THE GERMAN GITA : THE RECEPTION OF HINDU RELIGIOUS TEXTS WITHIN GERMAN ROMANTICISM (1 790-1830)

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BOSTON UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

Dissertation

THE GERMAN G m : THE RECEPTION OF HINDU RELIGIOUS TEXTS WITHIN GERMAN ROMANTICISM (1 790-1830)

BRADLEY L. HERLING B.A., Wesleyan University, 1992

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2004

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Copyright 2003 by Herling, Bradley L. All rights reserved.

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0 Copyright by BRADLEY L. HERLING 2003

Approved by

First Reader

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Second Reader Malcolm David Eckel, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Religion

Third Reader

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~ f A v o r Cl9-kn) ,

John Clayton, PK'.D. L Professor of Religion; Director, Division of Religious and Theological Studies; Chairman, Department of Religion

-

~l^r(3lson, Ph.D. Professor of Religion

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As I have discovered, one of the great rewards of working on a project of this nature is recalling the influence of great teachers. For their inspiration, I would like to thank Nancy Goodyear, Jim Stone, Stephen Crites, Barbara DeConcini, Warren Frisina, Walter Lowe, Dan Dahlstrom, Larry Cahoone, Robert Neville, Paula Fredriksen, Stanley Rosen, Ivan Strenski, Stephanie Jamieson, Purushottama Bilimoria, Cornelia Klinger, Wesley Wildman, and Peter Hawkins. I owe tremendous gratitude to Krzysztof Michalski, both as a teacher and a benefactor; by including me as a fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences, Prof. Michalski provided me the time and support necessary for the development and completion of much of this project. Most importantly, I want to thank the three men who have been there for me from the very beginning of my degree program and who graciously agreed to see me through to the end by serving on my dissertation committee: Alan Olson, Ray Hart, and David Eckel. And speaking of gracious... I must recognize those members of my personal community who have put up with me as I have done this work: my family (Mom, Dad, my sister, Glenn, Geri, Tom, Tara, Chad, and Justin) and good friends (Erica, Stacey, Leah, David, Bari, Dan, Martyn, Cliff, and Shawn). It is often the case that one person bears the burden more than all the others. This project has been a labor of love, but none of the labor - nor the desire to perform it - would have been sustained without my infinitely greater love for Maria. Finally, this dissertation would never have come to fruition without the sustaining influence of John Clayton. John served as my first reader, and despite his illness, he

offered invaluable support and feedback as I worked on this project. In his last few months, I was very proud to know that John was able to read the final revision of my dissertation and was prepared to approve it, but sadly, he passed away before he was able to inscribe an official signature. With the dean's approval, Stephen Prothero, current chair of the Department of Religious Studies at B.U.(and John's successor) agreed to sign off on behalf of John. I would like to thank Steve for his assistance in this matter, along with Anne Blackburn, who has my deepest respect and gratitude. This dissertation is dedicated to the memory and continuing presence of John Clayton, and to Robert Herling and Leonard "Bud" Lewis, my grandfathers.

THE GERMAN G m : THE RECEPTION OF HINDU RELIGIOUS TEXTS WITHIN GERMAN ROMANTICISM (1 790-1830) (Order No.

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BRADLEY L. HERLING Boston University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2004 Major Professor: John Clayton, Professor of Religion; Director, Division of Religious and Theological Studies; Chairman, Department of Religion ABSTRACT This dissertation investigates the initial reception of the Bhagavad G Z i in German intellectual circles, focusing in particular on the ways that the German Romantics who translated and anthologized the text constituted it as an object of European knowledge. By examining the intellectual debates and textual practices at play in early nineteenth century representations of Indian religious culture, this project contributes to the contemporary debate about Orientalism, which often lacks focus because of inattention to historical context. In addition, by bringing this underinvestigated topic to light, the dissertation adds an important chapter to the history of the study of religion and offers historical perspective on the comparative philosophy of religion. The works of Johann Gottfried Herder, Friedrich Schlegel, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and G.W.F. Hegel provide the matrix of this project. With these writings a German discourse on India took shape. Local intellectual preoccupations guided the Romantic presentation of the Giza, permeated its translations,

and were thus enlisted to accommodate its difference. These preoccupations (grappling with revived Spinozism and pantheism; debates about Classical and Hebraic models of ancient, authoritative texts; and the developing study of comparative linguistics) were thematized first in Herder's experimentations and then gained clarity in the work of the Schlegel brothers. Later exchanges between von Humboldt and Hegel illustrate the way that these preoccupations were reinterpreted after early Romantic enthusiasm had dissipated and conventions of academic discipline had evolved. The dissertation concludes by asserting that Romanticism leaves a legacy wherein broad cultural "myths" can dominate the "logos" of scholarship on India and Hindu religious sources. Reflection on the history of cross-cultural inquiry draws attention to such "myths" and thus enhances the self-consciousness of future scholarship.

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 - THEORETICAL INTRODUCTION

2

Opening

2

The Critique of Orientalism and Its Application to the German Study of Indian Texts

4

A Survey of the Scholarly Literature

12

Theory and Method in the Present Study

16

Putting Examination of Orientalism in Practice: Translation

32

Summary of Chapters

37

CHAPTER 2 - HERDER AND THE EARLY FLOWERS OF INDIA IN GERMANY

43

Introduction: Hermeneutics and Discourse

43

Foundations of Herder's Thought and the Relativization of the Hebrew Orient

46

The Background for Herder's Interpretation of India: French and British Sources

63

The Blossoming of India in Herder's Thought

80

The Philosophical World Surrounding Herder's Git;: Kant, Pantheismusstreif, and Indian Belief Conclusion: Return to Theory

CHAPTER 3 - HERDER GATHERS THE G'T$S FLOWERS Introduction Herder's Theory of Translation Textual Analysis Conclusion

TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued)

CHAPTER 4 - THE DILEMMA OF PANTHEISM IN FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL'S

GTTA Introduction Background for Schlegel's India Enthusiasm

r Sprache Purification of the India Impulse: Incomprehension and ~ b e die Rendering the Gitd in Light of Pantheism Pantheism Discussion Renewed Conclusion: Understanding India Scholarship

