s Cosmographia (1544), which now appear to us as massive reference works, often functioned as elementary textbooks.23 While anthropology as a discipline was not part of the curriculum (or did not exist as a distinct discipline), it is nevertheless possible to establish that Lawrence Stone, “The Size and Composition of the Oxford Student Body 1580-1909,” in The University in Society, ed. L. Stone, vol. 1 (Princeton, 1974), 3-110. 19 John Milton, A brief history of Moscovia and of other less-known countries lying eastward of Russia etc. (London, 1682), preface. 20 John Milton, Of Education. To Master Samuel Hartlib (London, 1644). 21 Allan Gilbert, “Pierre Davity: His “Geography” and Its Use by Milton,” Geographical Review 7, no. 5 (1919): 322-338. 22 Anthony Grafton, “Textbooks and the Disciplines,” in Scholarly Knowledge: Textbooks in early modern Europe, ed. E. Campi et al. (Geneva, 2008), 11-36. 23 Urs B. Leu, “Textbooks and their Uses - An Insight into the Teaching of Geography in 16th century Zurich,” in Scholarly Knowledge: Textbooks in early modern Europe, 229-248. 18
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the ethnographic content found in cosmographies and the descriptive geographies of the period generated a considerable amount of interest amongst university students and their teachers. The presence of descriptive geography at the universities is indicated by the college libraries and geographers attending Oxford and Cambridge. Their colleges owned extensive collections of geographies, ranging from mathematical geographies, through chorographies, to descriptive geographies. The latter in turn ranged from compilations of voyages, through accounts of European countries, to descriptions of Africa and America, the Ottoman Empire, India and the Far East. The English student seemed to have a keen interest in descriptive geography. The work of Pierre d’Avity (1614) was part of the library collection of Christ Church, Oxford, which also held the India Orientalis by the de Bry brothers (1598-1606), a Latin edition of Münster’s Cosmographia (1550) as well as three copies of Purchas his Pilgrimage (1613). The Principal Navigations (1598-1600) edited by Richard Hakluyt as well as Jan Huyghen van Linschoten’s Discourse of Voyages (1598) could be read at Corpus Christi, where the students also could consult the Latin edition of Münster’s Cosmographia (1559), an augmented French translation of his Cosmographia (1575) and the Historiarum Indicarum by the Jesuit scholar Giovanni Maffei (1588). German editions of the Cosmographia (1544) could be found at Peterhouse and St. John’s Colleges in Cambridge. Both owned copies of Ramussio’s Delle Navigationi et viaggi (1550).24 Not surprisingly, “the geography that most interested undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge between 1580 and 1620 was not the dry mathematical tract but rather fanciful descriptions of faraway places and peoples, liberally sprinkled with tales of adventure and intrigue.”25 As we have seen in Chapter 3, the religious abnormalities and associated stories about Brahmanic promiscuity fitted this picture. They were far removed from the dry mathematical tract. The networks of geographers who taught at university offer another window into the popularity of descriptive geography. The scholars discussed in this Chapter wrote extensively on Indian affairs and many of them taught at university. The first cosmography in English to describe some countries in every continent was George Abbot’s A Briefe Description of the Whole World (1599), written for the use of his students at University College. John PrideFor a detailed overview of geography books owned by students, fellows and libraries at Oxford and Cambridge, see Appendix B in Lesley B. Cormack, Charting an Empire: Geography at the English Universities, 1580-1620 (London, 1997). 25 Ibid., 129-30. 24
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aux taught geography at Exeter College, Oxford. The outcome of his lectures can be found in Robert Stafford’s A Geographicall and Anthologicall Description of all the Empires and Kingdomes (1607). This small volume is of particular interest. Not only does it engage with mathematical geography but it also indicates that Pridaux’ lectures also covered what is called ethnography today: the manners, customs and government of nations, including descriptions of Vijayanagar, Gujarat and Calicut.26 Peter Heylyn taught descriptive geography at Magdalen Hall, and his Cosmographie (1652) offers a glimpse into the subjects taught at university. His lectures were combined in Microcosmus, or a Little Description of the Great World (1621). This work was augmented and issued as the Cosmographie (1652), with accounts of the Indian traditions and society, reprinted throughout the latter part of the seventeenth century, and right into the eighteenth century.27 A random selection of the sales catalogues of the personal libraries of the period furnishes further evidence of the popularity of the cosmographies and travel literature amongst the lesser known teachers and educated gentlemen of England and Scotland.28 The book auctions organized by the bookseller Edward Millington in places like Norfolk (1694) and Norwich (1693) also suggest that descriptive geography was not only part of the Arts curriculum: the reports of foreign cultures—distributed in the cosmographies and special geographies—were consumed by a broad range of political, religious and educational actors.29 The representational structure called ‘Hinduism’ today emerged in this archive of early-modern sources when both canonical representations of the Brahmins met. The wide distribution and popularity of these works guaranteed that this edifice became a permanent feature of the European understanding of India, long before the East India Company dreamt of extracting revenues or the Crown envisioned state formation in India. Robert Stafforde, A Geographicall and Anthologicall Description of all the Empires and Kingdomes etc. (London, 1607), 54. 27 Charles W. Withers and Robert J. Mayhew, “Rethinking ‘Disciplinary’ History,” 16. 28 The archbishop of Canterbury, John Tillotson (1630–1694), possessed several works that could be classified as cosmographies, with detailed information on Indian traditions and society. See the Bibliotheca Tillotsoniana: or A Catalogue of the curious Library of Dr. John Tillotson etc. (London, 1695). Also see the library of James Wemyss (ca. 1630-1696, the Principal of St. Leonard’s College, University of St. Andrews), as recorded in the Bibliotheca Vemiana: Or, A Catalogue of the Books Of the Late Reverend and Learned Dr. James Weems etc. (London, 1697). 29 Edward Millington, A catalogue of ancient and modern books … Which will be sold by auction etc. (London, 1694); and Edward Millington, A catalogue of Ancient and Modern Books … Which will be sold by Auction ... for the Entertainment and Diversion of the Gentry and Citizens of Norwich, etc. ([S.l.], 1693). 26
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5.2. The Indian Religion of the Priest in Continental Europe The German scholars are considered to be first amongst the western European intellectuals to take a direct interest in the Portuguese activities in the East. When European learning determined to grant India the privilege of historical progress and moved beyond the canon of classical anthropology, it turned first to Varthema’s Itinerario (1510). In consequence, the difference between India’s past and present was portrayed as an unfortunate development: the nation of proto-Christian Brachmanes had turned into a circle of crafty priests. In 1534, at the time that Michael Herr’s translation of Novus orbus was issued at Augsburg, and fourteen years after Johan Boemus’ Omnium gentium mores appeared in that turbulent city, the noble Brahmins met the crafty Brahmins in close textual proximity. This meeting took place at a time when Boemus’ collection was still reprinted in many cities. The image of the proto-Christian Brahmins retained its popularity, but coexisted with the distribution of a second composite image: the Brahmin as the cunning priest. While the collation of both imageries in a single text first appears arbitrary— without an attempt to discriminate between the past and the present—it soon develops into a standard outline of the history of Indian spirituality. The Brahmin Religion in German Cosmography Throughout the cultural history of Europe, various Christian factions reproduced the image of the Brahmin divine to elucidate that the most fundamental Christian principles transcended the particularity of direct Revelation. In 1569, for example, the Protestant thinker Joachim Camerarius issued his Latin translation of the Palladius. As we have seen, Camerarius engaged with classical testimonies to perennial (Christian) truths, and applauded the Brahmins as the followers of the ascetic life. His concerns are closely related to those of Sebastian Franck (1499-1542), another German reformer of the first generation. Sebastian Franck came into contact both with humanism and the Reformation while studying at Heidelberg. He moved to the Reformed party at Nüremberg in 1525 where he served as a minister. In his early chronicle of Turkey (Augsburg, 1530), prefaced by Martin Luther, Franck attempted to uplift the Europeans by holding up to them the mirror of the exemplary Turk. The implication was that true religion was possible at all times and places, even outside the geographical realm of Christendom. But Franck went be-
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yond the pre-Renaissance vision and even rejected the possibility of capturing the Word of God in the written word of the Bible. Though he shared in the critique against the Church of Rome, Franck thereby argued at the margins of the Reformation. He advanced a religion of the Spirit, implanted by God in the heart of humankind, which led him to dismiss the visible Church and set aside the particularity of Scripture in favour of a timeless and unarticulated Inner Word of God. For this reason, Franck has been called a sixteenthcentury spiritualist.30 In lieu of his emphasis on Scripture as the sole guide to salvation (sola scriptura), Luther dismissed him as a “Devil’s mouth.”31 Central to the spiritual branches of the Reformation, Franck bears witness to the stability of the analytical formats with which the diverse Christian theologies made sense of themselves and other traditions. Like Boemus (1520), he saw his most important work, the Weltbuch, Spiegel und Bildtnisz des Gantzen Erdtbodens (Book of the world, mirror and image of the entire globe; 1534), not only as a scholarly project but also as the edifying embodiment of his theological outlook. The course of human history and design of the world as outlined in the cosmographies was generally seen as the disclosure of the will of God, such that geography and theology were never far apart.32 Inspired by 2 Romans, 14–15, in which the Apostle Paul argued that the gentiles or heathens by nature adhered to the commandments of God, Franck concluded that the contemporary heathens were the descendants of the tribes that came down from the Patriarch Abraham. His marginal annotation says, “Gott hat sein volck allenthalb” (God has his people everywhere).33 Franck moved beyond the ahistorical method of his predecessors. In so doing, he incorporated ethnographic reports brought back from the newly discovered worlds. With reference to India, the empirical evidence came from a single source: Varthema’s Itinerario (1510). It is here that the noble Brahims first met their satanic counterparts.
30 Sebastian Franck, Das Gott das ainig ain, und höchstes güt … in aller menschen hertz sey etc. (Augsburg, 1534). For the larger theological context of Franck’s spiritualism, see the introduction in George H. Williams and Angel M. Mergal, eds., Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers (Westminster, 1957); and R. Emmet McLaughlin, “Sebastian Franck and Caspar Schwenckfeld: Two Spiritualist Viae,” in J. D. Müller, ed., Sebastian Franck (1499-1542) (Wiesbaden, 1993), 71-86. 31 See the entry on Sebastian Franck in The Encyclopædia Britannica, eleventh edition. 32 David H. Sacks, “Cosmography’s Promise and Richard Hakluyt’s World,” Early American Literature 44, no. 1 (2009): 161-178 [169]. 33 Sebastian Franck, Weltbuch, Spiegel und Bildtnisz des Gantzen Erdtbodens etc. (Tübingen, 1534), fol. iiii.
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The Brahmins continued to serve a useful purpose in early-modern Europe. The medieval image of the Brahmin divine was distributed with the advent of the printing press and circulated widely when the Reformation polemicists adopted a second Brahmin image in their fight against the Catholics. The medieval mode of representation was dispersed to the farthest corners of Europe by Johan Boemus (1520). Boemus relied on the classical accounts of Pliny and Strabo to outline the several orders in Indian society. Franck reproduced this account of the seven ‘estates’ verbatim in the German vernacular, and described the Brahmins with an emphasis on their simple way of life and adherence to the law of nature. Franck not only conceived of the Brahmins as a proto-Christian nation but explicitly located them within the Christian realm. His unbridled enthusiasm led Franck to write those annotations that grace the margins in the books of old: in the margin left from where Boemus wrote that the Brahmins were not given to idolatry is printed, “Der Bracmannorum Gotsdienst” (The Brahmin religion). Next to where the section starts we find, “Bracman[n]i ein Christen volck” (Brahmins, a Christian nation).34 When these Christian Bracmanni met Varthema’s Bramini the latter were also assimilated: though misguided, they also testified to the human search for the Christian God. Franck referenced Varthema’s report of the religion and customs of Calicut word for word, and repeated the theme of indulgences in the German title of his chapter on the Indian pilgrimage.35 The Bramini failed to elicit the praises previously directed at the Bracmanni. The spiritualist reformer stayed remarkably quiet about what happened to ‘the religion of the Brahmins’ in the absence of scriptural Revelation. What emerges when both modes of representation are placed abreast? This work will demonstrate that the result is an explicit prefiguration of the representational structure called ‘Hinduism’ today. Cosmographers like Franck and his like were convinced that the Brahmins had to be situated within the realm of Christendom. Whereas they had been Christian or proto-Christian at one point in history, they had since debased their religion into idolatry and ceremony. This vision of priestly debauchery enticed the nineteenth-century Orientalists to delve into India’s past and unveil its ‘unadulterated religion.’ This emphasis on Brahmin centrality also guides critical postcolonial scholarship on the colonial representations of India. As must be clear, the centrality of the Brahmins in European learning knows of a long history of interpretation.
34 35
Ibid., fols. cxij-cxcv. Ibid., fol. cciij.
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The Brahmin was an integral part of European culture, the anchor point from where Europe could discuss multiple customs and traditions, and integrate them into ‘the Indian religion of the priest.’ The city of Calicut was often represented as the seat of this priestly estate, just as Rome was the epicentre of a pan-European priesthood. In this context, Franck included a chapter on How far the Religion, Lifestyle, Customs, Laws and Clothing of Calicut Extend. He concluded that the Devil’s industry was not confined to the Malabar regions: everything that could be said about the religion and customs of Calicut was also applicable to “Cauul, Dabuli, Bathacala, Onor, Mangalor, Cannonor, Cucinco, Narsinga, Caicolon, Colon, etc.”36 While Franck (1534) was the first cosmographer to prefigure the representational structure delimited by both Brahmin images, he introduced ‘the Christian Brahmins’ and ‘crafty priests’ as if both existed contemporaneously. One year later, the reformed printer at Frankfurt, Christian Egenolf, again arbitrarily juxtaposed both imageries in his cosmography, or Chronica, Beschreibung und gemeyne Anzeyge, vonn aller Wellt (Chronica, a description and display of the entire world; 1535). Egenolf ’s portrayal of the “Bracmanni” was another summary narrative of Boemus’ work (1520). They were presented as a friendly nation, living in a commonwealth of egalitarianism and virtue. They neither cheated, nor lied, and had but one law: not to go against reason and nature.37 This was followed with a description of Calicut. The main part of the text concerned the evil customs of Calicut and its “Bramini,” entirely derived from Varthema’s narrative (1510).38 Another German publication in which both Brahmin figures coexisted early on is the Cosmographia Universalis (1544) by the Reformed Hebrew scholar, Sebastian Münster. In a lenghty preface, Münster presented the same outline of religious decline as did the Omnium gentium mores (1520). As with Boemus, Franck and Egenolf before him, Münster also reproduced the tales of medieval anthropology. His work became famous for its illustrations of the fabulous and monstrous nations in the East.39 The illustrations reproduced below (taken from the French translation of the Cosmographia by François de Belleforest, 1552) were widely distributed in multiple augmented editions Ibid., fol. cciij. Christian Egenolf, Chronica, Beschreibung und gemeyne anzeyge, Vonn aller Wellt etc. (Frankfurt, 1535), fol. xxx. 38 Ibid., fols. xxx-xxxi. 39 Sebastian Münster, Cosmographia. Beschreibüg aller Lender dürch Sebastianum etc. (Basel, 1544), fols. dcxxv-dcxxvij 36 37
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and translations of Münster’s work. Not surprisingly, Münster also abridged the legendary description of the Brahmins that can be found in Boemus’ work. His marginal annotation described them as “a righteous nation” [“Bragma[n] ni ein gerecht volck”].40 Again, Varthema’s Calicut report was reprinted in close textual proximity. In contrast with Franck and Egenolf, Münster demonstrated a greater historical awareness and chronologically discriminated between both modes of representation: He welcomed the opportunity to study “India in our times” [India zü unsern zeiten].41 Münster included another illustration of the deumo, probably based on the woodcuts by Jörg Breu. The Cosmographia gained immediate popularity and enjoyed this preeminent status for more than a century, running up to forty-six editions in six different languages.42
5. Monstrous races in Münster’s La Cosmographie Universellse, trans. F. de Belleforest (1552).
Ibid., fol. dcxxix. Ibid., fol., dcxxxij. 42 Margaret T. Hodgen, “Sebastian Muenster (1489-1552): A Sixteenth-Century Ethnographer,” Osiris 11, (1954), 507. The second German edition was published in 1545, followed by editions in 1556, 1564, 1578, 1588, 1592, 1598 and 1628. Münster worked on the Latin translation, which was issued at Basel in 1550, and followed by another Latin edition at Cologne in 1575. The French translation was produced by François de Belleforest, issued at Basel in 1552, and followed by a heavily augmented edition at Paris in 1575. The Italian translation appeared at Basel in 1558. The Cosmographia reached as far as what is now called the Czech Republic: a Bohemian translation appeared at Prague in 1554. 40 41
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6. Idol of Calicut in Münster’s La Cosmographie Universellse, trans. F. de Belleforest (1552).
With the assistance of Reformed scholarship, ‘the religion of Calicut’ made a strong impression on the conception of India. The significance of their choice of language is that they visualized an audience in the vernacular. The city of Calicut was now readily associated with a satanic priesthood. Together with the medieval mode of representation, this second imagery soon delineated a remarkably stable outline of ‘the Indian religion of the priest.’ By the second half of the sixteenth century, Calicut was recognized as the principal city of India and the seat of ‘the Brahmin priesthood.’ In this capacity it featured as one of the few Asian cities in a multivolume collection (in French and Latin) by the Catholic cleric, Georg Braun from Cologne, known as De civitates orbis terrarum (Theatre of the cities of the world; 1574-1617). This massive compendium contains numerous town map engravings by Franz Hogenberg from Mechelen, primarily of European cities, and detailed pen drawings of their inhabitants, reminiscent of Münster’s Cosmographia (1544). Braun drew from the Venetian trader Alvise da Cà Da Mosto and Ludovico di Varthema in order to describe Calicut, the only item on India that contained more than simply a brief reference to religion. Although he omitted the description of the deumo, the references to satanic sacrifices performed by ‘the priests’ (“prestres Brammiens”), Calicut’s matriarchal system and the nup-
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tial practices or ‘priestly obscenities’ associated with them, reappeared again.43 It suggests that Varthema’s report and the associated imageries remained influential in the seventeenth-century German cosmographies. We find the image of the crafty Brahmins also in Gottfried Schultzens’ Welt-Beschreibung (Description of the world; 1656). The German scholar abridged Varthema’s report, yet did not fail to include the alleged nuptial duties of the Brahmins and the account of their deumo, reinforcing the ancient connection between idolatry and promiscuity.44 About three decades later, the German polyhistor, Eberhard Happel, famous for his Baroque collections of biological, historical and anthropological curiosities, published his Mundus mirabilis tripartitus (The marvelous world in three parts; 1687-89). This German compendium also contains an account of Calicut, again taken from Varthema.45 Whereas Happel noted the existence of diverse Indian sects and discussed the Gujarati Banyans along with the Gentiven (associated with the Kingdom of Golconda), he nevertheless saw the Brahmins as the overarching priesthood, or the priests of the Devil.46 In a similar fashion, his Thesaurus Exoticorum (1688), a lavishly illustrated assortment of curiosities, described the nuptial rites that ‘the Brahmin priests’ performed at the court of the king of Calicut.47 They were likewise the priests of the Gujarati Banyans.48 Attempts to arrive at an ethnographic synthesis that covered the entire subcontinent—suggesting the existence of a unified, pan-Indian religion— were fueled by the fact that the Samorin or king of Calicut often was identified as the high priest of the Indian religion.49 In his French translation of Aristotle’s Politics (1568), Loys le Roy alluded to the pope in Rome and to the king of Calicut when he discussed the strained relations between the religious and temporal powers. The king of Calicut was the chief of religion
Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, Theatre des cités dv monde, vol. 1 (Cologne, 1574), n.p. Gottfried Schultzens, Gottfried Schultzens neu-augirte Welt-Beschreibung (Lübeck, 1656), 211, and 266. Another German edition of this work was issued at Frankfurt in 1661. 45 Eberhard Werner Happel, Everhardi Guerneri Happelii Mundus Mirabilis Tripartitus, Oder Wünderbare Welt, in einer kurtzen Cosmographia fürgestellet, etc., vol. 2 (Ulm, 1687-89), 550. 46 Ibid., 603-04. 47 Eberhard Werner Happel, Thesaurus Exoticorum; Oder Eine mit Aussländischen Raritäten und Geschichten Wohlversehene Schatz-Kammeretc. (Hamburg, 1688), 8. 48 Ibid., 11. For seventeenth-century German reproductions of Varthema’s account of the customs of Calicut, also see Erasmus Francisci, Erasmi Francisci Ost- und West-Indischer wie auch Sinesischer Lust- und Stats- Garten etc. (Nürnberg, 1668), 1476-77. 49 See, for instance, Fernão Lopes de Castanheda, l’Histoire des Indes de Portugal etc., trans. N. de Grouchy (Paris, 1553), fol. 31. 43 44
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and found himself on a higher plane of dignity than the other kings.50 As late as 1733, the French Jesuit traveller and scholar, Joseph-François Lafitau, indentified Calicut as “the seat of the priesthood and empire” [Calicut, qui étoit alors le siege du Sacerdoce & de l’Empire].51 This alleged priesthood united local traditions and customs of diverse regions into a pan-Indian religion. At the same time, the Renaissance scholars continued to recapitulate the stories about their proto-Christian predecessors, but now in the sections on ancient India. The juxtaposition of both theological images into a historical profile of ‘the Indian religion’ consolidated into a stable and coherent representational structure (subsequently called ‘Hinduism’) that would be widely reproduced in the cosmographies of the period. The Brahmin Religion in the Low Countries Together with the Latin translation of Ptolemy’s Geography (1410), European overseas exploration fueled the creation of maps and atlasses. The famous Flemish cartographer Jodocus Hondius (1563-1612) purchased the plates of the equally acclaimed Flemish cartographer Gerard Mercator (1512-94) and reissued them in his own work, resulting in the famous Mercator-Hondius Atlas. Starting with the Latin edition of 1606, at least fifty reprints were issued in the major European vernaculars. The work contains a General Description of the East-Indies, derived from Megasthenes, Pliny and Solinus. The Flemish cartographer reproduced the classical outline of the seven-fold division of Indian society and represented the Indians as a righteous nation, without the need for laws: they were civil and ingenious.52 The theme of the noble heathens was repeated, but in this instance, with a focus on the ancient Gymnosophists, who administered the spiritual functions, lived an austere, solitary life and were called “Brachmanni.”53 The author combined both Brahmin figures in the same time frame and noted that after these Brachmanni abstained for some time from all kinds of wickedness, they “maye (as it [w] ere) by priviledge defloure Virgins, and committ wath riots they list.”54 50 Loys Le Roy in Aristotle, Les Politiques d’Aristote, Esquelles est monstre la science de gouverner le genre humain en toutes especes d’estats publics etc., trans. L. Le Roy (Paris, 1568), 378-79. 51 Joseph François Lafitau, Histoire des Découvertes et Conquestes des Portugais dans le Nouveau Monde (Paris, 1733), vol. 1: 104. 52 Gerard Mercator and Jodocus Hondius, Gerardi Mercatoris et I. Hondii. Atlas or A Geographicke description of the Regions, Countries and Kingdomes of the world, trans. H. Hexham, vol. 2 (Amsterdam, 1636), 420. 53 Idem. 54 Idem.
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Other examples demonstrate how both Brahmin imageries were collated into a unified outline of religion. In 1633, the Dutch cartographer Jan Willemsz. Blaeu (1596-1673) produced a famous atlas—Le Theatre du Monde— which ran through multiple enlarged editions, and included letterpress on several regions in India.55 Blaeu’s augmented Atlas Major was issued in eleven large volumes in 1632 and contains additional chapters on the Indian kingdoms. Though intended as an atlas, this exquisite publication is a work of descriptive geography illustrated with maps. According to Blaeu, the spiritual geography of India was characterized by multiple traditions, in which every family worshipped its own idol. But above all, they adored the Devil, the principle behind every form of idolatry. Once again, resurrecting Varthema’s Calicut report, the cartographer described the chief statue of the Indians, in much the same way as the Calicut deumo was portrayed in the contemporary illustrations, including his papal tiara.56 Blaeu clarified that those who had them entertain such abuses were the Brahmins, the successors of the ancient Brachmanes, whose ways of living had changed over the course of time. They were the ministers of idol temples, who governed the spiritual realm, and at times the temporal realm of kingdoms.57 The spiritual realm was transformed from a proto-Christian into a post-Christian space: “They worship a God called Parabram, the perfect principle of everything and creator of heaven and earth. Yet, they muddle this into an infinite number of fables to abuse the vulgar masses and say that He created three sons to govern the world, which are of one nature and one divinity.” Blaeu added that “their three-fold thread demonstrates a belief in
Joan Blaeu, Le Theatre du Monde ou Nouvel Atlas Contenant les Chartes et Descriptions De tous les Païs de la terre etc., vol. 2 (Amsterdam, 1633-40), fol. 84. For the works of Blaeu, see C. Koeman, “Life and Works of Willem Janszoon Blaeu. New Contributions to the Study of Blaeu, Made during the Last Hundred Years,” Imago Mundi 26 (1972): 9-16. 56 Joan Blaeu, Le Grand Atlas, ou Cosmographie Blaviane, en laquelle est exactement descritte la terre, la mer, et le ciel, vol. 11 (Amsterdam, 1663), 181: “Or bien qu’en tous ces faux dieux ils honorent le diable, principe & derniere fin de l’Idolatrie, toutefois non contans de cela, ils l’adorent encor en la propre figure que les peintres ont accoustumé de luy donner. Car ils le representent avec deux visages, l’un à la teste, & l’autre au bas du ventre, avec des cornes en tous deux, des griffes aux pieds & aux mains, & la barbe d’un bouc. Mais afin de le faire paroistre quelque chose de grand, ils luy couvrent la teste d’une tiare, ou mitre à trois couronnes, semblable à celle du Pape, & le representent assis sur une belle chair.” 57 Ibid., 182: “Ceux qui les entretiennent en cet abus sont les Brachmanes, ou Bramins, qui se nomment eux mesmes Baman, ou Bamana, & sont successeurs des anciens Brachmanes; veu qu’encor que leurs façons de vivre ayent changé avec le temps, toutefois ils sont Ministres des Temples des Idoles, & gouvernent le Spirituel parmy les Payens, & mesme le temporel de quelques Royaumes.” 55
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the Trinity.”58 As such, the evil Brahmins were still aware of the Triune God of the New Testament theology: India had moved from a proto-Christian into a post-Christian space. This outline of a unified ‘Indian religion’ corresponds with the nineteenthcentury Orientalist representation, and it recurs in a large variety of learned and popular sources. This is hardly surprising: both Brahmin imageries that defined the outer limits of this structure were widely distributed in Renaissance Europe. The beautifully illustrated works of the Dutch theologian and historian Arnoldus Montanus were key in this process. Montanus (1625-83) is known for his books on the New World and his exquisite and lavishly decorated Baroque works of the Dutch embassies to China and Japan, the Atlas Chinensis (1671) and the Atlas Japannensis (1670), issued in Dutch, English. French and German editions, with an English translation by the Scottish cartographer John Ogilby (1671). In his previous work, entitled De Wonderen van’t Oosten (Marvels of the East; 1651), Montanus described the East Indies on the basis of Portuguese and Dutch travel narratives. This work is divided into two books. The first synthesizes Dutch views of the East Indies; the second deals extensively with Dutch explorers and voyages, containing extracts of logbooks and diaries. Montanus was an exponent of the sustained influence of classical anthropology on the European understanding of India. He recapitulated Strabo’s account of India and drew from Pliny to describe the wise men in India, the Brachmanes and Germanes.59 At the time that Mandeville’s fictional travel report was reprinted in several European languages (an English edition appeared at London in 1657; a Dutch edition at Antwerp in 1677), Montanus provided a fascinating interpretation of those whom he called “Brachmanis.” According to the Dutch historian, the latter saw death as the transition to a happy life. They believed that God encompassed His creation. They also believed in the beginning and end of the world, in the immortality of the soul and in the Final Judgment.60 When Montanus thus wrote that the Brahmins Idem: “Ils adorent un Dieu nommé Parabram, principe de toutes choses, tout parfait, createur du ciel & de la terre; mais il mélent une infinité de fables pour abuser le pauvre vulgaire, disans qu’il a engendré trois fils establis pour gouverner le monde, qui n’ont toutefois qu’une nature, & qu’une divinité. Leur escharpe à trois cordons monstre cette creance de la Trinité.” 59 Arnoldus Montanus, De Wonderen Van’t Oosten, ofte de Beschrijving en Oorlogs-daden Van Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien etc. (Rotterdam, 1654 [1651]), 22-24. Also see the augmented 1680 edition, which appeared under a new title (Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien; Amsterdam) and further included the Dutch travel reports by Philippus Baldaeus and Jan Huyghen van Linschoten. 60 Ibid., 25-26. 58
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had sounder opinions than the ancient Greeks, and also added that their way of life could shame a European Christian, he became truly poetic: When I cast my eyes on your forests and at your tables void of excess, your garments void of vanity, your manners void of politics, your traffic without dishonesty, your life without frivolousness and your words without emptiness; when I turn myself to the caves of the earth, where you find an abiding home in life and a grave after death; in which you seek for knowledge and holiness without mundane concerns—such examples make me proclaim that at the end of world, within the musings of blind heathendom, burns the brightest sun of virtue that extinguishes the tepid light of the Christians, and lo, brings imperfection close to perfection, if only its rays were lit by the salvific fire of godly knowledge.61
The Brahmin divine is one of Europe’s deepest and most recurrent images of the East in general and of India in particular. However, as a proponent of revealed religion, Montanus did not fail to observe that the Brahmins had been unfortunate: their rays of light were not lit by the fire of direct Revelation. Guided by nature, they did not have access to the Revelation manifested in Christ. In his subsequent description of contemporary India, the priests were still held in high esteem by the Indians, but no longer by Montanus: some of the contemporary ‘priests’ abstained from sins for a period of time, only to deflower virgins, cohort with other women and perform all sorts of wickedness after their release from abstinence.62 The Brahmin Religion in French Cosmography The works we have consulted so far point in the following direction: Europe not only understood local Indian traditions and customs as manifestations of religion but rather as Christianity gone astray. A genealogical connection could now be drawn between two theoretical entities, combining both BrahIbid., 26-27: “Als ick mijn oogen na u Bosschen henen went, en u Tafelen sonder overdaet, u kleedingh sonder hoovaerdy, u ommegang sonder staet-sucht, u handel sonder bedrog u leven sonder lichtvaerdigheyt, u sinnen sonder ledigheyt, aensie: als ick na de kuylen der Aerde my heenen keer, in dewelcke ghy levendigh, een nimmer vervallend’ huys vindt, en doodt, een graf-stede; in dewelke ghy, buyten alle sorgh en Wereldtsche bekommeringen, de wetenschappen en heyligheyt na-jaeght. Dan doen my sulcke voor-beelden uyt-roepen: aen het eynde der aerde in de gemoederen van het blinde Heydendom brant so een heldere Son van deugden, die het flauwe licht der Christenen verdooft: ja de welke in de algemeene onvolmaecktheyt aldernaest aen de volmaecktheydt soude komen: indien sijn stralen aengesteken waren van het saligmakende vyer der Goddelijke kennis.” 62 Ibid., 6-7: “Want soo haest de gesette dag van inbinding verstreken is, worden sy als met een vrydom begiftigt, om, na haer wel gevalle[n], Maegden te schenden, by Vrouwe[n] te slapen, en allerley schelmstucken uyt te rechten.” 61
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min images into a representational structure that maps onto the two-tiered model of religion shared by diverse Christian theologies. This method of combining both images finds resonance in French cosmographies of the period. In this context, it is of interest to note that François de Belleforest, the historian of Henry III of France, rendered Münster’s Cosmographia (1544) into French in 1552. Belleforest also wrote L’Histoire Universelle du Monde (Universal history of the world; 1570) and interpolated extensive chapters on contemporary India in the second French edition of the Cosmographia (1575). For the first three books of his Histoire Universelle, the French historian relied heavily on Boemus’ Omnium gentium mores (1520). The preface repeats Boemus’ outline of the modes of worship practised in the world. The worst, Belleforest argued, could be found at Calicut and Mexico, where the Devil made the people worship an image of himself.63 The section on India begins with a detailed geographical outline of the subcontinent. Belleforest continued with the ancient Gymnosophists, and summarized the fictional letters by Dindimus, still relevant because of the extraordinarily popular Collatio correspondence. As such, the description of ‘the religion of the Brachmanes’ tracked the pre-Renaissance formulation: they were not given to sacrifices and served God in prayer and spiritual service.64 Belleforest wrote in the margin, “Pure religion of the Brachmanes, if nurtured by the knowledge of Christ like it has been since.”65 Belleforest testified to the kind of generalizations the Europeans would strive for, and suggested a genealogical connection between the present-day ‘priests’ and the Brahmins of yesteryears. In this context, he raised the contemporary Brahmins to the echelons of a pan-Indian priesthood. Another of his marginalia explains: “Still today in the entire country of India are the priests called Bramines.”66 The pilgrims at Calicut worshipped an idol that wore the papal tiara, and thus, bore witness to the manner in which the Devil mocked Christianity. The French historian reproduced Varthema’s report of the “images Sathaniques” and explained that the crafty ministers of Satan are in fact related to the proto-Christian Brahmins: “The priests retain the name of Bramins from these ancient Bracmanes, who are more saintly and more religious than these soiled and cursed idolaters.”67 François de Belleforest, L’Histoire Universelle du Monde (Paris, 1570), preface. Ibid., fol. 50. 65 Idem: “Religion pure des Brachmanes, si la cognaissance de Iesuschrist les eust abreuvez comme elle a depuis.” 66 Ibid., fol. 49: “Encor à present en tout le pays Indien les Prestres sont apellez Bramines.” 67 Idem: “Les sacrificateurs qui retiennent le nom de Bramins de ces ancie[n]s Bracmanes plus sains & religieux que ces souïllez & maudits idolatres.” Also see fol. 58. 63 64
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Belleforest also interpolated extensive sections on Gujarat, Calicut, Orissa, Vijayanagar and Bengal in the second French edition of Münster’s Cosmographia (1575). Deploying a transhistorical template of paganism, he classified the Indian traditions together with the traditions of Greco-Roman antiquity. On the basis of Varthema’s report, Belleforest compared the Indian sacrifices with similar practices in ancient Greece and Egypt. Christainity’s successful ascendancy in these regions, Belleforest wrote, forced the Devil to relocate to India.68 The pilgrimage to Calicut is described as “Le pardon general entre les Idolatres” (The general pardon of the idolaters). The oil with which priests anoint the pilgrims is compared with the holy water in Catholic churches. This is how the historian explains the entire event: the fact that it takes place on the twenty-fifth of December could not be without theological significance. According to Belleforest, ‘the Indian priests’ took the opportunity to incorporate in their religion festivals that were already honoured by the people, that is, the birth of Christ.69 The historian beautified with great imagination the sources he made use of. The temple of Calicut is now made into the epicentre of the inner circle of hell, from where its satanic religion spread amidst the phosphorous fumes of priestly corruption. Indeed, the city of Calicut had been transformed into the Oriental sister city of the papal metropolis, the seat of sacerdotal power. According to Belleforest, the Brahmins were priests, not only of Calicut but of all the regions documented: Gujarat, the Malabar littoral and Vijayanagar. The people were diverse, as were their ceremonies, but the engine of priestcraft transcended these variations: they enjoyed the same priests, responsible for the defects of Christianity amongst them. All the idols were but adaptations of the deumo of Calicut, “as in this respect they all are similar in their belief.”70 Another cosmography that unites both Brahmin figures was issued by Belleforest’s contemporary, the royal cosmographer André Thevet (1502-90). Thevet had served in the French colony in Brazil before becoming the Chaplain to the Catholic queen consort Catherine de Medici. He wrote in his Cosmographie Universelle (Universal cosmography; 1575) that the people in the Indies still sought the Creator. The historian was familiar with the older literary traditions, as becomes clear from his reading of Strabo, Pliny and Münster. Thevet also drew a connection between the mythical nation of noble 68 François de Belleforest in Sebastian Münster, La Cosmographie Universelle de tout le Monde, trans. F. de Belleforest (Paris, 1575), 1629-30 . 69 Ibid.,1631. 70 Ibid., 1713: “Car en cet endroit touts sont semblables en croyance.”
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Brahmins and a corrupted, pan-Indian estate of priests.71 He reproduced the canonical description of the deumo verbatim, which comes to show just how Varthema’s narrative had come to live an active life outside the Itinerario, detached from any reference to the original author himself.72 In other words, the Brahmin imagery that traces to medieval legend was not simply reproduced in Christian theologies but also in the scholarly disciplines, where it was combined with the equally theological image of the crafty priest into a representational structure, which maps onto the bifurcated model of ‘Hinduism’ known from eighteenth and nineteenth-century Orientalist discourse. The licentiousness of ‘the Indian priesthood’ received an enormous amount of publicity in seventeenth-century Europe.73 Both Brahmin images were henceforth continuously combined into a unified structure of the history of Indian spirituality, not only on the European Continent but also in English cosmographies of the period.
5.3. The Indian Religion of the Priest in England The same stereotypes were thus repeated, embellished and represented as bare ethnographic facts in a large amount of geographical and historical scholarship, throughout the seventeenth century and well into the eighteenth century. In English learning, we find the clergyman Donald Lupton writing his Emblems of Rarities (1636), a wide-ranging collection of items covering history, geography and customs. Lupton reproduced both canonical descriptions of the Brahmins, the first formulation being inspired by Boemus’ Omnium gentium mores (1520), representing the Brahmins as living in a common-
71 André Thevet, La Cosmographie Universelle d’André Thevet Cosmographe du Roy (Paris, 1575), fols. 381-82: “Ils mangent de toute viande au contraire de ceux de l’isle de Hermites, sauf de la chair de la beste Matath, qui semble à une Vache, leur esta[n]t ainsi deffendu par leurs Prestres, qu’ils appellent Beth-gatz, & les Modernes Braquins, retenans encor, comme I’estime, le nom, ou en appochans de pres, de ceux, qui le temps passé s’appelloient Brachmanez, lesquels assistent és temples, & sont les sacrifices des Dieux.“ Also see fol. 383. 72 Ibid., fol. 404. Also see fol. 392. Thevet also associated ritual bathings in the Ganges with the Christian practice of baptism. Much like Belleforest and others, he explained the Indian customs as relics of an age marked by the universal prevailance of Christianity. 73 See the multi-volume collection by Urbain Chevreau, Histoire du Monde, vol. 5 (The Hague, 1698), 171-72. The account of the Brahmins copulating with lay women was also extrapolated to cover the customs of Gujarat. See the cosmography by French greographer Nicolas Sanson: A Geographical Description of the four parts of the World, trans. R. Blome (London, 1670), 58.
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wealth of virtue.74 After his account of dragons, griffons and monstrous races, Lupton arrived at the famous mart of India and repeated the sensational details about Calicut, its customs, its ‘priesthood’ and their satanic religion.75 Nearly two decades later, Samuel Clarke, a pastor of the Church of Christ in Bennet Finck, wrote A Geographicall Description of all the Countries in the known World (1657). The pastor provided descriptions of the city of Calicut and the Malabar Coast, Vijayanagar and the Choromandel Coast. This is how he reproduced the canonical account of the temple at Calicut: The chappel where their grand Idol sits is covered, and about three yards high : the wooden entrance is ingraven with infernal shapes : within their beloved Priapus is imperiously enthronized upon a brasen Mount : his head hath a resplendent Diadem, from whence issue four great Rams horns : his eyes squint : his mouth is wide, from whence branch four Monstrous Tusks : his nose is flat : his beard like the Sun beams, of an affrighting aspect; his hands are like the claws of a Vulture; his thighs and legs big, and hairy; his feet, and tail resemble a Munkies: Other Temples, have other Pagods, ugly all, yet all differ in invention.76
The pastor improved upon his predecessors when he wrote that the Brahmins not only deflowered the queen but also “have the maiden heads of all that are married.” He concluded with a reference to the alleged sacerdotal tendency to usurp the civil power: the Brahmins “are couragious and politick.”77 The English were probably not much surprised. After all, another cosmography of the period by the hand of George Meriton (1671) explained that fidelity was not to be expected in India, and especially not amongst the Bengalis: “They are most subtil and wicked People, and are esteemed the worst slaves in all India; for that they are all Thieves, and the Women Whores; although this fault is common through all India, no place excepted.”78 This ethnographic insight was produced at a time when the East India Company was still dependent upon the hospitality of the Indian rulers. In 1683, the cartographer Richard Blome issued his famous Cosmography and Geography. The second part of this geographical work was derived from the French cartographer Nicolas Sanson. The author described the principle doctrines of Donald Lupton, Emblems of Rarities: Or Choyce Observations out of worthy Histories of many remarkable passages, etc. (London, 1636), 268-71. 75 Ibid., 300-08. 76 Samuel Clarke, A Geographicall Description Of all the Countries In the known World etc. (London, 1657), 29. Another edition of this work was issued at London in 1671. 77 Ibid., 28-29. 78 George Meriton, A geographical Description of the World etc. (London, 1671), 199. Enlarged editions of this work were issued in London in 1674 and 1679. 74
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the Gujarati Banyans in familiar terms: they believed that there is a God who created the world, yet also maintained that the Devil was created by God to govern the world, to which end they worship the Devil.79 The Brahmins were given the charge of all the women when their husbands undertook a journey. When the ladies married, not only the future queen but every girl was “brought to the Braman, and he is earnestly requested to enjoy the first fruits of her, without which they think the marriage is not blest, and for so doing he hath gifts presented him according to the qualities of the persons.”80 Other references to their deumo or Devil of Calicut can be found in a large variety of seventeenth-century English works on geography.81 Critical histories of the field of geography point out its connection with the politics of empire.82 Nevertheless, the history of cosmography suggests that its ethnographic tools were not informed by imperialist concerns, but rather by the theological struggles that defined the issues of the day. A lucid manifestation of this bias can be found in the Cosmographie by the Church of England clergyman, Peter Heylyn (1599-1662). Combining his lectures at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, this work was considerably influential and ran through multiple editions, released in London in 1652, 1657, 1666, 1670, 1674, 1682 and finally, 1703. During the battle over ceremonies that rocked the Church of England under Archbishop William Laud, Heylyn reconstructed the canonical representations of ‘the Indian religion’ brick by brick, within the strict boundaries of both Brahmin imageries outlined above. The imaginary Brahmin priesthood that graces the pages of the Cosmographie traces to the ancient Gymnosophists, as Heylyn wrote—yet seems to have been literally reproduced from the Mercator-Hondius Atlas (1636).83 Be that as it may, Heylyn added a fairly original paragraph on the contemporary ‘Indian priests,’ describing them in rather unpleasant terms:
Richard Blome, Cosmography and Geography in two Parts etc. (London, 1683), 275. Idem. 81 See, for example, Robert Morden, Geography rectif ied, or, A Description of the World (London, 1693 [1688]), 423; and Robert Stafforde, A Geographicall and Anthologicall Description of all the Empires and Kingdomes etc. (London, 1607), 53-54. 82 Anne Godlewska and Neil Smith, Geography and Empire (Cambridge, MA, 1994); and Lesley B. Cormack, Charting an Empire: Geography at the English Universities. 83 Peter Heylyn, Cosmographie in foure Bookes. Contayning the Chorographie & Historie of the whole World, vol. 4 (London, 1652), 214-15. For Heylyn’s theological profile, see Robert Mayhew, “”Geography is Twinned with Divinity”: The Laudian Geography of Peter Heylyn,” Geographical Review 90, no. 1 (2000): 18-34. 79 80
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To these Gymnosophists, or Brachmans, the Bramines do now succeed, both in place and authority; but differ from them most extremely in point of learning, and the civilities of their lives: these Bramines being the most impure, libidinous, and sensuall beasts in all the Countrey; privileged with the first nights lodging of every Bride, which when sated with their filthy lust, they sell, or trafick with, to strangers; serving as Stallions to old men, and as Pandars to young; so flesh’d in wickedness, and ignorant of all good letters, that they have nothing of a man but the voice and shape.84
As we have seen, Samuel Clarke (1657) called the statue at Calicut ‘Priapus,’ a reference to the Greek fertility god, noted for his permanently erect penis, which gave rise to the medical term priapism. The practices of ritual defloration were a popular trope in the early-modern cosmographies and tied up nicely with the theological understanding of idolatry. Peter Heylyn reproduced and combined the Calicut-motif with a second descriptive trend about the so-called defloration of virgins. He first described the idol of the Malabarians as it was represented in the canonical illustrations that derive from Varthema: seated upon a throne and crowned with a diadem, with four horns on its head, from its mouth four tusks, and with hands like claws.85 The author reproduced the description of the priests who deprived the adolescent girls of their virginity, yet also recapitulated another trope popular in Europe’s sensational tales of Indian social mores: Unto this Pagode [idol], or his Priest, they offer the virginity of all their daughters: the Pagode having in the place of his privy parts a Bodkin of gold and silver, upon which the Bride (married most commonly at ten or twelve years of Age) is forcibly set; the sharpness of it being such, that it forceth out the blood in great abundance; and if she prove with child that year, it is said to be of his begetting, and the more esteemed.86
The imagery of ritual deflorations by means of the Shiva-Linga was a permanent fixture in cosmographies and travel reports of the the period and generally related to the Greek priapus tradition. The trope of ritual defloration by the lingam was already reproduced by the Portuguese traveller Duarte Barbosa (ca. 1516-18) but might have entered the European imagination via the thirteenth-century travels of Marco Polo.87 Heylyn took it verbatim from Ibid., 215. Ibid., 227. 86 Idem. 87 Marco Polo, “Dry boecken van den Morghenlanden, beschreven door Marcus Pauwels,” in Die Nieuwe Weerelt der Landtschappen ende Eylanden etc., ed. S. Grynaeus, trans. C. Ablijn (Antwerp, 1563), xciij. 84 85
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the seventeenth-century travel report by Thomas Herbert (1634), who had himself reproduced it from the report by the Dutch traveller Jan Huyghen van Linschoten (1596).88 Heylyn now combined this trope of ritual defloration with the canonical representation of the Calicut deumo. Finally, the notion of a primeval religion, implanted by the Christian God in the heart of humankind, informed his description of Vijayanagar: The People, in Religion Gentiles, so worshipping one God, as the Lord of all, which is taught them by the light of nature, that they join the Devil or their Pagodes in Commisssion with him, whereto induced by the perswasion of their beastly Bramines, who thereout suck no small advantage.89
Another work that contributed to the development of this extraordinary stable discourse was produced by the German translator, Jodocus Crull, who had settled in England. Writing on the occasion of Tsar Peter’s visit to London, Crull issued a two-volume compilation on The Ancient and Present State of Muscovy (1698). This treatise provides descriptions of the countries neighbouring the regions of the Tsar, including Gujarat. Crull observed that the Brahmins were esteemed amongst the Gujarati Banyans “upon the account of their austerity of Life” and “extraordinary Abstinence.”90 In other words, this account of the Brahmins traces to the idiom of the priestly ideal that had informed many of the spiritual reform movements in Europe. His subsequent description of hymeneal rites—originally associated with the Malabar regions, but now equally apllied to Gujarat—led Crull to argue that their outward display of spirituality had become nothing but a cloak to gain authority and delude the masses. 88 Compare Thomas Herbert, A relation of some yeares travaile begunne anno 1626 etc. (London, 1634), 41, with Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, Semper Eadem. Iohn Huighen van Linschoten his Discours of Voyages into ye Easte & West Indies, trans. P. William (London, 1598), 64. For French travel narratives that reproduce the custom of ritual defloration by the Shiva Linga, see Jean Mocquet, Travels and voyages into Africa, Asia, and America, the East and West Indies (London, 1696), fol. 120. For Dutch travel narratives, see Wouter Schouten, Wouter Schoutens Oost-Indische Voyagie, etc. (Amsterdam, 1676), book 2: 260. This theme was reproduced in many cosmographies of the period. For English cosmography, see Richard Blome, Cosmography and Geography in two Parts etc., 283. For German works, see Erasmus Francisci, Neu-polirter Geschicht-Kunst- und Sitten-Spiegel ausländischer Völcker etc. (Nürnberg, 1670), 936; and Sebastian Münster, Cosmographia, Das ist: Beschreibund der gantzen Welt (Basel, 1628), 1568. For Dutch works, see Isaak Commelin, ed., Begin ende Voortgangh van de Vereenighde Nederlandtsche Geoctroyeerde Oost-Indische Compagnie, vol. 2 (Amsterdam, 1646), 33. 89 Heylyn, Cosmographie in foure Bookes, 232 (emphasis mine). 90 Jodocus Crull, The antient and present State of Muscovy, containing A Geographical, Historical, and Political Account of all those Nations and Territories under the Jurisdiction of the present Czar etc. (London, 1698), 227.