CHAPTER 5 - A.W. SCHLEGEL'S "INDIAN SPHINX": THE RIDDLE OF GrTz TRANSLATION Introduction A.W. Schlegel's Early Thought on India and Its Context

Intervening Moments - The Heidelberg Symbolists and Franz Bopp A Textual Museum?: Indische Bibliothek A.W. Schlegel's Protean G'lla

Conclusion: The Study of India and Public Misperceptions

TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued)

CHAPTER 6 - GERMAN ABSORPTION IN THE GilTA: VON HUMBOLDT AND HEGEL Introduction: Theoretical Interlude Wilhelm von Humboldt's Gild Hegel's Orientalist Divergence Hegel's Gita Pantheist Differentials in the L,ecture.s on the Philosophy of Religion Conclusion

CHAPTER 7 - CONCLUSION Reflections and Prospects Progress in Historical Framing The Gilfi's Early Reception and Contemporary Concerns What We Never Had

BIBLIOGRAPHY

CURRICULUM VITAE

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

IB

Von Schlegel, August Wilhelm. Indische Bibliothek. 2 Bade. Bonn: Eduard Weber, 18231830. KA

Schlegel, Friedrich. Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe. 35 Bade. Herausgegeben von Ernst Behler. Paderborn: Schoningh, 1958 fl.

LPR Hegel, G. W.F. Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Volume 11: Determinate Religion. Edited by Peter C. Hodgson. Translated by R.F. Brown, P.C. Hodgson, and J.M. Stewart with the assistance of H.S. Harris. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1 995.

SW (in chapters on Herder) Herder, J.G. Shmtliche Werke. Edited by Bernhard Suphan. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1882 fl. S'W (in chapter on A.W. Schlegel)

Von Schlegel, August Wilhelm. Sdmmtliche Werke. 12 Bade. Herausgegeben von Eduard Booking. Leipzig: Weidmann'sche Buchhandlung, 1847.

URG Von Humboldt, Wilhelm. "'Ueberdie Bhagavad Gita: Mit Bezug auf die Beurtheilung der

Schlegelschen Ausgabe im Pariser Asiatischen Journal." Gesammelte Schriften. Volume V. Edited by Albert Leitzmann. 1906. Reprint, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1968.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS (continued)

UEM Hegel, G.W.F. On the 1;pjsode of the Mahabharata Known by the Name Bhagavad-Gifaby

Wilhelm von Humboldt. Translated by Herbert Herring. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1995.

UUN Von Humboldt, Wilhelm. "Ueher die unter dem Namen Bhagavad- Gild bekannte Episode des

Mahi-Bhdfata [I and Ill.'' Gesammelte Schrijlen. Volume V. Edited by Albert Leitzrnann. 1906. Reprint, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1968.

xii

Indien: das alte Land, das man sucht und nichtfindet.

Johann Gottfried Herder

D@ ein Mensch den andern versteht, ist philosophisch unbegreiflich, wohl aber magisch. Es ist das Geheimnifi der Gottwerdung; die Bliithe des Einen wird Saame fur den andern.

Friedrich Schlegel

CHAPTER 1 - THEORETICAL INTRODUCTION

Opening

On the surface, this dissertation tells a simple story: a text with an illustrious history in its home country makes its way in an exotic foreign land, where it initially encounters misunderstanding and resistance but eventually achieves fame. All good tales of heroic success, however, emphasize the detailed recounting of adventures along the way. Following in these footsteps, this study also focuses on the complex hermeneutical sub-plots embodied in others texts that scholarship has consigned to relative obscurity: the writings through which natives of the farflung land questioned (and showed that they were questioned by) a mysterious stranger. The heroic wanderer in this case is the Bhagavad Gitd, a text that has become one of the most prominent and well-known expressions of Hindu religiosity. The exotic foreign land in question was Germany, where the Gitd first appeared in the waning years of the eighteenth century, drawing the attention and interest of some of the most prominent luminaries of the time, including Johann Gottfried Herder, Friedrich Schlegel, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Given the prominence of these figures in the Western intellectual tradition, a detailed, contextualized study of their responses to the GitZ offers a significant response to the question that has guided this dissertation project: How was the Gitd first constituted as an object of Western knowledge? This question has a broad set of implications for the study of religion and comparative religious thought. The Gitd was introduced to Germany during a period when intellectuals were embroiled in important debates about the nature of philosophical, aesthetic, and religious truth. In the wake of Kant and the Enlightenment, German Romantics and Idealists sought higher ground for their inquiries with an eye towards both the philosophical absolute and cultural

renewal. An almost unprecedented comparativism was a crucial part of these efforts, and German intellectualism invited the Gif6 into the structures of Western knowledge as part of a broad turn to the world beyond the confines of Classical, European understanding. As acquaintance with other cultures grew, intellectual enthusiasm for it was paired with and eventually channeled through academic disciplines within the nascent human sciences. The reception of the Git6 played an important role in these developments, taking its place in a founding moment that would give rise to the philological apprehension of Indian sources and to disciplined study of comparative religion and philosophy. In answering the question "How was the GitZ first constituted as an object of Western knowledge?" with specific reference to the German context, many of the historical foundations of such comparavist inquiry are opened to scrunity. The investigation of this topic naturally has inherent historical interest, but history should also serve the present. The origin under study in this dissertation has no power in and of itself to explain or to proscribe in the present study of religion and comparative religious thought. A constantly renewed effort to examine the history of the study of religion in light of present concerns, however, does have the power to re-assert the most persistent theoretical and methodological questions, often in new or in simply forgotten ways. Even mistakes continue to be instructive, if they are actively engaged in all their complexity and context. This dissertation is designed to contribute to the richness of the dialectic between present efforts in the study of Indian religion, texts, and thought and its past by restating the questions that troubled some of the best minds of the Western tradition as they attempted to constitute a German GitZ. In this introduction, I will lay out the theoretical concerns that prompt the study of this topic and outline the method and terms that will sustain my examination. Recent discussions in the humanities, particularly the debate about "Orientalism," have pointed to the historical moment in question as quite significant. It will be shown that some scholars have attempted to adapt the

concerns raised by the critique of Orientalism both to the study of Indian religion and to the German intellectuals who have contributed to it. But it will also become clear that significant gaps still remain. The topic at hand, the story of the encounter between arguably the most important Hindu religious text and some of the most influential European intellectuals of the modem period, is relatively underexamined. An analysis of the limited body of scholarship that has treated this episode provides an important touchstone for further work, but I will argue that it also has a number of limitations. This critique leads directly to an outline of a methodology that will assist both in gaining historical clarity on the subject and in presenting it such that it speaks to present concerns in the study of religion and religious thought. The introduction concludes with a summary of the following chapters.

The Critique of Orientalism and Its Application to the German Study of Indian Texts The appearance of Edward Said's work Orientalism (1978) was of course a watershed event in the humanities. Its contents and import are well known, so I will not engage in a lengthy survey or reading of the text here. For present purposes, it is perhaps enough to say that Orientalism opened up a set of important questions about the cultural representations of the Asian other both past and present. Said's attempt (inspired by Foucault) to connect scholarly constructs, which had hitherto been accepted as reliable and authoritative, with normative concerns about deployments of racism, power, and domination was perhaps the most challenging aspect of his text.' Said's concern with his present (which was specifically the configuration of power in the Middle East and how it was represented in the West) demanded an incisive theoretical

orientation, and Said borrowed this framework from Nietzsche, Foucault, Gramsci, and from his own literary humanism. This was certainly an interesting and often problematic mdange. Leaving aside theoretical complexities, it is safe to say that Said took up a historical approach to the "discursive formation" that he called "Orientalism." That is, in targeting the mass of statements and practices that constituted Orientalist discourse, Said required of himself a genealogical history that identified the "Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the ~ r i e n t . " ~ Said fully acknowledged that this history was selective and incomplete, despite the breadth implied by discussing both a "Western style" and "the Orient." Orientalism was, by and large, the history of the European (mostly French) encounter with the Islamic world, and Said's political concerns and his area of humanistic expertise prompted this approach. Nevertheless, Said did consistently seek to implicate the rest of Europe in his reconstruction of Orientalist discourse, predominantly by means of brief allusion. German intellectuals were included in this critiqueY3as were the British. As scholars began to work out the implications of Said's lightlydrawn suggestions, it came as no surprise to anyone that British scholarship on Asia was connected with institutions of power and domination: the direct colonial encounter in South Asia provided a rather clear example. In fact, some have suggested that the analysis in Orientalism applies rather directly to the Indian example but does not in fact fit the material Said purported to

'

See Alexander Lyon Macfie, ed., Orientalism: A Reader (New York: New York University Press, 2000) for a helpful compendium of Said's influences, excerpts from the text itself, and a representative collection of responses. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 3. For Said's original disclaimer on the question of other European Orientalisms, see Orientalism, 17-19. Said dismissed criticisms on the lack of attention to the German context in "Orientalism Reconsidered," which appeared as an afterword to later editions of Orientalism, by suggesting that "no one has given" him "any reason ...to have included" it. Orientalism: A Reader, 346.

'

cover: But the implication of German intellectuals in an Orientalist discourse of power represented a more complex historical problem. Unlike the French and British, the Germans had no direct colonial connection with Asia. Here, if Said was right, a different kind of domination must have taken place, a purely intellectual, scholarly form of mastery. Or, more specifically, this form of Orientalist discourse was not connected seamlessly with a practice of political rule in foreign, Asian lands, but rather it contributed to a broad sense of superiority that tacitly supported and enabled such rule through discriminatory and ultimately racist

construction^.^

In Orientalism, this thesis was not worked out in detail with regard to the German context, but scholars in other fields began to take up Said's challenge, particularly within Indology. Indology has a particularly German past; it is a field that was promoted vigorously by German intellectuals in its early stages, and German scholars dominated the study of India throughout the course of the nineteenth century. Three contemporary scholars have been particularly important in adapting Said's critique to the German study of India: Ronald hden, Sheldon Pollack, and Richard King. Inden's treatise Imagining India represents an attempt at theoretical revision of Orientalist historiography with specific reference to the "medieval" history of ~ n d i a Inden . ~ too relies on Foucault and Gramsci (with the notable addition of British historian R.G. Collingwood)

See Thomas R. Trautrnann, Aiyans and British India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 22. In this text Trautrnann provides an excellent critical analysis of Orientalism. Also see David Kopf, "Hermeneutics versus History," in Orientalism: A Reader, 194-207. For a discussion of this view, see Kamakshi P. Murti, India: The Seductive and Seduced 'Other' of German Orientalism (Westport,Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001), 6-7. It should be noted that the application of the term "Orientalist" to German scholars who studied India is initially a misnomer: in the late eighteenth century, the "Orient" referred to the Near East, as is evident in Herder's writings, which will be examined in the following chapters. By Hegel's time, however, "the Orient" had indeed expanded to encompass all of Asia or "the East," which supports the broadened sense of the term promoted by Said. Whether the critique of Orientalism in fact applies to the German encounter with India is of course an open question to which this study attempts to speak, but it is not necessarily foreclosed by the way in which the term "Orient" was used by scholars and intellectuals themselves during the period in question.

in constructing his theoretical frame, which illuminates an essentialist discourse in the traditional depiction of Indian history. Indology for Inden has consistently been accompanied by "the idea that humans and human institutions ...are governed by determinate natures that inhere in them in the same way that they are supposed to inhere in the entitites of the natural world.'y7 India has taken a subordinate place within this quasi-scientific system of the whole of human activity. Following Said, Inden specifies this point through an examination of the rhetorical and stylistic forms in both German and British traditions in intellectualism and scholarship, which commonly saw Indian culture as a realm of imagination, blank abstraction, rampant materialism, and sensual seduction. Based on this analysis, Inden argues that the essential determination of India in the hegemonic accounts of Orientalists have positioned it as an apolitical land of caste and imagination. This approach has had a significant and unfortunate impact: Studies of India have employed the presuppositions and assumptions of empiricism and its supposed opposite, idealism, to constitute their object. Whichever of these positions they have favoured, they can almost always be seen as trying to know and control a human world ordered in systems that consist of mutually exclusive or dichotomously defined but interdependent parts. Those parts and the systems to which they belong are all assumed to be reducible to essences, to stable, objective, and determinate features or natures presumed to underlie the surface phenomena of observation. Such thinking runs counter to a social science that wishes to study people and institutions as agents because it consistently devalues the actions of transient, historical agents. (263) This, then, is the legacy of Orientalism when it came to the study of India: essentializing "representations" (to use Said's term) effectively effaced the agency, historicity, and changeability of the culture and its members. The study of religion and Indology aided and abetted this failure of recognition by means of their essentializing constructions. Sheldon Pollack's essay, "Deep Orientalism? Notes on Sanskrit and Power Beyond the Raj," agrees with Inden that the project of "de-orientalizing" the study of India is "an essential