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Crull’s work makes for a perfect example of how a stereotypical imagery—that ultimatitely traces to the Paesi (1507)—was transformed into a ready-made platform on which the forces of priestcraft were played out. He wrote that after the bride was “purified in her lower parts, the Bridegroom may enter without danger.”91 This is how he explained the groom’s vigilance: “the cunning Priests have cajoled the poor simple People into a belief, that the Marriage could never be sufficiently Blessed, unless the Braman has initiated the Bride with a Sanctifying touch.”92 The Brahmins were rewarded for their efforts, which led Crull to conclude: “Thus the crafty Priest, by imposing upon the simplicity of his Flock, improves his natural Tallent to his utmost Advantage, satisfies at one stroak both his Appetite and Purse, and sells his Benevolence at an excessive price, which a Layman would be glad to bestow generously, for nothing.”93 The ancient theological connection between idolatry and promiscuity did not falter. The voyeurism that characterizes travel writing and cosmographies of the period bear witness to the reproduction of the same images to monotony, and an almost obsessive preoccupation with India’s sexual mores and the Indian women. European scholarship displays remarkably strong misgivings about Indian women, often described in terms of promiscuous shrews. That the women who did not burn themselves on the pyre of their husbands were looked upon with suspicion in Indian society was a trope directly derived from Marco Polo’s thirteenth-century travel narrative.94 Moreover, their knowledge of herbs and spices impressed the European explorers. One of the first travellers to combine the trope of Marco Polo’s travels with their medicinal dexterity into a perpetual narrative of suspicion (the Indian women used a herb to murder their men and commit adultery, which is why the practice of sati was instituted) was the Dutch explorer, Jan Huyghen van Linschoten (1596).95 Crull embellished these imageries with a great deal of imagination. In his description of Gujarat, the Brahmin was allowed to continue his affair with the bride after the mariage, and “remains a standing Friend of the Family.” If a stress-ridden priest happened to be “disabled to do his Office by Ibid., 227. Ibid., 227-28. 93 Ibid., 228. 94 Marco Polo, “Dry boecken van den Morghenlanden,” xciij. 95 Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, Iohn Huighen van Linschoten his Discours of Voyages, 60, 71. For German travel reports that reproduced this account, see Jürgen Andersen, De Beschryving der Reizen van Georg Andriesz; deur Oostindiën en d’Eilanden etc., trans. J. Glazemaker (Amsterdam, 1670), 16. 91 92
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his long fasting,” the women revived his spirit “with powerful Restoratives, at which the Indian Women are the most expert in the whole World, as they are very skilful to send their Husbands upon certain occasions, to the enjoyments of the other World.”96 This reference to their medicinal skills resonates with the explanation of sati provided by Linschoten and other travellers. Crull was inspired by the sati report in the voyages of Charles Dellon (1685), which he translated into English the same year that this work on the Tsar was released (1698).97 Geography mirrored theology, and this dynamic was also expressed in Crull’s description of ‘the Banyan religion,’ once again projecting an account that previously had been applied to the Malabar regions onto contemporary Gujarat. Crull described ‘the Banyan religion’ on the basis of the canonical Calicut report: while they faithfully “acknowledge one Supream God, they nevertheless worship the Devil, alledging for a reason, that God having created him to govern the World, and to do hurt to Mankind, he ought to be appeased by Prayers and Sacrifices.” The note in the margin explains: “They worship the Devil.”98 Crull’s description of the Gujarati statues is fascinating, for it embellishes Varthema’s account of the deumo by combining it with the visual tradition that built upon the latter report: For his Head, out of which come forth four Horns is adorn’d with a triple Crown in the shape of a Taira. His Face resembles that of a large Boar, with two great Teeth coming out of his Mouth; and a great ugly. Beard on his Chin. He bends his Breast to his Belly, where the Hands hang down negligently. Betwixt his Thighs there appears another Head with two Horns upon it, as ugly as the first, thrusting out of the Mouth, a Tongue of extraordinary bigness. Instead of Teeth it hath Saws, and a Cows Tail behind. This Figure stands always upon a Stone Table, this being the Altar where the offerings are to to be made.99
These stereotypical images of the ancient Brahmins and the local Indian customs were reproduced in a large variety of English sources and also entered the popular imagination. An extraordinary stable outline of the Indian traditions emerges in a wide variety of seventeenth-century geographical and cosmographical sources.The Wonders of the little World (1678) by the Church of England clergyman Nathaniel Wanley provides yet another example of the continued impact of these ethnographic commonplaces. This popular comIbid. 228-29. Charles Dellon, A Voyage to the East Indies etc., trans. J. Crull (London, 1698), 47-48. 98 Jodocus Crull, The Antient and Present State of Muscovy, 129. 99 Idem. 96 97
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pendium of prodigies—which went through at least six editions in the eighteenth century—includes a chapter Of the several things that several persons and Nations have set apart and worshipped as their Gods (chapter 12). Not surprisingly, the people of Calicut worshipped an image of the Devil, described along the lines of Varthema’s narrative, carrying a diadem “like the Pontifical Mitre amongst the Romans.”100 The Indian Religion of the Priest in Popular Sources Literary fiction of the period reveals a corresponding knowledge: the custom by which the maidenhead of the virgins was bestowed upon the priest soon entered the realm of prose fiction. It appears in The English Rogue (1665), arguably the most popular work of fiction of the seventeenth century and first English prose work that found translation into a continental European language (the German edition appeared in 1672). Upon its publication, the book was criticized for its vulgarity, censored and only sold in the black market. The author, Richard Head, had to refine the text before the Censors of the Press licensed to publish it. One comes to wonder about its original content, when compared with that which the censors did approve of. In this fictional travel report, the European protagonist explores the Malabar regions and comes to an agreement with the Brahmins to perform the hymeneal rites by proxy.101 The report of Indian women, described as ever so dutiful, submissive, yet also leacherous and deadly jealous, fits the stereotypes of the times.102 After a standard account of sati—devised to curb the women’s temper—the author ponders the benefits that such a custom would bring to Europe, and thus concludes with a motto: “A Couchant Cuckold, and a rampant Wife, Are Cop’latives disjunctive all their life.”103 The ease with which he juggles the ethnographic data is no different from what we have seen in cosmographies of the period. Here, Varthema’s report of the deumo of Calicut could be literally reproduced in the description of Ceylon.104 The famous city of Calicut also features in the The Isle of Pines, a libertine fantasy about an island in the East (1668), authored by the political essayist, Henry Neville (1620–94). After a Dutch fleet discovered the isle, the convoy Nathaniel Wanley, The Wonders of the Little World etc. (London, 1678), 585. Richard Head, The English Rogue: Described, in the Life of Meriton Latroon etc. (London, 1665), 433. 102 Ibid., 434. 103 Ibid., 436. 104 Ibid., 437-38. 100 101
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set sail to Europe, yet first touched at Calicut. The fictional Dutchman who narrates the events described their visit to Calicut as follows: Here is a great many of those persons whom thy call Brachmans, being their Priests or Teachers vvhom they much reverence. It is a custome here for the King to give to some of those Brachmain, the hanselling of his Nuptial Bed; for which cause, not the Kings, but the Kings sisters sons succeed in the Kingdom, as being more certainly known to be of the true Royal blood: And these sisters of his choose what Gentleman they please, on whom to bestow their Virginities; and if they prove not in a certain time to be with child, they betake themselves to these Brachman Stalions, who never fail of doing their work.105
Finally, the Indian “Biarmi or High-Priests” came to entertain not only the Indian queen but also the British ladies, who learned in The Ladies Dictionary (London, 1694) that the Indian kings happily agree to be made into their wives’ “cuckolds” and “superstitiously hold that their Wombs are sanctified by the Sanctity of the Priest.”106 Another fascinating work that intended to popularize ethnographic knowledge was written in 1678 by the English bookseller Nathanial Crouch (ca. 1640-1725), known to his contemporaries under the pseudonym of Robert Burton. His works were extremely successful and the means through which the standardized account of ‘the Indian religion’ was distributed amongst a wider audience.107 Reminiscent of the collections of marvels that were so popular in the sixteenth century, Crouch’s Miracles of Art and Nature (1678) contained several sections on India, China and the East Indies in general, but also touched upon Africa, America and Europe. Published at London in a small pocket volume, it was reprinted throughout the first part of the eighteenth century: illustrated editions were issued in small and easily affordable volumes in 1683, 1685, 1699, 1708, 1729 and 1762. Since each chapter was devoted to a specific country or city, the work can be placed in the cosmographical tradition, directed at less academic readers. After a short chapter on Egypt, Crouch moved towards India, introduced to the curious reader through Vijayanagar (Narsinga). The bookseller’s vision of its ‘religion’ was informed by contemporary theories of natural religion and the trope of Henry Neville, The Isle of Pines, or, A late discovery of a fourth island near Terra Australis Incognita by Henry Cornelius van Sloetten (London, 1668), 27-28. 106 N. H., The Ladies Dictionary; Being a General Entertainment for the Fair-Sex (London, 1694), 234. 107 Crouch was the author and publisher of many historical works “that presented shortened and simplified versions of more serious works to audiences that might otherwise never have read them.” See the entry for Nathaniel Crouch by Jason Mc Elligott in DNB. 105
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priestcraft, the Brahmins being described in ever so laudable terms: in the Country Narsinga in India, the People are in Religion, Gentiles, worshipping one God, as the Lord of all, who is taught them by the Light of Nature, that they joyn the Devil, or their Pa-Gods in Commission with them, whereto induced by the perswasion of their Beast’y Bramines, or Priests, who suck thereout no small advantage…108
The author continued with a brief account of sati. Interestingly, after a section on China, Crouch returned to the subject of India and, as late as 1678, informed the reader about India’s monstrous races, a chapter that derived from the legends of medieval lore rather than the reports of contemporary voyages.109 In 1686, Crouch published another popularizing work, entitled A View of the English Acquisitions in Guinea, and the East-Indies. This was an affordable pocket volume, which regaled its reader with accounts of wonderful customs, animals and monsters, as well as religions and modes of government. The description of Calicut contained the familiar references to deumo’s and Devil worship.110 Having traced the origin of the inhabitants of the Indian peninsula to the sons of Noah, Crouch provided another account of sati, here explained as resulting from the persuasions of crafty priests.111 As late as 1756, at the time that the East India Company was transforming itself into a fully-fledged territorial power, the English could still find the following entry in one of their general dictionaries: calicut (in India) the people of this kingdom believe in one God, the Creator of Heaven and earth; but they think him to be unactive, and does not concern himself in human affairs; but say an evil angel, named Deumo, governs the world, and to him they pay divine honours, and also to other false divinities.112
108 Nathaniel Crouch, Miracles of Art and Nature: Or, A Brief Description of the several varieties of Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Plants, and Fruits of other Countreys etc. (London, 1678), 9-10 (emphasis mine). 109 Ibid., 16-17. 110 Nathaniel Crouch, The English Acquisitions in Guinea & East-India etc. (London, 1700 [1686]), 148. 111 Ibid., 160-62. 112 Nathan Bailey, The Universal Etymological English Dictionary, vol. 2, 4th ed. (London, 1756), n. p.
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5.4. Conclusion To summarize: It has been said that European expansion informed the decisive shift from the classical anthropological canon to the development of modern anthropology, beyond the received wisdom of Pliny and Strabo. However, Michael Ryan (1981) and Sabine MacCormack (1995) amongst others have provided convincing revisions of this thesis, emphasizing the continuities in sixteenth and seventeen-century representations of other cultures.113 Indeed, the belief in marvels and the wondrous nations in the East might have died slowly. At least in the case of the representation of Indian traditions, the pre-Renaissance formulation was not discarded, but consigned to the chapters on ancient India, such that classical anthropology continued to thrive in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In addition, the classical and early-modern modes of representation reveal but two faces of the same theological coin, and further nuance the anthropological shift in relation to the European representations of religion. The combination of both Brahmin images grew into a remarkably stable mode of representation. The pre-Renaissance representation of the Brahmin reflects the preoccupations of pre-Reformation Christianity. The Renaissance representation of the Brahmin in addition echoes the preoccupations of early-modern Christianity. Within the ambit of both imageries, a unified and pan-Indian religion of the priest was created at the European libraries and universities. That is to say, the representational structure (called ‘Hinduism’ today) that emerges when both images are combined, does not relate to India: the outer limits of this structure map onto specific developments in the cultural history of Europe. The long history of Orientalism—the genealogy of colonial discourse outlined in this essay—cannot be related to the power configurations that crystallized the formation of the colonial state in India. In addition, we should not only insist on the international character of the processes through which this outline of Indian spirituality was constructed but also on their inter-denominational nature. This method of combining 113 Michael T. Ryan, “Assimilating New Worlds in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 23, no. 4 (1981): 519-538; and Sabine MacCormack, “Limits of Understanding: Perceptions of Greco-Roman and Amerindian Paganism in Early Modern Europe,” in America in European Consciousness, 1493-1750, ed. K. Kupperman (Chapel Hill, 1995), 79-129. For a detailed study of how the New was assimilated into the Old, also see G. Scammell’s attempt to trace the developments in the sixteenth-century disciplines and crafts to trends that were well in place prior to the Renaissance: “The New Worlds and Europe in the Sixteenth Century,” The Historical Journal 12, no. 3 (1969): 389-412.
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both Brahmin images into a representational structure finds resonance in Catholic cosmographies of the period. As shown in the following Chapter, under siege by the Protestants of Western Europe, the Catholic travellers and cosmographers advanced the cognitive methods through which both imageries were continuously reconstructed and understood.
Chapter Six
The Indian Religion of the Priest in Jesuit Discourses
T
he previous four Chapters not only have shown how two distinct images of the Brahmin protagonist were constructed in theological controversies, but also that both figures were ultimately combined in the field of cosmography into the Indian religion of the priest. The two-tiered model of religion behind this entity has a long history of servicing European scholarship, and its implementation is by no means unique to the study of Hinduism. Evan M. Zeusse (1976) suggests that in the colonial era the past of non-western traditions was typically elevated as their culmination, while their present forms were viewed as shadows of the glorious tradition. Unconvinced that all cultures were at the same time mired in decadence when the West colonized them, Zeusse traces the structure of this model to the Protestant conflict with Catholicism.1 In the Indian context, the protector of the glorious tradition— an ideated Brahmin priesthood—was identified as the agent of corruption, or the axis around which both models of religion revolved. While discussing the work by the East India Company official Charles Grant, Thomas Trautmann (1997) similarly observes that the trope of priestcraft—here applied to the Brahmins—was “a distinctly Protestant motif,” or “a critique of Catholicism turned to new purposes in India.”2 Whereas these insights in the genealogy of colonial discourse seem to be supported by the empirical study presented in the previous Chapters, it will be my argument that a forgotten archive of Catholic scholarship indicates that this analytical format did not simply derive from Protestant assumptions, but rather from a ‘generic’ Christian conception of the history of religion shared across the Christian denominations. This understanding of the history of religion concerned itself with defining non-Christian traditions either as the proto-Christian or post-Christian evidences for the existence of religion. In this light, Chapter 2 has already suggested that we need to dig deeper into Evan M. Zeusse, “The Degeneration Paradigm in the Western Study of World Religions,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 13, no. 1 (1976): 15-35 [18, 21]. 2 Thomas Trautmann, Aryans and British India (Berkeley, 1997), 104-05; also see 124. For a similar argument, see Raf Gelders and Willem Derde, “Mantras of Anti-Brahmanism: Colonial Experience of Indian Intellectuals,” Economic and Political Weekly 38, no. 43 (2003): 4611-4617. 1
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the religious history of Europe, moving backwards into the pre-Reformation era, in order to understand the complexity of colonial discourse. That is to say, a Brahmanic nucleus behind the plethora of Indian traditions was presupposed from the early-modern encounters onwards, and readily defined as the proto-Christian manifestation of religion in the East. Within this context, contemporary forms of Hinduism were recognized as post-Christian expressions of religion in the East. The postulation of priesthood facilitated the move from truth to falsehood. The present Chapter suggests that both modes of representation found an avid audience amongst the Catholic scholars and cosmographers in a wide spectrum of contexts. The first section focuses on a missionary letter produced by the first Jesuit missionary to India, Francis Xavier (1506-1552). This landmark text was one of the first eyewitness reports that brought the image of the crafty Brahmin priest back from the East. The second and third sections continue the argument of the preceding Chapter on the structure that emerged when both Brahmin imageries were united. Whereas the previous Chapter located the construction of this representational structure in predominantly Protestant discourses, this Chapter situates its construction within Catholic scholarship of the Counter-Reformation. On one hand, the Catholic cosmographers returned to and embellished the image of a proto-Christian India. On the other, the contemporary traditions were also recognized as post-Christian expressions of religion. Also here, the postulation of priesthood facilitated the transition from truth to falsehood. The format which Thomas Trautmann and others identified as “a distinctly Protestant motif ” was in fact shared across the denominations. Finally, this Chapter also sheds light on the immediate run-up to colonial scholarship and demonstrates that also the ‘textualization of tradition’ was not a specifically colonizing eterprise that simply derived from Protestant presuppositions. In other words, also the Catholic sources call into question the widely accepted thesis that Orientalist descriptions of India were primarily shaped by the colonial project.
6.1. For the Greater Glory of God The attacks on the clergy were familiar to the theologians and lay audience not only from the Reformed propaganda but also from the Catholic reformers. There is no question that the Latin and vernacular literatures between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries had been marked by unyielding anti-
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clerical sentiments. Even papal secretaries such as Poggio Bracciolini (13801459) attacked the hypocrisy of the clerical estate. Similar sentiments enticed Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) to locate most of the popes of his time in hell or in the circle of the simoniacs.3 In the sixteenth century, the Church engaged with Protestant hostilities by introducing several internal reforms. Beginning with the Council of Trent (1545-63), the Counter-Reformation did not merely assert the position of Rome on doctrinal issues; it also set out to curb the corruption within the administration of the Church. In this context, the historians of the Annales school such as Jean Delumeau (1971), challenged the perception that the Reformation was an isolated event. Such interpretations of Christianity emphasize the continuities between the late medieval and early-modern reform movements, and see the Reformation and Counter-Reformation as the results of several social and religious processes.4 The continuities were also manifested in the ethnographic discourses of the Counter-Reformation. The Apostle of the Indies and Japan One could say that the Counter-Reformation reached India with the arrival of the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier (1542). Xavier became acquainted with Father Ignatius de Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Order, during his theology studies at Paris, and participated in the conferences at Rome that would lead to the foundation of the Order. At the request of João III of Portugal and Pope Paul III (who called for the Council of Trent in 1545) de Loyola commissioned Francis Xavier to carry the Christian faith to Portuguese India. Xavier first landed at Goa, where he directed his attention to the souls of the Portuguese in the Indian colony. In the following two years, he travelled to Bombay, from where he plodded along the Fishery Coast, building churches, converting a legendary amount of heathen souls and engaging
For a detailed study of Italian anticlericalism, see Silvana Seidel Menchi, “Characteristics of Italian Anticlericalism,” in Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. P. Dykema and H. Oberman (Leiden, 1993), 271-81. 4 Jean Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire: A New View of the Counter-Reformation, trans. J. Moiser (Philadelphia, 1977; French ed. 1971). Also see Jane Schneider, “Spirits and the Spirit of Capitalism,” in Religious orthodoxy and popular Faith in European society, ed. E. Badone (Princeton, N.J., 1990), 24-53. 3
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in debates with the Brahmins.5 Xavier’s missive, dated Cochin, January 15, 1544, is arguably the first detailed eyewitness report of the Brahmins in explicit terms of priestcraft. Xavier was a forerunner of the Catholic intelligence network and provided Europe with the earliest details about the cults and customs of the East. The ‘January 15 letter’ was widely distributed, addressed to the General of the Society and to his brothers in Rome, Portugal, Valencia, Cologne and Paris. Copy after copy was made by hand and sent to the universities and convents all over Europe. In the words of a contemporary scholar, “all the world was struck with wonder.” This “letter went round the world, and it could be said with reason that Xavier had not produced less fruit in Spain and Portugal by his letter, than in India by his teaching.”6 A French translation of this letter was issued in Paris in 1545. For the purposes of this essay, I also have consulted a second French translation produced by the Bishop of the Diocese of Rodez, Louis Abelly (1660).7 It describes Xavier’s endeavours along the Malabar coast and provides a conception of ‘the Indian religion’ that is representative of the intellectual concerns of his Counter-Reformation milieu. Xavier wrote that the first principle which the Brahmin students learn is never to disclose the mysteries of their faith. He discovers that these secrets resemble the doctrines of his own religion: the Brahmins believed in one God. They also had a kind of Bible that contained His divine Law, written in a mysterious language, like the Latin in Europe; and on Sundays they worshipped God in prayer. This is how the passage appears in Abelly’s translation (1660): One of their mysteries is that there is but one God, Creator of heaven and earth, and that only He should be worshipped; that the idols are but representations of devils; that the Brahmins have a sort of Bible [une espece de Bible], in which the For the Society of Jesus and Counter-Reformation in general, see Arthur G. Dickins, The Counter-Reformation (London, 1968). On the Jesuit mission in India, see Donald Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. 1 (Chicago, 1965), 245-80. For a global history of the Jesuit programme, see Luke Clossey, Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions (Cambridge, 2008). 6 Ignasi Casanovas cited John Correia-Afonso, Jesuit Letters and Indian History (Bombay, 1969), 32. 7 The January 15 letter also appeared in a Latin collection of Jesuit correspondence edited by Emanuel Acosta and Giovanni Pietro Maffei (1571), which found translation into German: Kurtze Verzeichnuss und historische Beschreibung deren dingen, so von der Societet Iesu in Orient, von dem Jar nach Christi Geburt, 1542. biss auff das 1568 etc., trans. J. Goetze (Ingolstadt, 1586), 1-38. No mention of this influential epistle is made in the nineteenth-century collection of Xavier correspondence edited by the Orientalist scholar Henry James Coleridge. See Francis Xavier, The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier etc., ed. H. J. Coleridge (London, 1874). 5
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divine Laws are maintained. The religious doctors use a language unknown to the vulgar, like the Latin amongst us … Sunday is for them a day of celebration, and on that day they repeat several times in their language the following oration, with a low voice, for not to disclose its secret: “Oh God I adore you and for ever ask your assistance.”8
It is worthwhile to look at how this passage appeared in the first French edition of this letter (1545). The law in the Brahmin scriptures is, in no uncertain terms, referred to as the Ten Commandments or the Judeo-Christian Decalogue [les dix commande[n]s de la loy]. The Brahmins observed Sunday as holy (which is the third Commandment in Catholic and Lutheran versions of the Decalogue) and worshipped God in private prayer: “On Cirinaraina noma.” This translates into the Sanskrit phrase, “Om Sri Narayanaya Namaha” (Om, Bows to Sri Narayana).9 Xavier translates facets of Indian culture that he confronts into elements of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The idea that the Brahmins had been Christians once continued to explain the similitude which the Jesuit thought to uncover. The early-modern reports of the Indian traditions derive from the theological vision that the world had known the biblical God—a vision that traces to the patristic notion of the divine law, which God implanted in the soul of humankind. This theological reflection took on ethnographic significance: transforming elements of the Indian culture into aspects of the JudeoChristian traditions, Xavier represents the persistence of the categories with which the apologists of the Church understood their own traditions and those of others. At the same time, the Fathers of the Church domesticated the Greek and Roman cults into the corruptions of this perennial truth and saw the pontif ices and Virgines Vestales as the priestly agents of spiritual corruption. The Reformation thinkers reapplied this tactic, when they redirected this critique: like the Greco-Roman cults were seen as corruptions of God’s Francis Xavier, “Lettre V. Aux Peres & Freres de la Comapgnie de Iesus à Rome,” in Lettres de S. Francois Xavier de la Compagnie de Iesus etc., trans. L. Abelly (Paris, 1660), 68-69 : “Un de ces Mysteres estoit, Qu’il n’y a qu’un seul Dieu Createur du ciel & de la terre & que le souverain culte luy devoit estre rendu. Que les Idoles ne sont que des representations de Diables. Que les Brachmanes ont comme une espece de Bible, où ils tiennent que les Loix divines sont contenuës. Que les Docteurs se servent pour enseigner d’une langue inconnuë au vulgaire, comme est le Latin parmy nous. Il m’expliqua en particulier ces pretenduës Loix, lesquelles il seroit inutile & mesme trop prolixe de coucher icy par escrit. Le Dimanche est parmy eux iour de Feste, & ce iour-là ils repetent plusieurs fois en leur langue cette Oraison (mais à voix basse) pour ne violer le ferment du secret. O Dieu ie vous adore & vous demande vostre assistance pour iamais.” 9 Francis Xavier, Copie dunne lettre missive envoiee des Indes, par mo[n]sieur maistre Fra[n]cois xavier, etc. (Paris, 1545), fols. D-Dij. 8
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religion, the Catholic priesthood was seen to incorporate the pagan customs and thus, corrupt the message of Christ. The ethnographic information that returned from the East was incorporated into these polemics: an anticlerical representation of the Brahmins emerged in Reformation Europe, used by the German, Dutch, French and English Reformers to support the analogies they observed with the heathen and Catholic ecclesia. In this sense, Thomas Trautmann (1997) and others are correct to suggest that the colonial trope of priestcraft—when applied to Indian traditions—was “a Protestant motif turned to new purposes in India.” Yet, this motif built upon a ‘generic’ Christian conception of the history of religion that traces to the Fathers of the Church. Moreover, we have seen that the priestcraft accusation was levelled back and forth in the battle between the Protestants and Catholics. The charge of idolatry was also directed at the Protestants, said to have been corrupted by the industry of priestcraft. Spearheading the Counter-Reformation, the Jesuits in addition disagreed with the anti-Roman critiques of the Protestant Reformers, yet recognized the sentiments behind the anticlericalism of the pre-Renaissance reform movements. The latter differed in their scope of application and were far from anti-Catholic.10 Xavier’s ‘anathema’ was thus also directed against priests, or the priests of false religion. This is not surprising: Catholic Christianity has had a long tradition of assimilating pagan cults as the manifestations of God’s original religion, while either vilifying their protagonists as agents of corruption or applauding them as the teachers of humankind.11 The January 15 letter informed the Superior General of the Order in detail about the success of Xavier’s mission and God’s miraculous powers in the East, about the devilish forces at play and about those most influenced by them: the Brahmins. The Brahmins are said to be the keepers of paganism. According to Xavier, they were liars, impostors and the most perverse and wicked of all. They deceived the masses, tricking them into believing that their idols required offerings and sacrifices. These are their major source of revenue which they then funnel into their royal banquets. When these priests are displeased with the oblations, they threaten with the dreadful vengeance of the gods. Xavier explains it thus: Phyllis Mack Crew, Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands, 1544-1569 (Cambridge, 1978), 149-50. 11 Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and Its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art (Princeton, 1972). 10
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Amongst the gentiles are certain men called Brahmins, the superintendents of paganism, for they remain in the temples and are in charge of the idols. They are the most perverse and evil people in the world ... They are the biggest liars and impostors that ever existed: their profession is to cheat the poor people, taking advantage of the weakness and simplicity of the ignorant multitude, making them believe that the idols require sacrifices, which they desire for themselves, to maintain their families. They have these poor cretins believe that idols dine and sup. The most simple amongst them daily offer money to the idol—in the mornings and evenings—for the expense of its table. The Brahmins rejoice, and banquet amongst the sounds of pipes and drums, propagating that the gods are eating what was served to them. When the items necessary for their domestic affairs are missing, they proclaim that the gods are angry for not sending what they asked for; that if they do not sacrifice immediately, vengeance will be upon them; that they will suffer disease and death; that the devils will not give them rest. Like this they abuse these poor people, who believe what they tell them, and immediately bring whatever they please. These impostors or Brahmins have little knowledge of letters, but compensate by iniquity what they lack in the sciences.12
In this context, one could argue that the vision of the Brahmins as it emerges from in this work has not altered to this day. Even those prone to treat this as an exaggeration will have to admit that the arsenal of arguments used to support the anti-Brahmanism of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries are to be found in this letter. The critiques levelled at the priests back home could now be directed at those supposed to be the spiritual guardians of India, based on an imagery of the Brahmins that takes us right back to the pre-Renaissance reform movements. While he does not use the French equivalent of ‘priestcraft,’ Xavier nevertheless writes in terms of menteurs Francis Xavier, “Lettre V. Aux Peres & Freres de la Comapgnie de Iesus à Rome,” 62-63: “Il y a ici parmy les Payens une certaine maniere de gens, qu’on nomme Brachmanes, qui sont les Sur-intendans du Paganisme; car ils demeurent dans les Temples, & gardent les Idoles: il n’est rien de si pervers, ny de si meschant ... Car ce sont les plus grands menteurs & imposteurs qui furent iamais: leur profession est de tromper le pauvre peuple, & se prevaloir de la foiblesse & simplicité d’une multitude ignorante, leur faisant accroire que les Dieux commandent qu’on leur fasse offrande de diverses choses, selon qu’ils les desirent pour eux-mesmes, & pour entretenir leurs familles; & de cette maniere ils font croire à ces pauvres idiots, que leurs Dieux disnent & soupent comme nous; & il s’en trouve de si simples, qu’ils font comme des pensions iournalieres à l’Idole, d’une certaine somme d’argent, pour les frais de sa table, tant du soir que du matin: cependant les Brachmanes s’en donnent au cœur ioye, & banquerans au fon des fifres & des tambours, font croire que les Dieux mangent ce qui leur a esté servy. Quand les choses necessaires au mesnage commencent de leur manquer, ils font sçavoir au peuple que les Dieux sont en colere, de ce qu’on ne leur pas offert ce qu’ils demandoient; & que s’ils n’y pourvoyent au plustost, la vengeance est toute preste, qu’ils se verront accueillis de maladies & de mortalitez, & que les Diables ne leur donneront aucun repos. Ainsi abusent-ils ces pauvres gens, qui croyent ce qu’ils leur disent, & leur portent aussitost tout ce qu’ils ont desiré. Ces imposteurs de Brachmanes ont bien quelque legere teinture de lettres, mais ils recompensent par finesses ce qui leur manque de science.”
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(liars) and imposteurs. He opines that the Brahmins admit idolatry to be their source of revenue. To make matters worse, they are hypocrites: they believe in God but try to keep it a secret. Xavier writes that the Brahmins bestow unwanted gifts and greetings on him. While, according to Xavier, this confirms their attempts to secure their source of revenue, the latter might well have been a cordial attempt to temper the unhampered iconoclasm from which el glorioso Padre derived great pleasure—ad maiorem Dei gloriam.13 The January 15 letter has to be understood as the continuation of a descriptive trend in which the Brahmins are not merely understood in terms of priests of the Devil or idol worshippers, but in which the dynamics of priestcraft are explicitly laid bare. The priestly estate had been deceived by Satan and blinded by their greed into promoting miracles, pilgrimages and oblations to the Devil. The humanists and translators of travel reports ‘observed’ the global sway of these dynamics all along: they were explicit especially in the work and towering influence of Varthema. Seen from this perspective, it might be deceptive to emphasize Xavier’s impact on the European image of India: that image had already crystallized in the theological disputes raging at the universities. Approached from another perspecive, Xavier solidified this imagery by moulding his experiences into the pre-established formats that structured the writings at home. Seeing is believing, and the Jesuit caught the Brahmins in flagrante delicto—made visible what the savants at home could only conjecture. The question arises whether Xavier’s inability to convert the members of the Brahmin community might have coloured the tone of his writings: he was vexed by his experiences and structured these experiences using the analytical format available to him. That framework was given shape by the anticlerical sentiments operating across the Christian denominations. Or put differently, Xavier’s frustrations were given coherence by the critiques that the Reformed polemicists leveled against Catholic Rome. The anticlerical ethos of their criticism is reflected throughout his narrative. It is in this manner that a bifurcated, Brahmin-centric religion emerged: the apologetic vision of the Brahmin worshipping the biblical God was replaced by the anticlerical vision of a monotheistic religion degenerated into image worship. At the heart of this vision lies a theological understanding of the history of religion that can be traced back to the Fathers of the Church.
See Xavier’s letter (viii) dated Goa, January, 25, 1545, in Lettres de S. Francois Xavier, vol. 1: 86, and 87-88.
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This shared understanding of the history of religion is further indicated by Joseph Wicki’s discovery of a German edition of the January 15 letter. In 1948 he came across two German copies at the library of the University of Basel, issued in the year of the French edition (1545). This was the first missionary report ever about India in the German vernacular, translated in “a rather Catholic manner,” Wicki writes, without omissions or corrections by a translator inclined to favour the Protestant cause.14 The translation was done from a Latin edition, issued at Coimbra in 1544. Its public relations value is obvious: the letter influenced the German Catholics who were indecisive about their faith, and encouraged those who remained loyal to it in the face of Protestant assaults.15 Interestingly, one of the German copies contains a manuscript note that betrays the identity of its previous owner: the German professor of Greek and Hebrew studies, Sebastian Lepusculus, a Protestant minister at Augsburg (1546-1548). The impression that the letter left on the mind of this Protestant divine may be inferred from his marginal annotations and the underscored passages in his personal copy. His attention was drawn, significantly, to sections on ‘the Indian priests’ and those that concerned the idols. Lepusculus also underscored “One ciri naraina noma,” the Sunday prayer supposed to convey the content of true religion.16 The Jesuits in India The January 15 letter was by no means unique. The Jesuit legions of Christ soon realized that the success of their heavenly battle depended on God’s mercy, and on their ability to convince their Indian brethren that their customs were no time-honoured institutions but nothing but the fabrications of priests. Though the Iberian sources were in contact with cities like Paris, Basel and Antwerp, it is difficult to establish the impact of these early Jesuit works on the development of a European imagery. Many sources were produced during the first few decades of the seventeenth century, yet remained in manuscript till the twentieth century. Studies about this vast body of southern European ethnography have been produced in recent years, and it seems to be at least the case that the late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century
Joseph Wicki, “Der älteste deutsche Druck eines Xaveriusbriefes aus dem Jahre 1545,” Neue Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft. Nouvelle Revue de science Missionaire 4 (1948): 105-09 [106]. 15 Ibid., 108. 16 Ibid., 109. 14
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Iberian and Italian Jesuits took recourse to the same anticlerical formats—as pioneered by Xavier—to organize their data.17 For example, an Italian Jesuit visitor of the East, Antonio Rubino, provided the first detailed account of the traditions of interior South India (1608), which first appeared in print when included in an excellent article by Joan-Pau Rubiés (2001). Like his contemporaries, Rubino did not question the identification of Indian customs and practices with the devilish corruptions of a forgotten truth—Christianity—and went as far as to represent the Indian Krishna as a mockery of Christ. The usual anti-Brahmin bias that facilitated the move from truth towards falsehood also guided Rubino’s study.18 The division between the ascetic, monotheistic ideal on the one hand, and the early-modern Indian reality on the other, continued to guide Jesuit discourses—and it may in fact be argued that the Jesuit method of accommodation was drafted entirely along these lines, with the ascetic Brahmin known from ancient sources, yet still embodied in the figure of the sannyasi, worthy of being emulated by European missionaries. It is not my intention to provide a comprehensive overview of the Jesuit missionaries in India. They reproduced the binary outline of Indian spirituality that was simultaneously being developed at the libraries back home, such that the actual cross-cultural encounters simply provided great impetus to the theological machinery that was already operating at full speed.19 The early-modern representation of the Brahmins was conditioned by actual cross-cultural encounters, yet elaborated upon by the cosmographers and theologians pursuing their own agendas. Their treatment of Varthema’s report was but one example of how Europe continued to transform the East to suit its own expectations. The Catholics found in Xavier an informant who reached the heights of Varthema. Like the Itinerario (1510), the January 15 letter (1545) became a building block for humanist scholarship on the East. Its representation of ‘the Indian religion’ was distributed in Catholic learnFor Iberian and Italian representations of South India, see esp. Joan-Pau Rubiés, Travel and ethnology in the Renaissance: South India through European eyes, 1250-1625 (Cambridge, 2000). For early seventeenth-century Jesuit discourses on India, also see Diogo Gonçalves in his Historia Do Malavar, ed. J. Wicki (Münster, 1955); and Jacobo Fenicio’s The Livro da Seita dos Indios Orientais, ed. J. Charpentier (Uppsala, 1933), one of the early works on Hindu mythology. 18 Joan-Pau Rubiés, “The Jesuit Discovery of Hinduism: Antonio Rubino’s Account of the History and Religion of Vijayanagara (1608),” Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 3 (2001): 210-256 19 For the seventeenth-century Jesuit missionary Roberto de Nobili, see his Preaching Wisdom to the Wise etc., trans. A. Amaladass (St. Louis, 2000). For de Nobili’s reproduction of this binary outlook on Indian traditions, see Ines G. Županov, Disputed Mission: Jesuit Experiments and Brahmanical Knowledge in Seventeenth-Century India (New Delhi, 1999), esp. 3, 24–30. 17
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ing of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Xavier found the greatest influence in historiography and cosmography. The Brahmin figure extracted from Varthema’s report was united in cosmography with the legendary image of the proto-Christian Brahmin. Xavier’s missive was incorporated into this bifurcated model of religion that guided the Renaissance cosmographies. The number of books that drew on his letters further ensured the dissemination of this two-tiered ‘Indian religion of the priest’ in the European imagination.
6.2. From proto-Christian to post-Christian India Early Christian thought allowed for the transformation of India into a protoChristian space (Brahmins worshipping the biblical God). There were yet other factors that allowed for the transformation of the subcontinent into a post-Christian space. After Christ had restored the true religion in Palestine, it was left to his apostles to turn the world towards its alleged spiritual roots. In the division of apostolic labour, St. Thomas, the Apostle, is generally credited with the conversion of the East.20 This connection between India and New Testament theology featured in reports of actual cross-cultural encounters. Europe was convinced that the Indians had not only been aware of the biblical God and the Judeo-Christian Commandments but also of the finer aspects of the Christian doctrine: early sixteenth-century Portuguese travelers such as Duarte Barbosa (ca. 1516-18), Tomé Pires (ca. 1512) and Fernão Nunes (ca. 1535-37) informed their readers that the Brahmins were also aware of the Holy Trinity, that is, the Triune God of the New Testament. Barbosa in addition noted their interest in the Virgin Marie.21 In a Spanish letterbook translated from the Portuguese (1558), the Jesuit missionary Rodriguez Gonzalez similarly wrote about India’s temples and reported about an idol with three names, a false representation of the Trinity, he concluded, Eusebius of Caesarea (Historia Ecclesiae; fourth century) also writes that the teacher of Clemens of Alexandria preached in the East—as far as India, where he found the Gospel according to Matthew, left there by the apostle Bartholomew: “The Church History of Eusebius,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. P. Schaff and H. Wace, trans. A. McGiffert (Massachusetts, 1995), 225. Others have demonstrated that this New Testament schematic was also applied to the Amerindian traditions. See Louis-André Vigneras, “Saint Thomas, Apostle of America,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 57, no. 1 (1977): 82-90. 21 Duarte Barbosa, The Book of Duarte Barbosa, trans. M. Dames, vol. 1 (London, 1918), 11516; Tomé Pires, The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires, trans. A. Cortesão (London, 1944), 39; and Fernão Nunes, “Chronicle of Fernão Nuniz,” in A Forgotten Empire (Vijayanagar): A Contribution to the History of India., trans. R. Sewell (London, 1900), 390-91. 20
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or “la falsa Trinidad de los gentiles.”22 The Portuguese military commander, Afonso d’Albuquerque, also wrote that the Brahmins had knowledge of the Trinity and the Virgin Mary, “whereby it appears that anciently they were Christians.”23 The Trinity in the East Before Barbosa and others made this observation, a Syro-Christian priest known as Josephus Indus travelled to Portugal with the Portuguese commander Pedro Alvares Cabral (1501). Josef informed his interlocutors that ‘the heathens at Canonor’ (Kodungallur) worshipped one God—the Creator—yet also believed that He was one in three, and made statues of Him with three faces. The relation of his answers was first issued in the Paesi (1507). The reproductions of his interrogation show that the Europeans did not need an eyewitness report to conclude that not only the Syrian-Malabar Christians believed in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Josef ’s report was reproduced in the Novus orbis (1532), the most famous travel collection of the period, issued thirty years prior to Ramussio’s publication of Barbosa (1550). His testimony was reproduced as follows: “They worship God in Heaven and believe in the Trinity, which is why they paint God with three faces and His hands folded.”24 The French historiographer François de Belleforest reproduced it thus, in his Histoire Universelle (1570): “And do not think that they have not been Christian, see what they continue to confess: they believe in one God, and this in the form of a trinity, because of which they represent and paint Him with three faces, his hands folded, and call Him Tambran in their language.”25 This is how Josef ’s narration can be found about one hunGonzalez’ letter was reprinted in an early collection of Jesuit correspondence, edited by the Portuguese Jesuit Manoel Alvarez: “Copia de una [carta] del padre Gonçalo rodriguez de Baçain etc.,” in Copia de algunas cartas que los padres y hermanos de la compañia de iesus, que andan en la India etc., ed. M. Alvarez (Coimbra, 1562), fol. 13. 23 Afonso d’Albuquerque, The Commentaries of the Great A. Dalboquerque etc. vol. 1 (London, 1875 [1557]), 78. Others observed that the Trinity was worshipped in China. See Thomas Nicholas, The strange and marveilous Newes lately come from the great Kingdome of Chyna etc. (London, 1577), 34. 24 Johannes Huttichius and Sebastian Münster, eds., Die Nieuwe Weerelt der Landtschappen ende Eylanden etc., trans. C. Ablijn (Antwerp, 1563; Latin edition 1532), ccxxxiii: “Sy bidden Godt in den hemel aen, ende sy gelooven aen der Dryvuldighey, daerom schilderen sy hem met dry aensichten, ende tsamen gheuouden handen, ende sy noemen hem Tambram …” 25 François de Belleforest, L’Histoire Universelle du Monde (Paris, 1570), fol. 52: “Et en pense point qu’ils n’ayent esté Chrestiens, veu ce que encor ils confessent: car ils croyent vn Dieu, & iceluy en trinité, & pource ils le font, & paignent auec vne statue aya[n]t trois faces, & tena[n] t pliées les mains, l’apellans Tambra en leur langue …” 22
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dred and thirty years later (1707) in the Dutch collection of voyages by Pieter van der Aa, a Dutch cartographer, suggesting just how potent the spiritual historiography of the Bible was: “They worship one God in Heaven and call Him Tambram. They represent him with three faces and folded hands; as if they had some understanding of the Holy Trinity.”26 The sheer number of sources in which this motif reappears indicates that this was not simply an early Portuguese confusion; nor was it derived from a missionary perspective. Europe effectively saw the subcontinent either as a proto-Christian or a post-Christian extension of the Christian realm. The axis around which this two-tiered model of religion revolved was an imaginary Brahmin priesthood. The Portuguese bishop Jerónimo Osório da Fonseca, known for his proCatholic epistle to Elizabeth I (1563), is also famous for his Latin chronicle of the Portuguese empire, De Rebus Emannuelis (The reign of Emanuel; 1571).27 Osório enjoyed close contacts with Pierre Lefevre (a co-founder of the Jesuits) and also befriended Ignatio de Loyola. While narrating the Portuguese exploits in the East, he described the Brahmins in disparaging terms, portraying them as priests, swindlers and frauds, not too different from the manner in which Elizabeth’s secretaries understood the Catholic priests: This nation is depressingly superstitious and idolatrous. They have many temples and bestow much honor upon their priests, who are called Brachmanes or Brahmins … They carry three threads from the right shoulder to the left-hand side, to represent the existence of the Trinity in one divine nature. They believe that God communicated with the world to redeem mankind from eternal death. It is very likely that they have taken this from the ancient Christians. They are big hypocrites: under the guise of holiness they commit grave sins their entire life. The other Malabarians are taught by these priests to worship monsters.28
Pieter van der Aa, ed., Naaukeurige Versameling der Gedenk-Waardigste Zee en Land Reysen, vol. 3 (Leyden, 1707), 6: “Ook biddense eenen God in den Hemel aan, diense Tambram noemen, en hem afbeelden met drie Aangesigten, en t’saamgevouwene handen; even als ofse eenige Beseffing van de H. Drievuldigheyd hadden.” 27 This Frenchchronicle (1581) was reprinted at Paris in 1587. The Latin edition of Osório’s work was issued at Cologne in 1574, 1581, 1586 and 1597. Another French edition was issued in 1610. 28 Osório da Fonseca, Histoire de Portugal etc., trans. S. Goulart, vol. 2 (Geneva, 1581), 43 (emphasis mine): “Ce peuple est miserablement superstitieux & idolatre. Ils ont force temples, & portent fort grand honneur à leur Prestres, qu’ils appellent Brachmanes ou Bramins … Ils portent trois filets pendans de l’espaule droite sur le costé gauche, pour representer la trinité des personnes en une seule nature divine. Ils croyent que Dieu couvert de la forme humaine a conversé au monde, afin de racheter le genre humain de la mort eternelle. Il est vray semblable qu’ils on apris cela des anciens Chrestiens … Au demeurant, ce sont grands hypocrites, qui sous apparence de saincteté commettent de grandes mechancetez en toute leur vie. Les autres Malabares, enseignez par ces Prestres, adorent des mo[n]stres.” 26
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This anticlerical imagery of the Brahmins appealed to Osório’s antagonists. The influence of a shared understanding of religion and the role of priests is revealed in the incorporation of Osório’s account in the anti-Catholic discourses of early Stuart England. Shortly before his death (1626), the bishop of Winchester, Lancelot Andrewes, drafted a Discourse Shewing that many Paynim Ceremonies were retained in England after Christianity was received. An edited version of his notes was published in 1653. Andrewes provided an alternative to the Calvinist genealogy of Catholic worship and argued that pagan ceremonies—not contrary to Scripture—were retained in the Christian policy to serve peace and order after the pagan lands were christened. In what might be called a proto-Laudian High Church fashion, he wrote that “this kinde of birth of our Ceremonies can be no disgrace to our Ecclesiasticall Ceremonies.”29 After all, did the pagans not continue the ceremonies which God had commanded to the Jews?30 Yet, the Catholic popes also introduced evil customs, similarly drawn from pagan worship, like the worship of saints, franckincense offerings, fasts and feasts. Andrewes’ diatribe against the Jesuit supporters of the pope bears witness to a characteristic brand of anti-Catholicism. Interestingly, his invective against the Jesuits drew from the Jesuit partisans themselves: it simply reproduced Osório’s account of the Brahmins as outlined above.31 This anticlerical representation of the Brahmins in Protestant polemics was an example of the process through which Europe continued to domesticate the East. The Jesuit letters were immediately incorporated into this anticlerical format. In this sense Xavier was a kind of Jesuit Varthema and his relation of the Brahmins (1545) was as likely to be found in Renaissance scholarship on the East as the Calicut report from the Itinerario (1510). The increasing number of books that drew from Xavier and Varthema combined the images of the proto-Christian and crafy Brahmins into a single representational structure.
Lancelot Andrewes, A Learned discourse of ceremonies Retained and used in Christian Churches etc. (London, 1653), 4. For Andrewes, see the entry by McCullough in DNB. 30 Ibid., 9-11, 75. 31 Ibid., 24-25: “That their worshiping the Reliques of their Saints and Martyrs is meer Gentilism, the ancient bait of Satan: And therefore generally to conclude, I conceive the Jesuites, the golden staves and mattocks of the Sea of Rome … In office resemble the Heathen Priests of the Indians, called Brachmanes, mentioned by Ozorius; He saith, these Heathen ClergyPriests also study Philosophy, and the Mathematicall Arts; Insomuch that by their learning and counterfeit holinesse they continue all their life time the singular contrivers of all fraud and villany: For my warrant I appeal to the Catastrophe of many Houses of Nobility of this Realm, acted by the Jesuites.” 29
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These works were not so much objective descriptions of an Indian reality as they were projections of the cultural history of Europe onto an alien setting. Or put differently, these are more convincing artefacts of the cultural history of Europe, rather than an archive of the East. I have demonstrated that this cultural inflection occurred in two ways: Firstly, European observers of India domesticated the Indian traditions by representing them in terms of the elements characteristic to the Judeo-Christian religions. Secondly, to explain deviations from the original version, they took recourse to the anticlerical tactics that had been refined in Protestant thought. Since religion was priest-centred, India had to have its own estate of priests. Where the laity went astray, there the priest was accountable for the decline of religion. The Catholics did not differ on this fundamental score: the only difference was its scope of application. Where the Catholics differed with the Protestants was in ascribing similarities between the Brahmins and their ecclesia. It is thus not surprising that their works became acutely anti-Brahmin. While they shared in the vision that religion revolves around the priest—a vision that lies at the heart of medieval anticlericalism, radicalized in the Reformation and translated into anti-Brahmanism—the prudent thing for them to do in face of the Protestant assaults was to emphasize the dissimilarities between the Catholic and ‘Indian priesthood,’ which could account for the rabid antiBrahmin undercurrent of their writings, fueled by their inability to convert (or re-convert) this ‘sacerdotal estate’ to its imaginary spiritual origins: Christianity.32 The Brahmin Religion in Hagiographies To get an insight into the European representations of Indian traditions, we need to advance our understanding of anticlericalism beyond the strict confines of Protestant theology. The Jesuit biographies and hagiographies that followed Xavier’s passing in 1552 constitute an essential stage in the distribution of the anticlerical Brahmin imagery beyond the confines of Protestant polemics. These sources went through multiple editions and translations themselves, disseminating and embellishing the vitriolic components of Xavier’s epistles in the vernacular literatures of Europe. They were recreational reading in Catholic seminaries, and provided instruction to the seminarians. The first biography of Xavier (composed with hagiographic intent) Similarities were generally understood as being beneficial to conversion. See the travels of Martin Ignacio de Loyola, in Mendoza, ed., The Historie of the great and mightie kingdome of China etc., trans. R. Parke (London, 1588; Spanish edition 1585), 305-410.
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was written in Latin by the Italian Jesuit Orazio Torsellino and released at Antwerp in 1596.33 Torsellino drew upon the January 15 letter and also added that the Brahmins referred to God as Parabram (a reference to Para Brahman, or the ultimate goal in Vedanta). But “togeather with this truth they mingle innumerable fables to deceive the common people.”34 That he read this as a corruption of Christianity becomes clear in his explanation of their deceit: they say that God has three sons who govern the world, “having in this manner, either through the malice of men, or craft of the Divel corrupted the mistery of the B. Trinity, which was anciently received among them.”35 Not surprisingly, the threefold thread of the Brahmins is related to this corrupted instance of Trinitarianism. Torsellino further wrote that they “cover their naturall lewdness with abhominable deceipt” and also mentioned their wealthy banquets, funded by their stratagems and frauds.36 Europe soon learned that the Indians had their own names for the constituents of the Trinity: Brahma [Pyrama], Vishnu [Vidhunus] and Shiva [Unitirem].37 The hagiography of Xavier (1682) by the Jesuit scholar Dominique Bouhours, draws from the work of Torsellino and also reproduces the passages on the Brahmins in Xavier’s January 15 letter. The French edition was very popular—an English translation by John Dryden appeared in 1688, while the original French text remained in popular usage well into the nineteenth century. Bouhours expressed strong anticlerical or anti-Brahmin sentiments when he recapitulated an account that crudely anticipated the The Latin edition was reprinted in 1597, 1600, 1601, 1607, 1610, 1621, 1752, and 1797. The work almost literally reproduces Xavier’s January 15 letter and becomes a vehicle with which anti-Brahmin sentiments percolated into the vernacular literatures of Europe. It soon found translation into Spanish by Pedro de Guzman. The Spanish edition was released at Valladolid in 1600, with a second print in 1603 and a small pocket edition in 1620. The Italian translation appeared at Milan in 1606. The German translation first appeared at München in 1674. Via the hand of Torsellino, Xavier’s first-hand relation of the dynamics of priestcraft entered English literature, via the 1632 translation by the Jesuit rector of the English college at Rome, Thomas Fitzherbert. 34 Orazio Torsellino, The admirable Life of S. Francis Xavier etc., trans. T. Fitzherbert (Paris, 1632), 141. 35 Idem. 36 Ibid., 141-42. The second biography of Xavier (1600) by the Portuguese Jesuit João de Lucena provides a lengthy account of the Brahmins and distributes the anti-Brahmin passages of the January 15 letter in the Portuguese vernacular. See João de Lucena, Historia da vida de Padre Francisco de Xavier etc. (Lisbon, 1600), 98-107. The Portuguese edition of this work was reissued at Lisbon in 1788. Lodovico P. Mansoni produced an Italian translation, issued at Rome in 1613. The Spanish edition by Alonso de Sabdoval was issued at Seville in 1619. 37 Niccolò Pimenta, Lettres du P. Nicolas Pimente visiteur de la Compagnie de Iesus en l’Inde Orientale au R.P. Claude Aquaviva General de ladicte Societé etc. (Antwerp, 1601), 72. 33
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colonial or typical Indological vision of ‘the Hindu pantheon.’ He made it all too clear what he had in mind when he wrote about the sons of Parabrama, or the “Lord of all the others” and “most perfect Substance”: The first, and Lord of all the others, is Parabrama; that is to say, a most perfect Substance, who has his Being from himself, and who gives Being to the rest. This God being a Spirit free from matter, and desirous to appear once under a sensible Figure, became Man … he conceiv’d a Son, who came out at his Mouth, and was call’d Maiso [Shiva]. He had two others after him, one of them whose name was Visnu, was born out of his Breast, the other call’d Brama, out of his Belly … These are the three Deities which the Indians represent by one Idol, with three Heads growing out of one Body, with this mysterious signification, that they all proceed from the same principle. By which it may be inferr’d, that in former times they have heard of Christianity; and that their Religion is an imperfect imitation, or rather a Corruption of ours.38
Whether and when the ideal state of true religion ever prevailed in the East is a subject most Europeans remained silent about. The internal critiques at home hint at the fact that Europe saw itself as part of this normative and asymptotic process, which is why it perpetually reinvented itself into ever more denomina-tions. Their shared understanding of the history of religion not only propelled the fragmentation at home; it also enabled the transition from a proto-Christian to a post-Christian India, revolving around a Brahmanical axis. The reports of the cross-cultural encounters only provided more fuel to the theological machinery already operating at full speed. Via the hand of Xavier’s biographers, the figures of the proto-Christian Brahmin and his alter ego were further distributed. Both Brahmin images united by a history long forgotten. The number of sources that disseminated the representational structure delimited by both modes of representation is truly astonishing. The Brahmin Religion in Catholic Scholarship As we have seen, François de Belleforest—the Catholic historian of Henry III of France—rendered Münster’s Cosmographia into French (1552). In the second French edition of the Cosmographia (1575), Belleforest also incorporated detailed chapters on contemporary India, and explained why the Indians no longer followed the Christian religion. Barbosa’s report of the Gujarati Brahmins (ca. 1516-18), their alleged belief in the Christian Trinity, and Dominique Bouhours, The Life of St. Francis Xavier, of the Society of Jesus etc., trans. J. Dryden (London, 1688), 117-18 (emphasis mine). The English edition was reprinted in 1743, 1812, 1828 and 1837.
38
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curiosity about the Blessed Virgin, brought forth the following explanation: One can easily see that they once had a taste for Christianity, because of their belief in the Trinity, and because they enter our Christian churches (by the mercy of God there is a good number of them) where they voluntarily come to pray, worship and honour the images of saints. Moreover, Duarte Barbosa says that they always inquire about our blessed Lady, the Virgin Mary, and request him to talk about her. According to me, the defects of Christianity amongst them are the fault of their priests, who ceased to administer the people, for they also say that there is no difference between their religion and ours…39
One of Belleforest’s marginal annotations explains this: “The Brahmins were once Christians.”40 For the Renaissance humanists, the Brahmin’s ‘pluralistic attitude’ towards other traditions was understood in terms of doctrinal consent: as proof for the fact that the Indians once were Christians. The French Jesuit priest Pierre du Jarric (1566-1617) produced another synthesis of Jesuit letterbooks and a comprehensive history of the missionary project in Asia. His work was issued in three volumes as the Histoire des choses plus memorable advenues tant ez Indes Orientales (The History of memorable things that occured in the Oriental Indies). The first edition of this beautifully leather-bound work appeared in three successive volumes at Bordeaux, in 1608, 1610 and 1614, and became famous for its history of the missions to the court of Akbar, the ruler of the Mughal Empire.41 Jarric demonstrated just how standardized the outline of Indian spirituality had become as early as 1610. Though various Indian families worshipped their idols each, he clarified, they were also united in their worship of the Devil. The account of their principal idol makes for interesting reading, for it is cast in terms of the visual tradition that originated in Boaisteau’s Histoires Prodigieuses (1560), which ultimately derived from Varthema’s Itinerario (1510).42 Their priests—called 39 François de Belleforest in Sebastian Münster, La Cosmographie Universelle de tout le Monde, vol. 3 (Paris, 1575), 1567-68 (emphasis mine): ”Il est aisé a voir qu’ils ont eu goust quelquefois du Christianisme, tant pour cette croyance de la Trinité, & unité des personnes, que pour ce que lors qu’ils entrent és Eglises des Chrestiens (car là Dieu mercy il y en a asses bon nombre) ils y prient volontiers, les reverent, & y honorent les images des saints. Et qui plus est Edouard Barbosse dit que tousiours ces gens s’enquierent de nostre Dame la glorieuse vierge Marie, comme ayants ouy parler d’elle: & quant a moy ie pense, que le defaut de la Chrestienté parmy eux est procedé de la faute des ministres qui ont cessé d’admonester le peuple, comme ainsi soit qu’encor ces gents dient qu’il n’y a point guerre de difference de leur religion a la nostre…” 40 Ibid., 1567: “Bramins ont esté Chrestiens quelquefois.” 41 Other editions of the second part were issued at Arras in 1611 and 1628. The Latin translation by Martino Matías Martinez appeared at Cologne in 1615. 42 Pierre du Jarric, Histoire des choses plus memorables advenues tant ez Indes Orientales etc. (Bordeaux, 1610), 43-44.
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Brachmanes since antiquity—are accountable for the snake pit of duplicity.43 While Jarric gathered from the travel reports that there are various sorts of Brahmins (some were even merchants) their tongues only spoke lies. The Brahmins convinced the gullible masses to sacrifice to the idols, the product of which ‘the clerical estate’ was ever so happy to keep for itself. Those who did not sacrifice were to be punished by the intervention of the Devil. The Brahmin opposition to Christendom was thus easily explained: they were hostile to Christianity, for it uncovered their schemes and deprived them of a key source of revenue.44 Compared to what Xavier wrote about sixty years earlier, neither the content, nor the tone had changed significantly. Pierre d’Avity’s Les Estats, Empires, et Principautéz du Monde (The states, empires and principalities of the world; 1614) was one of the most influential political cosmographies in the seventeenth century. Written by a French military commander, it represented the territories of the known world in terms of geography, national character and institutions, economic resources and religious life. Its wide reception in France, England and Germany suggests that a broad circle of laymen was interested in it.45 This publication contains detailed descriptions of India, from ancient India, through contemporary Gujarat and Calicut, to Vijayanagar. The information on local traditions—both past and present—was fitted in the conventional formats. For ancient India, the French cosmographer directed his readers to the chapter on ancient Vijayanagar, said to cover the manners of all the ancient Indians. Here, d’Avity reproduced Boemus’ outline of India (1520) and still referenced the Collatio correspondence.46 The pre-Renaissance representation of Indian spiritual life was precisely reproduced, but relegated to a chapter on ancient India. The contemporary traditions were described in terms of Devil worship.47 D’Avity testified to the sustained impact of Varthema’s narrative on seventeenth-century scholarship. Though no mention of the Italian traveller is made, d’Avity reproduced his report of the deumo in the sections
Ibid., 44-45. Ibid., 45. 45 This cosmography was issued in 1614, 1617, 1619, 1630, 1635, 1644, 1649 and 1659. The work saw at least twenty-five reprints. The English translation, which I have used for my quotations, was produced by Edward Grimstone (London, 1615). The Dutch edition appeared at Amsterdam in 1621. Johann L. Gottfried, a translator who collaborated closely with Pieter van der Aa, translated the work into Latin (Frankfurt, 1628) and German (Frankfurt, 1628, 1695). 46 Pierre d’Avity, The Estates, Empires, & Principallities of the World, trans. E. Grimstone (London, 1615), 774-75. 47 Ibid., 756-57. 43 44
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on Calicut.48 The January 15 letter reappears as well. The French author reformatted his empirical data and projected Xavier’s narrative on a pan-Indian scale to describe the Brahmins at Vijayanagar: they were familiar with the biblical Ten Commandments, used a secret language in matters of faith and “worship one God creator of heaven and earth.” And on Sundays they pray: “I worship thee O God with thy grace and succours eternally.”49 As late as 1659, Varthema’s and Xavier’s narratives were reproduced in a cosmography issued at London, bound together with the English translation of the chronology by the Jesuit Denis Pétau. This cosmography (authored by a certain R. P.) offers an ethnographic account of India and testifies to the enduring importance of ethnographic commonplaces. Xavier’s January 15 letter and the Calicut narrative of Varthema’s Itinerario reappear.50 In this cosmography, the queen does not enjoy the nuptial services of just any priest, but only those of the king of Cochin, “the High Priest of the Brachmanes or Bramins.”51 Between 1667-71 Cornelius Hazart’s Flemish history of the Church appeared at Antwerp, entitled Universal Church History of the past and present Centuries. Its author was a Flemish Jesuit priest, known for his apologetic works and sermons against the Calvinists. The first volume of this massive chronicle starts with a history of Christianity in Japan, China, North and South America, replete with references to the works of Xavier, the destruction of idols, temples and violent persecutions. It also contains a detailed description of the Mughal Empire and the kingdom of Vijayanagar. Hazart took recourse to the reports of multiple travellers, Jesuit and secular, as well as to previously issued cosmographies. The chapters on India begin with lengthy poems in which the Flemish Jesuit deplored the Indian traditions and the Brahmins in no uncertain terms (see appendix 1 and 2). It becomes clear how the format of both Brahmin images continued to provide structure to the Indian reality: in his chapter on the Mughal Empire, the Jesuit explicitly differentiated between the sect of the Banyans (the Gujarati mercantile class) and the Brahmin religion, indicating the multiplicity Ibid., 770-71. Ibid., 778. As late as 1676, d’Avity’s account of ancient India (Vijayanagar) and contemporary India (Vijayanagar, Calicut, Cochin, the Malabar littoral) was reproduced in the third volume of Nicolas Jovet’s work on comparative religion: Histoire des Religions de tous les Royaumes du Monde (Paris, 1680). Other editions appeared at Paris in 1680, 1710 and 1724. 50 P. R., A Geographicall Description of the World. Describing Europe, Asia, Africa, and America etc. (London, 1659), 84-85. 51 Ibid., 84. 48 49
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of Indian traditions.52 Yet, the pre-existing category of priesthood compelled him to describe the Brahmins as priests. Varthema’s account of the deumo had nested itself in the European imagination, disassociated from the pages in which it first appeared. Hazart now described ‘the religion of the Banyans’ in Gujarat like Varthema described that of Calicut: the Banyans believed in one God, the Creator, yet also worshipped the Devil, the servant of God and governor of the world. His subsequent description of the images they paid reverence to is conforming to the pictorial tradition that originated with the sixteenth-century illustrations of the deumo, inspired by Varthema’s account of Brahmin sacrifices, the Brahmins being of course the priests.53 In contrast, the subsequent chapter on ‘the religion of the Brachmanes’ stressed that they are a different type of heathens [een andere soorte van Heydenen], esteemed for their wisdom and office. They claim to be the descendants of Bramma, the first man and city keeper of God. Hazart referred to the scholarship of a Dutch preacher in India (Abraham Rogerius) and reproduced the Purusha Sukta story outlined in Rogerius’ work (1651).54 He also observed that amongst the fables the Brahmins narrate about Brahma [Bramma] and Vishnu [Wistuu] they had knowledge of the Holy Trinity: Hazart wrote that the Indians worshipped a monstrous idol with the faces of Bramhaa, Visnuu and Macesu, a Trinitarian vision they expressed with the threefold thread.55 It is commonplace that a breakthrough was made in seventeenth-century discourses on religion when comparison was no longer understood as simply a polemical tool and both Protestant and Catholic scholars recognized the differences between the traditions in the world, both past and present.56 Nevertheless, the vision of a proto-Christian Brahmin nation was to have a long history in the study of religion. The endurance of classical anthropology in heartland Europe is most clear in Hazart’s detailed chapter on Vijayanagar. The customs of its ancient inhabitants are described according to the utopion vision that emerged prior to the Renaissance: Hazart recapitulated the legendary tales about the Brahmins in Boemus’ Omnium gentium mores (1520). The third chapter, “On their religion and priests,” contains all the standard ingredients. First, the Indians still believe in God, Creator of the world, but Cornelius Hazart, Kerckelycke Historie van de Gheheele Wereldt etc., vol. 1 (Antwerp, 1671), 245-78. 53 Ibid., 247. 54 Ibid., 247-48. 55 Ibid., 248. 56 Guy G. Stroumsa, “John Spencer and the Roots of Idolatry,” History of Religions 41, no. 1 (August 2001): 1-23. 52
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also honour devils as the origin of evil. Second, they are led to believe that the gods have great appetite and therefore offer sacrifices to the idols, which ‘the priests’ or Brahmins secretly consume themselves. Third, they are familiar with the Ten Commandments. Finally, they worship God with secret invocations, or the Sunday prayer recorded in the January 15 letter.57 Hazart’s source must be obvious: d’Avity (1614) had reproduced Xavier’s narrative in his chapter on contemporary Vijayanagar. The spiritual landscape of India was perpetually reconstructed either as a proto-Christian or as a post-Christian space in a miscellany of Catholic histories and cosmographies. The first incorporated the image of the protoChristian Brahmin; the second the image of the crafty Brahmin priest. The books that reconstructed these imageries went through multiple editions and translations, and reproduced the representational structure delimited by both imageries. As late as 1733, the French Jesuit, Joseph-François Lafitau (16811746), reproduced these hackneyed themes in his Histoire des Découvertes et Conquestes des Portugais dans le Nouveau Monde (History of the discoveries and conquests of the Portuguese in the New World). Lafitau also wrote about the Brahmins and “the relics of true religion in their idolatry” [vestiges de la vraye Religion dans leur Idolâtrie]. They are said to be the guardians of ‘the Indian religion’ and recognized the Supreme God [Parabrama] who consisted of three divine constituents. This insights was, however, reformulated in the popular understanding that God discharged the governance of the world to three subaltern deities. As such, the relics of true religion hidden in the realm of idolatry did not simply concern aspects of the Old Testament tradition but also particular points of the Christian doctrine: the Holy Trinity.58 To conclude, the images of the proto-Christian and the post-Christian Brahmins were continuously recapitulated in European learning—Protestant as well as Catholic—and united into a structure of representation that prefigures the representation of Hinduism in nineteenth-century Orientalist discourse. As elaborated previously in Chapters 3 and 4, a transhistorical template of paganism allowed Renaissance Europe to classify the Indian traditions together with the traditions of antiquity. Both Brahmin imageries also interlocked with more specialized theories that traced the genealogy of paganism via the ancient world and Egypt, through ancient India and into China and Japan.
57 58
Cornelius Hazart, Kerckelycke Historie van de Gheheele Wereldt, 279. Joseph Lafitau, Histoire des Découvertes et Conquestes etc., vol. 1 (Paris, 1733), 98-99.
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6.3. Brahmins and the Genealogy of Paganism The assimilation of the Brahmins was part of a larger problem: the nature and history of paganism. The new lands and new peoples who the Europeans encountered generated a great deal of speculation, and with the arrival of novel ethnographic information, the Brahmin became a central element in the histories of paganism. Both imageries—of the Brahmin ascetic and the corrupt priest—interlocked with the theories of religion that located the traditions of Egypt, India, China and Japan in a transhistorical format of paganism. As shown below, the Protestant cosmographers might have set both Brahmin images side-by-side, but the Catholic antiquarians set them in stone. There are essentially two processes through which the subcontinent was transformed into a proto-Christian space. The first propelled the theological debates in Europe and derives from the patristic notion of the divine law implanted by God in the heart of humankind. The second was informed by the Old Testament tradition: the progeny of the biblical Patriarch Abraham had introduced Judaic elements of true religion into the East. The latter conformed to the thesis that all nations descended from the sons of Noah.59 A prefiguration of this thesis can be found in one of the most recurring tropes in the pre-colonial discourse on India: the connection between India and the biblical tribes of Israel, which was evoked in the English translation of Boemus’ Omnium gentium mores (1555), where the Brahmins were referred to as ‘Abrahmanes.’60 This connection already was anticipated in the fifteenthcentury translations of Marco Polo’s travels, where we can read about the Abraiamim.61 One of the first Renaissance humanists to elaborate upon this correspondence to construct a genealogy of paganism was the French Orientalist, Guillaume Postel (1510-81).
This thesis found resonance in cosmography and historiography. See, for instance, Hartman Schedel’s Liber Chronicarum (The Nuremberg chronicle; 1493), arguably the most printed book during the century that movable type was invented. The Europeans continued to chart the travels of Noah and his family into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a trend not only exemplified in biblical scholarship. See Walter Raleigh The Historie of the World etc. (London, 1614), esp. chap. 8. 60 Johannes Boemus, The Fardle of Facions conteining the aunciente maners, customes, and Lawes, of the peoples enhabiting the two partes of the earth, trans. W. Waterman (London, 1555), fol. L. ix. 61 See the first printed edition of Marco Polo’s travels, issued in German without title page: Marco Polo, [Begin:] Hie hebt sich an das puch des edel[e]n Ritters un[d] Landtfarers Marcho Polo (Nuremberg, 1477), fol. 50. 59
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The Marvels of the World Guillaume Postel was educated at the Collège de Sainte-Barbe in Paris. The college attracted a large number of students from the Iberian Peninsula on account of the close ties between the college and the Portuguese crown. Postel was an avid reader of travel reports and cosmographies, and published De orbis terrae concordia (The union of the world; 1544), where he outlined his vision of a religious utopia. Like the Patristic Fathers, Postel championed a universal religion on the basis of the commonalities between all the traditions. One of his most influential works was released in French as Des Merveilles du Monde (Marvels of the world; ca. 1552) and similarly draws from Xavier’s letters to elevate Japan as a virtually Christian nation. Like many works of the period, it accentuates that tolerance and open-mindedness applied to those who had been hauled into the realm of Christian thought: all the nations in the world could be converted to Christianity once it had been shown to them that they shared in their religious foundations. Not surprisingly, this spiritual bedrock looked entirely Christian. The basis of Postel’s open-mindedness— also illustrated by figures like Sebastian Franck—was the idea that God had communicated His message in various ways. The message of Christ was not only true but also corroborated the beliefs of other nations, the principles of a natural religion or the innate ideas of humanity.62 In November of 1548 a remarkable report written in Italian but based on a Portuguese testimony was translated into Spanish by Francis Xavier and sent to Ignatius de Loyola. This was the testimony of a former Japanese samurai called Yajiro. The Portuguese explorer and founder of the first church in Japan, Fernão Mendes Pinto, returned to Malacca with two Japanese fugitives.63 One of them was Yajiro, baptized there by Xavier as Paul de Santa Fé (Paul of the Holy Faith). Yajiro provided the Jesuits with a large amount of information on the Japanese government and Buddhist traditions. The French scholars were quick to respond to this stimulus: four years later Postel reproduced the Spanish translation in his Merveilles du Monde to paint a utopian picture of Japan, and also interpolated the letter with multiple annotations set in italic letter type. Postel inferred that the Japanese adhered to many points of the Christian doctrine. Postel was enraptured and observed
For Postel’s utopianism and unconventional intellectual life, see William J. Bouwsma, Concordia mundi: The Career and Thought of Guillaume Postel, 1510-1581 (Cambridge Mass., 1957). 63 Pinto’s travels were posthumously published in Portuguese under the title Peregrinaçam de Fernam Mendez Pinto (Lisbon, 1614). 62
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that God had diverse ways to teach diverse peoples: the Europeans by Christ and Revelation, and the Japanese through natural reason. Not only did he use Yajiro’s narrative to praise Japan’s rational mode of government, but he also praised its spiritual life.64 Sebastian Franck set both Brahmin images randomly side by side in 1534, followed in 1535 by Egenolf and Münster in 1540. While he did not refer to the Brahmins in this context, Franck argued that the contemporary heathens descended from the Patriarch Abraham. Postel used Yajiro’s testimony to satisfy his curiosity in first sources, and drew an explicit genealogical connection between both theoretical entities: the proto-Christian and the post-Christian Brahmin. He wrote that the Abrahamanes—that is, the ancient Brahmins called by Marco Polo ‘Abrahmin’—are the descendants of the biblical Abraham. When they disobeyd the laws of Isaac, Abraham sent his offspring into the East, yet not without bestowing the divine doctrine upon them: I am persuaded that this is the doctrine of the Abrahmanes, the children of Abraham’s concubines. Their beneficial influence brought this doctrine to the Orient, of which I am convinced by a letter by Francis Xavier ... in which Xavier mentions one of those Abrahmanes, which Marco Polo called Abrahmin. This Brahmin ate his letter, after realizing that it displayed too liberally the universal foundations of our religion. Among many things, Xavier said that they have the same doctrine as ours, amongst their priests, but that they never disclose it to the people, and that nobody but a Brahmin learns it. So did the Brahmin tell him, which I believe to be true. Because when Abraham saw that the children of his concubines did not obey Isaac and renounced the Catholic Church, he did not send them into the East without teaching them the divine doctrine, together with their magic or astrology. As such, today they still retain its fragrance, together with a superior understanding of astrology, much like those in Japan.65
Guillaume Postel, Des Merveilles du Monde, et Principaleme[n]t des Admirables Choses des Indes, & du Nouveau Monde (s.l., 1553?), esp. fols. 13-14, and fol. 16. 65 Ibid., fols. 18-19: “Cecy me conferme en la sentence que ie tiens que ce soit doctrine des Abrahmanes enfantz des concubines d’Abraham, lesquelz il enuoya eu orient soubz l’heureuse influe[n]ce, & m’y re[n]dz co[n]fermé par unes letres qu’escriuit par le passé ledict M. Francoys Schabier ... lá ou ledict Schiabier dist, qu’il y ent un desdictz Abrahmanes, lesq[uel]z Marc Paulo appelle Abrahmin, & eulx se disent Brahmin mengeant la lettre a, voyant que si librement il luy monstroit les commen cementz de nostre religion, entre beaucoup de propos luy dist, nous avons bien la mesme Doctrine q[ue] v[ous] enseignes, entre no[us] presbstres mais iamais ne l’enseignerions au peuple, & n’y ha que les Brahmains, qui entre eulx & pour eulx la doibvent scavoir. ainsi dist ledict Brahmin, ce que ie croy. Car combien qu’Abraham veist que les enfantz des concubines ne vouloient pas obeir a Isaac & renoncoient en ce a la Catholique Eglise, nea[n]tmoins il ne les envoya pas en l’orie[n]t sans leur bailler Doctrine Divine avec leur Magike ou Astrologie, do[n] iusques au iour duy ilz retiennent l’odeur avec tresgrande & a tout le monde superieure congnoissance d’Astrologie, ce qui aussi est en Giapan.” Also see fols. 29, 32. 64
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The reference is to Abraham’s second wife, Keturah, whom the biblical Patriarch married after Sarah’s death (1 Chronicles 1:32). Postel’s search for the origin of things—a characteristic feature of the Renaissance—is exemplified by the family connection he draws between both Brahmin images.66 Like virtually every thinker of the period—whether Catholic or Protestant, Jesuit or Huguenot—Postel was convinced of the ethnographic credibility of the Bible. He did not end with extrapolating the Old Testament history to India and Japan, but also wanted his readers to believe that they fell within the purview of the New Testament history: the Brahmins transmitted not only aspects of the Jewish tradition into the East but also specifically Christian products. In this context, Yajiro’s narrative allowed Postel to stretch the synthesis further, and could thus be called upon to illustrate the point more convincingly: not only the Indian but also the Japanese traditions spoke to the Christian doctrines. The canonical account of the Brahmins could thus be fitted to those who played a prominent role in Buddhist traditions. The practices of Japan were instances of defective Christianity. The story about the Buddha was an obscure summary narrative about Christ.67 Postel first argued that Xaca (or the Shakyamuni Buddha) introduced the sacrament of baptism into Japan and was in fact Jesus Christ.68 He explained meditation practices in terms of the Catholic Sacrament of Penance, which demonstrated “that they [the Japanese] have the evangelical foundations and doctrine, to which the people are not exposed and due to which they compose fables reminiscent of true religion.”69 As such, Postel saw the similarities virtually everywhere: the Japanese knew about the crucifixion and also recited the rosary.70 They knew of heaven, hell and purgatory, and worshipped an image of a woman
Where Postel derived his inspiration from is clear: the Recognitions of Clement—produced somewhere in the first half of the third century c.e.—outlined the doctrines of true religion taught to the Patriarch Abraham. The author of this early Christian work described the exploits of Abraham’s sons and mentioned their progeny, including the Brahmins. See A. Robertson and J. Donaldson, eds., Fathers of the Third and Fourth Centuries etc. The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Michigan, 1951), chap. 33: 86. 67 Guillaume Postel, Des Merveilles du Monde, fols. 22, 23-24 and 35. 68 Ibid., fols. 22-23: “… par cecy se voit claireme[n]t, q[ue] Xaca ne peult estre aultre q[ue] Iesus qui Iuy seul ha institué le baptesme a l’exemple duquel cecy se faict.” 69 Ibid., fol. 27: “[Q]u’il aye lá de la semence & doctrine Eva[n]gelique, qui n’est pas exposée au peuple, & par ainsi ilz composent des fables avec la vieile memoire de la verité.” Also see fols. 24-26. 70 Ibid., fol. 31: “Oultre il y ha audict pays [ Japan] un Prince qui porte une croix pour enseigne en sa banniere ou estendart, ce que nul ne peult aultre que luy en toute l’Isle faire. Cecy est la vraye confirmation que xaca soit lá adoré pour iesus christ crucifie.” 66
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holding the child Xaca in her arms, a satanic replica of the Virgin Mary.71 The Orientalist concluded, “all this comes from the Christian Doctrine.”72 Xavier’s experiences in Japan testified more strongly to what Postel had to infer from Yajiro’s testimony: as with the ‘Hindu’ traditions, the ‘Buddhist’ traditions were again instances of defective Christianity. The mechanism of corruption had been identical: the Devil had taught the Asian priests to show the European priests the real meaning of deceit.73 The Europeans not only understood the Indian tradions as variants of religion but as Christianity gone wrong. On the basis of Xavier’s letters, a genealogical connection could now be drawn between two theoretical entities, combining both Brahmin figures into a historical outline that maps onto the two-tiered historiography of religion shared by diverse Christian theologies. The Distribution of Postel’s Thesis Postel’s impact on Renaissance cosmography is suggested by the 1628 edition of Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia. Münster introduced ever more data into this massive work, which resulted into progressively more voluminous editions. From the 659 pages that made up the 1544 edition, the work grew into the 1752 folio pages of a posthumous 1628 impression. The sections on India that graced the first edition were augmented and restructured into a dedicated chapter conform to the information brought home from the East. Writing about India, Münster summarizes what the Greeks knew about India and the Brahmins, still applauded as a righteous nation. At variance with previous prints, the section on contemporary India developed into a dedicated chapter on modern India, a more accurate account of the Indies, as the author titled it, based to a large extent on Xavier’s letter of January 15th (1544).74 The additional information provided by Xavier was incorporated in the outline of Indian spirituality that previously embraced Varthema’s narrative. Münster wrote that Postel considered the Indians to be the descendants of Abraham, who had migrated to the East after Moses liberated the Jews from slavery, which provided a clue on the etymology of Brahmin: as MünIbid., fol. 37. Ibid., fol. 36: “Tout cecy est de la Doctrine Chrestienne.” 73 See Xavier’s epistle dated November 3, 1549: “Lettre VII. Au Peres & Freres de la Compagnie, à Goa,” in Lettres de S. Francois Xavier, vol. 3: 338-39. 74 Sebastian Münster, Cosmographia, Das ist: Beschreibund der gantzen Welt (Basel, 1628), 156176: “Eygentliche Beschreibung des Lands Indien, so jetz Ost-Indien genennet wirdt.” 71 72
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ster explained, Brachmanes was a derivation of Abrachmanes.”75 Much like Postel, he resorted to priestcraft in oder to explain the difference with the contemporary Brahmins, and wrote that the philosophers and priests [den Philosophis oder Geistlichen in India] were far removed from the original descendants of Abraham. Münster wrote that ‘the priests’ had universities and schools, and that the students were required to promise to preserve their secret. As his readers would expect: “That there is only one God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and that He only and not idols should be worshipped.”76 Münster acknowledged his source with a deferential reference to “Xaverius der Jesuit.” And as the Jesuit observed, the Brahmins not only knew the first of the Ten Commandments (worship only God) but were aware of the entire Judeo-Christian Decalogue.77 As we have seen, the Brahmin figure extracted from Varthema’s report (1510) was combined with the legendary image of the proto-Christian Brahmins into a unified outline of ‘the Indian religion.’ The data which Xavier provided the European cosmographers with was immediately incorporated into the same two-tiered model of religion. Postel’s scholarship on the source of the Oriental traditions was popular in the Renaissance academies. Sections of Des Merveilles du Monde—including Postel’s annotations to Yajiro’s narrative—were repeated in Jean Macer’s Les Trois Livres de l’histoire des Indes (Three books on Indian history; 1555).78 Postel’s disciple, Guy Lefèvre de la Boderie (1541-98), turned to the study of Oriental languages to further his Christian apologetic, and recapitulated the connection between the Brahmins and Abraham in verse while writing his La Galliade, ou de la Révolution des Arts et Sciences (1578).79 As late as 1793, the Orientalist and librarian at the British Museum, Thomas Maurice, elaborated upon Postel’s thesis in his Indian Antiquities.80 The vision that the Brahmins trace to Abraham and the posterity of Keturah was to have a long history: this thesis can still be found in the entry on Brachmins in the sixth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1823).81 Ibid., 1561: “… welches so viel seye als Abrachmanes.” Ibid., 1562: “[D]ass nur ein Gott, Schöpffer Himmels und Erden sey, welcher allein, und nicht die Pagodes solle angebetten werden.” 77 Idem. 78 Jeff Persels, “A Curious Case of Ethnographic Cleansing: The First French Interpretations of the Japanese, 1552-1555,” L’Esprit Créateur 48, no. 1 (2008): 45-57. 79 Guy Lefèvre de La Boderie, La Galliade, ou de la Révolution des Arts et Sciences (Paris, 1578; second edition 1582), fols. 48-49. 80 Thomas Maurice, Indian Antiquities etc., vol. 2 (London, 1793), 291-92. Also see William Heckford, A succinct Account of all the Religions, and various Sects in Religion, that have prevailed in the World, in all Nations, and all Ages etc. (London, 1791), 245-47. 81 Encyclopaedia Britannica: or, a Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1823), 364-65. 75 76
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From the first encounters onwards, European savants speculated on the place of ‘the Brahmin religion’ in the larger context of heathendom. Several scholars attempted to uncover the connections between Indian customs and those of ancient Egypt and Greece to provide a larger history of the distribution of paganism in the world.82 Postel evoked both Brahmin images to explain the ‘facts and figures’ within his theory of paganism. Both imageries were continuosly evoked, even in light of the sceptic attacks against this set of traditional truths. China Illustrated In the decade after which the French theologian Isaac La Peyrère observed the particularity of the history of the Hebrews and thus, interrogated the universal applicability of the Old Testament (Prae-Adamitæ; 1655), and after Thomas Hobbes implied that the New Testament was not the Word of God but a product of men inspired by the divine (Leviathan; 1651), the German Jesuit antiquarian, Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680), continued to process the ethnographic novelties into the ancient formats of the Old Testament history. While it is true that this was a period in which established truths were being questioned, at least in the case of sensitive areas like that of religious belief, it is equally true that the novel information was still absorbed into a systematic, yet centuries-old format. Both Brahmin images continued to play a central role in this process.83 Kircher is an appropriate example. In Rome he had easy access to the central archive of the Jesuits and priviliged access to their reports from abroad, including the discoveries in Oriental languages. An extraordinary erudite scholar, he produced perhaps one of the most influential Orientalist works of the second part of the seventeenth century, best known as the China Illustrata (Amsterdam, 1667). This was a synthesis of the information on the East available to a Jesuit scholar in the latter part of the century, and derived greatly from the works of Jesuit missionaries and travellers to the East. Kircher had earned his colours through his study of Egypt (Oedipus Ægyptiacus, 1652), leading him to weave Indian (Hindu) and Chinese (Buddhist) tradions into a common idolatrous thread that found its origins in Egypt. All expressions of François de Belleforest, Histoire Universelle, fol. 51. Also see André Thevet, La Cosmographie Universelle d’André Thevet etc. (Paris, 1575), fol. 381. 83 My conclusions thus differ from Joan-Pau Rubiès thesis in his “Travel writing and humanistic culture: A blunted impact?,” Journal of Early Modern History 10, no. 1 (2006): 131-168. 82
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idolatry were explained by a universal theory of priestcraft.84 The same model of religion also structured Kircher’s theory of the diffusion of paganism in the China Illustrata. He was confident that the Apostle Thomas had brought true religion to the lands of the East. The Indian worship of the cow was sufficient evidence for Kircher to conclude that the Asian forms of worship also derived from ancient Egypt, known for its worship of the bull Apis.85 The third part of this highly eclectic work focuses closely on the origin and dissemination of idolatry, and how it travelled via Persia into India, and further East to all the regions of the Orient. From the worship of an infinite number of deities, through the worship of the sun and the fire, to the veneration of the cow, all modes of worship were imitations of Egypt.86 Kircher added that those who travelled into the Orient confirmed that the images worshipped there were equal to the deities of Greece and Egypt.87 There was no problem in seeing Indian traditions through this lense, since priestcraft—much like paganism and Christianity itself—was a transhistorical category. Varthema’s account of Calicut (1510) is here revised to demonstrate that Egypt and India share in a common worship of the demon. The deumo of Calicut is accommodated in Kircher’s system of paganism as an avatar of the Greek Typhon.88 The explanatory force of the early-modern Brahmin image is evoked in the subsequent chapter, entitled On the practices and customs of the Brahmins.89 The reputation of the Brahmins led Kircher to explain—in what would become an account of the spread of Buddhism—that the architect of Oriental superstitions was a villain—a Brahmin. Kircher referred to the ‘Brahmin priest’ as an imposter, a detestable monster [monstre detestable] and a monster of nature [monstre de la nature], who gained fame among the idolators of
84 The China Illustrata was translated from the Latin into Dutch by Jan Hendrik Glazemaker (1668) and into French by François-Savinien d’Alquie (1670). It provided a background for the editors of future eyewitness reports: extracts of the French translation were interpolated into the French edition of Abraham Rogerius’ work (Amsterdam, 1670). The China Illustrata was an influential work with ramifications across the English Channel. The Scottish translator and cartographer, John Ogilby, interpolated extracts of Kircher’s work in his translation of Johan Nieuhof ’s report of the Dutch embassies to China (1673). For Kircher, also see Paula Findlen, Athanasius Kircher: The last Man who knew Everything (New York, 2004). 85 Athanasius Kircher, La Chine d’Athanase Kirchere de la Compagnie de Jesus etc., trans. F. d’Alquie (Amsterdam, 1670), 72-73. 86 Ibid., 199-200. 87 Ibid., 200. 88 Ibid., 202-03. 89 Ibid., 207.
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India under the name of Rama, amongst the Japanese as Xaca (the Shakyamuni Buddha), and as Xe Xian (the Shih-chia Buddha) in China. This Brahmin retired to a mountain from where he instituted the atrocious forms of idolatry which reigned in the Oriental lands, inventing doctrines about the worship of devils and men.90 Kircher’s system of religion was not exceptional. It would not be unlikely, for instance, that he inspired the account of the diffusion of paganism in the lavishly illustrated Dapper-Montanus collection on the Dutch embassies to China.91 The late seventeenth-century savants had greater access to information than the sixteenth-century cosmographers, yet Kircher incorporated these novelties into the ancient formats. He also printed a pictorial representation of Purusha Shukta, in which Brahma was placed inside the cosmic egg and the creation of ‘the four tribes’ was illustrated by four circles on his celestial body. The illustration is more reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man than anything remotely related to India.92 While Kircher took recourse to supernatural or demonological interventions to explain the genealogy of Asian traditions—and while the second Brahmin image neatly interlocked with this thesis, connecting Egypt via India with China—it also should be remarked that the China Illustrata contained many of the elements of later Indological scholarship, suggesting the deep theological foundations of the field. The explanation of Indian society, popular in colonial times as Purusha Sukta or the story of the sacrificial man, already structured Kircher’s work in the 1660s, when he thus wrote that the Brahmins believed humankind to originate from the different parts of Brahma’s body. Kirchers observed that the Indians also believed in hierarchically ordered worlds in which the deceased were reborn according to merit, leading to a state of perfection, an allusion to enlightenment. According to Kircher, this was simply a corruption of the Neo-Platonic notion of theomorphosis, (of form divine).93 He continued with Indian stories concerning the origin of the world—referred to as ridicuIbid., 207-08. Arnoldus Montanus, ed., Atlas Chinensis; Being a second Part of a Relation of remarkable Passages in two Embassies from the East-India Company of the United Provinces, to the Viceroy Singlamong etc., trans. J. Ogilby (London, 1671), 569-74. 92 A similar illustration previously had been printed in the second edition of the French travelogue by François de La Boullaye-Le Gouz (1653), entitled Fabulos Brachmanum Narratio de 14 Mundorum genesi (The fabulous narration of the Brahmins concerning the Origin of the 14 Worlds). See François de La Boullaye-le-Gouz, Les voyages et observations dv Sievr de la Bovllaye le-Gouz Gentil-Homme Angevin etc. (Paris, 1657 [1653]). 93 Athanasius Kircher, La Chine d’Athanase Kirchere, 212-13. 90 91
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lous superstitions—and devoted the subsequent chapter (chap. 6) to their doctrines about the incarnations of God. Kircher’s outline of the Indian traditions maps unto a format that traces to the first few decades of the sixteenth century, yet continued to structure the facts about India in the latter part of the seventeenth. The China Illustrata distributed Heinrich Roth’s pioneering work on the Sanskrit language, and introduced his work on the ten incarnations of Vishnu, called by Kircher the doctrine of the ten incarnations of God.94 Kircher’s oblique reference to the Christian God is made explicit when he refers to Brahma [Bruma], Vishnu [Vesne] and Shiva [Butzen] as the Holy Trinity (Les personnes de la Sainte Trinité). The Brahmin’s believe in the ten incarnations of Vishnu was further taken by Kircher to constitute the Devil’s corruption of this central Christian doctrine.95 The stories about the avatars of Vishnu reproduced from the work of Roth prefigure the classical Indological accounts, and are illustrated by pen drawings. These were amongst the first pen drawings of Indian devatas based on popular indigenous art, and thus, among the first pictorial representations of the devatas that moved beyond the demonological illustrations associated with Calicut.96 To a certain extent then, Kircher’s account of India was more accurate than many of the previous and contemporary sources, fueled by an abundance of first-hand observations. Yet, the facts were still incorporated into the ancient formats that straightjacketed the Indian traditions into a priest-centred or Brahmin-centred format. Kircher concluded that all the Indian stories narrated thus far found their origin in Genesis 6.97 He also discussed the Sanskrit characters and called them a secret script of the Brahmins, which they learned from the Hebrews, as the Jews used a similar script For the Jesuit missionary Heinrich Roth, see The Sanskrit Grammar and Manuscripts of Father Heinrich Roth S.J. (1620-1668) etc., eds. A. Camps and J. C. Muller (Leiden, New York, 1988). 95 Athanasius Kircher, La Chine d’Athanase Kirchere, 214-15. 96 Ibid., 215-20. Heinrich Roth’s illustrations were also reproduced in Bernard Picart’s famous collection, Cérémonies et Coutumes Religieuses des Peuples Idolatres etc. (Amsterdam, 1723). The same shift was apparent in Dutch scholarship of the period, and especially in the works by Olfert Dapper (1672) and Philippus Baldaeus (1672). The latter reproduced the illustrations in the Dutch manuscript by Philips Angels, entitled Devex Avataars. For a discussion of the shift from demonological representations to illustrations based on a set of Indian originals, see Partha Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters (Oxford, 1977). Also see Günter Herzog, “Kunst und kulturelle Identität: Materialen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der europäischen Auseinandersetzung mit fremder Kunst, 1550-1850” (Doctoral thesis, University of Cologne, 1998). 97 Athanasius Kircher, La Chine d’Athanase Kirchere, 221. 94
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for their Cabbala.98 In a letter, dated 1644, Heinrich Roth referred to this language as the church language [Schul- und Kirchen-Sprach] of the Brahmins.99 Needless to say, seventeenth-century Europe was far from imaginative when it concerned representations of religion. This was a period suspicious of supernatural interventions, eager to put the demonological analysis of paganism aside. Yet, Europe continued to transform the subcontinent either into a proto-Christian or a post-Christian space. The anticlerical ethos that permeates the cultural history of Europe was thus extrapolated to the Brahmins, identified as the priesthood that juggled true religion, in the East. This conception of religion—with the Brahmin as the most central and recurring element in it—was reproduced in a variety of Renaissance sources, and is consistent with the nineteenth-century Orientalist representation: the Brahmins had corrupted a monotheistic core into ritual and idolatry. Or put differently, the local Indian traditions (‘popular Hinduism’) were roped together by a rigid and unyielding Brahmanic system (‘philosophical Hinduism’). As far as colonial scholarship was concerned, the locus of this system was to be found in the ancient Indian manuscripts. The Textualization of Tradition As we have seen in Chapter 1, there is no prima facie evidence to presume that Indian manuscripts have among the Indian traditions the same status as the Bible has in Christianity. The European search for scriptural foundations began with the first wave of Jesuit activity in India. The idea that a text or a canon of texts is central to ‘the Indian religion’ was manifestly presupposed from the sixteenth century onwards. In other words, no research was needed to arrive at the commonsense claim that the Vedas parallel the Bible in Christianity. Equally, the ‘textualization of tradition’ is not a specifically colonial project; nor does it draw from an exclusively Protestant model of religion.100 One only has to highlight the Jesuit works discussed above, or the Portuguese treatise on Hindu mythology by the Jesuit Jacopo Fenicio, the Livro de Seitas dos Indias Orientais (Book of the sects of the Oriental Indians; Ibid., 222. Heinrich Roth, “Brief P. Henrici Roth, der Gesellschafft Jesu Missionarii in dem Reich des Gross-Mogols etc.,” in Allerhand So Lehr- als Geist-reiche Brief, Schrifften und Reis-Beschreibungen, Welche von denen Missionariis der Gesellschafft Jesu aus beyden Indien etc., ed. J. Stöcklein, P. Probst, and F. Keller (Augsburg, 1728), 114. 100 It suffices to refer to ‘textualizing’ responses in Counter-Reformation Catholicism. See Jean Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, 40-43. 98 99
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1609), to get a glimpse of the larger Jesuit project concerned with identifying and translating the so-called sacred scriptures of the Brahmins.101 In 1602, the Jesuit visitor of India, Niccolò Pimenta, copied a letter from the pen of Melchior Cotingo (aka Père Emanuel de Vega). Cotingo not only observed that the Brahmins originate from the dispersion of the twelve tribes of Israel, but also that their books, called “Samescretan,” resemble those of the Holy (Christian) Scripture remarkably well.102 The endurance of these ethnographic commonplaces and their influence on the cross-cultural encounters is best illustrated by the letters of Jean Venant Bouchet (1655-1732), a French Jesuit in present day Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, and an accomplished cartographer who travelled extensively in India during the first half of the eighteenth century. Bouchet’s letters were popular in Europe: the French originals were translated into English, Dutch and German.103 His most interesting letters are those written to aid the theologians with fresh evidence from the East. One of his recipients was the bishop of Avranches, Pierre-Daniel Huet, the author of Demonstratio Evangelica (Demonstration of the Gospel; 1679), showing that all religions of the world could be derived from Christian Revelation. Bouchet corroborated this thesis with arguments from India. The English translator introduced his letter (first released in French in 1713) as follows: “A Letter from Father Bouchet to the Bishop of Avranches, concerning the knowledge the Indians have had of the True Religion, the Truth whereof they have corrupted with Fables.” The Jesuit reproduced the claim made by many in the sixteenth century: while the Indians retain some knowledge of the Christian God, their present religion is a corruption of the true worship of God. This is what the Jesuit Father proposed to bishop Huet as late as 1713:
101 Jacobo Fenicio, The Livro da Seita dos Indios Orientais etc, ed. J. Charpentier (Uppsala, 1933). While the British Museum manuscript was issued in the twentieth century, this work was used by several early-modern writers for its account of Indian cosmology and mythology, many of which never acknowledged their debt. One of the most famous examples can be found in the Dutch publication by Philippus Baldaeus: Naauwkeurige beschryvinge van Malabar en Coromandel, etc. (Amsterdam, 1672). 102 Melchior Cotingo cited in Niccolò Pimenta, Les Miracles Merveilleux Advenus aux Indes Orïentales etc. (Paris, 1603 [1602]), 50-51. This collection of letters, sent to Claudio Aquaviva, the general of the Order (Goa, December 1, 1600), appeared in Italian in Rome in 1602, and found translation into Latin, issued in Mainz, that same year. 103 For Bouchet, his role in the second Malabar Rites controversy and his influence upon European perceptions of India, see Francis Xavier Clooney, Fr. Bouchet’s India: An 18th Century Jesuit’s Encounter with Hinduism (Chennai, 2005).