Ronald Inden, Imagining India (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 2.

precondition for classical Indologyy'and is also "the most exciting development in the field in this generation.yy8In Pollack's case, this enthusiasm gives rise to an analysis of the foundations of German Indology and a discussion of the employment of Indian texts within National Socialism. Thus the essay gives voice to some very deep suspicions about the cultural and political applications of Indology and the study of religion. Pollack also presents an argument for an indepth understanding of L'pre-Orientalisty'forms of domination in the sub-continent, suggesting some skepticism about aspects of the anti-Orientalist critique. Pollack writes, "I have begun to sense that some arguments and perspectives currently dominant could benefit from a more capacious historical view and a more nuanced methodological reflection on what ideological power...might mean for our interpretation of Indian cultures" (74). This investigation was left to other scholars, and perhaps Pollack had something like

',

Richard King's book, Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and 'The Mystic

East

in mind when he made his comments, especially in his call for "a more nuanced

methodological reflection." At the center of King's work is a historical reflection on the construction of "Eastern religions" and their purportedly close ties with "the mystical." King challenges the particularity and Eurocentrism of these categories (along with the notion of "religion" itself), often implicating major figures from the German tradition, including Herder, Hegel, Schelling, Muller, and Otto, in their construction. The result is a skilled interrogation of the way broadly employed categories in the study of religion come to be accepted. This brief account of these works should indicate that Said's initial critique of German Orientalism and the study of India has reached a level of maturity within the study of religion and In Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia, edited by Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 79. The collection in general was an important contribution to the adaptation of Said's critique to the study of India.

comparative religious thought. A number of provocative and problematic issues remain in these texts; detailed criticism, however, can be left for another place. In the present context, it is most relevant to point to Pollack's call for "a more capacious historical view" than that which dominates the critique of Orientalism. Pollack offers interesting suggestions for this more expansive view when it comes to the history of Indian religion, but even he, Inden, and King, who have responded so ably to the gaps in Said's work (investigating German scholarship on India, for example), tend to rely heavily on repeated tropes, quotes, and ideas about the history of the study of India and the history of the study of religion, even as Said's Orientalists repeated idies revues in the face of a passive, voiceless " ~ r i e n t . "One ~ ~ way to address the problems

exposed by these authors is to engage in detailed and contextualized historical work, to go deeper into the history of the discipline than has generally been explored. One might initially object that the point is simply to know enough of the past to avoid its mistakes, and that does not take too much effort. Then we can jettison a body of scholarship that was, it must be admitted, in its childhood. Proponents of this kind of pragmatism in the study of religion urge us to "get over" the theoretical hand-wringing and the obsession with the past - in Ivan Strenski's memorable phrase, to "stop the whining and...move on."" But a discipline cannot

9

Richard King, Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and 'The Mystic East' (London: Routledge, 1999). lo See Michael Richardson, "Enough Said," in Orientalism: A Reader, 2 1 1 . While its heart is in the right place, J.J. Clarke's Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter between Asian and Western Thought (London and New York: Routledge, 1997) is a particularly good example of this phenomenon but with none of the theoretical astuteness on display in the works by Inden, Pollack, and King. Clarke admits that he will not actually engage Orientalist texts and will instead rely on secondary sources (9), which is curious if one wishes to argue in earnest (or with any level of complexity) "that the information flowing Westwards from these cultures [Asian cultures] has provided-an instrument of serious self-questioning and self-renewal, whether for good or ill, an external reference point from which to direct the light of critical inquiry into Western traditions and belief systems, and with which to inspire new possibilities" (6). I ' Ivan Strenski, "Religion, Power, and Final Foucault," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 66, no. 2 (Summer 1998), 365. Strenski himself is of course one of the more important contributors to the investigation of theory and the history of the field; his position is in tension with his own scholarly work, perhaps productively so.

live on pragmatism alone.I2 A richer concept of the history of disciplines like Indology and the study of religion is necessary in order both to establish a foundation and to derive important lessons from the past. When it comes to the discourse on Orientalism and the way it has influenced the history of the study of India, many have discerned that it imposes its own images of West and East, Occident and Orient, Europe and the Other. As critics have often noted, while attempting to restore humanity, agency, and diversity to the Other (raising anew the question of power relations in terms of who is restoring what to whom),I3 the critique of Orientalism has often simultaneously constructed the West as an agentless monolith that is snared in its own impersonal interest. The post-Enlightenment Western scholar (and perhaps even the Western