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[T]he Indians have taken their Religion from the Books of Moses and the Prophets; that all the Fables their Books are fill’d with, do not so much disguise the Truth but that it may still be known, at least in Part, by their Commerce with the Jews and Egyptians, there appear among them plain Footsteps of the Christian Religion, preached to them by St. Thomas, the Apostle, Pantænus, and other great Men, ever since the first Ages of the Church.104
Because the Indians acknowledged an infinitely perfect God, Bouchet reiterated what the medieval sources (and the Church Fathers) had shown: “the Author of Nature has engrafted this fundamental Truth in the Minds of all Men.”105 The remainder of this letter can be summarized in brief: the ingredients of the Indian stories were themes from the Bible. From the Indian cosmogonies, through their notions of the Flood, to the etymological link between Brahma and Abraham, the similarities were virtually endless: the Ramayana resembled a passage in the life of Samson; other stories resembled The Book of Job. The ancient conformity of names not only applied to Abraham but also to his wife: the Jewish Sarah and the Indian Sarasvati were in fact the same historical persons.106 Most elements of the later colonial discourses were present in this letter. Bouchet continued with a description of Indian Law and sacred scriptures, authored by Brama and called Vedam, the Book of Law, which was unmistakably “an imitation of Moses’s Pentateuch.”107 The cosmogonies in the first Veda demonstrated the resemblance with the first chapter of Genesis; the moral precepts in the second Veda were similar to the precepts found in Exodus; while the fourth Veda, describing sacrifices, guidelines for temples and festivals, resembled Leviticus.108 And whereas Brahma, Vichnou and Routren reflected the corruption of the belief in one Supreme God, the “more learned” exemplified the “confuse Notion the Indians still retain of the adorable Trinity, which was former preach’d to them.”109 Jean Venant Bouchet, “A Letter from F. Bouchet, Of the Society of Jesus, Missioner at Madure, and Superior of the New Mission of Carnate, to the Lord Bishop of Avranches,” in The Travels of several Learned Missioners of the Society of Jesus, into divers parts of the Archipelago, India, China, and America (London, 1714), 1-26 [2]. This letter was translated into German and printed in the collection of Jesuit correspondence by Joseph Stöcklein, Petrus Probst, and Franciscus Keller, eds., Allerhand so lehr- als geist-reiche Brief, Schriften und Reis-Beschreibungen, welche von denen Missionariis der Gesellschaft Jesu aus beyden Indien etc. (Augsburg, 1726). It was reprinted in the influential Enlightenment collection by Bernard Picart, ed., Cérémonies et Coutumes Religieuses des Peuples Idolatres etc. (Amsterdam, 1723), providing an even wider distribution of the letter. The Dutch translation of this collection appeared at ’s Gravenhage in 1728, and an English translation at London in 1733. 105 Ibid., 5. 106 Ibid., 10. 107 Ibid., 16-17. 108 Ibid., 20. 109 Ibid., 21. 104
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While the missionary zeal to understand Indian paganism for the purpose of conversion contributed to the development of Indology, the Jesuits continued to reproduce century-old commonplaces at the eve of the colonial era. In one of his letters, dated 1705, a Jesuit in India who went by the name of F. de la Lane, mentioned the Indian “Book of Law, writ in Samouseredam,” observing that “our sacred Books have not been altogether unknown to them; for they make Mention of the Flood, of an Ark, and of many more such like Things.”110 In another letter, issued in the same collection of Jesuit correspondence, de la Lane elaborated again upon the Indian manuscripts, and concluded that the Indian heathens “formerly had a distinct knowledge enough of the true God.”111 Similar to Bouchet, he arrived at an understanding of Indian texts that would guide the massive Orientalist projects of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The poets of India, he wrote, “have by their Fictions from Time to Time effac’d out of the Minds of the People the Notions of the Deity.”112 While he no longer fell back on devilish interventions, de la Lane still identified the role of scriptures in India like his predecessors did, and thereby prefigured the Orientalist stance: the ancient books, “containing the purer Doctrine, have by Degrees been neglected, and the Use of that language [Sanskrit] is altogether ceas’d.”113 Much like his Orientalist successors, the missionary did not wonder whether this ‘negligence’ indicated an altogether different attitude towards scriptures, and continued that “This is most certain with Respect to the Book of the Religion call’d Vedam, which the learned Men of the Country do not now understand.”114 The letters of Jean Bouchet and other Jesuit missionaries in the East were incorporated in the famous collection of Jesuit correspondence, best known as the Lettres Édif iantes et Curieuses (Curious and Edifying Letters) edited by Charles Le Gobien in the eighteenth century. This French collection ran through multiple enlarged editions and was translated into English, German and Italian. In 1749, the Jesuit scholar, Claude François Lambert (17051765), drew from the Lettres Édif iantes to produce another work in the cosmographical tradition, treating of the ancient and contemporary manners, F. de la Lane, “An Extract of another Letter. From the same F. de la Lane. Tarkolan, 1705,” in The Travels of several Learned Missioners of the Society of Jesus, 121-25 [124]. This was the English translation of a collection of Jesuit correspondence or the Lettres Édif iantes, issued at Paris in 1713. 111 Ibid., 107. 112 Idem. 113 Ibid., 108. 114 Idem. 110
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customs, religions, mythologies and sciences of the peoples of Asia, Africa and America. The second chapter of the first volume of this work is appropriately entitled Of the knowledge which the Indians have had of the true Religion [Sur la connoissance que les Indiens ont eue de la vraie Religion]. Lambert observed that the ancient manuscripts of the Indians demonstrate that they drew their religion indeed from the books of Moses and the Jewish prophets, notwithstanding the fables with which they clouded these principles. On the one hand, the Indians were familiar with aspects of the Judaic tradition, transmitted via trading with the Jews and the Egyptians. On the other, ‘the Indian religion’ also displayed traces of Christianity, preached to them by the Apostle Thomas and other great men.115 Interestingly enough, Lambert also argued that their belief in God does not necessarily support either of both statements, for Christian theology tells us that monotheism is a fundamental truth which the “Author of Nature” engraved on the minds of men.116 Nevertheless, the conformity of names supports the first thesis: the names of Brahma and Abraham as well as the names of Sarasvati and Sarah are indeed remarkably similar.117 Brama among the Indians, like Abraham among the Jews, was head of the same number of tribes.118 The manner in which the Indians treat the Vedam or ‘the book of Law’ is reminiscent of the Jewish esteem for the Law of Moses.119 Like Bouchet, Lambert listed the many ways in which the Vedas resembled the Old Testament tradition, and concluded: “Such is the knowledge the Indians have had of the religion of the Hebrews.”120 Lambert once again observed that that they had knowledge of the Christian religion, from the earliest times of the Church. His second thesis is supported by their confused understanding of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity [une idée confuse de l’adorable Trinité], which the Indians present as Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.121 These works are the products of missionary activity in the early eighteenth century. Accordingly, the Indian manuscripts were not simply sacred scriptures but spurious copies of the Bible, in the same way as the sixteenthcentury cosmographers saw the Indian traditions as the manifestations of 115 Claude F. Lambert, Recueil d’observations curieuses sur les moeurs, les coutumes, les Usages … la Religion … de différens Peuples de l’Asie, de l’Afrique, & de l’Amérique, vol. 1 (Paris, 1749), 16. 116 Ibid., 19. 117 Ibid., 27. 118 Ibid., 27-28. 119 Ibid., 34-35. 120 Ibid., 41: “Telle est la connoissance que les Indiens ont eue de la religion des Hébreux…” 121 Idem.
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defective Christianity in the East. Whether or not they were copies of the Bible in the eyes of the nineteenth-century Orientalists, the Vedas had to be the sacred scriptures all the same, performing exactly the same role in India as the Bible in Christianity. The long history of this emphasis on textual sources must be clear. While de la Lane (much like the deists) had left the demonological thesis aside, he continued to find in ancient scriptures evidences of a forgotten truth, which in his particular case was also the Christian truth. Although it is important to allow for variations, there is a direct line of interpretation that connects this discourse with such later scholarship as the work by the French Jesuit in India, Abbé Dubois (1816), recommended by Lord William Bentinck, the governor of Madras, for being of “the greatest benefit in aiding the servants of the Government in conducting themselves more in unison with the customs of the natives.”122 Abbé Dubois provided a unified picture of Indian traditions that fits the two-tiered model of religion outlined above, with a particular emphasis on the Indian scriptures as the harbingers of a monotheistic truth, and an imaginary Brahmin priesthood as the defiler of this truth.123
6.4. Conclusion In conclusion, the so-called construction of Hinduism has been historically associated with centers of political, economic and social power. But does this tell us something fundamental about the European representations of India? It does not; because there is nothing particularly colonial about the unification of multiple traditions into a Brahmin-centric format: precolonial European authors conceptualized ‘the Indian religion’ in much the same way, long before the British coined the term ‘Hinduism.’ This ‘religion of the priest’ first emerged as a representational structure at the libraries of Europe—in Renaissance cosmographies—delimited by two images of the Brahmin protagonist that were continuously reconstructed in theological discourses. As such, an understanding of the history Orientalism—our study of the genealogy of colonial discourse—is to begin understanding the western culture itself. In addition, the idea that the Vedas and the Upanishads are the sacred scriptures Cited in the third edition, edited and annotated by Henry K. Beauchamp: Jean-Antoine Dubois, Description of the character, manners, and customs of the people of India; and of their institutions, religious and civil etc. (London, 1906 [1816]), xv. 123 Ibid., 105, 186-87, 566-67, 576, 606-07. 122
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of India means that they enjoy the same status as the Bible in Christianity. Also this emphasis on scripture is not particularly colonial in nature: it derives from the theological vision that Indian manuscripts are not just like the Bible, but are in fact spurious copies of the Bible. The majority of nineteenth-century Orientalists left the demonological argument about the corruption of religion aside and Hinduism became part of the ‘world religions,’ but also this discourse of world religions displays no major discontinuity in its structure of representation. The two-tiered conceptualization of a Brahmin-centric religion that took root when theological considerations still determined the discourse on religion was gradually translated into the language of colonialism, and employed as a neutral analytical format to study Indian traditions. The theological nature of this paradigm is less easily recognized as it no longer manifests itself in an explicitly Christian guise. Yet, what was in origin a theological understanding of Indian culture— shared across various Christian denominations—percolated so deeply into our intellectual traditions that it is now taken too often as a given. Chapter 1 not only suggested that Hinduism emerged as a representational structure in Christian theology, but also that it exists as an object in the experiential world of the West: this representational structure provided the Europeans with a unitary and coherent experience of India. On the one hand, ‘the Indian religion of the priest’ (Hinduism) emerged as a concept in the libraries and universities of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Europe. On the other, it is also a construct because it is an entity-in-experience, which unifies the western experience of India. The Jesuit missionaries structured their experiences of India according to the anticlerical formats available to them. In this sense, ‘the Indian religion of the priest’ became a ‘reality’ in their experience. As shown in the following Chapter, the spectrum defined by both modes of representation—with the Brahmin as the proto-Christian or the corrupted embodiment of the Christian norm—was not only reconstructed by the European scholars and theologians, but also defined the cognitive make-up of future travellers to India. The latter similarly structured their experiences by the analytical formats available to them.
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Chapter Seven
Hinduism: An experiential Entity for Europeans
I
t is not my argument that the European representations of the Indian traditions arose out of a closed textual system of books influencing other books. Rather, the limits of the European engagement with India were such that various historical actors—Protestant as well as Catholic—manufactured the very same outline of an ‘Indian religion of the priest’ when confronted with the Indian reality. This representational structure was delimited by two distinct images of the Brahmin protagonist that emerged in the theological controversies that marked the cultural history of Europe. On the one hand, the present Chapter provides a rudimentary overview of the production of travel literature in the seventeenth century to show the endurance of the ethnographic commonplaces that guided the construction of ‘Hinduism’ in the cosmographies. On the other hand, it suggests that the construction of ‘Hinduism’ was the prerequisite for structure in the European experience of India—it preconditioned empirical observation. The manner in which the Europeans resorted to the world that was familiar to them is clear in travel writing. The first section demonstrates that the images constructed in the early decades of the sixteenth century continued to be reproduced in travel writing all the way through the seventeenth century. The spiritual historiography of the Bible—accepted as an ethnographic premise by cosmographers and the translators of books on the discoveries in the East—combined the Semitic and non-Semitic traditions into one common frame of reference. The company of future travellers confirmed in the eyes of many readers that this was indeed their most appropriate place. Whereas the ethnographic scholarship was framed to fit specific theological agendas, seventeenth-century travellers to India reproduced its assumptions as commonsense anthropological narratives. The first section substantiates this claim, using the travel literature produced in England, France, Germany and the Low Countries. It demonstrates the endurance of the anticlerical images that graced the pages of the cosmographies. ‘The Indian religion of the priest’ (later known as ‘Hinduism’) emerged as a theoretical entity in the cosmographies of Renaissance Europe. This concept also became an entity-in-experience: it provided stability, structure and coherence to the European experience of local practices, customs and traditions.
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As suggested in Chapter 1, without this concept, Europe would confront pandemonium in the East: adhyatmic practices, garlands and temples, statues of humans and non-human entities, the drummers, pipers and the sounds of ringing bells, the incense and cows and vegetarian diets—all the empirical facts were incorporated into the background theory of Christian theology and related to its category of religion. Every ‘fact’ Europeans commented upon in this context became a manifestation of ‘the Indian religion of the priest.’ This interpretative process took place within the ambit of both modes of representation outlined in the previous Chapters. They provided stability and coherence to Europe’s engagement with India. This will be shown in the final section of this Chapter.
7.1. The early Travel Tradition: Brahmin Ascetics and devil Priests The rationale behind the early-modern eyewitness accounts of India stems from the widespread assurance that the world had known the biblical God. Christian theology was adamant that the true religion could be traced back to Adam and Eve and suspected that its remnants survived in the most distant quarters of the world, testifying to the universal propagation of the truth, prior to the Devil’s deceptions. At a point when Oriental regions were increasingly being documented in European sources, the canonical representation of ‘the satanic religion of Calicut’ could be extrapolated to cover the entire subcontinent. The Malabar littoral had grown into the seat of Satan and his crafty priesthood after the European lands had been christened, from where the sacerdotal corruptions fanned out over inland regions like the sultanate of Golconda and kingdom of Vijayanagar, up north to Gujarat, down south around Cape Comorin, along the Coromandel Coast, and all the way up to Bengal. The reports of cross-cultural encounters demonstrate that European travellers and the merchants to the East observed multiple practices and customs. While they wrote about a myriad of local traditions, they also postulated a pan-Indian synthesis. As would be the case with colonial scholarship (and postcolonial scholarship today), the pre-existing category of a pan-Indian clerical estate—a religious system centred upon Brahmanic beliefs and practices—was instrumental in this process of unification. That is to say, the European explorers, merchants and government officials necessarily used the conceptual apparatus available to them when recording their experiences in India. Because the ‘austere’ Brahmins had been
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represented as proto-Christians, they were thought to guard the central aspects of true religion: good morals, faith and the acknowledgment of the biblical God. But the Brahmins are not the priests of India, and the European travellers observed them performing various professions. Nevertheless, the legendary image of a Brahmin nation striving for the priestly ideal in the East had such an impact on the popular imagination that to single out the Brahmins as India’s clerical estate appeared to be self-evident—they always had a fabled place in European learning and popular perceptions of the East. In the context of the medieval discourse, religion was the realm of the priest, leading Mandeville (ca. 1357) to classify the Brahmins as that they were religious men. The foreknowledge of their ‘asceticism’ determined the idea that ‘Brahmins’ referred to a nation that strived for the sacerdotal ideal—in word, but like the Christian priests, not always in deed. Interestingly enough, the vegetarian diet of the Brahmins that were observed after the Portuguese rounded the Cape of Good Hope (1497) reinforced the medieval image that they adhered to monastic rules of penance and thus, must have been the priests. Some saw the Brahmins living up to the sacerdotal ideal; others wrote that they slighted their spiritual duties. A perusal of the most important travel collections between 1589 and 1625 suggests the increasing emphasis on factual accounts, compared to the fantastic material of the previous centuries. With reference to India, Purchas his Pilgrimage (1625) contains only one pre-1500 source: Marco Polo’s travels. The omission of Mandeville’s travels in the second edition of Hakluyt’s The Principal Navigations (London, 1598; first edition 1589) shows where the emphasis was being put: on ‘facts’ and ‘real information,’ instead of the fantastic tales of medieval legend. This is not surprising, because ‘actual information’ was essential to the mercantile project of the European powers.1 But inevitably, the authors of these first-hand reports placed the strange and odd practices of the natives within a framework with which they and their audiences could make sense of them. In addition, most reports were not printed without the helping hand of an editor or translator. The editor not only stood guarantee for chronology and coherence; he often interpolated the work with erudite references to specialists in the field and with passages from previous A similar conclusion can be drawn from the sources that compose the Novus orbis (1532) and Ramusio’s Delle Navigationi et Viaggi (1550). For the early voyages of the Dutch East India Company, also see the German collection by the Flemish printer and publisher Levinus Hulsius and his successors, released at Franckfurt between 1598 and 1660, and often associated with the de Bry collection. Also see A. Asher, Bibliographical Essay on the Collection of Voyages and Travels, edited and published by Levinus Hulsius and his Successors etc. (London & Berlin, 1839).
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cosmographies and reports to give weight to the author’s observations. As such, the cosmographies and travelogues acted jointly in solidifying a remarkably stable mode of discourse that soon became self-referential. The Dutch cross-cultural Encounters While it might be argued that the Jesuit letters and observations discussed in the previous Chapter were confined to convents and universities, the Dutch explorer, Jan Huyghen van Linschoten (1563-1611), informed the seamen and merchants to the East that the Brahmins had indeed become cunning priests. Linschoten’s Navigatio ac Itinerarium (1596) is one of the most detailed travel reports in the Dutch vernacular produced at the end of the sixteenth century. Linschoten started his travels in 1576, and at Lisbon he became attached to the revenue of Vincente de Fonseca, who was preparing to depart for India as the Archbishop of Goa. Linschoten arrived in Goa in 1583 and continued to work under the Dominican Archbishop. He travelled extensively in the Malabar and Coromandel regions and returned to Europe in 1589.2 During his spare time in India, Linschoten drafted a secret dossier on the eastern sea routes, which became required reading for all the navigators to the East, with beautifully illustrated maps and pen drawings of the Oriental nations. As such, it also became one of the most important vehicles to disseminate the canonical account of ‘the Indian religion’ amongst an even wider audience of merchants, seafarers, captains and all those interested in the affairs in the East (1596). The sheer detail in Linschoten’s work is impressive. He provide ethnographic detail on late sixteenth-century Goa, the Malabar and Coromandel regions, Cambay, Gujarat and inland regions like the Deccan kingdoms. The template of priestcraft allowed Linschoten to structure this information. The spiritual landscape of India echoed the heavenly battle between the Christian God and the Devil’s minions: every section related to Indian customs is replete with references to the Devil, the source of paganism. Linschoten wrote that the Indians believe in God, the Creator and Ruler, but have come to worship demons. The culprits are the priests or the Brahmins, who nurtured idolatry for their own profit. While much of his narrative reflects the disinterested tone of a neutral observer, this neutrality disappears quickly when Linschoten described the merchants at Gujarat: For Linschoten see the entry in Raymond John Howgego, Encyclopedia of Exploration to 1800 etc. (Potts Point, 2003). 2
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Also for the Marchantes some of them eate all things, except Cowes or Buffles flesh, which they estéeme to be holy. Others eate not any thing whatsoever, that hath either life or bloud in it, as those of Gusarata, and the Banianes of Cambaia, which observe Pythagoras lawe: most of them pray unto the Sunne and Moone, yet they do all acknowledge a God that made, created and ruleth all things, and that after this life there is an other, wherein men shall be rewarded according to their workes. But they have Idoles and Images, which they call Pagodes, cut and formed most ugly, and like monstrous Devils, to whom dayly they offer, and say, that those holy men have been living among them, whereof they tell so many miracles, as it is wonderfull, and say that they are intercessors between them and God. The Devill often times answereth them out of those Images, whome they likewise know, and doe him great honour by offering unto him, to kéepe friendshippe with him, and that hee should not hurt them.3
Like many of his contemporaries, Linschoten wrote that the Brahmins perform multiple professions: many were grocers, others were apothecaries.4 Still today, the Brahmins are not the priests, and not everyone who performs a central role in the realm of the Indian traditions is necessarily a member of the Brahmin community. Nevertheless, the pre-existing category of the Brahmin priesthood (the legendary image of a Brahmin nation striving for the sacerdotal ideal) propelled the travellers to consistently single out the Brahmins as India’s clerical estate. As Linschoten saw it, they were not simply priests, but rather wicked priests, eager to delude the laity for mere personal gain: They have on every hill, cliffe, hole, or denne their Pagodes and Idols in most divilish and deformed shapes, cut and hewed out of the stones and rockes, with their furnises hard by them, and a cesterne not farre from them, which is alwaies full of water, and every one that passeth by, washeth their féete therein, and so fall downe before their Idoll, some setting before him for an offering fruits, Rice, Egges, Hennes, &c. as their devotions serve, & then commeth the Bramenes their Priest and taketh it away and eateth it, making the common people beléeve that the Pagode hath eaten it.5
Varthema’s Itinerario (1510) had such an impact on the popular imagination that it frequently informed what later travellers actually ‘saw’ in India. In his chapter on the Pagodes and Indian Idoles, Linschoten emulated Varthema: he embellished the description of the deumo, adding an extra face to the idol:
Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, Semper Eadem. Iohn Huighen van Linschoten his Discours of Voyages into ye Easte & West Indies etc., trans. W. Phillip, (London, 1598; Dutch edition 1596), 64. 4 Ibid., 65, 70. 5 Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, Semper Eadem. Iohn Huighen van Linschoten his Discours of Voyages, 65. 3
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At the last wee came into a Village, where stoode a great Church of stone, wherein wee entered, and found nothing in it but a great Table that hung in the middle of the Church, with the image of a Pagode, painted therein so mishaped and deformed, that more monsterous was never séene, for it had many hornes, and longe téeth that hung out of his mouth down to the knées, and beneath his Nauel and belly, it had an other such like face, with many hornes and tuskes. Uppon the head thereof stoode a triple Crowned Myter, not much unlike the Popes triple crown, so that in effect it séemed to be a monster, such as are described in the Apocalips. 6
Linschoten’s work became a popular source for all those interested in the East. The most important collection of voyages in the early seventeenth century, edited by the Liégeoise engraver Theodorus de Bry (1528-98), was issued in Latin and in German editions between 1598 and 1628. Its volumes on the East Indies are best known as the India Orientalis or Small Voyages. Issued at Franckfurt, they were instrumental in disseminating Linschoten’s report among Latin readers and in the German vernacular. Linschoten’s report was reproduced in the German editions as Ander Theil der Orientalischen Indien (Other Part of the Oriental Indies) in 1598, 1613, 1616 and 1629, and in the Latin editions of India Orientalis in 1599, 1601 and 1628.7 At the end of this work, de Bry printed thirty-eight illustrations based on Linschoten’s narrative. Plate twenty-one represents a heathen landscape with a Muslim mosque on the left hand side and a Hindu temple on the right. The statue in the temple is represented as the Christian devil, wearing a papal tiara with four horns, mandatory goat feet, and a complementary face below the navel, reminiscent of Boaisteau’s Histoire Prodigieuses. The caption explains the scene as follows: “Here is displayed the blindness of the poor devil worshippers, who keep such gods, carved in rocks and called by them as pades, at all the roads and lanes, and to whom they devote their prayers, and diligently give sacrifices, which the priests take for themselves, and pretend that the pagods have eaten it.”8 Ibid., 82. For a detailed overview of the various editions of this lavishly illustrated collection, see John Carter Brown, A Bibliographical Description of a Copy of the Collection of the Great and Small Voyages of De Bry etc. (Providence, 1875); and A. Camus, Mémoire sur la Collection des Grands et Petits Voyages, et sur la Collection des Voyages de Melchisedech Thevenot (Paris, 1802). 8 Johann Theodor de Bry and Johann Israel de Bry, eds., Eigentliche und warhaffte Fürbildungen aller Frembden Völcker in Orient, etc. (Franckfurt am Meyn, 1613), plate xxi: “Alhie wirt vor augen gestellt die Blindheit der armen Teufelsdiener, welche bey allen Wegen und Stegen solche Götzen, von ihnen Pades genennet, in Felsen gehauwen stehen haben, vor denen sie ihr Gebett verrichten, bringen inen auch mit sonderen andacht, Opffer, welche ihre Priester die Brachmanes zu sich ziehen, und als ob dieselbe von den Pagoden verzehrt würden, vorgeben.” 6 7
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7. Indianischer Abgott Pagodes, sampt der Mahometisten Tempel, in de Bry and de Bry’s India Orientalis (1613).
Linschoten himself ended his account of the statue by noting the similarities between this monster and the ones that “are described in the Apocalips.”9 The vision that God inscribed a sense of His existence in the heart of all humans had shaped the European understanding of other traditions for centuries. The most exotic nations sought to worship the Creator. In the absence of Revelation, they were easily misled by the Devil. While referring to the Brahmins, Linschoten reformulated these theological claims thus: They have their Pagodes and Idoles, whose minisiters they are, whereof they tell and shew many miracles, and say that those Pagodes have been men living by on earth, and because of their holy lives, and good workes done here in this world, are for a reward thereof, become holy me[n] in the other world, as by their miracles, by the Divel performed, hath beene manifested unto them, and by their commandements their formes and shapes are made in the most ugly & deformed manner that possible may bee devised. Such they pray and offer unto, with many divilish superstitions, & stedfastly beléeve that they are advocates & intercessors unto God. They beléeve also that there is a supreame God above, which ruleth all 9
Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, Semper Eadem, 82-83.
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things, and that mens soules are immortal, and that they goe out of this worlde into the other, both beastes & men, and receive reward according to their workes, as Pythagoras teacheth, whose disciples they are.10
It must be clear that the European travellers to the East recapitulated the images that were simultaneously constructed at the European libraries and universities. It would be no exaggeration to argue that in the vast majority of travel reports that discuss Indian culture, the Brahmins make an appearance. Here, the role of the pre-existing category of priesthood should not be underestimated: while multiple traditions, sects and customs were generally observed, ‘the Indian priesthood’ invariably transcended this variety. To give another example, the Dutch journal of Pieter van den Broecke, an East India Company (voc) merchant (1585-1640), was issued in Isaak Commelin’s compendium of voc voyages (1634) and from the third edition onwards (1646) interpolated with extensive sections on the kingdom of Golconda (one of the Muslim sultanates in the region of Hyderabad). The author of the interpolations—a Dutch servant in the voc factory at Surat—cast his observations in the conceptual apparatus at hand. The first-hand observers often noted that the Brahmins were not priests. The author of Commelin’s interpolations referred to them as scribes, proficient in writing and mathematics. Nevertheless, in his report of social stratifications, the Brahmins are again identified as priests.11 The cosmographies and the travel literatures together solidified the images that previously consolidated at the European libraries and universities. As we have seen, Pierre d’Avity’s French cosmography (1614) reproduced Varthema’s description of the deumo verbatim. The impact of the reports that lie at the heart of the imageries established in the sixteenth-century is suggested by the second edition of Commelin’s compendium (1646). The Dutch editor strengthened the ties between humanist learning and travel writing, but now in the reverse direction: Commelin made use of d’Avity to augment his collection of voyages. The French sections on Calicut and Vijayanagar were rendered into Dutch and copied in full as to supplement the report of
Ibid., 71. Isaak Commelin, ed., Begin ende Voortgangh van de Vereenighde Nederlandtsche Geoctroyeerde Oost-Indische Compagnie etc., vol. 2 (Amsterdam, 1646), 71. William H. Moreland, Relations of Golconda in the early seventeenth century etc. (London, 1931), xxvi, xl-xlii, suggests that the interpolated text was authored by Pieter Gielisz. van Ravesteyn, for the use of the Company superiors. 10 11
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the expedition by the naval commander Paulus van Caerden.12 To take this one step further, the Dutch editor of Abraham Rogerius’ mid-seventeenthcentury account of the South Indian traditions (1651) referencee the expedition of Paulus van Caerden when he observes that ‘the Brahmin priests’ deflower the queen of Calicut, which traces via Commelin, through Pierre d’Avity, to Varthema, and, ultimately, to the reports of the Portuguese expeditions in the Paesi novamente retrovati (1507).13 The category of a Brahmin priesthood allowed the Europeans to postulate a pan-Indian synthesis when confronted with multiple traditions. Another example can be found in Johan van Twist’s Generale Beschrijvinghe van Indien, ende in ’t besonder van ’t Coninkrijck van Guseratten (A general description of India, and in particular, of the kingdom of Gujarat; 1638). This Dutch report was also included in Commelin’s compendium of voc voyages (1646) and reissued in Joost Hartgerts’ collection (1648). Other editions were published in 1647 and 1651. The General Description of India is compiled from various sources, interspersed with personal observations. While Linschoten was an obvious choice, its matter on Gujarat is taken in large measure from another report (ca. 1625), written at the request of the voc by the factor Wollebrandt Geleynssen de Jongh. This report remained in manuscript until the Linschoten Vereeniging issued a Dutch edition in 1929.14 Van Twist served as director of the factories in Ahmadabad and Cambay in the 1630s, and provides an early reference to the term ‘Hindu.’ According to van Twist, the Banyans or the merchants of Gujarat were once all Hindus [Hindoy] but now include many Muslims too.15 The Hindus are administered by the priests, the Brahmins, the ministers of their temples and idols.16 Van Twist furnished his report with a considerable amount of detail. The Banyans knew of eighty-three sects, but like de Jongh, he classified them in four major groupings. He did not distinguish between Hindus and Jains, but classified Commelin, ed., Begin ende Voortgangh van de Vereenighde Nederlandtsche Geoctroyeerde OostIndische Compagnie, 36-41. 13 Abraham Rogerius, De Open-Deure tot het Verborgen Heydendom etc. (Leyden, 1651), 47 n.; also see 92 n. 14 For a detailed overview of van Twist’s sources, see William Harrison Moreland, “Johan van Twist’s Description of India,” Journal of Indian History 16 (1937): 63-65. Also see Donald F. Lach and Edwin J. Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe: A Century of Advance (Chicago, 1998), 662-67. 15 Johan van Twist, Generale Beschrijvinghe van Indien, ende in ‘t besonder van ‘t Coninckrijck van Guseratten etc. (Amsterdam, 1646), 29. 16 Ibid., 31; also see 29. Also see Wollebrandt Geleynssen de Jongh, De Remonstrantie van W. Geleynssen de Jongh, ed. W. Caland (’s Gravenhage, 1929), 88. 12
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the latter as the first sect, the Ceurawaeh (Sravana or carvaka?), recognized by their vegetarianism and respect for all forms of life.17 The second grouping was called Samaraeth (Smārtas), and included members of the trades. They believed in the Creator of the world, Permiseer (Parameshvara or Shiva) but also worshipped three idols. The first is Brama (Brahma), deliverer of souls; the second Bussiana (Vishnu), the teacher of law or the commandments, recorded in four sacred books, an allusion to the Vedas. The third idol was Mais (Shiva) and governed the dead.18 Their priests were also Brahmins. The third of the four sects was Bisnouw (Vaishnavas), whose members agreed with the previous in matters of diet. They were merchants, factors and interpreters; their priests were Brahmins.19 The d’Goegy (yogis) constitute the final sect.20 In other words, while van Twist saw and described several groupings, an imaginary Brahmin priesthood united them in their superstitions. The Brahmins also featured in his description of the Kingdom of Golconda, where they were similarly represented as priests.21 To give another example from Dutch travel literature, in the 1670s, Wouter Schouten (1638-1704), a surgeon attached to the voc fleet, wrote a work on the Indies with records of the military and mercantile exploits of the Dutch between 1658 and 1665 (Amsterdam, 1676). It contains ethnographic sections describing India in vivid detail, which found translation into German and French, and went through multiple editions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Again, the Indians in various and remote regions are said to worship images of the Devil.22 Like the Gujarati Banyans, the heathens of Malabar observed the dim light of the Highest Majesty of Heaven, and acknowledged the existence of God: The Samorin and other heathen kings of Malabar, the nobility … and the other heathens of Malabar, see the faint light of the highest Majesty of God, but nothing else. They agree in many respects with the heathen sects of the Banyans. They Ibid., 33-35. Also see de Jongh, De Remonstrantie van W. Geleynssen de Jongh, 75-83. Ibid., 35-37. Also see de Jongh, De Remonstrantie van W. Geleynssen de Jongh, 83-88. 19 Ibid., 37-38. Also see de Jongh, De Remonstrantie van W. Geleynssen de Jongh, 91-97. 20 Ibid., 39-40. Also see de Jongh, De Remonstrantie van W. Geleynssen de Jongh, 97-102. This four-fold division of sects is reproduced in Dutch travel reports of the period and generally associated with four sects of the Brahmins. These reports drew either from van Twist or de Jongh’s manuscript. See Philippus Baldaeus, Naauwkeurige beschryvinge van Malabar en Coromandel etc. (Amsterdam, 1672), 6; and Johan Nieuhof, Johan Nieuhofs Gedenkweerdige Brasiliaense Zee- en Lant-Reize etc., vol. 2 (Amsterdam, 1682), 82. 21 Ibid., 55. 22 Wouter Schouten, Wouter Schoutens Oost-Indische Voyagie etc., vol. 2 (Amsterdam, 1676), 180, 181, 270. 17 18
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also believe (like most other Indians) in a Supreme Godhead, Creator of heaven, earth, and everything else, but demonstrate, through an infinite number of gross misconceptions and disastrous fables, that they do not possess the true knowledge of God, but pay divine worship to the Prince of Darkness.23
Comparable with Varthema, Schouten explained that the Indians believe God to have too much on his hands if he were to punish and reward His children single-handedly, which is why they think He has delegated His powers to lesser gods.24 Schouten described them as demons, reminiscent of Varthema, and recapitulated the imagery of the idol consuming human souls.25 Once again, a unified picture emerges: the Brahmins are the priests of all the Indian lands. The Malabar priests are not only admitted to entertain the queen, but allowed to enter every household: it is considered to be a sign of great fortune when a Brahmin ‘makes use’ of one’s wife.26 Matrilineal customs are thus easily explained: the king’s son shall never inherit the throne; neither shall a son be the heir of his father.27 Schouten literally reproduced van Twist’s description of the four major Gujarati sects, but now in the sections on Bengal.28 A clear example of how the category of an Indian priesthood structured the descriptions of India becomes visible when he thus observed that the Bengalis agree in matters of faith with the Banyans—they are also deluded by the Brahmin priesthood. His choice of words, throughout his narrative, is in terms of the European estates of the realm, with the Brahmins or priests occupying the highest echelons, followed by the Nairs or the aristocratic estate. Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is that the Brahmins are not always priests. As he explained it in his chapter on Malabar, some earned a living from temple service, others were apothecaries, some doctors,
Ibid., 2: 269: “Den Zamorijn, als oock de andere Heydensche Coningen en Vorsten van Malabar, met haren Adel … mitsgaders alle de andere Heydensche Malabaren, sien wel een schemer-licht van de hooghste Majesteyt Godts, maer vorders niet: komende in veel dingen met de Secten der Benjaense Heydenen … seer over een: gelooven oock wel (gelijck meest alle de andere Indianen) datter een opperste Godtheyt is, die Hemel en Aerde, en alles watter in is, geschapen heeft; maer betoonen, door een oneyndelijck getal van groove dwalingen, en rampsalige beuselingen, datse geen ware kennisse Godts en hebben, maer veel eer den Prince der duysternisse Goddelijck eeren.” 24 Ibid., vol. 2: 269-70. 25 Ibid., vol. 2: 270. 26 Ibid., vol. 2: 271: ”Sy worden niet alleen by de Vorstinnen geadmitteert: en (gelijck de sommige weten te verhalen) sou het voor geen kleyne eere gereeckent zijn, als yemandt het geluck aentreft, dat een onkuyse Bramine sijn Huys-vrouw gebruyckt.” 27 Ibid., vol. 2: 272. 28 Ibid., vol. 3: 96-103. 23
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and others merchants and soldiers.29 As must be clear, by the time Schouten penned down his narrative, the terms ‘Brahmins’ and ‘idol priests’ had become interchangeable in the ethnographic vocabulary.30 The German cross-cultural Encounters The German reports bear witness to the same continuities: the Indians worship idols, yet still believe in God. This statement is a recapitulation of both modes of representation outlined above, and Varthema’s report continued to reinforce this structure. In 1606, three years before Mandeville’s famous work (applauding the Brahmins for their proto-Christian way of life) was republished at Frankfurt, there appeared at Strasbourg a German collection of voyages issued by the chronicler Jakob Beyrlin. The third voyage—from Lisbon to Calicut—informs the readers that while the king of Calicut worships the Devil he still remembers that there is one God in heaven.31 In the voice of Varthema, Beyrlin observed that the Indians believe God to have delegated His supervision of the world to the Devil. He outlined the nuptial practices of Calicut performed by the Brahmins, and briefly describes a pilgrimage to a South Indian temple, similar in shape to the St. John’s Basilica at Rome.32 In other words, few did not ‘observe’ what Varthema ‘saw’ in the early sixteenth century: the armies of hell occupying the Indian lands. When it came to the South, many simply recapitulated Varthema (1510). The German soldier Johann Verck kept a journal on the voc voyage of Pieter Willemszoon Verhoeff (1607-09). Gotthard Arthus of Danzig, a German editor of travel reports and a collaborator with the de Bry brothers for whom he translated several works, reworked the journal before it was printed in the ninth volume of the India Orientalis or Small Voyages (1612). Verck described Calicut, although it would not be unlikely were the sections not by the hand of the German soldier himself: The religion of this people is entirely heathenish, and they pray to the Devil, for they have in all their mosques, which are like our churches, many devils carved. Ibid., vol. 2: 270-71: “[S]ommige leven alleenlijck van den Tempel-dienst; andere zijn benevens dien Koopluyden en Maeckelaers; oock sommige die haer op de sieckten en qualen, en ‘t gebruyck der Medicijnen verstaen; eenige trecken, als dappere Helden, met haren Coning, Adel, en Nairos, in den strijdt ...” 30 Ibid., vol. 3: 94, 95-96. 31 Jakob Beyrlin, Reyß Buch: Das ist ... Beschreibung und Wegweyser, etlicher Reysen etc. (Strasbourg, 1606), 24. 32 Ibid., 24-25. 29
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They have in a mosque a large devil with three heads, sculptured or modelled in brass, which they worship and to which they sacrifice ... gentlemen and noblemen do not sleep the first night with their brides but hire a Brahmin to do so (who are their priests), or otherwise just someone else, who can earn four to five hundred guilders, and he must sleep the first night with the bride, and take her virginity … The common people do not have this custom: they take the effort themselves, and save their money.33
In 1635 Johann Albrecht von Mandelslo (1616-44), a German page at the court of the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, became attached to the duke’s embassy to Moscow and Persia. Mandelslo’s work soon became one of the most influential German travelogues of the seventeenth century and found translation into Dutch, English, French and Italian. Mandelslo landed at Surat in April 1638, from where he travelled through Gujarat and via Lahore, Agra and Goa along the Malabar Coast to Ceylon. Once again, in one of the most detailed German travelogues of the period, Varthema plays a central role. His narrative about Calicut (1510) either influenced Mandelslo himself or—and this would be more likely—the editor of this report.34 At Gujarat, Mandelslo was confronted with many aspects of the Indian traditions, which he understood as follows: the sects in the territory of ‘the Great Mogul,’ Shah Jahan, were beyond measure, yet united in their belief in God and worship of the Devil. The reason for this mishap was identical to what Varthema wrote at Calicut: they agreed that God transferred the supervision of the world to the Devil.35 Mandelslo also described Vijayanagar and Golconda, which, accordJohann Verken, Neundter Theil Orientalischer Indien etc., ed. J. T. de Bry, J. Israel de Bry, and A. Gothard (Franckfurt, 1612), 30: ”Dieses Volcks Glaube ist gans Heydnisch, dann sie beten den Teuffel an, wie sie dann auch an allen ihren Müsskern, welches dann ihre Kirchen seynd, viel Teuffel gemahlet haben. In der Musskera aber haben sie einen grossen aussgehawen, oder von Messing gegossen Teuffel stehen mit dreyen Köpffen, welchen sie dann anbeten und für ihm opffern. Dessgleichen beten sie auch die Sonn und Mond an, sie halten auch den Gebrauch in ihrem Weiber nehmen, dass, was grosse Hern und Edelleuth seyn, dieselben schlaffen die erste Nacht nicht bey den Braut, sondern sie mieten ihrer Bramini einen, (wekches dann ihre Pfaffen seyn) oder sonst etwan einen Menschen, so sie einen bekommen können, für etwan vier oder fünff hundert Gülden, und derselbe muss dann die erste Nacht bey der Braut schlaffen, und ihr die Jungfrawschafft nehmen … was aber das gemeine Volck anlanget, dieselben halten diesen Brauch gantz nicht, sondern können sich der Mühe wol selbst unterstehen, und das Gelt verdienen.” 34 Mandelslo separated himself from his company and obtained permission to continue his travels to India. Before his death, he entrusted his notes at Madagascar to Adam Olearius, a geographer and librarian who accompanied the embassy as a secretary. Olearius issued the notes as an addendum to the official report of the embassy (1645). 35 Johann A. von Mandelslo, “Het schrijven van den Wel Ed. Getrouwen en Vesten Johan Albrecht van Mandelslow etc.,” in Beschrijvingh vande nieuwe Parciaensche ofte Orientaelsche Reyse, welck door gelegentheyt van een Holsteynsche Ambassade, aen den Koningh in Persien gheschiet is etc, ed. A. Olearius, trans. D. Wageninge (Utrecht, 1651), 11-12. 33
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ing to him, were much like the kingdom of Calicut. From Calicut he set sail to Ceylon, and it appears that he did not spend much time in this port city. Significantly enough, his brief account of Calicut is reminiscent (if not simply an abridgment) of Varthema’s account: All these kings and kingdoms are heathens of Calicut, about which I will speak briefly. He [the king] will not eat what has not been presented to the horrible, silver and gold chapel-devils. The king’s son will never succeed to the throne, for the inhabitants of Calicut need to be reassured that their king has royal blood. Hence, they prefer the king’s sister’s son as his rightful heir. No daughter marries unless the priests have deflowered her. They receive money for their favours.36
The editor, Adam Olearius, was responsible for the publication of the report of another traveller to India, Jürgen Andersen (1620-79), a German in the service of the voc. Andersen trod the ground made familiar by Mandelslo and visited Goa, Gujarat, the Malabar littoral and Ceylon in the 1640s. Olearius issued it together with the work of another German, Volquard Iversen (1669). Like his contemporaries, Andersen compared the idols at Gujarat with images of the Devil.37 However, he observed that the Banyans also believed that there is a God, Creator of heaven and earth.38 He wrote that the Banyans had twelve places at Gujarat where they gathered to perform their ceremonies and rites. The Brahmins had four of these, suggesting that diverse communities had their own temples each.39 They were nevertheless united under their priesthood, or the Brahmins.40 Andersen’s account of how the Banyans represented the (Christian) Devil was no less picturesque than the canonical representations of the deumo, reminiscent of the illustrations that circulated at the time: a petrifying figure with the legs of an ass, a crown centred between four horns, a second face below the navel and outward pointing Ibid., 29: “Alle dese Koningen en Koninckrijken sijn Heydenen van Calecuth daer ick kortelijck alleen van spreecken wil, geniet nimmermeer eenige spijse, die niet te vore[n] sijne schrickelijke Silvere en Goude Capel-Duyvels voor geset en gepresenteert gheworden zijn. Hier kan des Konincks soon de Vader niet succederen. De Inwoonders willen tot meerder versekering hebben dat haer Konink van ‘t rechte Konincklijck bloet sy, en daerom des Conincx Susters soon verkiesen. Geen dochter werdt ten houwelick uytgegeven, ‘t en zy dat haer te voren den maechdom benomen is van een van haerlieder Papen, die daer voor een somme geldts bekomt.” Partha Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters: History of European Reactions to Indian Art (Oxford, 1977), 24, observes the same connection with Varthema. 37 Jürgen Andersen, De Beschryving der Reizen van Georg Andriesz etc., trans. J. Glazemaker (Amsterdam, 1670 [German edition 1669]), 21. 38 Ibid., 49. 39 Ibid., 26. 40 Idem. 36
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teeth. The vessel that contained the tilak powder at the entrance of the temple where this image was observed is here described like the holy water stoup in the Roman Catholic churches.41 The French cross-cultural Encounters The accounts of the French travellers to India were also mediated by the cultural legacy of their authors, and the editors who reworked the reports, contributing to a stable representation of the Indian traditions that fitted the European horizon of expectations. Together with the merchants Michel Frotet and François Martin de Vitré, Pyrard de Laval founded the French Compagnie de St. Malo to take on the monopoly of the Dutch and English East India Companies. His Discours du Voyage des François (Discourse of French voyages) was first issued at Paris in 1611 and ran through multiple editions and translations. Pyrard de Laval travelled along the Malabar Coast and observed that the South Indian regions were united under one language, one law and, more importantly, one religion.42 He divided the people at Calicut according to the estates of the realm: the priests, nobility and commoners. The priests were the most esteemed and lived the most religious and austere lives [une observation plus religieuse & austere], which the French traveller described in terms of their vegetarian diet.43 Yet, they performed multiple professions: some took up arms; others were merchants. And some were idol priests, because only from this ‘race’ the priests could be chosen.44 The confusion that the myriad of practices and customs registered on the mind of the Europeans becomes apparent when de Laval wrote that the natural inhabitants of Malabar do not have a religion in common.45 The idol to which they devote their worship is said to be an image of the Devil, set in their temple at Calicut. However, “they very well know that there is one God, but claim that it’s good neither to pray to him, nor to adore him, for he will do no evil.”46
Ibid., 50. Also see 86-87. Pyrard de Laval, Discours du Voyage des François aux Indes Orientales etc. (Paris, 1611), 130. 43 Ibid., 132-33; 146-47. 44 Ibid., 134-35. 45 Ibid., 147: “Il n’y a qu’une religion commune à tout ce peuple naturel du païs de Malabar, tant Brameny, Nayres que Poulia ou Moucoys.” 46 Idem: “Ils cognoissent bien qu’il y a un Dieu, mais dissent qu’estant bon il ne le faut prier, ny l’adorer, puis qu’il ne fait point de mal.” 41 42
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Similarly, during the first few decades of the seventeenth century, the French explorer, Vincent Le Blanc, visited most parts of the known world. The manuscript of his travels was reworked by the French editor of travel reports, Louis Bergeron, who released it as Les Voyages Fameux du Sieur Vincent Le Blanc (1648). Le Blanc observed that the Gujaratis maintained superstitions and performed various ceremonies. Both the Brahmins and the Banyans were their priests and religious men [qui sont comme leurs Prestres & Religieux] and resembled those who were living in India at the time of Alexander the Great. That the Banyans are here included in the category of ‘priesthood’ is not surprising: many observed that they lived the same ascetic (or vegetarian) life as the Brahmins.47 In fact, it would be hard to find a European traveller who failed to notice the strict vegetarian diet whilst discussing the Banyans, which fitted the vision of a clerical estate striving for the monastic ideal. As Vincent found, they were the most just, reasonable and religious nation of the Orient.48 The author (or the editor) referred to the works of Barbosa and Varthema. It would not have been unlikely that Le Blanc had Varthema in mind when he wrote about Calicut in 1648. The author noted that the idolaters at Calicut have put an image of the Virgin Mary in the midst of their idols. He observed that when they see a Christian, they give him powders to put on his forehead, which is their way of using holy water, and they proclaim “Andocray Maria,” or “behold Mary.”49 Observations of Indian pluralism reinforced the typically Christian stance that the world had once been Christian. The Brahmins in addition maintained an idol of Satan, with wide-open mouth, reddish, enflamed, devouring the souls of those who did not follow its religion. Some Indians thought the Devil is God; others claimed he is a creature of God.50 The language is again reminiscent of Varthema’s narrative (1510) and might have simply been the product of editorial practice. Contemporary scholarship is thus correct in suggesting that pre-colonial travellers to India recognized a variety of traditions. As must be clear, much like the colonial (and postcolonial) scholars, they nevertheless also ‘observed’ Vincent Le Blanc, Les Voyages Fameux du Sieur Vincent Le Blanc Marseillois, etc., ed. Bergeron and Coulon (Paris, 1648), 66. In a similar fashion, Pierre d’Avity wrote that the Banyans and Brahmins govern the religion of Vijayanagar. See The Estates, Empires, & Principallities of the World etc., trans. E. Grimstone (London, 1615), 777. 48 Idem: “[C]e païs est habitéde de Gentils & Gusarates, qui est la nation la plus iuste, raisonnable, & religieuse de tout l’Orient …” 49 Idem. 50 Ibid., 88. 47
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a unifying priesthood, a vision that derives from the tales of medieval legend. This is how the French physician, Gabriel Dellon, introduced his chapter on ‘the religions in Surat’ in 1685: “To give an exact account here of all the Sects of the Indians, would be too tedious, if not quite impossible.”51 While Dellon observed numerous sects, the Brahmins were nevertheless identified as priests; the most considerable amongst them. The French physician typically continued with their vegetarian diet and rigorous fasts, which fitted the medieval image of the Brahmin ascetics who strived for the sacerdotal ideal. This is how he described the contemporary ‘priesthood,’ not too different from the manner in which they were conceived of in Xavier’s 1545 account: Besides the ordinary Revenue of these Pagan Temples, the people bring every day their Offerings, which are given to the Bramans, who are to offer it to the Idols. And as these Offerings don’t consist in any thing that has Life, so they are most commonly Rice, Butter, Fruits, Preserves, Gold, or Silver; the two last are but rarely offered, and the rest serve the Bramans for the Maintenance of their Families, they having no more to do than to bring forth their empty Dishes to these ignorant people, who think it a Crime to believe otherwise, than what they have offered to have been consumed by the Idols.52
The English cross-cultural Encounters The fourth edition of Samuel Purchas’ Purchas his Pilgrimage, Or Relations of the World Religions (1626) contains several travel reports and is usually added as a fifth volume to the 1625 edition of his famous collection of voyages, Purchas his Pilgrimes or Hakluytus Posthumus. It includes a report by the East India Company administrator, William Methold, written at the behest of Purchas, and based on his experiences gained at Masulipatam between 1618 and 1622.53 Methold wrote that the natives of Golconda differed little in their “Habit, Complexion, Manners, or Religion, from most of the Inhabitants of the mayne of India.”54 He added that they also enjoyed the same 51 Gabriel Dellon, Nouvelle Relation d’un Voyage fait aux Indes Orientales etc. (Amsterdam, 1699; first ed. 1685), 57 (emphasis in the original): “Ce seroit une chose Presque impossible & même ennuyeuse de rapporter exactement icy le nombre des Sectes & des Religions qui partagent le culte des Indiens.” 52 Charles Dellon, A Voyage to the East Indies etc. trans. J. Crull (London, 1698 [French edition 1685]), 108-09. Also see 44. 53 For an extensively annotated edition of the text, see William H. Moreland, ed., Relations of Golconda in the early seventeenth century (London, 1931). 54 William Methold, “Relations of the Kingdome of Golchonda, and other Neighbovring Nations,” in Pvrchas his Pilgrimage. Or Relations of the World Religions etc., ed. Samuel Purchas (London, 1626), 997 (emphasis in the original).
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priests and the core features of religion.55 The Indians believed first in God, yet also claimed that He took to His assistance the heroes who lived upon the earth. Methold identified a social system of forty-four stratifications in which the priests were found at the highest echelons.56 He concluded his account as follows: “But all these thus distinguished, are in Religion one Body, and have their Pagodes or Idoll Temples common to all, but not of all equally affected: some inclining in their devotions to one Saint, some to another…”57 In other words, the English also took recourse to the pre-existing category of priesthood in order to unite multiple traditions into a pan-Indian synthesis, long before the colonial era, and reproduced the canonical descriptions of India that were distributed in Continental European sources. In 1634 appeared at London A Relation of some Yeares Travaille by Sir Thomas Herbert, a native of York who had been part of the English embassy to Persia. Herbert landed at Surat in 1627, from where he set sail to Persia. On his way home, he first returned to India where he visited the Coromandel Coast, Kannur, Calicut and Cochin. As for his account of Indian traditions, Herbert knew about one thing: Devil worship—from Surat, down the Malabar Coast, rounding Cape Comorin, up north along the Coromandel Coast.58 His report of this practice on the Malabar littoral is again an almost literal reproduction of Varthema’s description of the deumo (1510).59 William Bruton was sent to Bengal to negotiate trade agreements with the Indians. His News from the East Indies was released at London in 1638 and contains A briefe Relation of the great City of Jaggernat. The English merchant provided a detailed account of a local Juggernaut temple, “the Mirrour of all wickednesse and Idolatry” and “house of Satan,” and referred to the Brahmins as its “Religious men, or Idolatrous Priests.”60 The iniquitous scenes he witnessed reminded him of Revelations 13, which mentions the name and the mark of the beast, much like the Brahmins and “all that come to worship the Idoll, are marked also in their fore-heads.”61 The exceptions to this Idem: “The Gentiles in the Fundamentall points of their little Religion, doe hold the same principles which their Learned Clergie the Bramenes, have from great Antiquitie, and doe yet maintayne, but with an Implicite faith, not able to give an account of it, or any their customes, onely that it was the custome of their Ancestors.” 56 Idem. 57 Ibid., 999. 58 Thomas Herbert, A Relation of some Yeares Travaile Begunne anno 1626 etc. (London, 1634), 38-39, and 192. 59 Ibid.,188 60 William Bruton, News from the East Indies: or, a Voyage to Bengalla, etc. (London, 1638), 29. 61 Ibid, 30.
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standard discourse indicate that the vision of the Brahmin priesthood relied indeed on a theoretical category, used by the first-hand observers to provide structure to their experiences of the Indian reality. That is to say, many observed that the Brahmins were not necessarily priests. This becomes clear in the report of another Englishman, the Reverend John Ovington (1696), who described cultural pluralism in India as follows: there were not only different traditions at Gujarat, but each craft had its own religion: Each single Trade is diversified by some particular Opinions; the Goldsmith, and Scrivan, the Joyner, Barber, and Merchant, &c. as they have different Employments, so are they of divers Sentiments, and distinguish’d in the Ceremonies of their Worship; and mix no more in their Sacred Sentiments of Religion, than in their Civil Arts.62
The Brahmins were “by much the strictest sect among them” and exceeded the rest in their abstinent way of life. When the medieval reformers emphasized the priestly ideal, the Brahmins were defined as the embodiment of this ideal—promoting frugality and a spiritual life. Their legendary asceticism informed the early-modern vision of the Brahmin priesthood. This was subsequently ‘reaffirmed’ by their vegetarian diet which Renaissance travellers frequently observed. Like the other European visitors, Ovington thus similarly ‘saw’ what the multiple traditions had in common: a Brahmin priesthood, the spider in the web of idolatry.63 This overview, however rudimentary, suggests the impact excerted by the images developed in the early sixteenth century on the seventeenth-century travellers to the East. The pre-existing category of a sacerdotal nucleus allowed for a synthesis of a myriad of practices and customs. The Brahmins were priests, and the Indian priests deflowered their queens. In combination with the imageries associated with their idols, this custom lies at the heart of the anticlerical representation of the Brahmins. The importance of travel writing is not that it provided more information on the Indian traditions. Rather, it strengthened the method with which the Europeans came to terms with this empirical data. On the one hand, the travellers did not fail to recognize the remnants of Christianity in the East. On the other, the Brahmin protagonist was put right in the forefront of this. Though he might have been a government official, a soldier, an ayurveda practitioner, or a merchant, he was invariably identified as a member of the clerical estate. After all, did his 62 63
John Ovington, A voyage to Suratt, in the year, 1689 etc. (London, 1696), 278-29. Ibid., 334.
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ancestors not guard the true religion and strive for the priestly ideal in the East? As late as 1729, the multi-volume Enlightenment collection of engravings by the Dutch cartographer, Pieter van der Aa, known as La Galérie Agréable du Monde (The beautiful gallery of the world; 1729), still included representations of their contemporary idols in the Christian Devil tradition.
8. Idols and Religion at Malabar, in Pieter van der Aa, La Galérie Agréable du Monde, vol. 25 (1729).
The empirics bear witness, not so much to the discontinuities, but rather to the continuities in ethnographic thought. Much has been said about the limited impact of the new discoveries on the beliefs and attitudes of earlymodern Europe.64 Although this is a complex theme, it at least seems to be true that the discoveries did not initiate an overthrow of tradition, or a more critical handling of the facts as opposed to the application of vested theological schemata. In this context, the final section of this Chapter reinforces the conclusion of Chapters 5 and 6, and demonstrates that the manner in which Europe understood both its own Christian past and the Jewish past continued to structure its representations of India. Both Brahmin images—the The classical formulation of this thesis can be found in John H. Elliott, “Renaissance Europe and America: A Blunted Impact?,” in First images of America: The impact of the New World on the Old, ed. F. Chiappelli, vol. 1 (Berkeley, 1976), 11-23.
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ascetic Brahmin and the crafty priest—stand central in this outline: two ideas with a long history of interpretation which gave the Brahmin a presence and utility in Europe. Any new element in the Indian culture which the Europeans reported upon was incorporated into the conceptual scheme delineated by both imageries. Indeed, this theoretical entity (subsequently known as ‘Hinduism’) lent structure, coherence and stability to the European experience of India—in every sense, it was an entity-in-experience.
7.2. The Orientalist Travellers in the East It is possible to distinguish types of travel accounts, not only by the vocation and nationality of their authors, but also by the amount of time they spent abroad and the comprehensiveness of their works. A new genre of literature—starting from the 1630s and expanding through the seventeenth century—developed parallel to the travel reports already discussed above. These were the first systematic studies of Indian traditions and society in which the impact of sustained contacts between Europe and India was clearly felt. Previous European travellers had prepared the ground, although most of their pages were filled with sensationalist items like the deumo of Calicut, sexual mores and priestly extortions. These nuggets of information were reproduced all through the seventeenth century. Simultaneously, more detailed sources entered the stage, written by travellers who also sought for a scriptural foundation to substantiate their descriptions of India. They illustrate most clearly how every aspect of Indian culture related to traditions became an expression of ‘the Indian religion of the priest.’ The manuscripts they made use of were translated as the sacred texts; the devas were false gods (or minions of the Devil); puja was rendered into the worship of gods; the temples refurbished as houses of worship; and so on. As argued above, such referents are not neutral terms but part of a Christian theory of religion, in the same way as ‘force,’ ‘mass’ and ‘acceleration’ are the concepts in our theory of gravitation. When European scholars in India interpreted Sanskrit manuscripts, these texts were literally experienced as part of ‘Indian religion.’ After all, their quest for textual evidence derived from their desire to learn about religion, not through the observation of local practices—which were absurd and repellent in any case—but directly from its source: the Indian Bible. Similarly, the devas were part of religion. Meatless diets were not simply vegetarianism but also expressions of religion. Adhyat-
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mic or yogic practices, in the same way, manifested ‘the Indian religion of the priest.’ What would otherwise have been a collection of unrelated cultural facts was incorporated into a background theory (theology) that decided upon the relations between these elements and related them to the category of religion. In other words, ‘the Indian religion of the priest’ provided structure, coherence and stability to Europe’s experience of India. As a concept, it was the prerequisite for structure in experience, and preconditioned empirical observation. Europe ‘saw’ (and still ‘sees’) Hinduism in India, virtually everywhere. This concept is an entity-in-experience. Hinduism in the English cultural Experience As we have seen, Xavier (1545) and other Jesuits were vexed by their patent failure to convert the Brahmins to their alleged Christian roots, and took recourse to the anticlerical formats to structure these experiences. In much the same way, ‘the Indian religion of the priest,’ as a concept, also structured the experience of future travellers to the East. It preconditioned actual observations. Arguably the first Englishman to provide the European public with a detailed study of the Indian traditions on the basis of textual evidence was the English minister, Henry Lord, a chaplain to the East India Company factory at Surat. This work was based on an Indian manuscript which Lord translated and abridged, and published with his studies of the Parsi tradition as A display of two forraigne sects in the East Indies (1630). Lord had acquired knowledge of Hindustani and Persian, but via the president of the factory at Surat was acquainted with Brahmin interpreters who assisted him in translating the manuscript, the sacred scripture of the Brahmins, as he called it, or the Shaster.65 Dedicated to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord’s work had a significant impact on future travellers and scholarship on the East. As we have seen in our study of Catholic ethnographic scholarship in Chapter 6, the identification of Indian manuscripts as sacred books was an intellectual process that took place within the ambit of both Brahmin imageries, where the scripture reflected insights in true religion associated with the first image. In this instance, Lord referenced the dharmashastras, and the manner in which he understood them in the 1620s was in no way different from the role they came to play in the policies of the colonial state.
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For Henry Lord see the entry in DNB.
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According to Lord, the shastras were like the Bible in Christianity, concealing the grounds of religion in writ. The cosmological narrative which he distilled from it looked remarkably similar to the first nine books of Genesis that treat the Creation of the world, the Deluge, and the second population of the world by the sons of Noah. According to the Banyans, God did not just create Adam and Eve, but Pourous and Parcoutee. Each of their four sons was given a specific disposition. First, Brammon guarded knowledge and imparted the law unto the people. Cuttery had a martial temper and ruled the kingdom. Shuddery was a merchant. And finally, Wyse was the handicrafts man. Lord provided a rudimentary outline of the Varna story (the four-fold division of Indian society), about two hundred years before it came to govern the social policies of the colonial state.66 To concise his narrative, the sons were soon slacking: the priest did not attend to piety; the king became cruel; the merchant deceitful; and the craftsman corrupted by profit. More interestingly for our present purposes, the worship of images was also introduced, originally not contained in the sacred book. The ceremonies were soon received as the canon of ceremonial law.67 Given the gist of his story, it is not hard to predict the plot: the Deluge or biblical Flood, unleashed by God to wash all sins away. The second peopling of the world was also cast in biblical terms. When God created the second age, he created Bremaw (Brahma), Vystney (Vishnu) and Ruddery (Shiva).68 Lord continued that God delivered the ceremonial and moral law—combined in the shastras—to Brahma. Interestingly, he narrates this story in a manner reminiscent of the episode on Mount Sinai where Moses received the Ten Commandments.69 While Xavier observed in 1545 that the Brahmins knew the Judeo-Christian Decalogue, Henry Lord had the Commandments resemble, in structure and content, the Law of Moses. He further outlined the observances applicable to the contemporary four tribes, which were described along the Varna story outlined above. Lord’s analysis of the Indian cosmogony was consistent with the classical Indological accounts of Indian traditions and society: And because there could bee no invention more commodious for the government of the world, then was used by the foure Tribes in the first Age, as to have Bramanes to instruct the people in matters of Religion; to have Cutteryes Henry Lord, A display of two forraigne sects in the East Indies etc. (London, 1630), 5-6. Ibid., 32-33. 68 Ibid., 39-40. 69 Henry Lord, A display of two forraigne sects in the East Indies, 40. 66 67
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that should sway the Scepter, and keepe men in obedience; to have Merchant men that should use Trafficke and Trade as did Shuddery; to have servile and manufactory men, that should serve the uses of the world in the handicrafts, as did Wyse: Therefore they were by this Tract bound to keepe their owne peculiar Tribe or Cast, and to observe what was proper to the faculties of each in severall; which accordingly was done, and is yet continued so farre as it lyeth in their power to conserve this Ancient forme of government and policie.70
As for now, it suffices to note that Lord’s work develops within an explicitly biblical model, which is made clear in his preface and conclusion. Lord wrote that the Banyans “rebelliously and schismatically” violated “the divine Law of the dread Maiesty of Heaven.” That is to say, “with notable forgery,” they coined “Religion according to the Minte of their owne Tradition.”71 The Banyans did not only corrupt the Judeo-Christian Old Testament tradition, but also Christian doctrine. As Lord asked in the conclusion, “if by those three persons, Bremaw, Vistney, and Ruddery, they glaunce at the Trinity, how prodigious have they made that Mystery: making it rather a Quaternity, than a Trinity?”72 Henry Lord was praised all over Europe for having discovered the scriptural foundations of ‘the Banyan religion.’73 Le Journal des Sçavans published in 1666 a review of the French translation of his work. The anonymous reviewer observed that many had discussed the religion of the Banyans, yet most had little understanding of their subject. Lord is praised for finally having discovered, translated and abridged their scriptures. Also the unnamed reviewer maintained that the Banyans derived their doctrines and ceremonies from the books of Moses, yet mixed the truth of the bible with ridiculous tales.74 Lord’s work also featured in the edifying literature of the time: he ‘demonstrated’ that the Indians were aware of several points of Christian doctrine
Ibid., 70-71. Ibid., fol. A2-A3. 72 Ibid., 93. 73 See, for example, the translater’s preface to the first French edition, Histoire de la religion des Banians, contenant leurs loix, leur Liturgie etc., trans. P. Briot (Paris, 1667). 74 Anonymous, “Histoire de la Religion des Banjans et des anciens Persans; Traduite de l’Anglois de Henry Lord,” Le Journal des Sçavans, no. 37 (1666): 261: “On voit dans cette Relation l’abregé de toute leur croyance, qui paroist manifestement avoir esté tirée de nos livres sacrez. Car ils croyent que Dieu a creé le monde, qu’il y a eu un Deluge universel, & que le monde sera destruit un jour par le feu. Ils ont aussi pris quantité de leurs Ceremonies des livres de Moyse. Mais ils ont meslé plusieurs contes ridicules parmy les veritez de la Bible, & ils ont adjousté aux preceptes de la Loy Judaïque beaucoup de ceremonies superstitieuses.” 70 71
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and morality, even without access to the supernatural Revelation of God (or the Bible).75 Like many works of the period, Lord’s study of ‘the religion of the Banyans’ suggests that the Europeans literally experienced this religion in India, constituted by the canonical elements outlined in the previous Chapters, and centred upon an imaginary Brahmin priesthood. This not only informed their obsession with textual evidences, but also determined their choice of informants, centuries prior to the colonial era and the colonial ‘textualization’ of Brahmin scriptures. As the previous Chapters have demonstrated, the elements that delimited the ‘Indian religion of the priest’ in the European imagination were not colonial but Christian-theological in nature. Thomas Herbert issued his A Relation of some Yeares Travaille in 1634, which ran through several augmented editions (1638, 1655, 1677). It is from the second edition onwards, that Herbert became truly fascinating. His narrative about the spiritual history of India followed the standard outline. Herbert described the ancient forerunners of the priests of the Banyans on the basis of classical anthropology. The ancient Brahmins were no hereditary community but received their titles after sufficient study and contemplation: Their Priests are called Bramyni or Brachmani; such as in old times from their quality, were nam’d Gymno-sophi, as Porphyrius the great Platonist … dictates concerning them, and thus: If by descent he continued constant to this study and contemplation, he then attained great Æstimation, and the title Brachman: if he sought this degree by election, he was seven yeares (sayes Bardefanes of Babilon) stiled Calanus and Samanæus, and then by that other Nomenclation; of all sorts of Philosophers these were held most excellent, and contemplative.76
The Brahmins were engaged in study and contemplation. Herbert continued with an account of ‘the Banyan religion,’ derived (verbatim) from Lord, and understood the spiritual development of India thus: “But, how they have (by overture of their wits and country) … broacht new opinions, more fanatastick and ridiculous…”77 This is how he concluded the Indian cosmogony he took from Henry Lord: [W ]e may perceive the delusion Sathan charmes them with, whose custome it has ever been to erect to himselfe worship and Idolatry in some things (to make Gentleman, A Seasonable Prospect for the View and Consideration of Christians etc. (London, 1687), fol. A.2; and Franciscus Ridderus, De Beschaemde Christen door Het Geloof en Leven Van Heydenen en andere natuerlijcke Menschen (Rotterdam, 1669), 73-74. 76 Thomas Herbert, Some Yeares Travels into divers Parts of Asia and Afrique etc. (London, 1638), 39-40. 77 Ibid., 40 75
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’em more authenticall) cohering with the story of our Bible, and in imitation of the Jewes: and that this Cabala or Shaster of the Bannyans is a depraved Story of the Bible, either obtain’d by some Jewes, such time as Solomon traded to Ophir (neere these parts) or from the Father of Lies, who peradventure dictate it for his servants.78
Lord’s reproduction of the Indian Commandments in terms of the JudeoChristian Decalogue was not a coincidence. The fourth edition of Herbert’s Travels (1677) adds the following about the Indian Laws: “most of which agree with the seven which Rabbi Solomon says Noah taught the World in his time, called the Noahcaddy.”79 When the Europeans confronted statues and images in India, they were experienced as parts of religion—‘the Indian religion of the priest.’ Lord and Herbert suggest that this process of cultural translation was applied to other elements of Indian culture too: the Sanskrit manuscripts had to be sacred scriptures; the traditional stories had to be religious cosmogonies or variants of Genesis; and so on. That is to say, every element in Indian culture Europeans were confronted with was experienced and represented as a lucid manifestation of ‘the Indian religion of the priest.’ Hinduism in the Dutch cultural Experience Information about the ‘Indian religion of the priest’ became more abundant and detailed during the latter half of the seventeenth century. The book production in the Dutch Republic was not only instrumental in distributing the vision of a unified and pan-Indian religion; it also suggests that ‘the Indian religion’ existed as an entity in the Dutch experience of India. In the middle of the century there appeared at Leiden one of the most thorough descriptions of South Indian traditions prior to the colonial period. The author was the Dutch missionary to India, Abraham Rogerius. The Golden Age of the Dutch Republic was a period of maritime and scientific discoveries and it is not surprising that among the pioneers of typically Orientalist attitudes we can find Dutch missionaries and savants. One of them was Rogerius, who spent about ten years on the Coromandel Coast, preaching in Portuguese and Tamil. By the 1640s the Dutch were highly visible in the Indian subcontinent, the Malay Peninsula and Indonesia. From around 1660, after the Portuguese Ibid. 43 (emphasis mine). Thomas Herbert, Some Years Travels into divers parts of Africa, and Asia the Great etc. (London, 1677), 49. 78 79
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defeat in Ceylon, the Dutch became the leading European power in India. While the voc, much like the English East India Company, expressed interest in and encouraged studies in the local languages, culture and societies, the products of this scholarly endeavour were structured by the modes of representation developed in the previous centuries. Rogerius ventured deeply into the Indian mythology and cosmogony, and provided one of the first detailed accounts of the Vedas. On the one hand, his work—as well as the many works that drew from it—indicate again that ‘the textualization of tradition’ was not a British colonial enterprise. On the other, Rogerius fitted the information in the pre-established formats available to him, with the ‘sacred scriptures’ concealing the memories of forgotten Christian truths. The multitude of unmediated local traditions was experienced as a corruption of these truths. The work that distributed these commonplaces is known in Dutch as Open-Deure tot het verborgen Heydendom (The open gates to concealed heathendom; 1651). Aside from the influence which the German (1663) and French (1670) translations exercised, Rogerius also impacted several seventeenth and eighteenth-century works. The Dutch savants such as Franciscus Ridderus (1669) and Balthasar Bekker (1691) drew from it. The Flemish Cornelius Hazart (1671) copied extensive sections from it. The influential Enlightenment contribution to the comparative study of religion, Bernard Picart’s Cérémonies et Coutumes Religieuses des tous les peuples du Monde, distributed it in French (1723), Dutch (1728) and English (1733) editions. Also the nineteenth-century students of ‘Hinduism,’ like the Abbé Dubois and Max Müller, took recourse to the work of Rogerius. In 1672, there appeared in Amsterdam two other influential books that drew from Rogerius. Rogerius’ representation of Indian traditions was further distributed by Philippus Baldaeus, a Dutch missionary who had spent some years in Ceylon and the southern coasts of India. His Dutch work (1672) was translated into English as A True and Exact Description of the Most Celebrated East-India Coast of Malabar and Coromandel, As also of the Isle of Ceylon (1704). The first part describes India, the second Ceylon, and the third is a detailed treatment of traditions. This book contains several letters and voc reports and is an invaluable source for the history of the Dutch presence in South Asia. Baldaeus’ narrative on the Indian traditions was to a large extent derived from Rogerius and from Portuguese scholarship, or the book on Hindu mythology by the Jesuit Jacopo Fenicio, the Livro de Seitas dos Indias
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Orientais (The Book of the sects of the Oriental Indians; 1609).80 The second work that distributed Rogerius’ representation of Indian culture amongst a wider audience of Dutch (1672), German (1673) and English (1681) readers was Olfert Dapper’s influential Asia, a lavishly illustrated Baroque compilation of records on India and the East.81 The importance of Rogerius’ work is threefold. First, the Dutch manuscript was issued posthumously two years after his death and heavily annotated by an editor who wrote under the name of A. W. JCtus, most probably a professor at Leiden University. His numerous footnotes include a wealth of information and multiple comparisons between Indian and Jewish customs, the traditions of the Greeks and Romans, and references to previous scholarship on the East. Rogerius’ work not only provides an insight in the firsthand experiences of the Indian traditions, but another indication of how the reports of these experiences were understood back home.82 Second, Rogerius’ description of India dovetails with colonial scholarship and must be understood as an important step in the reformulation of theological themes into anthropological commonplaces. It sounds neutral and dispassionate, and, at variance with the editorial annotations, it contains few references to the history of the Jews and Christian history of Europe. Nevertheless—and this is the third reason for why his work is important to us—the manner in which Rogerius structured his experience was no different from what we have seen in previous reports. As such, ‘the Indian religion of the priest,’ a theoretical concept that emerged in the texts of Renaissance Europe, provided structure, coherence and stability to Rogerius’ experiences along the Coromandel Coast. Or to put this differently, the elements of Indian culture Rogerius encountered were neatly fitted within a century-old and Brahmin-centred format. The actual work is divided into two large sections: the first one concerns the customs of the Brahmins and the second their religion. It soon becomes clear that seventeenth-century Dutch scholarship was capable of providing a 80 Baldaeus did not translate Fenicio’s work. Via the Dutch governor of Batavia, a translation of Fenicio’s work by the Dutch artist Philip Angel, entitled Devex Avataars, had come into Baldaeus’ possession. The Dutch MS is held at the Premonstratensian Abbey of Postel in Antwerp, Belgium. 81 For Dapper, see Donald F. Lach and Edwin J. Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe, 490-91. 82 Many of the parallels which the editor drew between Indian customs and those of the Jews were literally reproduced in the footnotes to the Abbé Dubois’ Description of the character, manners, and customs of the people of India etc. (London, 1817). This famous work of French Orientalism is of particular interest as it was purchased by the English East India Company and grew into a manual for colonial administrators, recommended by a host of British officials.
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representation of Indian community life that dovetails with the nineteenthcentury sources. In addition, Rogerius acquainted a Brahmin informant, a certain Padmanaba. As was the case with colonial scholarship, the perpetual emphasis on the Brahmins and textual evidences made Padmanaba the most obvious choice as informant. While Rogerius’ work is considered to be an early work on ‘Hinduism,’ it focuses single-mindedly on the Brahmins. Where Rogerius first described them, the Dutch editor recapitulated Postel’s thesis about their Hebrew origins.83 Rogerius saw the Vedas as their Book of Law, of which he provided a summary narrative, leading the editor to conclude that “the allegorical treatises of the Vedas demonstrate clearly that those who have instituted it were familiar with the knowledge of Christ, although they covered it with dark fables, which is generally the heathen method.”84 Multiple stories about the creation of the world existed (and still exist) in the realm of Indian traditions, yet every European consistently singled out one story or the other as the Indian version of Genesis. Where Rogerius outlined Indian cosmogony and mentioned the creation of the world from the body of Brahma, the editor observed: “They narrate many things that the Holy Scriptures teach about Christ, and it looks like they have transformed the truth into fables. Perhaps their ancestors learned about the Gospel from the Apostel Thomas…”85 The editor engaged with the debate on natural religion: In the dedication to the reader, he similarly wrote that both the heathens and the Jews displayed knowledge of God, suggesting the universal impact of the light of nature.86 He further applauded Rogerius for exposing the grounds of Indian worship, hidden behind the curtain of fables, and concluded that the Brahmins in former ages must have been aware of the Christian Scripture. The medieval vision of a Brahmin nation keeping up the priestly ideals of the Gregorian Reformation in the East, determined the Europeans to Abraham Rogerius, De Open-Deure Tot het Verborgen Heydendom (Leiden, 1651), n. 1-2. Ibid., n. 26: “… het blijck klaerlijck uyt het gheallegeerde in dese Tractaten uyt den Vedam, dat die ghene die den selven inghestelt hebben, niet t’eenemael vreemt vande kennisse Christi en zijn geweest, alhoewel sy deselve onder seer dicke ende duystere fabelen (‘twelck doorgaens de maniere der Heydenen is) bedeckt hebben.” Olfert Dapper reproduced this editorial analysis of the Vedas literally in the main body of his text: Asia, of Naukeurige Beschryving van Het Rijk des Grooten Mogols (Amsterdam, 1672), 137. 85 Ibid., n. 55: “Sy verhalen meest alle het ghene van hem, dat de H. Schriftuere ons van Christo leert; ende schijnen de waerheyt gantsch in een fabel verandert te hebben. Misschien of hare Voor ouders den klanck des Euangeliums gehoort hebbende van den Apostel Thomas…” Also see 104-05. 86 Ibid., fols. 2-3.
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single out the Brahmins as a clerical estate. Their lasting fame drove Rogerius, Dapper and Baldaeus to structure their works along the lines of what was thought to be the Brahmanic religion and worship. As Dapper observed, the Indians believed in the doctrine of the Brahmins.87 Dapper stressed that those Brahmins who were the strictest in their vegetarian diet (generally conceived as a work of penance) and adherence to their laws were the priests. In other words, the same criteria that made the Brahmin protagonist famous in the edifying works of the Middle Ages—and determined the category of Indian priesthood—continued to structure European scholarship in the late seventeenth century. Whereas the Indian priests were esteemed as a result of their ways of living, the Europeans considered themselves to be in a position to unveil this cloak and to stress the numerous wicked deeds they also performed.88 Be that as it may, it is important to note that many observed the Brahmins performing multiple professions, yet continued to use the principles that guided the pre-Renaissance discourses to identify this so-called priesthood: their strict (vegetarian) modes of living. Having observed that not all Brahmins are priests, Dapper added a hypothesis to keep the picture stable. Because they were the only community from which the priests were to be chosen, the Brahmins must have been like the Levites, the priestly tribe among the Jews.89 A similar work that can provide an insight in how ‘the Indian religion of the priest’ (later known as ‘Hinduism’) was an entity in European experience is Johan Nieuhof ’s Gedenkweerdige Brasiliaense Zee- en Lant-Reize (The most memorable journeys by sea and over land; 1682). This was a lavishly illustrated Dutch narrative, treating of Nieuhof ’s travels in Brasil and the East Indies. In 1665 he had published a detailed account of the Dutch embassy to Peking, which made him one of the most authoritative writers on China of the period. Nieuhof ’s travels to Brazil and India were issued posthumously. An English translation (including its beautifully detailed engravings) appeared in the successive editions of a compendium edited by John and Awnsham Churchill (1704, 1732, 1744 and 1752). Nieuhof entrusted his notes Olfert Dapper, Asia, of Naukeurige Beschryving van Het Rijk des Grooten Mogols, 38. Ibid., 34: “Die zich onder de Brahminen het strengste in ’t eeten, en in ’t onderhouden van hun wet betoonen, zijn de genen, die het ampt van Priesters bekleden, en Boti genaemt worden. Deze worden ook by gevolgh het meest geacht en ge-eert. Zy leven van aelmoesen, en ongetrouwt: verachten alle wereldsche dingen: doen belydenis van een streng leven, ten minsten in schijn: aengezien veelen hunner ontallijke boosheden bedrijven.” 89 Ibid., 39: “Het ampt en d’oefening der Brahminen heeft groote overeenkomsten met die van de Levijten onder de Hebreen.” 87 88
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to his brother Hendrik, through which the printed work became another example of the influence of editorial practice on the genre of travel writing. Editorial practice is most apparent in Nieuhof ’s description of the Malabar regions, where the account of Indian traditions and society seems to be lifted from the pages of Pyrard de Laval’s French report (1611). The Brahmins are again described in the formulaic terms we are familiar with: their professions are divers, and while some take up arms with the nobility, the others are the priests of the idols.90 Like de Laval, Nieuhof observed that the Banyans who lived in the Malabar regions had their own Brahmins as priests.91 Again, the idea of a Brahmin-centred religion emerges: the kingdoms in South India followed the same religion, while the commoners knew of eighteen different sects.92 Hinduism in other European Experiences In the 1650s, one of the finest works of early-modern travel literature, a collection of letters, written by the Italian traveller Pietro della Valle, addressed to his friend at Naples, Mario Schipano, appeared in Rome. Della Valle set out from Venice in 1614. After his extensive travels through the Middle East he embarked in 1623 on an English ship bound for Surat, from where he visited other places in Gujarat, Goa, Mangalore and Calicut. His Persian letters were issued at Rome in 1658 and his letters from India in 1663, a collection which went through French, Dutch and English translations before the end of the century and exerted influence on future writers on India, like Olfert Dapper (1672). It shows not only how standardized the ethnographic imageries outlined in the above had become by the middle of the seventeenth century, but also that ‘the Indian religion of the priest,’ as a concept, structured the manner in which the Europeans experienced several elements in Indian culture. Della Valle’s letter, dated Surat, March 22, 1623, provided detail on the Indian traditions, cast into the formats at hand. Writing about Indian stories and mythology, della Valle observed “that under the veil of these Fables, their ancient Sages (most patrimonious of the Sciences, as all Barbarians ever were) have hid from the vulgar many secrets, either of Natural or Moral Johan Nieuhof, Johan Nieuhofs Gedenkweerdige Brasiliaense Zee- en Lant-Reize etc. (Amsterdam, 1682), 143-44. 91 Ibid., 144. 92 Ibid., 158-59. 90
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Philosophy, and perhaps also of History.”93 Della Valle was convinced that “all these monstrous figures have secretly some more rational significations, though express’d in this uncouth manner.”94 Like the other visitors to the East, this Italian traveller noted the presence of various ‘gentile’ communities in India, yet outlined the contours of one common religion: “In the substantial points of Religion all agree together, all believe the Transmigration of Souls … All equally believe that there is a Paradise in Heaven with God…”95 That he was discussing ‘religion’ here as a system of beliefs becomes clear a few pages below, where he structured this religion according to the two-tiered model of religion discussed in the above. That is to say, Della Valle observed that the Gujaratis agreed in “the substance of religion” and differentiates this ‘substance’ from all the “Rites and Ceremonies” in which they differed.96 The priests who harboured this ‘substance’ and guided their rites are Brahmins, who were the most strict in their observances, resembled the Levites amongst the Jews, and were divided into several sorts, some more noble than others. Interestingly, they were divided according to the strictness in their diet “and in their other superstitious ceremonies.”97 Della Valle wrote that only the most stringent were priests: some were astrologers, some physicians, others scholars, scribes or the secretaries of princes. The medieval vision of the proto-Christian Brahmin who lived a life like that of the priest was entrenched in the European imagination, such that the Levites as the clerical tribe of the biblical Jews (the twelve tribes of Israel) became a useful tool to grasp the Indian reality. This legendary image informed the early-modern notion of ‘the Indian priesthood.’ But because there were many Brahmins who did not fulfil the office of priest, and thus, in reality did not conform to the European expectations, this surmise was stabilized by postulating another hypothesis: they were like the Levites among the Jews, the Judaic tribe from which the priests had to be chosen. Della Valle observed that “the most esteem’d and most sublime amongst the Brachmans, and consequently, most rigorous of all in point of eating and other observances, are those who perform the Office of Priests, whom they call Boti.”98 In
Pietro Della Valle, The Travels of Sig. Pietro della Valle, A Noble Roman, into East-India and Arabia Deserta etc., trans. George Havers (London, 1665), 38. 94 Idem. 95 Idem. 96 Ibid, 46. 97 Ibid., 42. 98 Idem. 93
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other words, the Indian reality was made to conform to the medieval image of ‘Brahmin asceticism,’ now related to their vegetarianism. Della Valle continued that “the strictest amongst them, as the Brachmans, and particularly the Boti, not onely kill not, but eat not, any living thing.”99 An overview of Continental European experiences of India based on the production of travel accounts would be incomplete without a short analysis of the work by the French traveller, François Bernier (1625-1688), who served for twelve years as the personal physician of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. His Histoire de la dernière révolution des Etats du Grand Mogol (History of the late revolution in the empire of the Great Mughal; 1670) contained a letter to Jean Chapelain (1595-1674), a French poet who had shipped him crates of books from France. Bernier’s work on India would gain him the title of ‘philosophical traveller.’100 His letter to Chapelain indicates the close relationship between European scholarship and the reports of cross-cultural encounteres. The representational structure that emerged at the Renaissance libraries also structured Bernier’s experience of the Indian reality. That is to say, ‘the Indian religion of the priest’ preconditioned his observations. The books he received from Europe include Athanasius Kircher’s China Illustrata (1667). Bernier also praised the works of Henry Lord (1610) and Abraham Rogerius (1651), and he was familiar with the work of Heinrich Roth on the Sanskrit language and the incarnations of the second constituent of the Indian Trinity.101 Bernier provided detailed and sensationalist accounts of India, from sati performances, through the devotees crushed under the wheels of the Juggernaut chariot, to ritual deflorations by the Brahmin priests. All the practices re centred upon a self-serving and lecherous priesthood.102 Like his predecessors, Bernier identified the locus of religion in the Vedas, the sacred books of the Divine Law which God bestowed upon Brahma, and Ibid., 44. Also see 46. Peter Burke, “The Philosopher as Traveller: Bernier’s Orient,” in Voyages and Visions. Towards a cultural History of Travel, eds. J. Elsner and J.-P. Rubiés (London, 1999), 124-137. 101 On their way to Europe Heinrich Roth spent some days in March 1663 with the Carmelite Fathers in Shiraz. On this occasion, a Carmelite Father wrote down Roth’s information on the incarnations of the Indian devatas. Bernier passed through Shiraz during the autumn of 1667 and copied the notes of the Father, which he incorporated in his letter to Chapelain. See the introduction by Arnulf Camps in Heinrich Roth, The Sanskrit Grammar and Manuscripts of Father Heinrich Roth S.J. (1620-1668) etc., eds. A. Camps and J.-C. Muller (Leiden & New York, 1988), 20-21. 102 François Bernier, “Lettre a Monsieur Chapelain, Envoyee de Chiras en Perse, le 4. Octobre 1667. Touchant les Superstitions, étranges façons de faire, & Doctrine des Indous etc.,” in Suite des Memoires du Sr Bernier, Sur l’Empire du Grand Mogol (Paris, 1671), 8-18. 99
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which are now guarded by the Brahmins. In other words, French Orientalism of the period equally stands for the continued reproduction of a long tradition of cumulative knowledge.103 The vision of a unified ‘Indian religion of the priest,’ located in ancient manuscripts, and a plethora of local practices associated with it, existed in the European imagination long before the era of British colonialism. The travellers to India who provided the European public with increasingly detailed accounts of Indian traditions, whether they were Dutch, English, French or Italian, invariably structured their experiences by placing the cultural elements they were confronted with within this format. That format took shape in the Renaissance ethnographies and was delimited by two theological modes of representation.
7.3. Conclusion A stable representation of the Indian traditions crystallized towards the end of the seventeenth-century. The detailed reports by travellers in the East provided the scholars at home with additional information, which in turn was incorporated into the century-old formats. The European representations of Indian traditions thus make for an enclosed theoretical space: one single book that paraphrases all the volumes on the voyages to the East and all the scholarship on the manners and customs of India—just one book with an infinite amount of cross-references that conveys a form of knowledge for which Europe alone is responsible. These inter-connected, pre-colonial sources do not contain descriptions of India but rewrite the cultural history of Europe in a profoundly alien setting. At the heart of these works stands the Brahmin protagonist, originally applauded for his proto-Christian way of life and subsequently despised for the corruption of religion into idolatry and local practices. Within the confines of both valuations floats a repertoire of cultural images that grew into the building blocks of ‘the Indian religion’ in European discourses: the Brahmin priesthood, equal to the Catholic priesthood; the Indian equivalent of the Trinitarian doctrine, or Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva; the Indian edition of the Bible, or the Vedas; the Brahmanic variety of the Decalogue, or the dharmashastras; and so on.
A similar conclusion can be drawn from the pioneering French works by Jean de Thévenot and Jean Baptiste Tavernier. See Jean Baptiste Tavernier, Les Six Voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernier, Ecuyer Baron d’Aubonne, en Turquie, en Perse, et aux Indes etc. (Paris, 1676); and Jean de Thévenot, Voyages de Mr de Thevenot, Contenant la Relation de l’Indostan, des nouveaux Mogols, & des autres Peuples & Pays des Indes (Paris, 1684)
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The first Chapter of this essay outlined the research hypothesis that would guide our study of the European representations of India’s traditions. It suggested that Orientalist discourse is not a representation of the East, but a chronicle of the manner in which Europe came to terms with the reality that is the East. I engaged with the debate on the construction of Hinduism in order to show that we have to transcend the hackneyed theme of power and knowledge if we want to arrive at an insight in the long history of Orientalism. In this context, I have traced the decisive transformations in European representations of the Indian traditions that map onto specific developments within the cultural history of Europe itself. To suggest the heuristic productivity of this approach, the following Chapter will focus on two descriptive threads that developed in tandem with the ‘the Indian religion of the priest’ in European discourses. In other words, Chapter 8 is the first step towards a much larger project that transcends the so-called construction of Hinduism. This project sets out to map the European representations of India in its entirety—and in that process, proposes a comprehensive approach to the cultural history of Europe that is both extensive as it is intensive.
Chapter Eight
Orientalism and the cultural History of Europe: Two Case Studies
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hus far, I have suggested that Orientalism is not an anthropological chronicle of the East; but rather, a revealing mirror of particular European dynamics. Whatever Europe wrote about India’s traditions took shape from within a theological system in which the Indian reality was reduced to the religious disputes that typify the cultural processes in Europe. The previous Chapters have shown that we need to dig deeper into this cultural history if we have to come to terms with the European representations of India. The present Chapter indicates the heuristic productivity of this approach in two ways. On the one hand, it outlines a descriptive trend that developed in parallel with the European discourse on the Brahmins. On the other, it also takes the first step towards a comprehensive study of the European representations of India. That is to say, it maps the discourse on India from a wider angle by incorporating the representations of Indian society. In this context, it engages with the recent theories on ‘the colonial construction of the caste system,’ as evident in the scholarship of Nicholas Dirks (2001), amongst others. As was the case with ‘Hinduism,’ the continuous emphasis on the nexus of knowledge and power (as manifested in the colonial state) confronts clear empirical problems. The present Chapter uses two case studies—the European representations of the yogis and yogic practices, and the European representations of Indian society, respectively—to make two suggesttions: one, that our hypothesis on Orientalism has consequences beyond the immediate discourse on the Brahmins, and two, that this hypothesis generates cognitively interesting questions that provide directions for research into the European representations of Indian culture and society.
8.1. Pentitentiary Orders and the Indian Religion of the Priest European chronicles of the East continued to demonstrate a strong allegiance to classical anthropology: the representation of India typical of works like Boemus’ Omnium gentium mores (1520) was relocated in the Renaissance
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cosmographies to the sections on ancient India. As already outlined in Chapters 2, 3 and 4, the medieval and early-modern representation of the Brahmins in addition reveal but two faces of the same theological coin. While the Brahmins initially were expected to abide by the priestly ideal, the European observers wrote that they had come to disregard their spiritual duties. In this context, their vegetarian diet was often understood as reflecting the sacerdotal principle. The norms which the Brahmins were to embody informed the Gregorian Reforms in the eleventh century, when the papal curie sought to model the Church on monastic patterns. Christianity always had been a religion of monasteries: the process of becoming a true Christian and submitting one’s will to the will of God was institutionalized in the monasteries. This implied a spiritual movement—away from carnal desires and the sins of the flesh towards a spiritual disposition of the soul. The regime of the monasteries disciplined the lives of the monks to guide them towards the spiritual kingdom of God. As shown below, this monastic procedure was regulated by a strict body of rules. The monks—living under vows of poverty, chastity and obedience—surrendered themselves to the will of God. Following a life of asceticism and performing works of penance, they were the spiritual units, the guardians of religion. This monastic ideal was later projected on the secular priesthood who lived in the cities at large, and with the Gregorian Reforms, the ecclesiastic canon law came to perform the function of these monastic rules in the institutionalized Church. Europe’s representation of the Brahmins was structured by the monastic or sacerdotal ideal—prior to and during the Renaissance. Europe’s understanding of the yogis and their spiritual exercises was also structured by this normative ideal. While the European scholars and the travellers to the East jointly manufactured ‘the Indian religion of the priest,’ they simultaneously constructed an elaborate system of penitentiary orders around the Brahmin protagonist. Both the Catholic and Protestant scholars (and the travellers to the East) described them, not only as mendicant orders, but also as spiritual frauds, deluding the laity with fake pieties and austerities. A rudimentary outline of the monastic tradition in the West first provides the background against which we can grasp the position of the yogis in the European imagination.