I' I am influenced by one of Tomoko Masuzawa's concluding comments in her study of Durkheim, Freud, and Muller: "Least of all do I claim to have unearthed from these old texts some newfangled 'tools' ready for immediate use by other research scholars in the field. I reject this utilitarian script because of its blatant positivism. What underlies such a script is a powerful, profoundly delusionary image of who we are as a student of religion, or rather, we as 'Western man'; it deludes us to think as if so-called theory and methods were but a useful if also dangerous set of instruments mediating 'the researcher/subject7on the one hand, and 'the object' on the other, while remaining extrinsic to both, as if, by suspending and canceling this third thing [the historical genealogy of theories and methods], we could hope to deliver both 'the subject' and 'the object' in their virginal innocence." In Search of Dreamtime: The Questfor the Origin of Religion (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), 177. This question was recently raised by Wilhelm Halbfass (in his comments on Gayatri Spivak's work): "this attempt to liberate India from Western 'hegemonic discourses' and to restore its 'epistemic and axiological sovereignty' was itself a continuation and extrapolation of Eurocentric practices: 'This selfabrogation of Eurocentrism is at the same time its ultimate affirmation.'. ..The claim to be able to grant sovereignty and 'agency' to the Indians and to restore their genuine selfhood is no less presumptuous than the attempt to take it away." Wilhelm Halbfass, "Research and Reflection. Responses to My Respondents. I. Beyond Orientalism? Reflections on a Current Theme," in Beyond Orientalism: The Work of Wilhelm Halbfass and its Impact on Indian and Cross-CulturalStudies, edited by Eli Franco and K ~ M Preisendanz (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997)' 2 1. 14 See Said, Orientalism, 3: "My contention is that without examining Orientalism as a discourse one cannot possibly understand the enormously systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manage - and even produce - the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment period. Moreover, so authoritative a position did Orientalism have that I believe no one writing, thinking, or acting on the Orient could do so without taking account of the hitations on thought and action imposed by Orientalism."

'

subject in general) is never really thought to change in its self-fixated autonomy; in fact, selfsameness is reinforced through subterranean and unreflective projections on the other." A number of scholars (including Pollack and King) have seen these tendencies as

historically inaccurate and also less than helpful for pushing the theory and methodology of crosscultural understanding "beyond Orientalism." On one level, the stridency of the anti-Orientalist critique tends to neglect the genuine contributions to understanding that were made by nineteenth century scholars; recognizing these contributions is an important aspect in addressing concerns about power and mi~re~resentation.'~ On a deeper level, I would claim that part of moving "beyond" means moving back into the texts of Orientalists first and foremost in order to gain an accurate historical picture. This kind of careful attention also has some interesting by-products that actually prove to be quite effective in moving "beyond." Deep engagement with Orientalist texts (i.e., rejecting facile and overly general characterizations about them) often shows where they had already begun to confound themselves: the shifts, differentials, surpluses, and excesses of these texts indicates the presence of a disruptive other within supposedly monolithic Western subjectivity. To my mind, this proves to be a much more important moment in re-thinking

Ibid.: "European culture gained strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self." This perspective is taken up by Ashis Nandy. But, as a contrast to Said, Nandy is more thoroughly dialectical in his account; i.e., the projection of the suppressed aspects of Western culture onto India does something to Western subjectivity, beyond simply supporting its solid conception. Nandy quotes one of the "colonizers": '"Very late in the day the present writer woke up to what he believes to be the fact, namely that Indian tradition has been 'in charge' throughout, and that English ideas and English ways, like the English language, have been used for Indian purposes. That, in fact, it is the British who were manipulated, the British who were the silly somnambulists."' Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), 77. 16 See Trautmann, Aryans and British India, 24-25?228: "Because the politics of knowledge fixes its gaze upon power it tends to leave in darkness whatever falls outside the power relation the world, in short. It tends to view knowledge as if it confronts a world that is infinitely plastic and of which anything may be said and to treat knowledge as if it were shaped by power alone. When Said puts all question of the content of Orientalism and its value - its relation to the world it claims to represent - outside the bounds he draws for his analysis of Orientalism, it seems to me that such an outcome is guaranteed." Also see Francesco Gabrieli, "Apology for Orientalism," in Orientalism: A Reader, 80-85.

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Orientalism (and ourselves, who stand in this legacy) than making it out to be a Goliath to our theoretical o avid." By putting what is called Orientalism into proper historical perspective, we avoid reconstituting it as overpowering and simultaneously resist reconstituting ourselves as its latter-day authorities presiding over a new form of intellectual superiority.

A Survey of the Scholarly Literature

The critique of Orientalism to which Said's work gave rise was obviously a turning point for reflecting on the European intellectual encounter with Asia and, in particular, with India. To employ a distinction utilized by Kaushik Bagchi, we can easily discuss scholarly works on this area of inquiry that are "pre-Orientalism" as opposed to those that arrived L'post-~rientalism.'~'8 The influence of Said, however, has not always been conducive to progress in careful, contextualized understanding of Orientalist texts. While my research on the German reception of the GitC has in many ways been prompted by the "post-Orientalism" discussions as they apply to concerns within my own discipline, comparative philosophy of religion within the context of religious studies, it has required an openness to a broad, interdisciplinary spectrum of sources, including texts that have often been left behind after the appearance of Said. Despite Said's re-orientation of issues surrounding the German reception of India, earlier works do have much to contribute to the topic at hand. Raymond Schwab's work, The Oriental Renaissance: Europe's Rediscove~yof India and the East 1680-1880 (1950), is a glittering tour

" This point has been made by Strenski with regard to the scholar of religion and by Trautrnann with regard to the Sanskrit scholar (Strenski, "Religion, Power, and Final Foucault," 355-360 and Trautmann, Aryans and British India, 19). Both question the feedback loop instituted by contemporary critique of the scholar's power to "construct" the object of inquiry: this power is itself "constructed" as overwhelmingly influencial such that our only hope is relentless (but ultimately hopeless) self-reflexivity and criticism. This process is authorized by the prior over-estimation of scholarly influence. l 8 Kaushik Bagchi, "Orientalism without Colonialism? Three Nineteenth-Century German Indologists and India," Ph.D. diss., The Ohio State University, 1996,97.

deforce without which Said would likely never have written Orientalism (Said wrote a preface for the English translation in 1984 in which he admits as much). While the work is eclectic in its presentation and unstable in its method, it provides an important survey of the German and French reception of India during the nineteenth century. Helmuth von Glasenapp (in Das