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Monasteries, Rules and Works of Penance The long history of Christian monasticism starts in the Egyptian and Palestinian deserts at the end of the third century. By the fourth century, the deserts were populated by colonies of ascetic hermits who withdrew from society to pursue a spiritual and ascetic life. While they continued to inspire many in the Middle Ages, it became more common to follow the ascetic life with the support of an organized (coenobitic) community. These communities of monks existed within the framework of a set of monastic rules, a legislative blueprint for the organization of the monastic life. About 300 of such rules were written between the end of the fourth century and the second half of the seventh. While many provided no more than cursory suggestions for the regulation of life within the monastery, these rules range from the succinct Augustinian Rule (ca. 395), through the rule of Basil the Great (397), to the massive Regula Magistri (Rule of the Master; sixth century), which contains 95 chapters that legislate on virtually every conceivable aspect of the spiritual and daily life of the monks. This literary tradition eventually gave way to the Rule of St. Benedict (ca. 530-555) and the institutions evolving around it.1 The Rule of St. Benedict—a legislation for monks composed by Benedict of Nursia, the abbot of Monte Cassino in Italy—would become a standard pattern for the monastic observance for centuries in Europe. It survives in innumerable manuscripts, and emphasizes the idea of the monastery as a community living under the direction of a fatherly abbot. The newcomers who sought admission to Benedict’s coenobitical society were required to pass a year in the noviciate to test their perseverance, after which they renounced all personal property and took vows to observe the Rule until death. It consists of several chapters that deal in minute detail with monastic values such as humility, patience, obedience and asceticism. The previous legislative literature, like the Rule of the Four Fathers (ca. 410), suggests that the emphasis on obedience and self-negation was part of the monastic tradition from the very beginning of developing the coenobitic life.2 The Rule of St. Benedict was the climax of this literary tradition. Similar to other such rules, it prescribed asceticism and the renunciation of physical pleasures, from fancy clothing to the consumption of meat. Other normative
William Johnston, ed., Encyclopedia of Monasticism, vol. 2 (Chicago & London, 2000), 1067-69; and William Kibler, Medieval France: An Encyclopedia (New York, 1995), 627. 2 C. Franklin, I. Havener, and J. Francis, trans., Early monastic Rules: The Rules of the Fathers and the Regula Orientalis (Collegeville, Minn., 1982), 27. 1
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acts included guidelines for daily living, such as regulations for hours of sleep, manual work and meals, and a penitential code that lay down the penalties for breaching the Rule. The Rule of St. Benedict was followed in thousands of monasteries between roughly 800 and 1100 and came to define the very understanding of the monastic life: “Men came to think of monks as people whose religious life was governed by a written code: the monastic life came to be described as the ‘regular life’—life according to a rule.”3 Asceticism and Works of Penance The military imagery characteristic of the Rule of St. Benedict suggests that the monks were engaged in an unrelenting battle with the Devil, who sought to lure them away from the monastic path. The products of medieval monasteries were the elite troops of God, or state-of-the-art combat units specialized in spiritual warfare against the temptations of the flesh. Stories about the desert hermits of the first centuries of Christianity popularized the vision of extraordinary penances. While St. Benedict prescribed a path bereft of such extreme mortifications, self-denial and asceticism were part of the monk’s vocation. The Irish Rule of St. Columbanus provides a glimpse of the harsh spirit of these rules. For St. Columbanus the life of the monk was of a perpetual battle to conquer his self-will and carnal desire. As was the case with the Rule of St. Benedict, this warfare took place within the walls of a monastic community: The chief part of the monk’s rule is mortification … Let the monk live in a community under the discipline of one father and in the company of many … Let him not do as he wishes, let him eat what he is bidden, keep as much as he has received, complete the tale of his work, be subject to him whom he does not like. Let him come weary and as if sleep-walking to his bed, and let him be forced to rise while his sleep is not yet finished. Let him keep silence when he has suffered wrong. Let him fear the superior of his community as a lord, love him as a father, believe that whatever he commands is salutary for himself.4
The severe and often bizarre practices of the Desert Fathers had led to caution by the spiritual guides, yet the scourging of monks who severely broke C. H. Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages (London, 1984), 25. Also see Marilyn Dunn, “Mastering Benedict: Monastic Rules and Their Authors in the Early Medieval West,” The English Historical Review 105, no. 416 (1990): 567-594; and Ludovicus Milis, Angelic Monks and earthly Men: Monasticism and its Meaning to Medieval Society (Woodbridge, 1992), esp. chap. 5. 4 Cited in C. H. Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism, 40. 3
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the Rule was a customary practice. As the Rule of St. Columbanus suggests, the life of the monk was underpinned by a battery of penitential practices. A brother who dropped food whilst serving was to do penance in church, lying prostrate and motionless for the time of twelve psalms. Breaking the code of silence or smiling during service was penalized by six lashes; forgetting prayer, twelve lashes; and contradicting the word of another—fifty lashes.5 The members of the convents perfected the works of penance with selfflagellations, fasts, vigils, hairshirts and the cilice, a strap studded with spikes. The hagiographical literature was replete with stories of the ascetical heroes performing extraordinary acts of mortification. These narratives are almost identical to the manner in which the Indian yogis were subsequently described: the combatants of God would “recite the Psalter standing in icy waters, or stand for long periods in prayer with arms outstretched like a cross— the crossfigill; Kevin of Glendalough maintained the posture for seven years, unsleeping and motionless, so that birds nested in his upturned hands; they fast continually, and use bare rocks for bolsters.”6 The disciplining of body and mind served an ascetic and symbolic purpose—a symbolical way of identifying with the pain of the Crucified, who suffered death on the cross to redeem for the sins of humankind. The final goal of such severities was the ultimate self-denial and unity with (the Christian) God. The Medieval Wanderers The monastic life in Europe developed in tandem with the conversion of the heathens to Christianity, and the Renaissance cosmographies are a source of information for the orders known to Renaissance Europe.7 In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, new monastic orders—unrelated to the Rule of St. Benedict—were arising in France, some of which were part of the so-called eremitical movement, a reaction to secular involvement and the neglect of the principles of solitude. These monks rejected the conventional models of monasticism and began to congregate in groups in the mountain regions of Italy and forests of northern France. The most successful was the Carthusian order, established by St. Bruno in the 1080s, combining eremitic elements with Idem. Ibid., 41. 7 The final chapter of Pierre d’Avity’s cosmography is a detailed list of religious and monastic orders: Les Estats, Empires et Principautez du Monde (s.l., 1614). Also see Paolo Morigia, Histoire de l’Origine de toutes les Religions qui jusques à present ont esté au monde etc., trans. J. Lourdereau (Paris, 1578; Italian edition 1569). 5 6
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the coenobitic elements of established tradition. That is to say, the monks had their own cells to find solitude, though the cells were combined within a monastic community. Another order was institutionalized at the abbey of Grandmont (the Grandmontines) towards the end of the eleventh century on the principle of extreme poverty.8 But a mode of religious living modelled upon the life of the Apostles not only emphasized asceticism and renunciation, but also the need for evangelism. The mendicant friars which appeared in the thirteenth century combined both needs within a new monastic tradition. Prior to the time of St. Benedict, several attempts had been made by various synods to discipline the monks who refused to settle in a cloister. With the establishment of the Rule of St. Benedict in the eight century, the wandering monks—known from the pages of the apostolic Fathers—had fallen into obscurity. This tradition would only be revived with the mendicant friars of the high Middle Ages. Unlike the monks who were bound within the limits of their house, the mendicant friars wandered far and wide, relying on the hospitality and charity of others for their livelihood. One of them was the Order of the Friars Minor, or the Franciscans, founded in 1209. While they adopted a rule of poverty, the wandering monks neglected the principle of seclusion from the secular world in order to fulfil their evangelical mission. The conservative opponents accused these friars of reviving the tradition of the gyrovagi or the gyrovagues of the earliest ages of Christianity. The latter were itinerant monks who relied on the charity and hospitality of the people, and, in this capacity, became the scorn of the establishment. Pierre d’Avity (1614) calls them vagabonds, never abiding in one place, wandering through villages, standing in the doorways of churches to beg for money. They lodged in the hospitals and inns, and were often described as gluttons, always given to pleasure and sensuality.9 In other words, the gyrovagues were treated as a kind of ‘false hermits,’ for they did not live according to a monastic rule but feigned a contemplative life for worldly purposes. It should come as no surprise then that the mendicant friars of the fourteenth-century also featured prominently in the anticlerical literature of the Middle Ages, where they were unfavourably compared with the ‘true hermits.’ While the latter lived in isolation (outside the framework of the monastic rule) to achieve spiritual perfection, the ‘false hermit’ abandoned the severity of the rule, but only for
8 9
C. H. Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism, 133-37. Pierre d’Avity, Les Estats, Empires et Principautez du Monde (s.l., 1614), 35.
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personal purposes.10 The European representations of the yogis were structured entirely along these lines: they were seen as ‘false hermits,’ who tried to impress the laity by excessive works of penance. They were gluttonous friars, who travelled in bands across the Indian lands, feeding from the charity and hospitality of others. For the Jesuits and the Catholics in general, the Sacrament of Penance is a legitimate and central aspect of religion. With regard to their descriptions of India, the Catholics operated within the same and essentially Christian universe as the Protestants, limited by the same formats to make sense of the Indian reality. Self-mortifications and excessive works of penance might have been laudable to some, superfluous and degenerate to others, but whatever one’s theological profile put forward, the practices performed by the Indian yogis were works of penance all the same. For the Catholics, these ‘Indian penitentiaries’ were misguided: their absurd exercises embodied a travesty of genuine works of penance. For the Protestants, Indian acts of ‘mortification’ were as absurd and idolatrous as the Catholic works, but works of penance all the same. As such, ‘the Brahmin priesthood’ found company with another theoretical entity in the European imagination: ‘the mendicant friars’ or the ‘orders of Indian penitentiaries.’ The Penitentiaries of the Devil Much like the cultural history of Europe modelled the European representations of the Brahmins, it also shaped the accounts of the yogis. Their spiritual exercises were transformed into acts of mortification, or works of penance associated with the monastic tradition. In 1597 the Italian Jesuit Giovanni Battista Peruschi issued a summary in Italian of what the Jesuits knew about the Mughal Empire, which found translation into German the following year. This is how Manuel Pinheiro—a member of the third mission to Akbar—saw the yogis at Gujarat: “I saw many yogis in the country of Gujarat (like the people in Orders with us) who in their poverty and external works of penance [Bußwerken] do not rank behind anyone else.”11
Wendy Scase, Piers Plowman and the New Anticlericalism (Cambridge, 1989), 125. Emmanuel Pinheiro, “Copey eines schreibens, so P. Emmanuel Pinnerus auss Mogor ... den 27. Septemb. des 1595. gethan,” in Zween kurtze Bericht, Der erst, Vonn desz Grosmächtigen Königes Mogor Person, Leben, Macht etc., ed. G. Peruschi (Mainz, 1598), fol. 21b: “In dem Guzzarate ofer Landschafft had ich viel Gioghi gesehen (seynd wie bey uns die Ordens Personen) die in Armut und äusserlichen Busswerken, seinem andern nichts bevorgeben.”
10 11
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About a century later, François Bernier reported in detail about the yogis in his letter to Chapelain, and wrote of their vow of chastity, poverty and obedience [une sorte de vœu de Chasteté, Pauvreté & Obeïssance].12 Bernier outlined the monastic rules to which the yogis adhered and continued with a picturesque account of their appearance, “hideous to behold.” Like the representations of the yogis in most of the European reports, their looks reminded the reader of the Naga Sadhus.13 But the European observers did not only see repellent creatures beneath the ashes which the yogis smeared on their bodies—they saw instead, the monastic history of Europe: The ‘traditions of asceticism’ which they encountered in the East were described along the lines of the monastic traditions of Europe.14 At first, Bernier conjectured that yogic practices derived from the Cynics, but he added that the yogis lacked the necessary capacity for rational thought.15 Finally, he concluded: None of our religious men or Hermits in Europe should imagine that on these points [austerities] they outshine these people, or any other Asiatic religionist. For instance, when compared to the lives and fasts of the Armenians, Copts, Greeks, Nestorians, Jacobins and Maronites, our European devotees are mere novices…16
Back home in France, Bernier would later write an article for Le Journal des Sçavans (1688), entitled Mémoire sur le Quiétisme des Indes. Here Bernier compared the spiritual exercises of the yogis with the controversial Quietist movement in Catholic France of his time. Both ‘quietisms’ were derided.17 Likewise, the Dutch traveller Johan Nieuhof (1682) wrote of the Goegys or Gioghi which he encountered in Persia, and observed their terrifying appearance. He described their spiritual exercises in a language that reminded the reader of the medieval miniatures that illustrated the will-power of the Catholic saints. For instance, La Vita beati Benedicti abbatis (1432) repre-
François Bernier, “Lettre a Monsieur Chapelain etc.,” in Suite des Memoires du Sr Bernier, Sur l’Empire du Grand Mogol (Paris, 1671), 48. 13 Ibid., 48-61. 14 For a similar argument, see William Pinch, Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires (Cambridge, 2006), 65. 15 François Bernier, “Lettre a Monsieur Chapelain,” 54-55. 16 Ibid., 62: “Il ne faut pas, ou je suis bien trompé, qu’aucuns de nos Religieux ou Hermites Européens croyent l’emporter en cela sur ces gens-là, ny mesme en general sur tous les Religieux Asiatiques, témoins la vie & les jeunes des Armeniens, des Costes, des Grecs, des Nestoriens, des Jacobites & des Maronites, il faut auoüer que nous ne sommes que des Novices auprés de tous ces Religieux…” 17 François Bernier, “Mémoire sur le quiétisme des Indes,” Le Journal des Sçavans (1688): 47. 12
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sented St. Benedict in his cell tempted by seven naked girls.18 In much the same way, Nieuhof wrote that the Indian women approached the meditating yogis “to touch their fingertips and to kiss their members submissively, without noticing motion or sensitivity in them, for those who reveal any motion or sensitivity are considered ungodly and impure.”19 He continued with their ‘works of penance’: They live an austere and difficult life, and starve their bodies, with several kinds of penance, and they keep themselves in strange and unnatural postures … Some of them, again by way of penance, always walk, for years at length, day and night.20
The imagery with which the European observers described the yogis was always reminiscent of the Catholic works of penance.21 The monastic history of Europe became thus a ready-made platform on which the ethnographers could build: like the Brahmins, the yogis had to be religious men, who engaged in acts of penance. This normative vision lies at the heart of the image of the Brahmins as ‘saintly’ heathens. But like the contemporary Brahmins, the yogis embodied a perfidy of the monastic ideal: they were misled, and devoted their penitentiary exercises not to God, but to the Devil. The Italian traveller Pietro dell Valle wrote of the “spiritual exercises” by which they arrived at revelations, yet concluded that these were but correspondences with the Devil.22 Others called the yogis the martyrs of the Devil, and compared them with the Christian penitentiaries of the desert.23
Ludovicus Milis, Angelic Monks and earthly Men, 69 Johan, Nieuhof, Johan Nieuhofs Gedenkweerdige Brasiliaense Zee- en Lant-Reize etc. (Amsterdam, 1682), 82: “D’Indiaensche vrouwen vervoegen zich dikwils by hen, uit aendacht, om d’einden van hunne vingeren aen te raken, ja … hunne mannelijke leden zeer nederig te kussen: zonder men eenige beweeging of gevoelijkheit in hen bespeurt: want die dan eenige beweging daer mede quamen te maken, of eenige gevoelijkheit te toonen, zouden voor onheiligen en onkuischen gehouden worden.” 20 Idem: “Zy leiden alle een gestreng en hert leven, en mergelen het lichaem uit, met verscheide slagh van boete, en vreemde en onnatuurlijke gebaerden en gestalten des lichaems aen te nemen ... Zommigen, tot meerder boetvaerdigheit, gaen altijt, eenige jaren lang, zonder dagh noch nacht te leggen” 21 Jean Baptiste Tavernier, Les Six Voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernier ... en Turquie, en Perse, et aux Indes, etc. (Paris, 1676), vol. 2: 376-79; Joan de Barros’s Asia, “Het Koningryk Guzaratte of Cambaya etc.,” in Tien-Jarige Scheeps-Togten en Heldhaftige Krijgs-bedrijven te Water en te Land etc., ed. P. van der Aa and J. Gottfried, (Leyden, 1706), vol. 2: 126-27. 22 Pietro della Valle, The Travels of Sig. Pietro della Valle, A Noble Roman, into East-India and Arabia Deserta etc., trans. G. Havers (London, 1665; Italian edition 1650), 55-56. 23 De La Créquinière, Conformite des coutumes des Indiens orientaux, avec celles des Juifs & des autres peuples de l’Antiquité etc. (Brussels, 1704), 141-151. 18 19
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9. Yogis or Banyan Saints, in Johan Nieuhofs Gedenkweerdige Brasiliaense Zee- en Lant-Reize (1682).
These ‘mendicant orders’ were described as spiritual aberrations, deluding the laity with counterfeit pieties and austerities. The unrepentant anticlerical lingo that characterized the early-modern representations of the Brahmins could thus also inform the European representations of the yogis. The Portuguese historian Osório da Fonseca (1571) wrote of the Brahmins in extremely dis-
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paraging terms. When he portrayed the native messenger who announced the arrival of the Portuguese fleet to the king of Calicut (1500), his narrative became as pejorative as when he wrote of the Brahmins. His choice of words reminds the reader of the Christian gyrovagues, who were believed to have used the cloak of their austerities to indulge their passions and cravings: This Michel was a man of marvellous abstinence, of a vain religion that makes fantastic claims, which the Indians call Yogis. They give the exterior impression of having entirely renounced the world. They do not possess any faculties and riches, live from alms, walk here and there, in order to preach the saintliness of their sect to all those who want to listen. They are great impostors, who delude simple folks with their illusions, yet fatten themselves up as beasts.24
What emerges in Renaissance cosmographies is a stable representation of Indian spirituality that is divided into two parts: the first invariably describes ancient India on the basis of classical anthropology and embellishes the imagery of the Brahmins living a saintly life. The second part concerns contemporary India and is divided according to its specific regions, the best documented of which are the Malabar and Coromandel littorals, the Deccan sultanates, Vijayanagar and the dominions of the Mughal rulers. Here, the Brahmins are depicted as evil priests. Right through the geographical and post-Christian space that extends across the Indian kingdoms traversed their monastic counterpart: the penitential wanderers and successors of the ancients Gymnosophists. The reports of the latter came down to us via the geographers and historians from antiquity (Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Arrian). These Gymnosophists generated as much interest in Europe as the ancient Brachmanes aroused.25 In other words, the framework that defined the representation of the Brahmins allowed for the construction of a second trope in the discourse on India: ‘the Indian orders of mendicant friars,’ or the monastic counterpart of ‘the Brahmin priesthood.’ On the one hand, Europe turned Jeronimo Osório da Fonseca, Histoire de Portugal, contenant les Entreprises, Navigations et Gestes memorables des Portugallois etc., trans. S. Goulart, vol. 2 (Geneva, 1581; Latin edition 1571), 73: “Ce Michel avoit esté un homme de merveilleuse abstinence, d’une vaine religion dont font professions certains fantastiques que les Indie[n]s appellent Iogues, lesquels ont apparence exterieure d’avoir entierement renoncé au monde: ils ne possedent aucunes facultez & richesses, vivent d’aumosnes, coure[n]t çà & là, afin de prescher la saincteté de leur secte à tous ceux qui les veulent escouter. Ils sont grands imposteurs, qui par illusions pipent le simple peuple, & s’engraissent de la bestice d’icelui.” 25 Duncan M. Derrett, “The Theban Scholasticus and Malabar in c. 355-60,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 82, no. 1 (1962): 21-31; and R. Stoneman, “Naked Philosophers: The Brahmans in the Alexander Historians and the Alexander Romance,” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 115 (1995): 99-114. 24
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to the ancients for support: the information that the travellers brought home allowed the Renaissance scholars to maintain the tenacious grip of classical anthropology. The latter provided a frame of reference to describe the yogis, who, as della Valle observed, beyond doubt descended from “the ancient Gymnosophists so famous in the world…”26 On the other, the anticlerical format that defined the image of the Brahmin protagonist also modelled the image of the yogi antagonist. If not in deed then in word at least, the yogi embodied religion and the priestly ideal. The Europeans wrote about their fake and exterior austerities. Like the legendary ‘saintliness’ of the Brahmins, their exercises had become a spiritual cloak to perform all kinds of wickedness. As Kircher explained in his China Illustrata (1667): Still today there are two orders among the Brachmanes in the Indies. The first is that of those who want to be sages and live prudently and politically. The second is that of the yogis, who stay in the deserts and live according to the manner of the ancient Gymnosophists who went all naked. They are devoted to the infernal science of demons. If we consider their life as it looks from the outside, we find them living an austere and rude life. But if we consider the interior, we will find nothing but hypocrisy and a sewer of vices and sins.27
Likewise, Xavier’s hagiographer, Dominique Bouhours (1682), saw ‘the monastic ways’ of the Brahmins as a cover to enjoy the most wicked pleasures of the flesh.28This descriptive tradition led to a distinction between the ‘regular priesthood’ and ‘orders of religious men’ that can be mapped onto the monastic history of Europe. In his chronicle of the Portuguese conquests and the Jesuit posts in the East, the Italian Jesuit chronicler, Giovanni P. Maffei (1588), spoke of the Brahmins as the most esteemed community in South India, in charge of religious and ceremonial matters. Some got married and lived a public life; others kept the vow of celibacy and were known as the yogis, or the Gymnosophists from the Greeks, “and because of the austerity of Pietro Della Valle, The Travels of Sig. Pietro della Valle, 52. Athanasius Kircher, La Chine d’Athanase Kirchere etc. (Amsterdam, 1670), 214: “Il y a deux ordres de ces Brachmanes encore aujourd’huy dans les Indes. Le premier est de ceux qui veulent estre sages, & qui vivent prudamment & politiquement. L’autre est celuy des Jogues qui restent dans les deserts & qui y vivent à la mode des anciens Gymnosophistes qui estoient tous nuds, & qui s’adonnoient extraordinairement à la science des enfers & des demons. Si vous considerés la vie de ceux-cy, quand à ce qui concerne le dehors, vous la trouverés tout à fait austere & rude: mais si on observe l’interieure, on remarquera que ce n’est qu’hypocrisie, & qu’une sentine de vices, & de pechés.” 28 Dominique Bouhours, The Life of St. Francis Xavier, of the Society of Jesus, Apostle of the Indies, and of Japan, trans. J. Dryden (London, 1688; French edition 1682), 119-120. Also see Allain Manesson Mallet, Description de l’Univers, contenant les differents Systêmes du Monde etc., vol. 2 (Paris, 1683), 114. 26
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their life and clothing, they gained reputation and credibility, and with their monstrous lies and multiple superstitions deceive the ignorant masses.”29 Patrick Gordon similarly wrote in his geography (1699) that they are a “kind of Religious Monks” who lived “very austere Lives, being much given to Fasting, and several Acts of Mortification, and some (as a voluntary Penance) make solemn Vows of keeping their Hands clasp about their Heads.”30 Like the ancient Brahmins adhered to the sacerdotal ideal, the ancient Gymnosophists were like the isolated, monastic orders. In contemporary India, the yogis made up this faction. The Jesuit historian Pierre du Jarric (1610) also, distinguished between the priests and their spiritual orders: There is another sort of Brachmanes, which never marries. They are called yogis now, though the Greeks called them Gymnosophists ... They lead (at least for a time) a very austere life and travel across the land in extreme poverty and misery. Each sect enshrouds and narrates fables. They endure a lot in these pilgrimages, and, as such, acquire lots of credit and sanctity in the opinion of this blind nation, such that they make them believe many stupidities or worse, bad and abominable things, which they say have been done by means of their idols. This is a diabolical invention to give credit to their wickedness, and to induce the people to commit similar things, which the yogis perform by means of their false gods …31
In short, the anticlerical format that defined the European representations of the Brahmins also structured the way in which other elements of Indian community life were understood. Not surprisingly then, both the Brahmins and the yogis also featured in European scholarship on the history of the monastic life.32 Giovanni P. Maffei, Histoires des Indes, de Iean Pierre Maffee Bergamesque, de la Societé de Iesus etc., trans. F. de la Boirie (Lyon, 1604 ; Latin edition 1588), 73-74 : “… & par austerité de leur vie & vestemens ayans gaigné reputation & creance, par leurs monstrueux mensonges & diverses superstitions, deçoyvent les esprits des hommes trop legers à croire…” Also see Giovanni Antonio Magini, Histoire universelle des Indes Orientales etc. (Dovay, 1607), 48-49. 30 Patrick Gordon, Geography Anatomiz’d: Or, The Compleat Geographical Grammar (London, 1699 [1693]), 250-51. 31 Pierre du Jarric, Histoire des choses plus memorables advenues tant ez Indes Orientales, vol. 1 (Bordeaux, 1610) 45-46: “Il y a un autre maniere de Brachmanes, qui ne se marient point: lesquels maintenant on appelle Iogues, & les Grecs jadis les nommoient Gymnosophistes; parce qu’ils alloie[n]t tous nuds, comme encore à present. Ceux-cy font estat de mener (à tout le moins pour un temps) une vie fort austere; les uns voyageans par le païs en grande pauvreté, & misere; preschent par tout leur secte, & une milliasse de fables, qu’ils content. Ils endurent beaucoup en ces pelerinages, mais ils acquierent par ce moyen un grand credit & opinion de saincteté parmi ceste nation aveugle; tellement qu’ils leur font croire mille bourdes, voire (qui pis est) plusieurs choses tres mauvaises, & tres-abominables, qu’ils racontent avoir esté faites par leurs Pagodes. Qui est une invention diabolique, pour donner credit à la meschanceté, & induire les gens par ce moyen à commettre semblables forfaits, que ces Iogues presche[n]t avoir esté perpetrez de leurs faux Dieux.” 32 C Delle, Histoire ou Antiquitez de l’état monastique et religieux etc., vol. 4 (Paris, 1699), 336. 29
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The illustrative Tradition The illustrations in the travelogues and cosmographies of the period distributed these images, reminiscent of the hagiographical legends of the ascetic heroes that circulated in Europe. Abraham Rogerius (1651) described the spiritual exercises of the yogis entirely along these lines.33 His narrative was adorned with several pen drawings illustrating their ‘penitentiary exercises.’ Likewise, Olfert Dapper (1671) incorporated detailed pen drawings of the yogis, fakirs and Jains, which in turn were reproduced in the Enlightenment collection of engravings by Pieter van der Aa, or La Galérie Agréable du Monde (1729). Van der Aa entitled one of these illustrations as follows: Rude et volontaire chatiment qui s’imposent les Fakirs pour amende, dans les Indes (Harsh and voluntary punishment which the Indian Fakirs impose as penalty). The theme of penance became a popular subject in the visual representations of the East. The illustrations in Rogerius’ work (1651) were reproduced in Picart’s Enlightenment collection of engravings (1723), with spectacular sounding inscriptions, as Religieux Penitens de la Secte de Joguis (Religious penitentiaries of the yogi sect) and Pénitente Bramine, Pelerine Bramine (Penitent Brahmin, wandering Brahmin).34 The ritualistic practice of hookswinging was similarly described as yet another excessive work of penance. In 1605, the India Orientalis or Small Voyages, a Latin and German collection edited by the brothers de Bry, reproduced the travels of the Venetian jewel merchant Gasparo Balbi (1590). Balbi had travelled for years in India and wrote of the practice of hookswinging in his report of the Amocchi. The latter term (Amoucos) was used by the Portuguese to refer to the Nairs who devoted themselves to death.35 The Liégeoise engraver illustrated Balbi’s narrative with a sketch of hookswinging, entitled Ein sonderlich Fest der Buss der Völcker Amocchi oder Chiavi (A remarkable festival of penance of the Amoucos or Chiavi).36 In the lower corner on the left-hand side, the illustrator drew a statue in the Christian tradition, a naked she-devil with dragon wings. The drawing was reproduced (and inverted) in Pieter van der Aa’s collection of engravings (1729),
Abraham Rogerius, De Open-Deure Tot het Verborgen Heydendom etc. (Leiden, 1651), 21-22, 196. 34 Bernard Picart, ed., Cérémonies et Coutumes Religieuses des Peuples Idolatres etc., vol. 1 (Amsterdam, 1723), 17-77. 35 Edgar Thurston, Castes and Tribes of southern India (Madras, 1909), 287 36 Johann Theodor de Bry and Johann Israel de Bry, eds., Warhafftige Vorbildung der Völcker, sampt iren Königen mit iren Ceremonien, Götzendienst, Sitten etc. (Franckfurt am Meyn, 1605), plate xiv. 33
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where it was given the title of Ceremonies cruelles des Penitens, en adorent l’Idole Gansa (Cruel ceremonies of the penitentiaries while adoring the idol Gansa).
10. Fakirs, in Pieter van der Aa, La Galérie Agréable du Monde, vol. 24 (1729). Reproduction of Olfert Dapper’s Asia (1672).
11. The idol Ganga, in Pieter van der Aa, La Galérie Agréable du Monde, vol. 24 (1729).
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12. Penitentiary ceremonies, in Pieter van der Aa, La Galérie Agréable du Monde, vol. 25 (1729). Reproduction of de Bry and de Bry’s India Orientalis (1605).
13. The Heathen penance, in Eberhard Werner Happel, E. G. Happelii Gröste Denkwürdigkeiten der Welt Oder so genannte Relationes Curiosæ (1683).
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As we have seen, the German polyhistor, Eberhard Werner Happel, was famous for his collections of curiosities. His Relationes Curiosæ (1683-1690), a German collection of geographical, biological, anthropological and historical curiosities, included a chapter on Der bussfertige Jogys (The penitent yogis).37 Happel emphasized their vegetarian diet and reproduced the spectacular descriptions of yogic exercises outlined in Rogerius’ work. This exquisite Baroque collection embraced a pen drawing of Die heijdnische Busse (The Heathen penance), based on one of the several illustrations that embellished Tavernier’s French travel report (1676).
14. Enlarged view of The Heathen Penance, in Eberhard Werner Happel, E. G. Happelii Gröste Denkwürdigkeiten der Welt Oder so genannte Relationes Curiosæ (1683).
In other words, the monastic or cultural history of Europe not only defined the manner in which Europe understood the Brahmins—prior to as well as during the Renaissance—but also allowed for the restructuring of a range of Indian rituals and practices into the normative format of sin and penance. Both entities in European thought—the Brahmin priesthood and the monastic orders—reinforced each other: the Europeans understood the Brahmin’s diet similarly as a work of religion, which reinforced the vision that they must have been the priests, or at least strived for the sacerdotal ideal, if not deluded by their greed. The yogis were also engaged in works of religion. They were monastic orders, the penitentiary combat units of the Devil that circulated around ‘the religion of the Indian priest.’ Eberhard Werner Happel, E. G. Happelii Gröste Denkwürdigkeiten der Welt Oder so genannte Relationes Curiosæ etc., vol. 1 (Hamburg, 1683), 785.
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Monastic Orders and the Comparative Method To the Protestants, however, justification was not possible through human efforts but solely through the healing grace of God. If man was fallen, then he was also in a perpetual bondage to sin. Only Christ could atone humankind; all efforts for atonement in this world were trifles at best, or satanic inventions at worst. This attitude towards works of penance also shaped the manner in which the Indian practices were described in Protestant thought. It should come as no surprise then that the image of the Indian penitentiary—like the image of the Brahmin priest—could be incorporated in the comparative method to discredit Catholic doctrine and customs. The anticlerical sentiments that informed the vision of the yogis in the Jesuit discourses was thus, redirected to the Catholic orders. In the Protestant universe, anticlericalism was anti-Catholic in application, and the spiritual exercises and Indian practices lambasted in the Jesuit sources thus became effective tools to ridicule the Catholics. The continuities between the Reformation and Counter-Reformation are again manifested in their ethnographic discourses. Michael Herr described the Indian customs in Novus orbis (1534) not different from the manner in which a Lutheran understood the practice of mortification in the Christian monasteries: the apostles of the Devil at Calicut martyred themselves, pierced and burned their bodies for Antichrist.38 More than a century later, the Huguenot minister Pierre Mussard identified Catholic austerities as dim-witted ways to attain redemption, which entered the realm of Christ via the gates of paganism (1667). Indian vegetarianism was thus like the Catholic fast. The Huguenot writes of the Gymnosophists, or “a religious Sect, or Hermits, who lived lonely in the Woods and Mountains in a very odd Kind of Austerity.”39 For the Calvinists, such austerities—Catholic or heathen—were by definition superfluous means to seek redemption and nothing but inventions of the priests to impress upon the masses. Arguably one of the most detailed Renaissance works of comparative religion, authored by the Church of England clergyman, Samuel Purchas, uses this comparative method to lambast the Catholic works of penance. Purchas recast the structure of Indian spirituality entirely along the lines of the
Michael Herr in Johannes Huttichius and Sebastian Münster, eds., Die New Welt, der Landschaften vnnd Insulen etc., trans. M. Herr (Strassburg, 1534), fols. iii-iiii. 39 Pierre Mussard, The Conformity Between Modern and Ancient Ceremonies etc. (London, 1745; first French ed. 1667), 56-57. 38
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monastic history of Europe. As we have seen, Purchas is famous for his collection of travel narratives, Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625), but also wrote the equally influential Purchas his Pilgrimage, Or Relations of the World and the Religions (1613). He presented a history of religion and the corruptions it went through, and left no doubt as to how he understood the practices of the Catholics, that is, as heathen corruptions of religion: He which admireth and almost adoreth the Capuchine, Iesuite, or other Romanists, for selfe inflicted whippings, fastings, watchings, vowes of obedience, povertie, and single life, and their not sparing their limmes, and lives for their will-worships, may see, in all these, the Romanists equalled by Heathens, if not out-stripped, even by the reports of the Iesuites and other Catholiques. … Here also the Reader may see most of their Popish Rites, derived out of Chaldean, Egyptian, and other Fountaines of Paganisme, as in the later taske we shall have more occasion to shew.40
And that is exactly what this massive work will show: the spiritual exercises of the Indians and Catholics are all the same. While the amount of information Purchas drew from is impressive, it is cast within a monastic outline of religion, drawing a direct parallel between Indian Brahmins and the Catholic ecclesia, and between the Gymnosophists, the early Desert Fathers and the mendicant orders of Catholic Christianity. The monastic history of Europe functioned as a clear prefiguration of the Indian modes of spirituality. Purchas described the ancient Brahmins as “Philosophers, or men Learned and Religious.”41 The distinction he made between those that are “more Civil and Secular” is exemplary, as it shows just how a Church of England clergyman saw the religious realm: in terms of pietistic and monastic practices. Those who are ‘more civil’ live in the cities and villages at large, “in their life professing like Pietie and Holiness.”42 Throughout his narrative, the Brahmins are consistently described as ‘the priesthood,’ while the practices of ‘the laity’ are commented upon in terms of the Sacrament of Penance. After a description of the Decannis, Purchas wrote that in many respects they were like the Brahmins: “For those are the Laitie, these are the Spiritualtie.”43 Besides the priesthood and laity, the spiritual landscape of India also featured monastic orders. While Bernier (1671) compared these orders with the Samuel Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimage. Or Relations of the World Religions etc. (London, 1626; [1613]), dedication. 41 Idem. 42 Ibid., 479-80. 43 Ibid., 545. 40
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Quietists, Purchas portrayed the yogis as the Familists, a mystic sect seeking imperturbable serenity, and best known as the Familia Caritatis (the Family of Love). The organization of the spiritual realm is carved up according to the monastic structure of Christianity. Not only do the Indians have a clerical estate and their very own monastic orders, ‘the Brahmin Church’ exhausted the entire ecclesiastic spectrum. Purchas wrote that “They have a Principall amongst them, which is their Bishop, which correcteth them if they doe amisse.”44 The Jains (referred to as the Verteas) were represented along the same lines of sin and repentance. The constancy of this representation in the early-modern sources and the monastic idioms employed call for quotations of considerable length: Besides these Secular; There are other Religious or Monasticall Bramenes, which are called Iogues; anciently called by the Greeks, Gymnosophists, because they went naked; and so they still doe, professing much austeritie of life, at least for a time, with long Pilgrimages, and much bodily exercise little profiting the soule, possessing nothing but want and beggarie, seeking thereby to winne credite to themselves and their Sect. The Verteas [ Jains] I take to bee another Sect, the religious Votaries of the Banians of Pythogoreans. Both those and these are kindes of Ethnike Monkes, which professe by strict penance and regular observations, to expiate their sinnes; and procure salvation to their soules. There are also some that live as Heremites in Desarts, some in Colledges, some wander from place to place begging: some (an unlearned kind) are called Sanasses: some contrary to the rest, nothing esteeme Idols, observe chastity twenty or five and twenty yeeres, and feed daily on the pith of a fruit called Caruza, to preserve in them that cold humour, neither doe they abstaine from flesh, fish, or wine, and when they passe along the way, one goeth before them crying Poo, Poo, that is, way, way, that women especially may avoid: for their vow will not permit the sight of a woman.45
Another traveller of the period, the Reverend John Ovington (1696), described the fakirs at Surat as follows: “They imitate the Romish Orders in Vows of Piety and Celibacy, and in their Pretensions to a strange Intimacy, and prevailing Interest with Heaven.”46 The continuity between this Renaissance discourse and the later engagement with Indian practices is illustrated by the East India Company servant Henry Grose (1757). Grose wrote that the Catholics “pillaged every other religion of every things that was absurd, Ibid., 548; also see 559. Ibid., 548-49 (emphasis mine). 46 John Ovington, A voyage to Suratt, in the year, 1689 etc. (London, 1696), 361. For travel reports that made similar observations, see Christopher Farewell, An East-India Colation; or, a Discourse of Travels etc (London, 1633), 26-27; and Jean Mocquet, Travels and voyages into Africa, Asia, and America, the East and West Indies (London, 1696), fol. 123. 44 45
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ridiculous, or detestable, to compose that monster of their own.”47 For instance, the rosary was introduced to Christianity by vagrant monks who imitated the Muslim beads on which they “repeat their Bismallah, exactly in the same stile as the Papists do their Pater-nosters, and Ave Marys.” The Muslims had derived this practice from the Indian Gentoos.48 The yogis were once again transformed into an Indian order of mendicant friars, when the Company servant thus fulminated against the monastic life: Their [Catholic] mendicant fryers seem but a copy, and a most wretched one, of their [Indian] mendicant Joguys, whose abstinence from all animal food, contemplative life, austerities and macerations, far exceed whatever their [Catholic] most famous ascetics ever so much attempted. From them too the Mahometans borrowed their institution of Faquirs, or holy beggars, so that both Europe and Asia owe all that pesterable swarm of vermin, the monks of both those religions, to a perverted imitation of the Gentoo religion in that point.49
The pejorative terms in which non-European traditions were described did not derive from a specifically colonial mindset, but from the theological frameworks through which the Indian reality had always been structured and understood. Grose identified the yogis as the descendants of the ancient Gymnosophists, “which, like other human institutions, have been at length vitiated by abuses, hypocrisy, and the admission of corrupt members.”50 What follows is an elongated diatribe against all sorts of idolatry in both the Indian and Catholic systems of heathendom.51 In other words, the hypothesis which guided our foray into the role of the Brahmins in European thought (which has to be conceived of as a competitor to the colonial constructionist thesis) also proves to be productive beyond the immediate ambit of the representations of the Brahmins. That is to say, the battery of spiritual exercises, performed by a variety of communities and experts in India, was made intelligible to the European audiences from within the monastic and anticlerical formats that also defined the images of the Brahmins. Or to put this differently, this mode of representing alien customs has little to do with the axis of power and knowledge. The limited explanaJohn Henry Grose, A Voyage to the East-Indies, with Observations on various Parts there (London, 1757), 260. 48 Ibid., 261. In his later description of Islam, Grose drew similar analogies between the Catholic pope and the Muslim Caliph (1757: 283-87). 49 Idem (emphasis in the original). 50 Ibid., 311. 51 Ibid., 261-64. 47
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tory power of postcolonial theory can be shown in several ways. The following section therefore provides a cursory overview of another descriptive thread in the European representation of India: ‘the caste system.’
8.2. The Tribes of Israel, Varna and the Caste System One of the main problems of the postcolonial approach to the colonial discourse is the emphasis placed on the nexus of power and the production of colonial knowledge, where the political and economic expediency of the colonial rulers constitutes the primary explanation of their representations of the colonized. As we have seen, the problematic nature of this focus resides, among others, in its chronology. This applies as well to the emphasis on ‘the caste system’ as yet another colonial product. Bernard Cohn (1984, 1996) argues that the identification of Indian society with ‘the caste system’ finds its roots in the colonial census project.52 Nicholas Dirks (2001) further elaborates upon this thesis to posit that under colonial rule ‘caste’ became a concept capable of expressing the diverse forms of social identity in India. Prior to colonial rule, ‘the caste system’ was “fluid,” and the “identities were fluid within caste boundaries.”53 Dirks outlines the ‘textualization of tradition’ that made this category into a rigid socio-religious concept and writes that the colonial conception of local customs was centred on Sanskrit texts and Brahmanic testimonies.54 The translation and canonization of the Manu Dharma Shastras defined the colonial understanding of Indian society. Finally, the emphasis on Purusha Shukta (the Brahmin born from the head of Purusha) and the so-called Varna theory (the four-fold division of Indian society with the priest at its crown) rendered India’s social realm by definition Brahmanic and resulted into the fixed caste categories which Dirks discerns in contemporary India.55 According to Dirks, the result was a Brahmin-centred religion and a Brahmin-centred society, two ideas which provided the colonials with “transregional” and “metahistorical” modes of reasoning, capable of expressing various traditions, on the one hand, and a myriad of local communities, on the other. Bernard S. Cohn, “The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia,” Folk 26 (1984): 25-49; and Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge. The British in India (Princeton, 1996). 53 Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton, N.J, 2001), 188, 248. 54 Ibid., 150-51. 55 Ibid., 14. 52
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The problem with this explanation is the following: it simply fails to explain. While it sounds plausible (at first sight) that the British sought for predictable and transregional categories to govern a subordinated society, administrative measures do not explain the particular categories that were produced, and do not necessitate, by definition, the construction of a Brahmincentred religion and a Brahmin-centred social structure. A Brahmin-centred religion was presupposed by the European chroniclers, cosmographers and travellers to the East throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Colonial expediency neither accounts for the emphasis put on ‘the Varna theory,’ nor for why they took an ancient and barely known manuscript to be the ultimate (God-given) foundation of a highly complex society. It suffices to mention the Mughal administration. Cohn (1968) refers to Al-Biruni and the gazetteer at Akbar’s court, Abu’l Fazl, to suggest that ‘indigenous constructions’ of society were familiar with ‘the Varna theory.’ Yet, the Mughal lists of military and revenue obligations demonstrate that they operated solely within a localized setting of kin-based groups.56 Christopher Bayly (1996) similarly suggests that the pre-colonial regimes accumulated data in much the same way as the British did. However, at variance with the British, their discourse on religion stayed localized, in the same way as race and caste remained only one category amongst the many others.57 The question remains: why did the British invent ‘the caste system,’ and not something else? In addition, the dominant historical explanations of ‘the caste system’ face the same empirical problems as the postcolonial hypothesis on ‘Hinduism,’ that is, a problem of chronology. All the elements identified behind the colonial focus on ‘caste’ (the Manu Dharma Shastras, Purusha Shukta, Varna divisions, in sum, the ‘textualization of tradition’) directed the discourses on India centuries prior to the colonial era, on the one hand, and in the continental European discourses, on the other. The attitude of the colonial administrators was thus coloured by what their continental predecessors wrote, and their forerunners were not writing for states concerned with revenue extraction in South Asia. They structured the information on Indian society along the lines of ‘the Varna theory,’ and Purusha Shukta played the same role in Bernard S. Cohn, “Notes on the History of the Study of Indian Society and Culture,” in Structure and Change in Indian Society, ed. M. Singer and Bernard S. Cohn (Chicago, 1968), 3-28 [5]. 57 Christopher Bayly, Empire and Information. Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780-1870 (Cambridge, 1996), 20-30. 56
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these discourses as it performed in colonial thought. This is not a conclusive proof of our hypothesis on Orientalism. Rather, it signals the empirical issues which the competitor theory faces. The heuristic productivity of our approach is situated elsewhere. There is truth in the suggestion that ‘the language of caste’ is characteristic to the colonial era. As shown below, the pre-colonial sources are marked by a limited use of the term ‘caste,’ and where the term is employed, it is clear that the meaning ascribed to it today was far less strict prior to the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, both ‘caste’ and ‘the caste system’ are introduced by Dirks and others as full-grown concepts in the colonial imagination, without the faintest acknowledgment of their historical and intellectual backdrop. The development of these concepts thus has to be situated elsewhere. The productivity of our hypothesis is suggested by the fact that pre-colonial sources compared the communities enlisted in ‘the Varna theory’ with the biblical tribes of Israel. That is to say, the manner in which Europe understood the biblical anthropology had clear consequences for its long engagement with communities elsewhere in the world. At variance with the postcolonial approach, our alternative hypothesis on Orientalism thus generates new and cognitively interesting questions: which developments in the cultural history of Europe allowed for the ‘the caste system’ to develop as the entity we know of today? While this question will remain unresolved as far as the present essay is concerned, it will become clear that the European engagement with its biblical past provides a heuristic to grasp the development of ‘the caste system’ as a theoretical entity in the European imagination. Varna and Purusha Shukta: A colonial Fixation? It is inaccurate to equate ‘the textualization of tradition’ with the colonial state. Together with ‘the religion of the priest’ crystallized in the pre-colonial discourses the so-called Varna model of society. Europe built upon the classical division of society found in the Greek sources and consistently described Indian communities in terms of the estates of the realm. Castanheda (1551) wrote of the South Indian Brahmins as a clerical estate, while the Nairs of the Malabar regions were portrayed as the knighthood or gentility. Their tuition process is made to appear like the training process of the European noblemen; their knighting ceremony taking after the aristocratic events of medi-
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eval Europe.58 Botero’s Italian cosmography (1595) describes the rulers in the Mughal Empire and the Nairs of Calicut as aristocratic estates.59 Others applied this scheme to Gujarat, where the Brahmins are portrayed as a clerical estate and the Rajputs as the nobility.60 The Nairs even came to feature prominently in the early-modern books on warfare (1579).61 Europe never confronted a complex society like India before. Not only was it marked by a plethora of traditions, the Europeans also saw numerous communities. Europe had ‘known’ for centuries about these divisions: the sources were Strabo’s Geographika and Arrian’s Indica. They identified seven classes: the philosophers or wise men, the farmers, herdsmen and hunters, the artisans, the merchants, the soldiers, the inspectors or police, and counsellors of the king. It must be remarked that the Greeks did not identify a hierarchically ordered society: if the magistrates and councillors of the king were sixth and seventh in order—behind the hunters and farmers—it would be difficult to find a hierarchical stratification here. As the sixteenth century unfolded, this outline of society would still be seen as a veritable description, yet more often than not relegated to the chapters on ancient India.62 The impact that the recent discoveries registered on the beliefs and the attitudes of Europe thus has to be looked at as a subtle process. The Brahmins had long been identified as the first order, or the wise men of India. From the sixteenth century onwards, they became ostracized for being their apostate descendants. While the travellers wrote about many Fernão Lopes de Castanheda, l’Histoire des Indes de Portugal, contenant comment l’Inde a Este decouverte etc., trans. N. de Grouchy (Paris, 1553; Portuguese edition 1551), fol. 33. Also see Richard Blome, Cosmography and Geography in Two Parts etc. (London, 1683), 283. 59 Giovanni Botero, The Travellers Breviat, or An historicall Description of the most famous Kingdomes in the World, trans. R. Johnson (London, 1601; Italian edition 1595), 111, 144-46. 60 Joan de Barros, “Het Koningryk Guzaratte of Cambaya,” in Tien-Jarige Scheeps-Togten en Heldhaftige Krijgs-bedrijven te Water en te Land, door Nuno da Cunha etc., ed. J. L. Gottfried, vol. 2 (Leyden, 1706), 116. 61 Thomas Churchyard, A generall rehearsall of Warres, called Churchyardes Choise wherein is f ive hundred severall Sevuices of Land and Sea as Seiges, Battailes, etc. (London, 1579), fol. Pi. 62 For French scholarship, see Pierre d’Avity, The Estates, Empires, & Principallities of the World etc., trans. E. Grimstone (London, 1615), 774-75; François de Belleforest, L’Histoire Universelle du Monde etc. (Paris, 1570), fols. 48-49; and Pierre du Jarric, Histoire des choses plus memorables advenues tant ez Indes Orientales etc. (Bordeaux, 1610), 49. For Dutch sources, see Gerardus Mercator and Jodocus Hondius, Mercator-Hondius-Janssonius: Atlas or a Geographicke Description of the World, vol. 2 (Amsterdam, 1636), 420; and Arnoldus Montanus, De Wonderen Van’t Oosten etc. (Rotterdam, 1654), 20-21. For German cosmography, see Sebastian Franck, Weltbuch, Spiegel und Bildtnisz des Gantzen Erdtbodens etc. (Tübingen, 1534), fols. cxij-cxcv; and for English sources, Donald Lupton, Emblems of Rarities: Or Choyce Observations out of worthy Histories of many remarkable passages, etc. (London, 1636), 266. 58
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Indian communities, trades, sects and guilds, a new classification came to replace the seven-fold division, but now in the chapters on contemporary India: the four-fold Varna model. This division of Indian society stood central in European discourses from the middle of the sixteenth century onwards. This model (with the Brahmin at the crown) and the imagery of the Brahmins as a clerical estate mutually reinforced each other. Pietro della Valle (1650) observed that the seven divisions of society had now been reduced to four principal ones, or “the Brachmanes, the Souldiers, the Merchants, and the Artificers; from whom by more minute subdivision all the rest are deriv’d, in such number as in the whole people there are various professions of men.”63 The four-fold division of Indian society—and its scriptural foundation—was in addition outlined in the French travel reports by Tavernier (1681) and Thevenot (1684).64 Similarly, François Bernier (1671), described Indian society in a way that dovetails entirely with the colonial scholarship: They say that God, whom they call Achar, that is to say, Immovable or Immutable, sent to them four books, which they call Vedas [Beths], which means as much as ‘science,’ for they claim that these books comprehend all the sciences. The first is called Atherabed, the second Zagerbed, the third Rekbed, and the fourth Samabed. Following the doctrine of these books, the Indians should be divided, as in fact they actually are, in four tribes [Tribus]; the first are the Brahmins [Brahmens], or the interpreters of the Law; the second are the Kshatriyas [Quetterys], or the warriors; the third are Vaishyas [Bescué] or the merchants, commonly called Banyans; and the fourth are Shudras [Seydra], artisans and labourers; in such manner that these tribes are not allowed to intermarry. That is to say, a Brahmin is forbidden to marry a Kshatriya, and the same applies to the other tribes.65
Pietro Della Valle, The Travels of Sig. Pietro della Valle, 41. Jean Baptiste Tavernier, Les Six Voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernie … en Turquie, en Perse, et aux Indes etc., vol. 2 (Paris, 1676), 367-70; and Jean de Thévenot, Voyages de Mr de Thevenot, Contenant la Relation de l’Indostan, des nouveaux Mogols, & des autres Peuples & Pays des Indes (Paris, 1684), 184-85. 65 François Bernier, “Lettre a Monsieur Chapelain etc.,” in Suite des Memoires du Sr Bernier, Sur l’Empire du Grand Mogol (Paris, 1671), 72-73: Ils disent donc que Dieu, qu’ils appellent Achar, c’est à dire, immobile ou immuable, leur a envoyé quatre Livres qu’ils appellent Beths, mot qui signifie Science, parce qu’ils prétendent que dans ces Livres toutes les Sciences soient comprises. Le premier de ces Livres s’apelle Atherbabed, le second Zagerbed, le troisième Rekbed, & le quatrième Samabed. Suivant la doctrine de ces Livres, ils doivent être distinguez, comme ils le sont effectivement, en quatre Tribus ; la premiere de Brahmens, ou gens de Loi ; la seconde de Quetterys, qui sont les gens de guerre ; la troisième de Bescué, ou Marchands, qu’on appelle communement Banyanes ; & la quatrième de Seydra, qui sont les Artisans & Laboureurs, en sorte que ces Tribus ne se puissent point allier les unes avec les autres, c’est à dire qu’un Brahmen, par exemple, ne puisse pas se marier avec une femme Quettery, & ainsi des autres.” 63 64
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This fixed and four-fold division of society—defined according to what is today known as the ‘Varna categories’—stood central in European discourses on India by the end of the sixteenth century, and also guided these discourses all the way through the seventeenth century.66 And so did Purusha Shukta. The Jesuits penetrated deep into the subcontinent and went where all the European maps had ended. One of them was Niccolò Pimenta. His most famous collection of letters appeared in Italian at Rome in 1602. Pimenta also included a copy of a letter from the pen of Melchior Cotingo (aka Père Emanuel de Vega), who informed the Jesuit visitor about the progress of his mission in Vijayanagar. The ideas that structured the colonial representations of Indian society were well known at the turn of the seventeenth century. At variance with the nineteenth-century vocabulary, the idioms used were still explicitly biblical in nature: The principal houses are those of the Brahmans, Rajas and Cietins, who hold that their idol Perumal created the first [order of ] the chiefs, the second of the shoulders, the third of the belly, and the majority of people, from the feet. The Brahmins show in many ways … that they come down from the dispersion of the 12 Tribes of Israel, and their books entitled Samescretan, resemble in some way, those of the Holy Scripture, although they contain much evil and they interpret them badly. One of the Brahmins told me that God made the first man from thought, which they call Adam, and they know the statements of the holy Prophets.67
Whether or not Cotingo was familiar with the work of Postel (ca. 1552), his ideas were part of a general intellectual climate. Like the Patriarchs, the Brahmins were aware of aspects of the true religion. Cotingo provided more grist for the theological mill: they are, in fact, descendants of the tribes of Israel—the race of Abraham—for their scriptures contain insights from the Old Testament. Like Judaism had been a preparation for the Gospel (in
Also see Pieter van der Aa, ed., “Description des Indes Orientales,” in La Galérie Agréable du Monde etc. vol. 25 (Leiden, 1729), 3-4; and William Symson, A New Voyage to the East-Indies etc. (London, 1715), 36. 67 Melchior Cotingo in Niccolò Pimenta, Les Miracles Merveilleux Advenus aux Indes Orïentales etc. (Paris, 1603), 50-51: “Les principales maisons sont celles des Bramains Raius & Cietins, qui tiennent que leur idole Perumal engendra les premiers du chef, les seco[n]ds de la poictrine, les troisiesmes du ventre, & la lie du peuple, des pieds. Les Bramains monstrent en beaucoup de leurs faço[n]s … d’estre descendus de la dispersion des 12. Tribus d’Israël, & leurs livres intitulez Samescretan, ressemblent en quelque chose, à ceux de la S. Escriture, quoy qu’il les entende[n]t fort mal, & les interpretent encore plus mal. Un de ces Bramains me dist, que Dieu avoit fait l’homme de sa seule pensee, lequel ils no[m]ment Adam, & ont les dires des sainct Prophetes.” 66
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Christian thought), the Brahmins were transformed into the proto-Christian vehicles of religion. Like the Jews, they were divided into tribes. Already at the end of sixteenth century, this Jesuit missionary took recourse to what later would be known as Purusha Shukta. In a letter by a Jesuit missionary to South India, Jean Venant Bouchet (1713), we can read in a similar fashion that “Brama, among the Indians, like Abraham among the Jews, has been the Father of several different Races or Tribes”68 Henry Lord (1630) claimed to have discovered a text in the dharmashastra tradition, and the manner in which he understood it was no different from the role the Manu Dharma Shastras came to play in the policies of the colonial state: the ultimate foundation of Indian society. Lord outlined the genealogy of the four-fold division of society and was praised all over Europe for having discovered its textual foundations. This work was set within the ambit of Old Testament theology. In 1672, Olfert Dapper similarly wrote that the Brahmins derived their name from Brahma, from whom the Indian tribes were derived. The Brahmins were born from his head; Kshatriyas [Settreaes] from his arms; Vaishyas [Weinsjaes] from his thumbs; Shudras [Soudraes] from his feet; which, according to Dapper, explained their hierarchical divisions prescribed in the Indian Books of Law, that is, the Shaster and the Vedam.69 Like others, Dapper derived this vision of ‘the Varna theory’ as the ultimate foundation of Indian society from Abraham Rogerius (1651).70 Likewise, the Italian Jesuit Giacinto de Magistris wrote in his account of the Madura mission (1661) that the Indians maintained a peculiar division of society, to which they adhered meticulously. He continued with an outline of Purusha Shukta, a story which the colonials localized in the pages of the Rig Veda.71
Jean Venant Bouchet, “A Letter from F. Bouchet, Of the Society of Jesus, Missioner at Madure, etc.,” in The Travels of several Learned Missioners of the Society of Jesus etc. (London, 1714), 10. 69 Olfert Dapper, Asia, of Naukeurige Beschryving van Het Rijk des Grooten Mogols, En een groot gedeelte van Indiën etc. (Amsterdam, 1672), 28-29, 324. 70 Abraham Rogerius, De Open-Deure Tot het Verborgen Heydendom etc. (Leiden, 1651), 12-13. 71 Giancinto de Magistris, Relation dernière de ce qui s’est passé dans les Royaumes de Maduré, de Tangeor, & autres lieux voisins du Malabar, aux Indes Orientales etc. (Paris, 1663; Italian edition 1661), 11-12. Also see Jodocus Crull, The Antient and Present State of Muscovy etc. (London, 1698), 227; Cornelius Hazart, Kerckelycke Historie van de Gheheele Wereldt etc. (Antwerp, 1671), 247-48; Athanasius Kircher, La Chine d’Athanase Kirchere (Amsterdam, 1670), 211; and Franciscus Ridderus, De Beschaemde Christen door Het Geloof en Leven Van Heydenen etc. (Rotterdam, 1669), 73-74.