Indienbild dentscher Denker, 1960), Walter Liefer (India and the Germans, 1971) and Dietrnar Rothermund (The German Intellectual Questfor India, 1986) provide relatively uncritical but still useful surveys of German India reception. The most important texts on the topic that precede the Orientalism debate (and yet presage it), however, come from the 1960's. Renk Gerard's L'Orient

et la pensee romantique allemande ( 1 963), A. Leslie Willson's A Mythical Image: The Ideal of India in German Romanticism (1964), Ursula Oppenberg's Quellenstudien zu Friedrich Schlegels ~bersetzun~en ans dem Sanskrit (1965), and Ernst Behler's article "Das Indienbild der deutschen Romantik" (1968) are grounded in the literary and philosophical study of German Romanticism. Because of the careful scholarship that went into these works (which is often orphaned by high theory and polemic in "post-Orientalist" works), these texts will have an important role to play in the pages to come. Examples of works that treat the topic after Said can be multiplied. In addition to the works by Inden, Pollack, and King, other studies have appeared recently that, in varying degrees, receive their impulse from Said's stance, including Ludwig Amman's Ostliche Spiegel:

Ansichten von Orient im Zeitalter seiner Entdeckung durch den deutschen Leser 1800-1850 (1989), Asoka de Zoysa's Blutriinstige Braminen am heiligen Strome: Indienbilder in der

deustchen Unterhaltungsliteraturzwischen Aufklarung und Restauration (1997), Suzanne Zantop's Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770-1870 (1997), and Kamakshi P. Murti's India: The Seductive and Seduced "Other of German "

Orientalism (2001). Still other works measure the success of the anti-Orientalist critique in

relation to specific figures and their concepts of India, including Anil Bhatti's article on August Wilhelm Schlegel (1997)' Gary Handwerk's article on Friedrich Schlegel(1998), and Stuart J. Harten's dissertation on Hegel (1985). Though India and Europe (originally published in 1981 and revised for English publication in 1986) did not account for Said, Wilhelm Halbfass' work should also be mentioned in this category of scholarly literature because of its highly sophisticated appraisal of the German-Indian encounter; in the Beyond Orientalism collection (1997), Halbfass did specifically engage Said's critique. In addition to the voluminous general scholarship on figures who participated in the early German reception and interpretation of Indian religion, the body of literature described above provides the specific foundation for the work at hand. Much can be learned from these sources, and yet only rarely do they touch upon the details of interpretive encounter when it comes to the reception of individual South Asian sources. The existing scholarship tends to focus on statements and pronouncements, which are taken to exhaust the German intellectual representation of Indian culture. While many of these works treat the early German interpretation of Indian sources briefly, none of them, for example, examines the scholarly practices surrounding the reception of the Bhagavad Gitci in detail. Only a handful of texts have actually focused on this significant issue. First, it should be mentioned that Ursula Oppenberg7swork Quellenstudien zu Friedrich Schlegels Ubersetzungen aus dern Sanskrit does provide the groundwork for the kind of detailed

attention I have in mind. As a part of Ernst Behler's massive effort to assemble a critical edition of Schlegel's writings, Oppenberg produced a philologically precise study that includes a rendering of excerpts from the GitZ and thus lays bare the technicalities of translation practice for detailed analysis. Oppenberg herself did not present this analysis, and scholarship apparently did not follow up on her work; I hope to close this gap in my chapter on Schlegel. In addition to

Oppenberg's text, a pair of works focus on the discussion of the Giti that arose after August Wilhelm Schlegel's Latin translation of the text in 1823. This discussion involved Wilhelm von Humboldt and G.W.F. Hegel. Helmut Gipper's article "Understanding as a Process of Linguistic Approximation: The Discussion between August Wilhelm von Schlegel, S.A. Langlois, Wilhelm von Humboldt and G.W.F. Hegel on the Translation of the Bhagavadgita and the Concept of 'Yoga'" (1986) is an important gesture in understanding the technical details that played a fundamental role in this debate and thus in the constitution of the Git6 as an object of European knowledge. In a chapter of her book The Exotic: A Decadent Quest, Dorothy M . Figueira attempts to respond to this gesture and does offer important insight into the background knowledge that infused the technical discussion around crucial terms in the text. But apart from brief references and discussions in the body of literature surveyed above, these three works by Oppenberg, Gipper, and Figueira seem to constitute the scholarship on the specific topic taken up in this dissertation.19 These works also provide foundations for the comprehensive and detailed account that is called for by the topic. Figueira's efforts in particular provide an important point of departure because they come closest to giving the account that is necessary. Nevertheless, Figueira's theoretical and methodological limitations are also quite instructive, and my reaction to them has led directly to decisions about the methodology and terms of this study.

'

I should mention that an Italian scholar, Saverio Marchignoli, has published an interesting article on the web that examines the potentially canonical status of the GitZ among the figures in question. See "The Bhagavadgit~ias a Forgotten Source for European Aesthetics: The Notions of 'Symbol' and 'Philosophical Poem' in Herder and Humboldt" at www.unibo.it/transculturalitv/files/36%20n1arcliienoli.PDF. I have also become aware that Marchignoli is preparing a book-length manuscript that develops this thesis, but this work has not yet appeared in print.

Theory and Method in the Present Study Over the last ten years, Figueira has published an impressive set of works that provides a bridge between pre-Saidian and post-Saidian investigation of German Orientalist scholarship and its representation of India.?' Her work takes quite seriously the individual production and biography of nineteenth century figures in the German tradition who had intellectual commerce with India. This emphasis is in keeping with her training in comparative literature, and it follows in the footsteps of scholars like Willson, Behler, and Oppenberg. But Figueira's approach takes on a deeper layer of theoretical sophistication by employing Gadamerian hermeneutics, which reads the European reception of India as a complex negotiation of "self-~nderstandin~."~' Hermeneutics offers an important rejoinder to Foucault-inspired interpreters like Said, who reduce the individual intellectual to his or her participation in an all-encompassing, anonymous discourse of power and domination (6-7). Nevertheless, Figueira claims that Gadamerian hermeneutics does need modification to offer a "socially and culturally based" analysis (1 1); thus she attempts to have her treatments "weave back and forth between the scholarlylliterary and the social text" in order to lend the inquiry "more historical specificity" (14). Figueira is right to highlight hermeneutics as an important mode of reflecting on crosscultural encounter, both past and present. She is also correct to point to the limitations of hermeneutics, and the call for a more contextualized version of the theory represents an important caveat. But the way that this contextualization is meant to happen remains unclarified in

'' Translating the Orient: The Reception of ~akuntalain Nineteenth-Century Europe (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991); The Exotic: A Decadent Quest (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994); "The Authority of an Absent Text: The Veda, Upangas, Upavedas, and Upnekhata in European Thought," in Authority, Anxiety, and Canon: Essays in Vedic Interpretation, edited by Laurie L. Patton (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994). Figueira has also written many articles on the subject, and has recently published Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority through Myths of Identity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002). ' Figueira, The Exotic, 11 .

Figueira's earlier work, and this vagueness is apparent in her positioning of hermeneutics in relation to post-modem forms of analysis. Figueira argues that intellectual activity should be seen in social and cultural context, but not as Foucault and Said have described this nexus - or so it seems. She writes, "in trying to understand the Other, they [Romantic writers] ...appropriate it and colonize it, or at least create the conditions for its colonization. The result, as Foucault rightly asserts, is that power and knowledge become intertwined" (13). From this kind of statement, it is hard to know how much of Foucault's version of context Figueira wants. Emphasis on individual production may be the antidote to Foucault's fatalism, but this modification to Foucault closely approximates the perspective advocated in Orientalism: Foucault believes that in general the individual text or author counts for very little; empirically, in the case of Orientalism (and perhaps nowhere else) I find this not to be so. Accordingly my analyses employ close textual readings whose goal is to reveal the dialectic between individual text or writer and the complex collective formation to which his work is a contribution.** For the moment leaving aside the intricacies of mixing Foucault and literary humanism, Figueira's own version of this theoretical hybrid is not so distant from that advocated by Said himself. And yet Figueira is always at great pains to make the distinction between her approach and that presented by Said and his followers. In her many writings, for example, she has virulently attacked post-modem critiques of Orientalism, post-colonialism, and the multiculturalist ethos,23but this could lead one to suspect that she protests too much: perhaps

-- Orientalism, 23-24. * In her review essay "The Profits of Postcolonialism," for example, Figueira argues that post-colonialism Â¥?Â

(which brings together "multicultural" and "post-modem" tendencies) is a self-serving, truthless, elitist discourse which has little or no meaning for the "legitimate minorities" of the "Third-World": "The identitarian politics of postcolonial criticism has become so crucial to the project that a veritable Sanskritizationof theory has occurred within North American and Commonwealth institutions...Whites cannot be on the margin, but can get close to it and engage in participatory identification with a ThirdWorld writer...It is, indeed, ironic that the discourse of decenteredness makes possible the direct transfer of the Third-World elites to American elite positions and that the discourse of marginality serves to center

such extreme forms of backlash attempt to cover over an ambivalence about and implication in the discourse under attack. It is clearly the politicized content of recent scholarship that represents a problem (the "grand narratives of 'gender, race, and nation7ideology") and not basic theoretical forms of analysis and critique. Figueira does indeed invoke her version of hermeneutics to suggest that the Orientalist encounter with India may have some political content, but it also embodies a "rich history of extra-political

motivation^."^^ Because of her denigration

of "high theory," however, the "extra-political7'and the border between it and discourses of power are never precisely located. Figueira's diatribes against contemporary theory shed light on why this is the case: such virulence is also heaped on the Orientalists she studies.25 As she argues in The Exotic, the Orientalist treatment of the Indian other is genealogically related to and homologous with contemporary theoretical perspectives (jargon, obscurantism, esotericism, and nihilism, all mixed with privilege); thus, the history of this encounter is deployed in service of contemporary polemic, and not in the interest of more closely approximating the truth of the tradition or performing an "effective history" that assists in a more truthful version of contemporary cross-cultural encounter (as hermeneutics would dictate, if it were properly integrated). In short, we might suspect that Figueira7stheoretical will to polemic leads to a selective and sometimes derogatory mediation of subjectivity, context, discourse, and present concern in her reading of German Orientalism.

these theorists in remunerative posts in the metropolitan center." "The Profits of Poscolonialism," Comparative Literature 52 (Summer 2000): 252-253. 24 The Exotic, 7. 25 A kind of unwarranted ressentiment seems to fuse this connection, as illustrated in Translating the Orient: "The luxury of 'finding oneself in any culture other than one's own presupposes certain prerogatives. There is a freedom of play involved in such aesthetic or spiritual journeys. The unreflective vanity of the metaphorical traveler allows him figuratively, to journey away from home and still take with him the unacknowleged assumptions, not only of class and race, but ultimately of a secure social identity" (5-6). And then we find a note which makes the effacement of the past in favor of present polemics clear: "The phenomenon still exists today: Few, if any, members of American minority groups seek their gurus in India. The continued relevance of this phenomenon justifies our present study" (213).

In her most recent work, Aryans, Jews, and Brahmins, however, Figueira offers indications of a broader, less slanted herrneneutic. In investigating the development and influence of the Aryan hypothesis in scholarship on India, Figueira describes the overriding narrative that authorizes such scholarship as a "myth."26 Identifying the myths that are active in intellectual work has considerable explanatory power: myths are inherently social and political, but they also admit of individual creativity and innovation; they can have a powerful legitimating function, circumscribing a proper field of inquiry, but they also evolve, depending on historical circumstance. In short, myth represents a mediation of discourse, subjectivity, and power in the description of intellectual activity. Figueira's use of this concept as a heuristic device assists in clearing up some of the theoretical ambiguities that were present in her earlier work. But problems persist, particularly around the question of the political in scholarship and its boundaries. Along with Bruce Lincoln, I would argue that myth must be placed in dialectic with its age-old partner logos in a full investigation of scholarly discourse. Lincoln's Theorizing is particularly helpful in discerning the importance Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and ~cholarshi~' of both myth and logos in the Orientalist past. Logos is exactly the device Figueira needs in order to discern the appearance of the "extra-political" in scholarship, for even the most patently ideological of intellectuals employs method, evidence, and argumentation in his or her work. While myths often seem to be overpowering in the history of the study of religion (and in Orientalist discourse), it is important to acknowledge that logos has its own, independent status in scholarship, often in the service of myths, but sometimes disrupting them. - --