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Dictionaries and Encyclopaedias Together with the development of the large European libraries came the large dictionaries and encyclopaedic works. The universal libraries characterize the period between the 1670s and 1750s. They constitute a vast corpus of literature in which the notions of Indian traditions and society, manufactured in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, are reformulated in a ‘scientific’ lexicon. As such, they further demonstrate that by the time the British came to develop a colonial state, the four-fold division of Indian society was entrenched in the European imagination; and the Purusha Shukta story generally used to explain it. One of the famous reference works of the eighteenth century relating to the Orient was produced by the French Orientalist Barthélemy Herbelot de Molainville and issued posthumously under the title of Bibliothèque Orientale ou Dictionnaire Universel (1697). This is a large folio volume with over eight thousand alphabetically ordered entries on the history, literature and geography of the Arabic and Persian world.72 If one were to extract the entries on India in d’Herbelot’s work, it would be hard not to find a cumulative set of received ideas that dovetails with the representation of India in the nineteenth-century Orientalist discourse. It reproduces the standardized image of the key role of ‘Brahmin scriptures’ in the realm of the Indian traditions.73 Taken together, d’Herbelot’s entries on the several tribes in India also reproduce the Varna outline of Indian society.74 In other words, the source which for Edward Said (1978) was one of the major Orientalist works at the dawn of the eighteenth century should not simply be understood as the first systematic attempt to domesticate the Orient in European thought; rather it should be read as a moment in which the descriptive trends of the previous centuries were consolidated into one single work. In much the same way, the third edition of Le Grand Dictionaire Historique by Louis Moréri (1683) contains a detailed entry on “Brachmanes” that literally reproduces the contemporary understanding of the role of ancient scriptures in regulating the spiritual and social realm, and a prefiguration For a fuller treatment of d’Herbelot, see Nicholas Dew, “The Order of Oriental Knowledge: The Making of D’Herbelot’s Bibliothèque Orientale,” in Debating world literature, ed. C. Prendergast (London & New York, 2004), 233-252. 73 Barthélemy Herbelot de Molainville, ed., Bibliothèque orientale ou Dictionnaire Universel etc. (Paris, 1697), 114, 204, 713, 750, 920. Also see the entry for “Anbertiwkend” in Ephraim Chambers, A supplement to Mr. Chambers’s cyclopaedia: or, universal dictionary of arts and sciences (London, 1753). 74 Ibid., 183. 72
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of what now is called the Varna theory.75 Also the representations of Indian society therefore suggest that ‘the textualization of tradition’ was not a specifically colonial project. Europe consistently divided Indian society into four distinct communities and described these divisions entirely along the lines of ‘the Varna theory.’ With the publication of Henry Lord’s book on the Banyans (1610), Europe also ‘knew’ where to locate the foundation of this model of society: in the-called sacred Books of Law, the dharmashastras and the Vedas. As we have seen, the tendency to bestow upon the Brahmins the role of priesthood and the regulators of virtually every aspect of Indian community life was not a distinctly colonial exercise. While the focus on the so-called scriptures and Varna division of society thus guided the European discourses centuries prior to the colonial era, Dirks has a point when he observes a rather significant change in these discourses: the unambiguous ‘language of caste’ that came to dominate the European descriptions of India in the colonial era. The Language of Castes and Tribes It is generally accepted that the Portuguese were the first to describe Indian society in terms of castes. ‘Caste’ is often said to be derived from the Portuguese ‘casta.’ The Hobson-Jobson (1886) thus defines ‘caste’ as follows: “The artificial divisions of society in India, first made known to us by the Portuguese, and described by them under their term caste, signifying ‘breed, race, kind,’ which has been retained in English under the supposition that it was the native name.”76 As shown below, this genealogy of the term is highly suspicious, and Dirks and others do have a point when they note the specifically colonial focus on ‘caste’ as a category to describe the several communities in the Indian society. If the Portuguese explorers were the first to describe divisions in Indian society in terms of ‘castes,’ one would expect to find this concept at least in more than just a cursory fashion in the Portuguese and other earlymodern sources. Surprisingly, this is not the case. Louis Moréri, ed., Le Grand Dictionaire Historique, etc., vol. 1 (Lyon, 1683), 668-69. Also see the English editions of 1694 and 1703, and the universal dictionary by André Contant d’Orville, Jean Costard, and Nicolas Fallet: Dictionnaire Universel, Historique et Critique des Mœurs, Loix … des Cérémonies & Pratiques Religieuses & Superstitieuses … des Peuples des quatre Parties du Monde, vol. 1 (Paris, 1772), 154-56. 76 Henry Yule and Arthur C. Burnell, eds., Hobson-Jobson: Being a Glossary of Anglo-Indian Colloquial Words and Phrases etc. (London, 1886), 171. Others have identified the Portuguese poem Os Lusíadas by Luís Vaz de Camões (1572) as the origin of the conceptual history of ‘caste.’ See Christian Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde (Leipzig, 1861), 272 n. Also see the entry for “Caste” in Karen Christensen and David Levinson, Encyclopedia of Community: From the Village to the virtual World, vol. 1 (London, 2003), 115-21. 75
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The Portuguese government official Duarte Barbosa provided one of the earliest detailed accounts of the peoples of Gujarat and the Malabar regions. His work is known as Livro de Duarte Barbosa (The book of Duarte Barbosa; ca. 1516-18). As a result of the Portuguese policy of secrecy, the manuscript would not appear in print until the Italian geographer Giovanni Battista Ramusio included it in his Italian collection of voyages (1550). There it would remain until a Portuguese copy of the manuscript was discovered and published in 1812. Barbosa seems to confirm the thesis that the Portuguese described Indian society in terms of ‘caste,’ at least according to Mansel Dames, who rendered his work into English at the behest of the Hakluyt Society (1918-21). This is how Dames introduces Barbosa’s account of South India: Barbosa here commences his very full and accurate account of the country comprised under the name Malabar, which he begins at the point where the kingdom of Narsyngua or Vijayanagar came to an end… Barbosa begins his account with the history of the country as preserved in local legends; he then proceeds to describe the people and their castes, and finishes with a list and description from north to south of the principal towns, most of which were on the coast.77
The English text contains several references to ‘caste’ when Barbosa writes of the divisions in Indian society.78 However, the modern translation is misleading, as the original manuscript hardly uses the term: Barbosa spoke of ‘lei de gente’ and ‘lei de gentios,’ that is, ‘types of people.’ The Portuguese edition also talks of ‘linhagem’ (lineage) and ‘generacões’ (generations).79 The term ‘casta’ occurs at three places only. Because Ramusio’s translation was the only printed copy between 1550 and 1812, there is reason to assume that Barbosa influenced the European representations of India mainly through the Italian edition.80 Also in the Italian print, the absence of ‘caste’ is conspicuous.81 Another important source of information for the Portuguese representations of India are the many chronicles on the discoveries in India and the Mansel L. Dames in Duarte Barbosa, The Book of Duarte Barbosa etc., trans. M. L. Dames, vol. 2 (London, 1921), 1 (emphasis mine). 78 Ibid., 7, 38, 58, 59. 79 Duarte Barbosa, Livro Em Que Dá Relação Do Que Viu E Ouviu No Oriente Duarte Barbosa etc. (Lisbon, 1946), 63, 66, 121. 80 The second edition of Ramusio’s Delle Navigatione et Viaggi was issued in 1554. It was reprinted in 1563, 1588, 1606 and 1616. Ramusio based his translation of Barbosa on a Spanish manuscript, most likely the 1524 text which was discovered at Barcelona in the nineteenth century. 81 Duarte Barbosa, “Libro di Odoardo Barbessa Portoghese dell’Indie Orientali,” in Primo Volume delle Navigationi et Viaggi, etc, ed. G. B. Ramusio (Venetia, 1550). 77
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New World. One of the best known representatives of this genre is Fernão Lopes de Castanheda (1551). Castanheda spent several years in India. His history of the Portuguese conquests contains descriptions of Indian traditions and society, again conspicuous because of the absence of ‘caste.’ The absence is also felt in the English translation by Nicholas Lichefild (1582). At variance with Mansel Dames in the early twentieth century, Lichefild did not replace the Portuguese terms by ‘caste.’ What Castanheda saw were ‘kinde of people’ and ‘Gentiles of sundry sects.’82 This is not to deny the presence of ‘casta’ in the Portuguese sources, but emphasizes the limited fashion in which it was employed. Given the fact that ‘caste’ is said to be derived from the Portuguese ‘casta,’ this should make us suspicious of ascribing the language of the present unto the sources of the past. The same conclusion can be drawn from the other vernacular literatures in pre-colonial Europe. Caste in the Dutch Sources Philippus Baldaeus’ A True and Exact Description of the Most Celebrated EastIndia Coast of Malabar and Coromandel (1704; Dutch edition 1672) indicates that the term ‘caste’ was also little used in Dutch literature of the period. In general, the Dutch missionary represented the divisions in Indian society in terms of ‘kinds of people’ [slagh van inwoonders] and ‘kinds of heathens’ [slagh van Heydenen].83 Baldaeus mentioned the Nairs several times, but again, he did not write of ‘caste.’ He referred to them as an aristocratic estate of a high lineage.84 The Dutch ‘geslacht,’ which translates into ‘lineage,’ was consistently used to describe the communities in India.85 Simon de Vries (1682) reproduced Baldaeus’ report of Ceylon and wrote consistently about “various lineages of inhabitants” [verscheydene Geslachten van Inwoonders].86 One of the Fernão Lopes de Castanheda, The f irst booke of the historie of the discoverie and conquest of the East Indias, trans. N. Lichefild (London, 1582), fols. 33, 37, 71. 83 Philippus Baldaeus, Naauwkeurige beschryvinge van Malabar en Coromandel, der zelver aangrenzende ryken, en het machtige eyland Ceylon etc. (Amsterdam, 1672), 73, 79, 84 Ibid., 144: “Wy moeten hier een weynigh stille staan, en van deze Nairos spreken; zy zijn Indiaansche Edellieden, en van ’t hoogste geslachte naast het Koninghlijke en Priesterlijke of der Braminen, zijn trots en hovaardigh …” 85 Ibid., 185-6: “Wat belanght de verscheydentheyt der geslachten, de zeden en manieren der Bramines, ende andere Heydenen, op de kuste van Choromandel, de gestrengheydt des levens, den inhoudt van de Vedam, de Privilegien der Braminen boven andere Volken …daar van dan D. Abrahamus Rogerius na gezien werden…” Also see 176, 178-79, 184-85. Also see Olfert Dapper, Asia, of Naukeurige Beschryving van het Rijk des Grooten Mogols, 188, 286, 292, 300, 358; and Abraham Rogerius, De Open-Deure Tot het Verborgen Heydendom etc., 10-11. 86 Simon de Vries, Curieuse Aenmerckingen Der bysonderste Oost en West-Indische Verwonderenswaerdige Dingen etc., vol. 2 (Utrecht, 1682), 1319-20. 82
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most detailed Dutch works on the West and East Indies appeared between 1724 and 1726 under the title Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien (The Old and the New East Indies). When the author, François Valentijn, discussed the social divisions in India, he wrote about “kinds of people” [soorten van menschen].87 Again, this is not to say that ‘caste’ was entirely absent in the Dutch sources. One of the few Dutch works of the period that uses the term is Wouter Schouten’s Oost-Indische Voyagie (East India Voyage; 1676). However, it occurs sporadically, and it is clear that ‘caste’ has a much more general meaning for Schouten compared to the manner in which it is used today. That is to say, the term ‘caste’ was used to refer to the Muslims, Banyans, and natives of Golconda, and rather functions as a synonym for ‘nation’: In addition to the foreign nations, this city [Surat] is also inhabited by Muslims, Banyans, Gentiven and other castes. It is very populated and knows of many trades. Ships and merchants from all the quarters of Asia arrive here.88
Interestingly, when Schouten described Cambay, he listed the same communities but without any reference to ‘caste.’89 When he employed the term ‘caste’ at three other occasions, he was writing of the social divisions in Ceylon, which he almost certainly took from Baldaeus (1672). The term ‘caste’ was used as a synonym for ‘lineage’ [geslacht], which is the term used throughout the rest of his work.90 Another sporadic reference to ‘caste’ can be found in the journal of Dutch naval commander, Paulus van Caerden, printed in Commelin’s compendium of voyages (1646). In his description of Goa, van Caerden wrote about the Portuguese children born in India, and like other Dutch reporters, interpreted this term in the sense of lineage: “The children whose father and mother are Portuguese are called Castis, that is to say, Lineage; because Casta means Lineage …”91 Likewise, Johan van Twist (1646) François Valentijn, Oud en nieuw Oost-Indiën, vervattende een naaukeurige en uitvoerige verhandelinge van Nederlands mogentheyd in die gewesten etc. (Dordrecht, 1726). 88 Wouter Schouten, Wouter Schoutens Oost-Indische Voyagie; Vervattende veel voorname voorvallen en ongemeene vreemde Geschiedenissen etc. (Amsterdam, 1676), 240: “Behalven de Uytlandische Natien, is de Stadt [Zuratte] van Mooren, Benjanen, Jentijven, en andere Castens, wel bevolckt, en uyttermaten Neringh-rijck; de Koop-luyden en Schepen komen van alle Quartieren van Asia derrewaerts heen gevloeyt.” 89 Ibid., 241. 90 Ibid., 313, 108, 111. 91 Paulus van Caerden, “Loffelijcke Voyagie op Oost-Indien, Met 8. Schepen uyt Tessel gevaren int Jaer 1606 etc,” in Begin ende Voortgangh van de Vereenighde Nederlandtsche Geoctroyeerde Oost-Indische Compagnie etc, ed. I. Commelin, vol. 3 (Amsterdam, 1646), 17: “De Kinderen, wiens Vader ende Moeder Portugesen zijn, worden Castis ghenoemt, dat is te seggen, van den Gheslachte; want Casta beteyckent Gheslachte …” 87
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described Indian society, not in terms of ‘caste’ as we understand it today, but in terms of lineages. He used the term ‘caste’ once when he discussed the several trades of the Banyans, but again, in order to refer to specific lineages: They maintain the custom that nobody is allowed to change his trade, and always follow the craft of their parents, and they marry the daughters from the same craft, trade or profession. Although it sometimes happens that a bachelor and a daughter whose parents have died get married, yet they will be banned from their lineage and form a caste or lineage of themselves …92
Van Twist further identified twenty-seven different lineages [geslachten] amongst the Gujarati Banyans. In other words, besides a sporadic reference to ‘caste,’ which is invariably used differently from how the term is employed today, the Dutch observers in the East did not talk ‘the language of caste.’ As late as 1792, the Dutch historian Ary Huysers wrote about the Varna division of Indian society, yet described the varnas as the four primary lineages [vier Hoofd-geslagten].93 Caste in the French and English Sources A perusal of the French and English sources similarly indicates the terminological confusion when the Europeans wrote about social divisions. The French physician Gabriel Dellon (1685) not only wrote that it would be impossible to give an exact account of all the sects that made up the religion of the Gujaratis, but also observed that they are “divided into several races, families and sects, which the Portuguese comprehend under the name of Casta.”94 The English translator of this work (1698) rendered the French term
Johan van Twist, Generale Beschrijvinghe van Indien, Ende in ‘t besonder Van ‘t Coninckrijck van Guseratten etc. (Amsterdam, 1646), 30: “… hebben voor een gebruyck, dat niemant sijn neeringe mach veranderen; dan volgen altijdt het handt werck van haere Ouders, ende trouwen onder haer met Dochters van de selfde hantwercken, neeringhe ofte ambachten; dan ‘t gebeurt somtijts wel, dat een Jongman, ende Dochter, die beyde haer Ouderen overleden zijn, aen malcanderen trouwen, die dan uyt hare geslachte gestoten wordende, met haer beyde een Caste, ofte geslachte op haer selven maken.” 93 Ary Huysers, Beknopte Beschryving der Oostindische Etablissementen (Amsterdam, 1792), 111: “Alle deeze Landen, Koningryken en Vorstendommen [of Mallabar] worden bewoond door een Volk, gemeenlyk Malianie of Berglieden genoemd, en by ons Mallabaaren, die men in vier Hoofd-geslagten kan onderscheiden, en zyn Bramines, Chetteris, Soetraas en Vreemdelingen, of zo als wy zeggen: Mooren, Jooden, Cannaryns en Christenen ...” 94 Gabriel Dellon, Nouvelle Relation d’un Voyage fait aux Indes Orientales etc. (Paris, 1685), 60: “ ils sont divisez en plusieurs races, lignées, ou sects, que les Portugais expriment par le mot de Casta.” 92
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‘lignée’ (lineage) not only into ‘race’ but also into ‘tribe.’95 The Dutch and Germans also used the word ‘stam’ (or the French ‘tribu’) to refer to the same entity. Dellon wrote that the Gujaratis were “divided into a large number of lineages, each profession composing a particular one.”96 He ended his section on Malabar thus: “The people of Malabar and almost all the gentiles of India follow the same law, that nobody can rise to a higher degree than the degree of the lineage in which he is born, and whatever riches he may have, neither he, nor his posterity can change their condition.”97 Observations like this led English geographer Peter Heylyn (1652) to describe the social fabric of Gujarat as follows: “And because new opinions should not grow amongst them, they marry in their own Tribes only, and never out of their own Trades; secure thereby as they conceive from all innovations.”98 Terms like ‘tribe,’ ‘race,’ and ‘lineage’ were used interchangeably to denote the social divisions in India, each tribe applying itself to its trade. Eventually, the compound ‘cast or tribe’ was introduced in the Anglophone discourse.99 Others took avail to ‘cast of tribe,’ which means a ‘kind of tribe.’100 All the way through the seventeenth and into the nineteenth century, the Europeans used various terms to describe the social communities in India, from ‘nation,’ through ‘family,’ ‘tribe’ and ‘lineage,’ to ‘cast or tribe’ and ‘cast of tribe.’ In other words, social differences were not described in terms of ‘caste’ as we understand it today, but reminded the Europeans of that which they also called ‘tribes.’101 As late as 1788, Weeden Butler defined “Caste, or Cast” as
Gabriel Dellon, A Voyage to the East Indies etc., trans. Jodocus Crull (London, 1698), 91, 93. Gabriel Dellon, Nouvelle Relation d’un Voyage fait aux Indes Orientales, 61-62: “Les Gentils sont divisez en un grand nombre d’autres lignées, & chaque metier en compose une …” 97 Ibid., 125: “Les Peuples du Malabar & presque tous les Gentils de l’Inde observant exactement cette loy, qu’aucune personne ne peut jamais monter à un rang plus élevé que celuy de la lignée où il est né, & quelques tresors que l’on aye, celuy qui les possede ny sa posterité ne changent jamais d’état.” 98 Peter Heylyn, Cosmographie in foure Bookes etc. (London, 1652), 224. Also see Osório da Fonseca, Histoire de Portvgal etc., 44; Sebastian Münster, Cosmographia, Das ist: Beschreibund der gantzen Welt etc. (Basel, 1628). 1562; and Arnoldus Montanus, De Wonderen Van’t Oosten, ofte de Beschrijving en Oorlogs-daden Van Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien (Rotterdam, 1654), 6. 99 Sir Thomas Herbert, Some yeares travels into divers parts of Asia and Afrique etc. (London, 1638), 46; and Henry Lord, A display of two forraigne sects in the East Indies etc. (London, 1630), 40-41. 100 John Fryer, A New Account of East-India and Persia etc. (London, 1698), 27. 101 As Purchas wrote in the margins of William Methold’s account of the social divisions at Golconda: “Casta signifying a Tribe.” See Samuel Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimage. Or Relations of the World Religions etc., 997 (emphasis in the original). Also see 1003. 95 96
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follows in The Indian Vocabulary: “caste, or cast—A tribe.”102 It is clear that only during the nineteenth century the term ‘cast of/or tribe’ made way for the terms ‘caste’ (with an –e) and ‘tribe.’ In other words, a conceptual shift occurred in the European discourses, when we compare the pre-colonial terminological confusion with the absolute certainty in which the colonial administrators and scholars used the terms ‘caste’ and ‘caste system.’ While this seems to confirm the thesis of Dirks (2001) and others, the claim that ‘caste’ emerges as a fixed category through the census projects does not explain this: it simply redescribes this terminological shift. While this conceptual development still has to be traced in more detail and also has to be accounted for, the emphasis on colonial state formation has led to a total neglect of the cultural background of the colonizers, and allows Dirks to introduce ‘caste’ and ‘the caste system’ as fullydeveloped concepts into the colonial imagination. The actual development of these concepts thus has to be situated elsewhere. The Twelve Tribes of Israel: Some Concluding Remarks The complete lack of sensitivity towards the cultural history of the colonialism is illustrated by Dirks’ analysis of Alexander Dow’s The History of Hindostan (1768). Dow, an officer in the East India Company, relied on the tutelage of a Brahmin pundit and thus, according to Dirks, adopted a ‘textualist’ and ‘Brahmanic’ view of Indian society. After all, much like ‘Hinduism,’ ‘the caste system’ is also said to have emerged as a symbiosis between government officials and local elites. Dirks quotes Dow writing of the Brahmin elites: “the first and most notable tribe … who alone can officiate in the priesthood like the Levites among the Jews.”103 As we have seen, the indelible vision of the Brahmins being a priestly estate or priestly tribe was kept stable in face of the empirics (not every Brahmin was or is a priest) by introducing another presupposition in the European discourses: they were like the Levites, the priestly tribe of the biblical Jews. The latter were interspersed throughout the territories of the other Jewish tribes.104 Because the Brahmins were the strictest in their vegetarian diet and the performance of ceremonies, they must have been the priests. Since Weeden Butler, ed., The Indian Vocabulary. To which is pref ixed the forms of impeachments (London, 1788), 25. 103 Alexander Dow cited in Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind, 20. 104 Jean Baptiste Bourgignon d’Anville, Compendium of ancient Geography etc., vol. 1 (London, 1791), 398. 102
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not all of them were actual priests, they must have been a priestly tribe from whom the priesthood was to be chosen, like the Levites among the Jews. For example, the Protestant missionary to South India, Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg explained that the Brahmins “make a separate Tribe among the Malabarians, as the Levites formerly among the Jews.”105 Dirks’ briefly discusses Alexander Dow in reference to the pre-colonial sources. These pre-colonial sources spoke of tribes or employed a vernacular synonym for ‘tribe’ when they used the term ‘caste’ or when they spoke of what today is called ‘castes.’ Interestingly, the only example the Europeans had of ‘tribes’ before they ventured into the world was found in the Old Testament, with the twelve tribes of Israel, each tribe derived from one of the twelve grandsons of Jacob. In medieval English, ‘tribe’ by definition referred to a tribe of Israel. While it is unclear today what the role of Brahmin manuscripts (or any other Indian manuscript) was and still is in Indian society—and thus, while it is unclear what the role of the Varna division is or ever has been—it is clear that European commentators and travellers in the East read in it the history of the biblical Jews. When Olfert Dapper (1672) and other Dutch chroniclers outlined the four-fold division of Indian society, as described in the so-called Shaster, they consistently used the Dutch term for ‘tribe,’ that is ‘stam.’106 Similarly, Tavernier (1676) also reproduced ‘the Varna model of society,’ yet compared the varnas with the tribes of the biblical Jews: “A caste is amongst these idolaters what a tribe used to be amongst the Jews.”107 Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg, Thirty Four Conferences between the Danish Missionaries and the Malabarian Bramans etc. (London, 1719), iii. For other eyewitness reports that associated the Brahmins with the biblical Levites, see Pietro Della Valle, The Travels of Sig. Pietro della Valle, 40-42; and William Symson, A New Voyage to the East-Indies (London, 1715), 277. Also see Olfert Dapper, Asia, of Naukeurige Beschryving van Het Rijk des Grooten Mogols, 39; Claude Delle, Histoire ou Antiquitez de l’état monastique et religieux, etc., vol. 4 (Paris, 1699), 362; and the numerous editorial footnotes to the English translation of the sixteenth-century epic poem, Os Lusíadas: Luis de Camões, The Lusiad; or, the Discovery of India. An epic poem etc., trans. W. J. Mickle (Oxford, 1776), 292-93. 106 Olfert Dapper, Asia, of Naukeurige Beschryving van Het Rijk des Grooten Mogols, 24: “Al d’Indiaenen of afgodisten op de kust van Koromandel en de lander daer ontrent van Indiën ... worden in vier hooft-stammen of geslachten onderscheiden: als die van de Brahmannen, Settreas, Weinjas of Benjanen, en Soudras. Anderen voegen eenen vijfden daer by, hoewel zy selfs dien niet waerdig achten onder de geslachten te rekenen.” Also see 25-26, 28, and 327-29. 107 Jean Baptiste Tavernier, Les Six Voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernie … en Turquie, en Perse, et aux Indes etc., 336: “Une Caste est à peu prés parmi ces Idolâtres, ce qu’estoit anciennement une tribu parmi les Juifs; & bien que l’on croye vulgairement qu’il y a septente-deux de ces castes, j’ai sçu des plus habiles d’entre leurs Pretres qu’on les peut reduire à quatre principales, dont toutes les autres ont tiré leur origine. …” Dirks quotes this passage in English, yet chooses to omit Tavernier’s reference to the Old Testament Jews: Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind, 19. 105
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The editorial footnotes in Abraham Rogerius’ account of ‘Hinduism’ (1651) were replete with such comparisons between Indian customs and the customs that were known from the Old Testament, which were later reproduced in one of the most influential colonial sources on India, Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies by the French Jesuit, Abbé Dubois (1816). The Old Testament tradition provided a convenient framework to make the increasing amount of information on Indian customs intelligible to the European audiences, which is also indicated by Philippus Baldaeus (1672). One of the most explicit and elaborate comparisons between Indian culture and the customs of the Jews can be found in M. de la Créquinière’s Conformite des coutumes des Indiens orientaux, avec celles des Juifs & des autres peuples de l’Antiquité (The agreement of the customs of the East-Indians with those of the Jews, and other ancient peoples; 1704). In his chapter on Indian “tribes or castes” [De leur differentes Tribus, ou Castes] the author explicitly connects what later would be called ‘the caste system’ to the biblical anthropology: The Indian gentiles are divided into tribes, like the Jews formerly were. However, I have never been able to discover their exact number. Besides this division, each tribe is divided into an infinite number of other tribes, which internally differ with respect to their diet or some thing or the other. That which the Jews called tribes, the Indians call castes. But there are much differences between the castes, at variance with the Jews, even though the latter were not equal, for without mentioning the prerogative which the priesthood bestowed upon the Levites, there were other hierarchical divisions among them…108
Interestingly, where the original French edition used the French word for ‘tribe’ [tribu] the Dutch translator of de la Créquinière’s work consistently rendered this into ‘lineage’ [gheslacht].109 In much the same way, the Jesuit M. de la Créquinière, Conformite des coutumes des Indiens orientaux, avec celles des Juifs & des autres peuples de l’Antiquité etc. (Brussels, 1704), 112-13: “Les gentils Indiens sont divisez en Tribus, comme l’étoient autrefois les Juifs : mais je n’ay jamais pû découvrir au juste combien ils en avoient ; car outre la division general, chaque Tribu est encore divisée en une infinité d’autres, qui toutes different entr’elles, ou dans leur nourriture, ou dans quelque autre chose. Ce que les Juifs appelloient Tribus, les Indiens l’appellent Castes: mais il y a beaucoup plus de disproportion entre ces Castes, qu’il n’y en avoit entre les Tribus d’Israël, lessquelles n’étoient cependant pas égales; car sans parler de la préeminence, que le Sacerdoce donnoit à celle de Levi, il y avoit encoure un rang entre les autres…” 109 De La Créquinière, “Historische Verhandeling over de Hedendaagsche Godsdienst-Plichten en Gewoontens der Afgodische Oost-Indiaansche Volkeren, Met die van de Jooden … Vergeleeken,” in Naaukeurige Beschryving der uitwendige Godsdienst-Plichten, Tempel-Zeden ... der Afgodische Volkeren etc, ed. P. Bernard, trans. A. Moubach, vol. 3 (’s Gravenhage, 1728), 39. 108
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missionary, Pere Dolu (1700), wrote from Pondicherry that caste is what the Jews called tribe.110 The same observation was made by Pere le Caron (1720), a Jesuit missionary in Karnataka, who added that the several ceremonies and customs of the Indians indicated that they had been in contact with the ancient Hebrews.111 In the middle of the seventeenth century, Pietro della Valle similarly wrote that the “Gentile-people of India is divided into many sects or parties of men, known and distinguisht by descent or pedigree, as the Tribes of the Jews sometimes were...”112 Europe postulated a one-to-one relationship between the religious history of the Jews and the spiritual history of India. Also from a sociological angle, Europe resorted to biblical anthropology. In other words, the Indians did not only derive their religion from the biblical Jews, but also their social structure. As we have seen, the Jesuit scholar, Claude François Lambert (1749), drew from the Lettres Édif iantes to consolidate the information about India known at the time. The second chapter of the first volume of his work was entitled Of the knowledge which the Indians have had of the true Religion [Sur la connoissance que les Indiens ont eue de la vraie Religion]. Lambert explained that the scriptures of the Indians demonstrated that they derived their religion from the books of Moses and the Jewish prophets, notwithstanding the fables the Indians also introduced. The traffic with the Jews similarly explained Indian society. Lambert repeated the by then formulaic phrase that the Indians were also divided into castes or tribes [Castes ou Tribus] like the Jews formerly were.113
P. Dolu, “Lettre du P. Dolu, Missionaire de la Compagnie de Jesus, au Pere Le Gobien ... le 4. d’Octobre 1700,” in Lettres de quelques Missionaires de la Compagnie de Jesus etc., ed. C. Le Gobien (Paris, 1702), 50: “Caste, c’est ainsi qu’ils appellent ce que les Juifs appelloient Tribus.” 111 Pere le Caron, “Lettre du Pere le Caron, Missionnaire de la Compagnie de Jesus, à Mesdames ses Soeurs, Religieuses Ursulines. De la Mission de Carnate, aux Indes, ce 20 Novembre 1720,” in Lettres Édif iantes et Curieuses, ed. C. Le Gobien and Y. de Querbeuf, vol. 13 (Paris, 1781), 201: “Ces peuples sont divisés par castes ou tribus, comme étoit autrefois le peuple Juif avec lequel il paroît qu’ils ont eu commerce ; car dans leurs coutumes, dans leurs cérémonies, dans leurs sacrifices on découvre quantité de vestiges de l’ancienne Loi, qu’ils ont défigurés par une infinité de fables.” 112 Pietro Della Valle, The Travels of Sig. Pietro della Valle,, 40-41. 113 Claude François Lambert, Recueil d’observations curieuses sur les moeurs, les coutumes, les Usages … la Religion … les Arts et les Sciences, de différens Peuples de l’Asie, de l’Afrique, & de l’Amérique, vol. 2 (Paris, 1749), 55: “Ces Peuples sont divisés par Castes ou Tribus, comme l’étoit autrefois le Peuple Juif, avec lequel il paroît qu’ils ont eu commerce; car dans leur Coutumes, dans leurs Cérémonies, dans leurs Sacrifices, on découvre quantité de vestiges de l’ancienne Loi, qu’ils ont défigurée par une infinité de fables extravagantes.” 110
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To conclude: The European engagement with Indian society was defined by the manner in which Europe understood the social structure of the biblical Jews. The relationship between this process and the colonial understanding of ‘the caste system’ has to be studied in more detail. That is to say, future research on the development of the concept ‘tribe’ in European anthropology—and its connection with the untold ways in which Europe understood the history of the biblical Jews—might provide us with a better understanding of the growth of ‘the caste system’ as a theoretical entity in the European imagination. As for now, it suffices to conclude that the postcolonial fascination with colonial state formation obscures a serious engagement with the cultural history of Europe and the cultural history of colonialism necessary to arrive at a deeper insight into Europe’s engagement with India.
Chapter Nine
Postcolonialism: The Closure of Orientalism? The genuine principles of the Hindû religion inculcate the most sublime notions; though its rites are debased with idolatry and superstition. —The Asiatic Register (1800)
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he retreat of European colonialism has prompted the critical revaluation of the European representations of non-western cultures. This revision of Orientalism takes the descriptions of India as accounts of the East, whether they be true or false. At variance with the established approach, this essay has suggested that Orientalism, rather disguises itself as a description of other cultures—be it accurate or flawed— while, in fact, the western descriptions of the East are only expressions of the manner in which the West comes to terms with the reality that is the East. In so doing, this work has used as its empirical basis the European descriptions of Indian traditions and society, and especially, of the Brahmins; further research into the western descriptions of non-western cultures promises to deepen our understanding of the nature of western culture itself. The previous Chapters have fleshed out this hypothesis by drafting one of the possible genealogies of colonial discourse. They identified a shared pattern in the pre-colonial European books on India. This pattern was delimited by two distinct images of the Brahmins. Both imageries revealed two ends of the same theological continuum and defined the limits of the European engagement with Indian culture. This pattern allowed for the conclusion that ‘Hinduism’ did not emerge out of the colonial encounter, but that the concept of Hinduism was constructed in the texts of Renaissance Europe, through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The etymology of the term ‘Hinduism’ stands central in many recent studies of ‘the construction of Hinduism.’ It is pertinent to note here that ‘Hinduism’ gained wide currency only at the end of the eighteenth century and derived from ‘Hindooism.’ One primary concern of this essay has been to demonstrate that ‘Hinduism’ was the organic successor to terms like ‘Hindooism,’ ‘the Gentoo religion’ and ‘the Hindu religion,’ used to signify the same entity, or ‘the religion of the Indian
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priest.’ That is to say, the concept to which these words (‘Hinduism,’ ‘Gentoo religion,’ etc.) referred guided the European discourses throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and was manifestly not a colonial construct. As the nineteenth century unfolded, this simplified synthesis of manifold, vibrant, intersecting traditions was termed as ‘Hinduism,’ incorporated into colonial discourse, and implicated in colonial state formation. However, the constancy of representation cannot be explained in terms of colonial exigencies or the demands of modernity. It simply cuts across the manifold power constellations that emerged both in Europe as well as India over four centuries or more. That constancy was made possible because one coherent theoretical framework continued to operate in the background of the European discourses on India, the Christian theologies, both revealed and disguised. The strenght of this cultural framework resides in the fact that it could accomodate and responded to contemporary political and social change, such that dramatic fissures—for example, the Reformation—allowed for internal debate and change, whilst also ensuring the continuity of representation. In this context, one could well ask: Were these descriptions shaped by power configurations internal to European society? The answer to this question is: No. As this essay has reiterated, the imageries that delimited the discourse on India’s traditions originated outside the vested power structures of the Church. The image of ‘the saintly Brahmins’ was present in the works of the early Church Fathers, at a time when Christianity was still looking for apologetic devices in face of the Roman persecutions. It was reconstructed in medieval reform movements—often perceived as heretic by the institutionalised Church—and in religious discourses of Restoration England that were not part of established religion. In a similar fashion, the second Brahmin image of ‘the crafty priest’ manifested itself outside ‘the hegemonic discourses’ of the Catholic Church. While it is important to allow for historical variations, there is a direct line of interpretation that connects these pre-colonial imageries with the formats used by colonial scholars and administrators to structure the Indian reality. In conclusion therefore, I will briefly outline these continuities, and in addition touch upon the Indian responses to this European discourse. This essay concludes with some final remarks on the nature of ‘Hinduism’ and the future study of Indian culture.
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From Orientalists to Anglicists Contemporary scholarship that addresses the nineteenth century in India takes the debate between the Anglicists and Orientalists as a useful explanatory framework.114 Convinced that India was saturated by heathendom, the Anglicists considered it to be corrupt. Its culture was degenerate, its population irrational, superstitious, morally depraved. Evangelical missionaries such as Charles Grant (1792) and William Ward (1817) considered India to be intrinsically corrupted and perceived of British Rule as an instrument of Providence. Utilitarian reformers such as James Mill and Thomas Macaulay reasoned along similar lines. Quite certain of the supremacy of British culture, the Evangelicals and Anglicists attacked colonial policies of reconciliation and adjustment to local customs.115 In contrast, the Orientalists genuinely sought to understand the alien culture, proceeding on the liberal premise that no change could be real or lasting, unless it met with native acceptance. Therefore, they studied Indian culture, learned its local languages, preserved what belonged to its cultural inheritance, and discovered a grand past, excelling in the political, religious and intellectual domains. The differences between both factions are generally taken to be salient and important. However, they turn out to be superficial when it comes to their assessment of the fundamental structure of Indian traditions and society. This should come as no surprise, for both parties were the heir of numerous European authors who wrote on India prior to the colonial era. Unerringly, both factions identified the Brahmins as priests. They both were convinced that ‘the priesthood’ had a dire influence on religion and society. Both accepted, as true, the existence of religion in India, and moulded a multitude of traditions into a century-old concept, or ‘the Indian religion of the priest.’ The anticlerical format that runs as a thread through the history of Europe—from the earliest ages of Christianity, through the Middle Ages, right into the Renaissance and the Enlightenment—was employed by colonial scholars of diverse factions as a scientific framework to structure the Indian reality. As far as contemporary India was concerned, the contrast between the Orientalists 114 Bernard S. Cohn, An Anthropologist Among the Historians and other Essays (Delhi, 1987); Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton, N.J, 2001); Kenneth W. Jones, Arya Dharm: Hindu consciousness in 19th-century Punjab (Berkeley, 1976); Om P. Kejariwal, The Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Discovery of India’s Past, 17841838 (Oxford, 1988); and David Kopf, British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance. The Dynamics of Indian Modernization, 1773-1835 (Berkeley, 1969). 115 Lynn Zastoupil and Martin Moir, eds., The Great Indian Education Debate: Documents Relating to the Orientalist-Anglicist Controversy of 1781-1843 (Richmond, 1999).
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and Anglicists was thus superficial. While the latter found its culture intrinsically corrupt, the former understood it as being based on sound principles, which had steadily degenerated ever since. The cause of corruption was in both cases the same: ‘the Indian priesthood.’ As must be clear, this vision of a sacerdotal estate which regulated virtually every aspect of Indian community life, draws upon the conception of the Brahmins that was popularized in medieval discourses and carried over into the Renaissance. From pre-colonial to colonial Discourses A two-tiered representation of India’s traditions—with the Brahmin as the axis around which both models of religion revolved—and an emphasis on textual evidences, guided European discourses all the way through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The works on India issued in the second half of the eighteenth century link this Renaissance discourse with the colonial discourse. In 1761 appeared the influential Reflections on the Government of Indostan and a short Sketch of the History of Bengal by East India Company servant Luke Scrafton. This was one of the many works of the period that brought the events in India to the attention of the general public.116 Scrafton presented an outline of ‘the Indian religion’ which conformed to the bifurcated model of religion outlined above. Much like Henry Lord in the 1630s, he saw “Brumma” as the founder or lawgiver of this religion, which “left them a book, called the Vidam, which contains all his doctrines and institutions.” While the Orientalist project of translating ‘the sacred books of the East’ was still to begin, Europe already ‘textualized’ Indian traditions, and located their source in the “Shahstah,” which supposedly contained a monotheistic doctrine, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and a future state of rewards and punishments.117 The ancient manuscripts were defined as the origins of the ‘Indian religion of the priest,’ years before this trans-regional category came to play a key role in the colonial census project. The regional differences which Scrafton observed among the multitude of local practices and customs were explained according to the corruptions of this textual core: … and though all the Gentoos of the continent, from Lahore to Cape Comorin, agree in acknowledging the Vidam, yet they have greatly varied in the corruptions of it: and hence different images are worshipped in different parts; and For Scrafton, see the entry by D. L. Prior in dnb. Luke Scrafton, Reflections on the Government, &c. of Indostan; And a short Sketch of the History of Bengal, from the Year 1739 to 1756; and the English Affairs to 1758 (Edinburgh, 1761), 5-6. 116
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the first simple truth of an Omnipotent Being is lost in the absurd worship of a multitude of images, which, at first, were only symbols to represent his various attributes.118
Not surprisingly, the Brahmins were the ones who “have perverted the doctrine of their founder.”119 While the term ‘Hinduism’ was not yet present in the European discourses, Scrafton nevertheless wrote of a pan-Indian religion, which he called ‘the Gentoo religion.’120 Amongst many other works of the period, John Zephania Holwell’s Interesting Historical Events, Relative to the Provinces of Bengal, and the Empire of Indostan (1765-67) constitutes another link in propelling the chain of images outlined above into the colonial period.121 The two-tiered model of religion that guided the pre-colonial discourses—with ‘the priesthood’ as the axis around which both models of religion revolved—thus continued to structure the European discourses at the eve of the colonial era. The Asiatic Register for the year 1799 issued a series of articles on The History of British India, in which the anonymous author used the term ‘Hindū religion’ to refer to ‘the Indian religion of the priest.’ He wrote that the latter was centred upon the Vedas, which inculcated sublime notions of God and the human soul. While these tenets had been followed by the ancient philosophers of India, and still formed the creed of the learned Brahmins of his day, “priestcraft and ignorance have introduced into the popular belief a multitude of absurdities.”122
Ibid., 6. Ibid., 14. 120 Ibid., 24-25: “As I before observed, the universality of the Gentoo religion throughout the continent should imply, that there also subsisted an universal empire…” Back in England, Scrafton corresponded with the historian Robert Orme, who also reproduced this two-tiered and ‘textualized’ outline of the Indian traditions in A History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Hindostan from the Year 1745 etc. (London, 1763). 121 John Zephaniah Holwell, Interesting Historical Events relative to the Provinces of Bengal and the Empire of Indostan etc. (London, 1765). For the importance of Holwell’s work, see the introduction by Michael Franklin in John Zephaniah Holwell, Interesting Historical Events Relative to the Provinces of Bengal and the Empire of Indostan etc., ed. M. J. Franklin (London, 2000). Also see Alexander Dow, The History of Hindostan ... Together with a Dissertation concerning the Religion and Philosophy of the Brahmins etc. (London, 1768). The colonial emphasis on textual sources reached its zenith with Nathaniel Halhed’s A Code of Gentoo Laws (London, 1776), which sought to establish Hindu Law on the basis of the Sanskrit Shastras. Also see the preface to Sir William Jones, Institutes of Hindu Law (Calcutta & London, 1796). 122 Anonymous, “The History of British India,” The Asiatic Annual Register…For the Year 1799 (1800): 1-82 [4]. Also see Sir William Jones, “On the Gods of Greece, Italy and India,” Asiatick Researches 1 (1798): 221-275. 118 119
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The Heydays of Orientalism Despite considerable intellectual efforts, subsequent generations of Orientalists never challenged this simplified, two-tiered, Brahmin-centred synthesis of the Indian reality. In the fifth edition of James Mill’s The History of British India (1858), the Orientalist Horace Hayman Wilson agreed that India did not arrive at the developmental stage from where Europe overlooked the world. He explained this deficit by “the advantages we possess in a purer system of religious belief,” when compared with the character of Indian institutions.123 What an absence of pure religion could do was elaborated upon in two lengthy essays on ‘religious sects,’ first published in two subsequent volumes of the Asiatic Researches (1828, 1832). While the first essay discussed the Vaishnavas, the second provided an account of the Shaivas and miscellaneous sects. The discussion of the Vaishnava movement began with a detailed outline of religious corruptions. Wilson ended the second essay accordingly. What distinguished these sects from the ‘purer system of religious belief ’ was bhakti, or the worship of deities. This was an invention, Wilson argued, “and apparently a modern one ... intended like that of the mystical holiness of the Guru, to extend their own authority.”124 In a series of lectures delivered at Cambridge in 1882, Max Müller did not discuss contemporary India but rather presented “India such as it was a thousand, two thousand, it may be three thousand years ago.” He invited his students to examine its religion “if only purified from the dust of 19 centuries...”125 What they could learn from this course was the manner in which “the human mind arrives by a perfectly rational process at all its later irrationalities.”126 His preface to The Sacred Books of the East (1879) had already explained the manner in which the human mind arrived at this stage: “The priestly influence was at work, even before there were priests by profession, and when the priesthood had once become professional, its influence may account for much that would otherwise seem inexplicable in the sacred codes of the ancient world.”127 123 Horace H. Wilson in James Mill, The History of British India, ed. H. Wilson (London, 1858), 164, n. 1. 124 Horace H. Wilson, “A Sketch of the Religious Sects of the Hindus,” Asiatic Researches 17 (1832): 169-313 [312]. 125 Friedrich Max Müller, India What Can It Teach Us? (London, 1883), 7-12. 126 Ibid., 195. 127 Friedrich Max Müller, ed., The Sacred Books of the East. Translated by Various Oriental Scholars, and Edited by F. Max Müller, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1879), 15.
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Priestly Despotism taken for Granted The Orientalists might have presented their case in the garbs of rationality and open-mindedness. However, when it came to the identification of the Brahmins as the foundation of corruption and sacerdotal tyranny, their resemblance to the story told by Protestant zealots is remarkable. Charles Grant was one of the earliest and most influential representatives of the Evangelical movement. His greatest concern was the moral deprivation of the Indian subject. To make this state of affairs intelligible for the East India Company to be efficient in its ameliorations, he sought to identify the roots of the present situation. The results of his search can be read in his Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain. Though written to support William Wilberforce’s attempt in 1793 to change the charter of the Company in favour of missionary activities, it would only be widely acknowledged once it was published in the parliamentary papers of 1813. In Grant’s view, ‘the Brahmin tribe’ could be held responsible for virtually everything that went wrong in India. For their own benefit they had made the masses believe in false religion. The rays of light that still shone through the Bhagavad-Gita and the Vedas had been “conceived from the vulgar” to support “the consequence, and the very existence of the brahminical order.”128 Much like Holwell, Grant added that the Brahmins “made themselves indispensably necessary.” They “formed the religion, they are the sole exclusive depositaries of its ordinances ... It is thus that abject slavery, and unparalleled depravity, have become distinguishing characteristics of the Hindoos.”129 Again, the thread throughout this work was one of sacerdotal despotism. Nothing could be clearer than that “this whole fabric is the work of a crafty and imperious priesthood, who feigned a divine revelation and appointment, to invest their own order, in perpetuity, with the most absolute empire over the civil state of the Hindoos, as well as over their minds.”130 In other words, it is possible to outline a constancy and internal coherence in the colonial discourses on Indian culture across religious and ideological boundaries. Evangelicals and ‘secular’ Orientalists transcended the Orien128 Charles Grant, Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain, Particularly with Respect to Morals; and on the Means of Improving It, British Parliamentary Papers, Colonies East India, vol. 5 (Shannon, 1970 [1792]), 48. 129 Ibid., 58. 130 Ibid., 35. For a similar argument, see William Ward, View of the History, Literature and Religion of the Hindoos: Including a Minute Description of Their Manners and Customs (s.l., 1817), xi, xiv, 458-59.
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talist-Anglicist divide: both concurred that ‘the Indian religion’ was centred upon a sacerdotal nucleus, preserved by crafty priests who liberally invented religious dogmas and ceremonies as they pleased. This simplified synthesis of the Indian reality had been the stock-in-trade of the European discourse for centuries on end, and would become standard in the general writings consumed by the European public at large. One of the most influential works in this genre was The History of British India by James Mill (1817). To provide the British with heuristics to establish colonial government, Mill intended to identify the stage India had reached on the scale of civilizations. For this purpose, Grant’s work was not hard for Mill to accept: priestly despotism was the primary evil that held sway over the subcontinent. In an explicitly theological fashion, Mill argued that “just and rational views of God can be obtained from two sources alone: from revelation; or where that is wanting, from sound reflection upon the frame and government of the universe.”131 Because God (the Christian God) had not been so benevolent as to reveal Himself in India—and because the Hindus also lacked sound reflection on the state of the universe—they had “produced that heterogeneous and monstrous compound which has formed the religious creed of so great a portion of the human race; but composes a more stupendous mass in Hindustan than in any other country.”132 Still, the Brahmins showed a tendency to corrupt things: with the insertion of flattery and worship of heroes they had made this compound worse than it ever was and anywhere had been.133 Mill’s famous treatise might have appeared as the secular counterpart of Evangelical interpretations. He was neither a radical Anglicist, nor an Orientalist. Nevertheless, he accepted as self-evident and clear the narrative shared by both factions. When a given story transcends all ideological and theoretical boundaries, there must be a more common framework from which its consistency is derived. That constancy does not derive from a shared project of colonial state formation (on which they had radically different views in any case) but from a theoretical framework that had guided Europe’s perception of India for centuries. That framework was Christian theology. Although it is necessary to allow for historical variations, there is yet another constancy which has to be accounted for: there exists a direct line of interpretation that connects these colonial imageries with contemporary analyses of the Indian traditions. This two-tiered, Brahmin-centred structure James Mill, The History of British India (New Delhi, 1990 [1817]), 186. Ibid., 191. 133 Idem. 131 132
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of representation not only connects the pre-colonial with the colonial past, but also advances forward into the postcolonial present. One could easily claim that ‘the colonial constructionist thesis’ is itself a product of Orientalism, for it presupposes a monolithic Brahmin religion (Brahmanism, or the Indian religion of the priest) around which Hinduism was supposedly constructed. But the Brahmins are not and have never been the priests of India. In addition, the critique of the ‘ahistorical textualization of tradition’ takes for granted that the body of manuscripts on which the Orientalists relied was central to the multitude of Brahmin traditions that existed and still exist in India today. In other words, it presupposes a unified and non-historical Brahmin religion, transfixed in its Sanskrit past. Evidence in support of these assumptions is yet to be presented. The reason is simple: there is no evidence for the claim that multiple ‘Hindu’ traditions derive from a unifying, Brahmanic essence. Not only is this pervasive, yet simplified representation of the Indian reality unwarranted, the scholarly emphasis on the power of colonial knowledge impedes our ability to grasp the nature of the European discourse on the East. Thereby, it leaves intact many, if not most, of the key presuppositions of Orientalist discourse. The contemporary revaluations of colonial discourse have neither provided novel insights into the nature of India’s traditions, nor a more sophisticated analysis of Orientalism. There still exists a deep neglect of the differences that distinguish the cultural traditions of India from religions like Christianity and Islam. The critical study of India today is still anchored in a long-standing and ongoing process of translating the Indian reality into a Westerncultural context.134 Orientalism and Colonial Consciousness To nuance the claim that Orientalism was a purely western affair, postcolonial scholarship emphasizes native complicity. The Brahmins were commissioned by the British to translate ancient manuscripts and to add detail to the British understanding of India. But as we have seen, every fact on India’s traditions the Europeans commented upon was incorporated into the model of religion delimited by two theoretical images that originally developed in Exceptions can be found in recent attempts to reconceptualize the Indian traditions. The project of Rethinking Religion in India recently took concrete shape in a five-year international conference cluster inaugurated in Delhi, the visual proceedings of which are available on youtube.com/cultuurwetenschap.
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the theological struggles of Europe. Still today, Max Müller’s India What can it Teach us (1883) can be found in virtually every bookstore in Delhi. The more academically inclined also sell his Sacred Books of the East (1879-1910). The colonized, as must be clear, employed the Orientalist discourses of their day and made them their own. In other words, the synthesis of a multitude of Indian traditions into the category of a Brahmin-centred religion—which foundation was to be found in ancient texts—also came to structure the descriptions which Indian intellectuals provided in modern times. While a long tradition of criticizing the Brahmins existed in India, it is a matter of historical record that the indigenous discourses were not framed according to the anticlerical format employed in European discourses. However, the nineteenth-century Indian reformers, such as Rammohun Roy, echoed the vision of the British when they expressed such anti-Brahmin sentiments. The conception of an original religion, corrupted in the long haul of Indian history by a crafty priesthood, resonated throughout the indigenous reform programmes. As Rammohun Roy (1817) reformulated it: the Brahmins had concealed the Vedanta that expressed this original monotheism, which led to “severe reflections on the selfishness which must actuate those Brahmanical teachers,” who clouded the truth to derive “pecuniary and other advantages” from the idol worship they advocated.135 The similarities between the indigenous discourses of colonial India and the manner in which Francis Xavier described the Brahmins in 1544 are striking. The Indian intellectuals incorporated that which the Orientalists and the Anglicists shared: not only did they end up criticizing the Brahmins as ‘crafty priests,’ but they also accepted as true the existence of religion in India, centred upon a priestly core. About the source of his inspiration, Roy was explicit. In a letter to Alexander Duff, he declared that he had read about … … the rise and progress of Christianity in apostolic times, and its corruption in succeeding ages, and then of the Christian Reformation which shook off these corruptions... [and] that something similar might have taken place in India, and similar results might follow from a reformation of the popular idolatry.136
His English translation of the Upanishads was meant to demonstrate that the Indians were familiar with the One and Only God. The Brahmins not only 135 Rammohun Roy, “A Defence of Hindu Theism. In Reply to the Attack of an Advocate for Idolatry at Madras,” in The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy, ed. Nag and Burman, vol. 2 (Calcutta, 1946 [1817]), 81-93 [84-85]. 136 Roy cited in Sophia D. Collet, The Life and Letters of Raja Rammohun Roy etc. (Calcutta, 1913), 280.
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emphasized that which served their interests; these texts were also written in a language of allegory. Roy’s reading had to allow the British to make their own judgment, instead of deriving it from “the superstitious rites and habits daily encouraged and fostered by their self-interested leaders.”137 As must be clear, Rammohun Roy provided more detail to the pre-established formats through which the Indian reality always had been structured and understood. The cultural history of Europe was thus projected onto the cultural history of India; and indigenous intellectuals signed up to this process. In the wake of Rammohun Roy in Calcutta, the English educated reformers in Bombay became convinced that their practices were consequential to the industry of a crafty priesthood. They formed a circle of intellectuals, coordinating with student discussion circles and the Prarthana Samaj (the Prayer Society), an offshoot of the Calcutta Brahmo Samaj. Mahadev Govind Ranade, one of the leaders of this movement, argued at the National Social Congress in Madras (1898) that the Brahmins in the South had given in to Dravidian influences, while in the North, they had been influenced by hordes of invaders. The result in both areas was the same: “As priests of the castes and the aboriginal gods and goddesses, it became their interest to magnify for their advantage the old superstitious beliefs ... and new texts were introduced.”138 The letters issued in the Dnyanodaya clearly reflect the manner in which colonial discourse impacted on the indigenous discourses. Published by the American Mission Press in Bombay (first edition 1842), the Dnyanodaya was the most important Marathi missionary periodical in western India, and exemplified the debate between colonial and native discourses: the missionary propaganda was translated into the Marathi sections, while Marathi letters to the editor were translated into English. In an acerbic Marathi correspondence, enitled Hinduism needs Reform (March 1, 1845), the anonymous author expressed strong anti-Brahmin sentiments, when he compared ‘the Brahmin priests’ with the Catholic priests.139 Similar sentiments were expressed in another Marathi letter, issued in the Dnyanodaya under the title of Character of Rammohun Roy, “Translation of the Kuth-Upanishad of Ujoor Ved,” in The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy, vol. 2: 21-38 [23]. Also see the introduction to his “Translation of the Ishopanishad. One of the Chapters of the Yajur-Ved,” in The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy, vol. 2: 39-55. 138 Mahadeva Govind Ranade, “Southern India a Hundred Years Ago,” in Ranade, Mahadeva, Govind: Religions & Social Reform, A Collection of Essays and Speeches (Bombay, 1902), 179-197 [191-92]. 139 Anonymous, “Hinduism Needs Reform,” Dnyanodaya 4, no. 5 (March 1, 1845). Also see Anonymous, “Original Correspondence: Is Hindooism True or False?,” Dnyanodaya 4, no. 7 (April 1, 1845). 137
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the Brahmans as given by a Hindu (April 1, 1849).140 The wide distribution of the two-tiered, Brahmin-centred model of religion in which the Indian traditions were moulded can also be felt in the letters issued in the Indu Prakash, the organ of indigenous reformers, started by Ranade, and subsequently edited by Narayen G. Chandavarkar, the vice-chancellor of Bombay University.141 The colonized accepted the colonial programmes of reform, and also reconstructed their cultural history along the pattern of the cultural history of Europe: the non-Brahmanic movements in pre-colonial India were explicitly reconceptualized as variants of Protestant religion. How deeply the colonial discourse penetrated into the mindset of the Indian intellectuals can be witnessed in Ranade’s essay on The Saints and Prophets of Maharashtra (1895), where he rewrote the spiritual history of India as a history of Protestant reform.142 As the vice-chancellor of Bombay University explained, because of perpetual priestly corruptions, “The history of Hinduism has been a history of perpetual reform.”143 From the Kabirpanthis, through the followers of Mirabai and Tukaram, to the devotees of Guru Nanak, all the pre-colonial spiritual movements could now be reconstructed as variations on a common theme: the Protestant clash with Catholicism.144 In other words, the nineteenth-century reformers not only reconceptualized their contemporary traditions according to the anticlerical format that marks the cultural history of Europe; they also reconstructed their cultural history according to this anticlerical historiography. Nowadays, this scheme is still applied to write about the nineteenth-century reformers themselves, who are similarly referred to as “the Indian Martin Luthers.”145
Anonymous, “Character of the Brahmans as given by a Hindu,” Dnyanodaya 8, no. 7 (April 2, 1849). 141 See, for instance, the series of letters by “A political Rishi,” entitled Religious and Social Reform and issued in the Indu Prakash on March 2 and May 11, 1885. 142 Mahadeva Govind Ranade, “The Saints and Prophets of Maharashtra,” in Rise of Maratha Power and Other Essays by M. G. Ranade etc., ed. G. Ghurye (Bombay, 1900 [1895]), 78-92. 143 N. G. Chandavarkar, “Speech at the Indian Social Conference,” in The Speeches and Writings of Sir. Narayen G. Chandavarkar etc., ed. L. V. Kaikini (Bombay, 1911), 118-132 [81-86] 144 For a similar argument about the identification of Buddhism as a form of ‘Hindu Protestantism,’ see Philip C. Almond, The British discovery of Buddhism (Cambridge, 1988). 145 Dhananjay Keer, Mahatma Jotirao Phooley: Father of our Social Revolution (Bombay, 1964), 204. 140
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Towards a Comparative Science of Cultures This essay began with locating its approach to Orientalism in the tradition of S. N. Balagangadhara (1994, 1998, 2009). It will end accordingly. In so doing, it provides a research agenda for the study of contemporary India. In light of the indigenous discourses, the notion of native complicity becomes problematic. On the one hand, the colonized made the colonial formats and imageries their own. On the other, contemporary scholarship accepts as self-evident that the informants understood the theological concepts and imageries used by their employers. The native complicity argument thus leads to a fascinating question: how did the Indian intellectuals make sense of colonial discourse, when the latter used such terms as ‘religion,’ ‘scripture,’ ‘revelation,’ ‘worship’ and ‘priest’? A distinct background theory of religion (the Christian theology) allowed the Europeans to relate several elements of Indian culture to each other and to the category of religion. Without this theory, these elements would appear as unrelated facts. They were given a specific meaning: Sanskrit manuscripts became sacred scriptures; devas became gods; puja became worship; and Brahmins, priests. When the British invoked these designations, they operated against a background theory that determined the meaning of these terms, their internal relations, and their relation to the category of religion. This theory was ingrained in the cultural experience of Europe. With no access to the background theory of the colonizer, how did the Indian intellectuals make sense of the colonial vocabulary? The contemporary relevance of this question is illustrated by the example of puja. The latter simply cannot be equated with the notion of worship in European thought, which is semantically related to other theological concepts, such as ‘God’ and ‘religion,’ ‘idolatry’ and ‘false gods.’ Nevertheless, the Europeans understood the Indian rituals as manifestations of (false) worship and thus, translated ‘puja’ with the term ‘worship.’ Indian intellectuals adopted the English vocabulary, without having access to the theoretical framework that related ‘worship’ to a battery of other theological categories. The same applies to the manner in which they internalized other Europeanlanguage terms that similarly derive from theological concepts. For instance, ‘brahma’ does not equal ‘God.’ In much the same way, ‘dharma’ does not refer to the message or Revelation of this God (the God of the Old Testament), which is ‘religion.’ However, it would be simplistic to claim that Indian intellectuals simply echoed the West. The European observers were conditioned by their cul-
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tural background when they wrote about India. Indian intellectuals, too, are constrained by their culture when they appropriate the European accounts. They did not simply reproduce them, but also transformed them, as they understood them. The problem with the native complicity argument is that we do not know today which distortions occurred when Indian intellectuals internalized Orientalist discourse and its concepts, without having access to the background theory that made them intelligible in the first place. However, this provides us with a unique entry point to study Indian culture: Like there exists a pattern in the thousands of European books on India, we can minimally expect a shared pattern in the transformations that occurred when the Indian intellectuals reproduced Orientalist discourse. We can therefore return to and elaborate upon the hypothesis that guided the empirical study in the previous Chapters. There is structure in the manner in which the West comes to terms with the reality that is the East. That structure is determined by Christian theology. To understand Orientalism is to understand western culture itself. To understand the nature of Indian culture, future research would benefit from locating and studying the pattern that lends coherency to the many untold transformations which occur when Indians reproduce the Orientalist discourse. As this essay has shown, the coherent pattern in the European books on India provides insights in the cultural conditions under which it emerged. The shared pattern that surfaces when Indian intellectuals transform the western descriptions of India will similarly provide insights in the cultural conditions under which these transformations occurred. To study Indian culture today implies to study the pattern of conceptual transformations that emerges when the Indians reproduce the descriptions which the West provided and continues to provide of them. This is the task of a comparative science of cultures.146 The Construction of Hinduism This also raises the following question: how plausible is the claim that Hinduism exists as a reality today? As a consequence of the census project and a host of administrative measures and legal procedures, western-educated Indians have come to talk of ‘Hinduism’ and ‘religion’ as if these concepts belong to their tradition. Several historical studies have shown that they internalized these concepts for practical reasons, for instance, in light of the colonial poliS. N. Balagangadhara, “Comparative Theory in Culture and Politics,” unpublished research note, 2009. 146
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cies of toleration or modern-day secularism.147 The majority of Indians calls itself Hindu today, and also uses this term to differentiate itself from the Muslims and the Christians, but does this necessitate the reification of this concept in modern times? It does not. Neither does it imply that all Hindus have come to follow ‘Brahmanism,’ or ‘the Indian religion of the priest.’ Detailed ethnographic scholarship has shown that India is still characterized by a plethora of traditions, which do not derive from the Sanskrit traditions but are based on ancestral practices. The central place of doctrine— which marks the Semitic traditions—is alien to the Indian traditions. They do not revolve around a strict set of propositions about the world and the nature of God, His relation to humanity, or His message about the purposes He has for humankind. The realm of Indian traditions is marked by a plethora of stories and songs about devas and devis, and knows of numerous versions of these stories. One can recite one, relive the other, while neither carries the claims for truth that characterizes doctrines. There are literally thousands of adhyatmic practices in the realm of Indian traditions today, which similarly cannot be understood as doctrines or claims for truth, for their pertinence strictly depends upon the disposition of the practitioners. These practices do not embody doctrines: they are not true or false, but either applicable or not applicable in a given individual’s quest for the good life.148 The claim that ‘Hinduism’ has been reified because certain communities argue for its existence and act accordingly, can maximally demonstrate that within the variety of traditions that characterizes South Asia today, there exists now also a community that follows Hinduism. The followers of this tradition seek to model a ‘Hindu Church’ around a strict set of doctrines, more often than not vigorously guarded as the alleged creed of all Indian traditions. Many traditions are simply excluded from this process, for they are seen by the followers of Hinduism as too awkward or unwieldy to the sanitized model of religion which they have come to advocate. While the majority of Indian traditions is not textual in nature, the followers of Hinduism now seek to identify textual evidence for the many doctrines and commandments of what they perceive to be ‘the religion of all Hindus.’ As must be clear, this modern tradition particularly resonates with the sentiments of S. N. Balagangadhara and Jakob De Roover, “The Secular State and Religious Conflict: Liberal Neutrality and the Indian Case of Pluralism,” Journal of Political Philosophy 15, no. 1 (2007): 67-92; and Jakob De Roover and Sarah Claerhout, “The Question of Conversion in India,” Economic and Political Weekly 40, no. 28 (2005): 3084-3055. 148 S. N. Balagangadhara, “How to Speak for the Indian Traditions: An Agenda for the Future,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 73, no. 4 (2005): 987-1013. 147
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the non-residential Indians in the United Kingdom and United State organized in a limited number of foundations which profess to represent all the traditions that are still practised in India today. However, theirs is but one tradition amongst many, and a direct heir of Christian theology and centuries of European books on India.
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Appendix 1: Moghul Empire, poem in Cornelius Hazart’s Kerckelycke Historie van de Gheheele Wereldt, vol. 1 (Antwerp, 1671), 245. mogor wordt verlicht door het licht van’t H. Roomsch Catholyck Gheloof Verdoemden Satans hoop, van Godt vervloeckte sielen, Bloedt-dorstighe Tyrans, en moordenaers der sielen, Door trapte Brachmanes, die Mogor t’alle kant, Met vuyl afgodery, ghestelt hebt inden brant. Is’t mogh’lijck dat een slagh van blixem en van donder U niet van over-langh verplettert heeft? ’tis wonder Hoe d’aerde die u draeght, niet onder u en scheurt, En u met huyt en hayr tot inden afgront sleurt. Maer hoe! Wat dat ick segh? het aerdtrijck sou sich belghen, Soo een ongodlijck volck door sijne keel te swelghen, En ghy, en uwe goôn verdient meer straf en pijn, Als van de wreedtheydt self oyt can ghevonden zijn. Door u en uwe leer, ô jammer! gaen de vrouwen Hun af ghestorven mans in ’t vyer gheselschap houwen, Door u en uwe leer wordt op het wreedt autaer Oock menschen bloedt ghestort als oft het waeter waer. Verdedight hier u doen, beschermt uwe leeren, Daer staen se die het volck tot uwer spijt bekeeren, Daer staen se die en u, en Brama uwen godt, En al u fabel dicht ’t volck stellen tot een spot. Hier moet ghy leughenaers, als blinde vledder-muysen, Voor ’t licht des waerheydts floecx met al uw’ spoock verhuysen; De Priesters, en hun Goôn die moeten al ghelijck, Met al het helsch ghespuys naer ’t onder aerdtsche rijck. Maer dit heeft moeyt en sweet, en duysent banghe suchten Aen menigh hert ghekost, den arbeydt baerdt de vruchten; Wie heeft out rijpen ooghst? wie soete vrucht ghemaeyt, Die niet te voor met sweet en moeyte was gesaeyt? Heeft Goa niet ghestiert dry d’alder-kloeckste borsten? Die al naer arbeydts-sweet, als ’t hert, naer ’t water dorsten? Wat hebben die al leedts, wat moeyten onderstaen? Wat hebben die voor Godt perijckels aenghegaen?
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Dit kan Fernandius, en Montserratus tuyghen, Die als een marmor-beeldt voor gheenen last en buyghen, O mannen vol van moet! ô Sielen vol van gheest! Die midden inde doodt, gheen doodt noch wonden vreest! Rudolphus, edel bloedt, sal haest aen Mogor toonen, Dat in sijn vyerigh hert noch eelder gheesten woonen, Wanneer hy’t Hertoghdom van Adria verlaet, En uyt sijn vader-landt naer d’and’re wereldt gaet. Hieronyme, Xavier, bewandelt vry de weghen Van uwen kloecken Oom, stapt alle boosheydt teghen, Volght sijnen jever naer, maeckt dat uw’daet betoont, Dat’t herte van Xavier in uwen boesem woont. Noyt isser schoonder ghist aen Prins of Heer gheschonken, Noyt heefter helder steen oft diamant ghebloncken. Dan als ghy voor den throon van Mogor Coningh staet, En thoont dat rijck juweel dat’t al te boven gaet. Het salighmaekend’ houdt, voor wiens gheswinde schichten D’afgodery wel haest voor’t recht Gheloof sal swichten, Waer aen den grooten Godt sterft moeder-naeckt en bloodt, Oock voor den Mogorijn een schandelijcke doodt. Den Coningh die wel eer sich deed’ voor Godt aenbidden, Die siet-men van sijn throon af-treden, en in’t midden Van g’heel den Edeldom met liefde tot Xaveer, Aen hem en aen sijn Godt bethoonen jonst en eer: Hy gheeft hun vry gheleyd’ om’t Rijck van alle kanten Met palmen van’t gheloof en Gods-dienst te beplanten: Soo wordt dit landt een hof vol lustigh bloem-ghewas, Dat eertijdts een valley vol braem en dorens was. Leght uwen hooghmoedt af, onsuyv’re Sarasijnen, Uw’ valschen Alcoran moet hier al mé verdwijnen, En ghy, en uwe Sect, en uwen Mahomet Wordt hier van desen helt tot schandt en spot gheset.
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Appendix 2: Vijayanagar, poem in Cornelius Hazart’s Kerckelycke Historie van de Gheheele Wereldt, vol. 1 (Antwerp, 1671), 279. den yver verweckt apostolycke mannen tot de bekeeringhe van het ryck van bisnagar O Helden vol van moedt! ô Leeuwen vol van krachten! O Arendts die schiedt af als blixems naer de jachten! O Sielen vol van yver, ô Herten vol van stael; Tot u heb ick een woordt, ick Nimph van Portugaal: Siet ghy hoe onse vloot ont-deckt de vremste kusten? En daer zeylt on-vermoeydt, waer dat de Son moet rusten? Sy gongh de wereldt uyt, tot dat s’een wereldt vondt, Wel arm van ons Gheloof, maer rijck door gouden grondt. Spoedt Enghelen, spoedt dan, door stormen, en door kolcken, En biedt een heel-saem handt aen die ghewonde volcken: ’t Is boosheydt over-al, en sielen-moordery, Die maeckt den hemel droef, die maeckt de helle bly. Doet Coromandel aen, en anckert in hun haven, ’t Zijn al, tot Coningh toe, verblinde duyvels slaven; Siet hoe dat Bisnagar, siet hoe Narsinga roockt, Van ’t offeranden-bloedt, van’t wieroock die daer smoockt! Hun tempels zijn ghebouwt op’t hooghste van de rotsen Om naerder soo by Godt, daer mede Godt te trotsen: Den af-grondt is hun plaets, soo hy met donder slaet, Maer neen, sijn goedtheydt groot verduert noch al hun quaet. Hy wacht tot dat ghy sult daer sijnen standaert richten, Hy wacht tot dat ghy sult daer Kercken voor hem stichten; Tot dat ghy over-al daer sijnem Naem verheft, En aen d’af-godery den lesten doodt steeck treft. Gaet dan, ô Helden! Gaet; hy sal uw vloor gheleyden, Hy sal voor uwe komst de herten daer bereyden: Hoe wil’kom sult ghy zijn? het krielter op de ree, Men wenscht u aen het landt, men wenscht u uyt de zee. Ick sie dat Chandegrin met duysent Olyphanten, Met benden ruytery u in-haelt als Ghesanten; De Stadt loopt uyt de stadt, men dringhter menschen doot, Al is hun kennis kleyn, noch is hun liefde groot.
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Maer hoe sal ick de eer van’t Narsinghs Hof vertellen? Den Coningh sal u dicht by sijnen throon doen stellen; En roemen op uw’komst’met dees ghetuyghenis: Dat noyt gheen Son soo schoon, als dese siel-son is. Noch wordt tot kercken bouw u ’s Coninghs macht ghegheven, En schoon ghy hun zijt vremt, met hun als vriendt mooght leven: Ick sie Gods-dienst ghevest, ick sie op Godts Autaer Die offerande staen, die eerst hongh op Calvaer. Hier komt een edel Vrouw, hier komt Sandai ghetreden, Eerst een ontuchtigh hert, maer nu heel kuysche leden, Een Magdaleen van’t Rijck, maer nu een Godts vriendin, Midts liefdes vuylen brandt weeck voor Godts suyver min. Haer groot, en schoon palleys, een moordt-kuyl eerst van sielen, Dat siet men dagh, en nacht van nieuwe Christen krielen: Men leeft daer cloosters wijs door’t voor-beeldt van dees vrouw, Die alle daegh noch leert, op dat-se leeren souw. Al wat met Christo strijdt, dat haelt-se uyt de hoecken, En in een lustigh vyer van beelden, en van boecken Brandt-merckt sy ’s duyvels-dienst, tot aller duyvels spijt, Die door een vrouw alleen soo veel proeyen quijt. Ick sie Nobilibus oock dapper in-ghespannen, Doch eenen is ghenoegh voor duysent der Brachmannen. Hoe bondigh spreeckt den man? hoe vast gaet sijn besluyt! Hy preeckt de waere Wet, en lacht hun valscheydt uyt. Gaet helden, gaet dan aen, want uwe groote vruchten Voor-sie ick in den gheest, ’k sie Satans dienaers vluchten; Den blixem van het Cruys maeckt al de baenen claer, En Asia wordt soo, al oft Europa waer. Wat ooghsten sie ick u noch inden Oosten winnen? Den duyvels-dienst gaet uyt, den Gods-dienst komter binnen: Gaet, preeckt, vermeerdert ’t Rijck van Godt, en Portugael; Een jeverigh woordt snijdt meer als al ’t gheslepen stael.
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368
selected person index
Aa, Pieter van der, 200, 206, 246, 270, 275, 276, 277, 288 Collections of travels (18th c.) Abélard, Pierre (12th c.), 31, 32, 33, 41, 53 Abraham ( Jews), 25, 29, 59, 130, 133, 164, 210, 212-13, 214-16, 222-23, 224-25 Acosta, José de, 147, 148, 191 Naturall & Morall Historie Indies (1572) Adams, Thomas, 113 Sermon [Calicut-motif ] (1615) Ambrose, St. (4th c.), 31, 33, 38, 45, 123, 124 Palladius (Latin trans.) Andersen, Jürgen, 90, 148, 181, 240 Travel narrative (1670) Andrewes, Lancelot, 201 Church Ceremonies, Calicut-motif (1653) Annand, William, 147, 148 Pater Noster, Calicut-motif (1670) Anville, Jean B. Bourgignon de, 297 Compendium Ancient Geography (1791) Apianus, Peter, 74 Cosmographie (1524) Aquinas, Thomas of, 53, 69 Aristotle, 26, 93, 94, 169, 170 Arrian, 28, 30, 272, 286 Athenagoras of Athens, 26 Aubigné, Théodore-Agrippa de, 91-92 Confession Catholique, Calicut-motif (1598) Augustine, St., 26, 45, 68, 69 Avity, Pierre de, 158, 159, 160-61, 206-09, 234-35, 242, 266-67, 286 Cosmography (1614) Bacon, Roger (13th c.), 33, 156 Bailey, Nathaniel, 185 Etymological Dictionary (1756) Balagangadhara, S. N., 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, 26, 81, 118, 119, 120, 314, 315, 316 Baldaeus, Philippus, 172, 219, 220, 236, 25354, 256, 293, 294, 299 Orientalist travel narrative (1672) Barbosa, Duarte, 159, 179, 198-99, 204, 242 Travel narrative (ca. 1516-18) Barlow, Roger 105 Geographia (1540-41) Barros, Joan de, 150, 270, 286 Chronicle (16th c.) Bekker, Balthasar, 136, 137, 138, 253 De Betooverde Wereld, Enlightenment
Belleforest, François de, 98, 156, 167, 168, 174-76, 199, 200, 205, 216, 286 Histoire Universell (1570) Bernier, François, 135, 259, 269, 280, 287 Orientalist travel narrative (1670) Beyrlin, Jakob, 238 Collection of voyages, Reyß Buch (1606) Bèze, Théodore, 91, 121 Mappe-Monde, Calicut-motif (1566) Blaeu, Joan, 171-72 Atlas (1633; 1663) Blome, Richard, 155, 176-77, 180, 286 Cosmography (1683) Blount, Charles, 132, 134-35, 141 Boaistuau, Pierre, 96, 99, 100 Collections of curiosities (1558; 1560) Bockett, John, 126, 127 Gentile divinity demonstrated (1712) Boemus, Johan, 56-60, 75, 83, 96, 114, 121, 155, 156, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 174, 176, 206, 208, 209, 262 Omnium Gentium Mores (1520) Bossewell, John, 109, 110 Workes of Armorie, Calicut-motif (1572) Botero, Giovanni, 286 Travellers Breviat, Cosmography (1601) Bouchet, Jean V., 221-24, 289 Jesuit correspondence (18th c.) Bouhours, Dominique, 203-04, 273 Life of Xavier (1682) Bracciolini, Poggio, 37, 74, 190 Breu, Jörg (the Elder), 86, 87, 88, 167 Idol of Calicut, woodcut (1515) Bridges, John, 111, 112 Sermon, Calicut-motif (1571) Broecke, Pieter van den, 90, 234 Travel narrative (1634) Bruton, William, 244 Travel narrative (1638) Bry, de, 161, 229, 232-33, 238-39, 275 Collections of travels (16th c.) Burnell, Arthur C., 291 Hobson-Jobson (1886) Burnet, Thomas, 134, 135, 136 Appendix on the Brachmans (1693) Burthogge, Richard, 130 Causa Dei, or An Apology for God (1675) Butler, Weeden, 297
selected person index Byssche, Edward, 122, 126 Palladius (1569) Caerden, Paulus van, 235, 294 Travel narrative (1646) Calvin, John, 69, 76, 79, 80, 100, 101 Camerarius, Joachim, 121, 122, 163 Libellus gnomologicus, Palladius (1569) Camões, Luís Vaz de, 291, 298, 331 Os Lusíadas (1572) Cartari, Vincenzo, 114 Imagini de gli Dei (1615) Castanheda, Fernão L. de, 150, 169, 285-86, 293 Chronicle (1551) Chandavarkar, N. G., 313 Indigenous reform (19th c.) Chaucer, Geoffrey, 37, 49 Chevreau, Urbain, 176 Histoire du Monde (1698) Churchyard, Thomas, 112, 286 Churchyardes Choise (1579) Clarke, Samuel, 177, 179 Geographicall Description (1657) Clement of Alexandria, 26, 29, 130, 322 Coenen, Adriaen van, 102, 103, 111 Visboock, Calicut-motif (1577-79) Cohn, Bernard, 2, 6, 283-84, 304 Colebrooke, Henry T., 11, 348 British colonial scholarship (19th c.) Commelin, Isaak, 180, 234-35, 294 Colection of Dutch voyages (1646) Contant d’Orville, André, 291 Encyclopaedic dictionary (1772) Coverdale, Miles, 106 Sprynge of Sectes, Calicut-motif (1537) Créquinière, de la, 270, 299 Conformité des Coutumes (1704) Crouch, Nathaniel, 184, 185 Miracles (1678); Acquisitions (1686) Crull, Jodocus, 180, 181, 182, 243, 289, 296 State of Muscovy (1698); trans. Dellon Cunningham, William, 105 Cosmographical Glasse (1559) Dalhusius, Johannes, 88-89, 149 Caliut-motif (1689) Dames, Mansel L., 198, 292, 293 Book of Barbosa, ed. (1921) Dante, Alighieri, 37, 190
369
Dapper, Olfert, 218-19, 254-57, 275-76, 289, 293, 298 Asia (1672) Dee, John, 93, 94 Aristotle’s Politics (1598) de Jongh, Wollebrandt G., 235-36 Travel narrative (ca. 1625) della Valle, P., 257-58, 270, 273, 287, 298 Travel narrative (1665) Delle, Claude, 161, 229, 275, 292, 298 État Monastique (1699) Dellon, Charles, 182, 243, 295, 296 Voyage (1685) Dirks, N., 5, 23, 262, 283, 285, 291, 297, 298, 304 Dnyanodaya, 312-13 Douglas, James, 151 Errors Regarding Religion (1831) Dow, Alexander, 11, 297-98, 306 Dubois, Jean-A., 9, 12, 225, 253-54, 299 Dunton, John, 138 Students Library (1692) Eden, Richard, 73, 108-09, 150 Calicut-motif (1555; 1577) Egenolf, Christian, 166, 167, 212 Cosmography (1535) Elphinstone, Mountstuart, 12, 348 Erasmus, Desiderius, 36, 56, 69, 75, 89, 90, 99, 169, 180 Eusebius, 26, 27, 198 Fenicio, Jacobo, 197, 221, 253-54 Jesuit scholarship, Hinduism (ca. 1609) Fotherby, Martin, 142, 143, Sermons, Calicut-motif (1608) Francisci, Erasmus, 89, 90, 169, 180 Cosmographical collections (1670; 1668) Franck, Sebastian, 156, 163-67, 211-12, 286 Weltbuch (1534) Fulke, William, 107 Calicut-motif (1579) Gobien, Charles Le, 222, 300 Lettres Édif iantes et Curieuses, ed. Godfrey von Viterbo (12th c.), 42, 43 Pantheon, Collatio corresp. Gordon, Patrick, 274 Geography Anatomiz’d (1693) Gower, John (14th c.), 48 Confession Amantis, Dindimus
370
selected person index
Grant, Charles, 3, 151, 188, 304, 308-09 Observations State of Society (1797) Grose, John Henry, 281-82 Voyage to the East-Indies (1757) Hakluyt, Richard, 154, 159, 161, 164, 229 Principall Navigations (1598-1600) Halhed, Nathaniel, 306 Code of Gentoo Laws (1776) Hall, Joseph, 112-13 Sermon, Calicut-motif (1613) Halyburton, Thomas, 141 Natural Religion insuff icient (1714) Happel, Eberhard, 169, 277-78 Baroque collections (1687-89; 1688) Hazart, Cornelius, 207-09, 253, 289, 320 Jesuit Church History (1667-71) Head, Richard, 182-83 English Rogue (1665) Herbelot de Molainville, 290 Bibliothèque orientale (1697) Herbert of Cherbury, 132-33, 141 De Religione gentilium (1663) Herbert, Thomas, 180, 245, 252, 253, 297 Travel narrative (1634; 1638; 1677) Herr, Michael, 74, 83-85, 93, 163, 279 Itinerario (trans. 1515) Novus orbis (trans. 1534) Heylyn, Peter, 162, 178, 179, 180, 296 Cosmographie (1652) Higden, Ranulph (14th c.), 44, 45, 46 Polychronicon, Collatio Hislop, Alexander, 151 The two Babylons (1862) Holwell, John Z., 11, 306, 308 Hondius, Jodocus, 159, 170, 178, 286 Atlas (1638) Horneck, Anthony, 145-46 Four Tracts, Calicut-motif (1697) Howitt, William, 151 History of Priestcraft (1862) Hugh of St.-Victor (11th c.), 32, 33 Hulsius, Levinus, 229 Collection of voyages (17th c.) Huttichius, Johannes, 84-85, 199, 279 Novus orbis (1520) Huysers, Ary, 295 Account of the East Indies (1792)
Jackson, Thomas, 108 Commentaries, Calicut-motif (1614) Jacob van Maerlant, 44 Speculum Maius, trans. (1285-88) James I, King of England, 105-06, 112 Daemonologie (1597) Jarric, Pierre du, 205 Jesuit history East Indies (1608-14) John of Salisbury, 41, 44 Policraticus (12th c.) John of Trevisa, 45 Jones, William Sir, 6, 11, 74, 130, 304, 306 Josephus Indus, 70, 199 Jovet, Nicolas, 207 Histoire des Religions (1680) Justin Martyr, 26 Keith, George, 125-26, 128 Unversall Grace Gospel, Dindimus (1671) Kettenbach, Heinrich von, 85, 86 Sermon, Calicut-motif (1523) Kircher, Athanasius, 90, 135, 216, 217, 218, 219, 259, 273, 289 China Illustrata (1667) La Boullaye-Le Gouz, François de, 218 Fabulus Brachmanum Narratio (1653) Lafitau, Joseph-François, 170, 208 Jesuit history of discovery (1733) Lambert, Claude F., 223-24, 300 Jesuit ethnography (1749) Lane, F. de la, 223-25 Jesuit correspondence (early 18th c.) Langland, William, 54, 55 Laval, Pyrard de, 241, 257 Discours du Voyage (1611) Le Blanc, Vincent, 90, 242 Voyages Fameux (1648) Lefèvre de la Boderie, Guy, 215 La Galliade (1578) Leo of Naples, 28, 31, 47, 48 Book of Battles; Historia de Preliis Lepusculus, Sebastian, 196 Le Roy, Loys, 93, 94, 170 Aristotle’s Politics (1568) Linschoten, Jan Huyghen van, 90, 161, 172, 180-82, 230-35 Travel narrative (1596) Locke, John, 131
selected person index Lord, Henry, 135, 248-252, 259, 289, 291, 296, 305 A display of two forraigne sects (1630) Lucena, João de, 203 Life of Xavier (1600) Lupton, Donald, 176-77, 286 Emblems of Rarities (1636) Luther, Martin, 77-79, 83-84, 92, 101, 163, 164, 190, 220 Lyall, Alfred, 12 Macer, Jean, 215 Trois Livres (1555) Maffei, Giovanni, 149, 161, 191, 273-74 Historiarum Indicarum, Jesuit (1588) Magistris, Giancinto de, 289 Relation dernière, Jesuit (1663) Mandelslo, Johann A. von, 239-40 Travel narrative (1651) Mandeville, John (ca. 1357), 48, 50, 51-55, 75, 157, 172, 229, 238 Manesson Mallet, Allain, 273 Descriptions de l’Univers (1683) Marnix van St. Aldegonde, 101 Tableau des Différens, Calicut motif (1599) Maurice, Thomas, 215 Indian Antiquities (1793) Mayr, Hans, 71-2 Reisenbericht (ca. 1505) Megasthenes, 28, 170 Mela, Pomponius, 58 Mercator, Gerardus, 159, 170, 178, 286 Atlas (1638) Meriton, George, 177, 183 Description of the World (1671) Methold, William, 90, 243-44, 296 Travels (1626) Millar, Robert, 151 Propagation Christianity (1723) Mill, James, 309 History (1817; 1858) Monier-Williams, Monier, 11, 12 Montalboddo, Fracanzano da, 70 Paesi (1507), 70, 71, 74, 181, 199, 236 Montanus, A., 149, 172-73, 218, 286, 296 Wonderen Van’t Oosten (1651) More, Henry 45, 50, 55, 57, 62, 70, 80, 123, 142, 144, 145, 249, 279 Grand Mystery of Godliness (1660)
371
Moréri, Louis 142, 290-91 Dictionaire (1683; 1703) Müller, Max 9, 164, 253, 307, 311 Münster, Sebastian 83-85, 103-04, 108-10, 114, 155-61, 166-68, 174-76, 180, 197, 199, 204, 212, 214, 215, 279, 296 Cosmographia (1544) Mussard, Pierre, 81, 92, 93, 149, 279 Conformitez des Ceremonies (1667) Neville, Henry, 184 Isle of Pines (1668) Nieuhof, Johan, 217, 236, 256, 257, 269, 270 Zee- en Lant-Reize (1682) Nobili, Roberto de (17th c.), 135, 197 Nunes, Fernão, 198 Chronicle (16th c.) Origen, 25, 26, 29, 30, 31, 129 Orme, Robert, 306 History (1763) Osório da Fonseca, Jerónimo, 200, 201, 27172, 296 Rebus Emanuelis (1571) Ovington, John, 245, 281 Voyage to Surat (1696) Palladius (ca. 375), 30, 31, 33, 38, 45, 46, 48, 121, 122, 123, 124, 126, 128, 144, 163 Peruschi, Giovanni B., 268 Jesuit correspondence (1598) Phipps, Joseph, 128 Vindication of Quakers (1767) Picart, Bernard, 219, 221, 253, 275 Cérémonies peuples idolatres (1723) Pimenta, Niccolò, 203, 221, 288 Jesuit correspondence (1601; 1603) Pinto, Fernão Mendes, 211 Travel narrative (1614) Pires, Tomé 198 Suma Oriental (16th c.) Plato, 26, 44, 130 Pliny, the Elder, 28, 50, 58, 60, 155, 165, 170, 172, 176, 186 Polo, Marco, 44, 180, 181, 210, 212, 229 Travels (13th c.) Polonus, Martinus (1265-8), 45-46 Polychronicon, 44-47 Postel, Guillaume, iii, 210-16, 254-55, 288 Merveilles (ca. 1552) Poynder, John, 151
372
selected person index
Prester John, 51-55 Primaudaye, Pierre de la, 94 Academie Française (1577) pseudo-Callisthenes, 28 Ptolemy, 155, 157, 170 Geographia (2nd c.) Purchas, Samuel, 148, 150-51, 161, 229, 243, 279-81, 296 Voyages; Comparative religion (16th c.) Raicroft, T., 124 Discourse Alexander Dindimus (1668) Ramusio, Giovanni B. 150, 159, 229, 292 Delle Navigatione et Viaggi (1550) Ramus, Petrus, 157 Ranade, Mahadev Govind, 312-13 Indigenous reform (19th c.) Ranulf Higden, 44, 45 Renard le Countrefait, 49 Renart the Foxe. See Renard le Countrefait Richeome, Louis 94, 95, 96 Pantheon Huguenot, Jesuit polemic (1610) Ridder, Frans de, 251, 253, 289 De Beschaemde Christen (1669) Rogerius, Abraham, 135-37, 208, 217, 235, 252-59, 275, 278, 289, 293, 299 Open-Deure Verborgen Heydendom (1651) Roth, Heinrich, 135, 219, 220, 259 Jesuit, Sanskrit grammar (17th c.) Roy, Rammohun, 311-12 Indigenous reform (19th c.) Rubino, Antonio, 197 Jesuit scholarship (17th c.) Said, Edward, 1-2, 13-16, 19-20, 290 Sanson, Guillaume, 156, 176, 177 Introduction Geographie (1681) Schouten, Wouter, 145, 180, 236-38, 294 Travel narrative (1676) Schultzens, Gottfried, 169 Welt-Beschreibung (1656) Scrafton, Luke, 305-06 Scudéry, Madelein de, 139-40 Nouvelles Conversations (1688) Socrates, 26, 140 Solinus, Caius Julius, 58, 170 Sowle, Andrew, 123 Palladius (1683) Spierce, Thomas, 149 Sermons, Calicut-motif (1679)
Stafford, Robert, 162 Geographical Description (1607) Stillingfleet, Edward, 145 Discourse Idolatry, Calicut-motif (1676) Symson, William, 298 Travel narrative (1715) Tatian, 26 Tavernier, Jean B., 260, 270, 278, 287, 298 Travel narrative (1684) Tertullian, 66-67 Thévenot, Jean de, 260, 287 Travel narrative (1684) Thevet, André, 175-76, 216 Cosmographie (1575) Thorie, John, 105, 159 Theatre of the Earth (1599) Tindal, Matthew, 131-32 Toland, John, 116, 132 Letters to Serena (1704) Torsellino, Orazio, 203-04 Life of F. Xavier, Jesuit (1596) Tryon, Thomas, 123 Dialogue Brackmanny, Quaker (1683) Twist, Johan van, 90, 235-37, 294-95 Travel narrative (1645) Vaernewijck, Marcus van, 102 Beroerlicke Tijden (1566-68) Valentijn, François, 294 Varen, Bernhard, 155 Varthema, Ludovico di, 72-75, 82-88, 93, 96, 97, 102-04, 106-10, 113-14, 137, 142, 144-45, 150, 159, 163-69, 171, 174-76, 179, 182-83, 195, 197-98, 201-02, 205-08, 214, 215, 231, 234-35, 237-40, 242, 244 Verck, Johann [Verken], 238 Travel narrative (1612) Vincent de Beauvais, 43-44, 46, 50 Speculum Maius (1240-60) Viret, Pierre, 80, 81, 90, 91 De la Source etc., Calicut-motif (1560) Vitry, Jacques de, 39, 41, 44, 50 Historia Orientalis (13th c.) Vries, Simon de, 293 Curieuse Aenmerckingen (1682) Walsingham, Thomas, 46 Compilation of St. Albans (ca. 1400) Wanley, Nathaniel, 182-83 Wonders of the Little World (1678)
selected person index Ward, William, 308 Waterman, William, 56, 57, 59, 210 Fardle of facions, trans. Boemus (1555) Wilkins, John, 131 Wilson, Horace H., 5, 11, 12, 307 Xavier, Francis, 189-98, 201-15, 221, 243, 248-49, 273 Jesuit correspondence (1545 ea) Yule, Henry, 291 Hobson-Jobson (1886) Ziegenbalg, Bartholomäus, 298 Thirty four conferences (1719)
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