Brahmins, 3: "Myth functions as a narrative which possesses credibility and authority and whose charters are manipulated to elicit sentiments which, in turn, construct social formations or legitimize cahnged social and political conditions. A myth can be restructured to activate 'latent' symbolic meanings that play upon the sentiments of affinity to effect political reform." 27 Bruce Lincoln, Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). 26 Aryans, Jews. and

Further elucidation of these terms will establish the framework within which I propose to treat the subject matter at hand. In his text on the German Romantic reception of Indian sources, Willson describes his understanding of myth in the following way: Myth "is at once an external reality and the resonance of the internal vicissitudes of man," according to Jerome S. Bruner, and it is in this seeming contradictory sense that the term mythical image is used here. The phrase does not mean the image of myth but the image of India as a source of inspiration to the poetic imagination of the German Romanticist and, in that role, as a basis for ideal reality...The mythical image formed by the Romanticist in his view of India and its culture is unreal, but it is true in his ideal world and in his imaginative projection of that world through his art. It is a dynamic picture which the Romanticist sought to transform into reality through a unification of the wisdoms and a reconciliation of the cultures of the Orient and the West. A restatement of Western values embossed with the stamp of the mythical image, in the symbolism of a new mythology, meant a deeper understanding of man's place in the cosmos.28

In this definition Willson takes the myth of Romanticism on its own terms; i.e., if we are discussing the "myth of Romanticism," the " o f in the phrase signifies both an objective and subjective genitive in Willson's account. As we will see, the Romantics themselves were deeply invested in a re-mythologization whereby the revival of an archaic, symbolic ideality would result in cultural transformation. Consequently, Willson's use of the concept is limited to the boundaries of the German Romantic program when it comes to the apprehension of India. The historical shift to scholarly, technical apprehension of India falls outside the boundaries of the "mythical image" and disrupts it, marking the end of an era (and the limit of Willson's project). Lincoln's work suggests, however, that the notion of a myth can have an application to intellectual activity that is simultaneously more encompassing and more targeted. In Theorizing Myth, Lincoln offers a genealogy of the concept from Homer to the present, charting its various

- --- - - -

--

A. Leslie Willson, A Mythical Image: The Ideal of India in German Romanticism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1964), viii-ix.

fortunes through the intellectual history of the West. In the course of his analysis, Lincoln offers the following observations towards the definition of myth: First, the term "myth," like the Greek tnythos from which it derives, regularly denotes a style of narrative discourse and specific instances thereof. Second, whenever someone calls something a "myth," powerful - and highly consequential - assertions are being made about its relative level of validity and authority vis-a-vis other sorts of discourse. Such assertions, moreover, can be strongly positive (e.g., myth = "primordial truth" or "sacred story"), strongly negative (myth = "lie" or "obsolete worldview"), or something in between (as in the mildly indulgent view that myth = "pleasant diversion," "poetic fancy," or "story for ~hildren")?~ Inspired by functionalist and structuralist accounts of myth, which emphasize the taxonomic ordering of social meaning, and also by cultural critics like Gramsci, Barthes, and Bourdieu, the power and narrativity of myth gain clarity for Lincoln in the following definition: "I am inclined to argue that when a taxonomy is encoded in mythic form, the narrative packages a specific, contingent system of discrimination in a particularly attractive and memorable form. What is more, it naturalizes and legitimates it. Myth, then, is not just taxonomy, but ideology in narrative form" (147)As Lincoln illustrates, the German Romantics restored myth as a positive concept, recalling Willson's understanding described above. But the argument has a reflexive component that pushes well beyond Willson's understanding. Theorizing Myth is "as much concerned with the mythologization of theory as...with the theorization of myth" (xi); scholarship on myth (and perhaps in general) itself has been guided by myths. It is framed by "ideology in narrative form": "Students of myth seem particularly given to producing mythic, that is, ideological, narratives, perhaps because the stories they tell about storytelling reflect back on them as storytellers themselves" (209). That is not to say, according to Lincoln, that scholarship is all ideology, for myth is countered by its opposite, logos, which serves "as a check on ideological manipulation"

(208).~' But in intellectual practice myth and logos are in constant tension and dialectic: "This check is important, even though it is never entirely effective, since critics also have their ideological interests and themselves must be subject to scrutiny and critique" (ibid.).3'

In this study, my own use of these terms will build on the analysis provided by Lincoln and will hopefully add to his account. Two guiding principles can be presented from the outset. On the one hand, myth tends toward public enunciation. As Lincoln himself suggests, "narrative packages a specific, contingent system of discrimination in a particularly attractive and memorable form." Figueira's analysis is on target here, to the extent that myths most often are directed towards a public appeal and are thus broadly political. The myths of scholarship on India among German Romantics were in fact designed to appeal to public and cultural conceptions, often marking the intersection with the broader discourse of power about which Said

Theorizing Myth, ix. according to Lincoln, the countervailing logos in scholarship is embodied in the footnotes, which "graphically differentiate scholarly prose from that of other genres." Lincoln's perspective is worth citing in full: "Ideally, footnotes mark the fact that a scholarly text is not a discourse of free invention, wherein ideological interests escape all controls. Rather, they serve as a visible reminder that scholarly texts result from a dialectic encounter between an interested inquirer, a body of evidence, and a community of other competent and interested researchers, past, present, and future. All who participate are committed to a sustained engagement with the data and also with one another, their engagements being mediated by shared principles of theory and method, which - like the evidence and its interpretation - are subject to renegotiation in the space of their texts and conversations. Scholarship implies and depends upon debate wherein one experiences the scrutiny and criticism of others who are able to point to data and invoke established principles of method" (208). Taking Lincoln himself as an example, we can specify his vision of logos-driven footnotes: in footnotes Lincoln not only cites the members of the scholarly community who offer dialogical partnership but also the data that supports his readings. This data, which comes out of primary sources written in Greek, Latin, Old Norse, and Sanskrit (inter alia), shows that part of Lincoln's articular logos is in fact philology, which for him offers an extra-ideological avenue of approach. Figueira's account is clearly aligned with Lincoln (it draws upon Lincoln's earlier work), but Lincoln's attention to logos clearly differentiates it from the analysis offered in Aryans, Jews, and Brahmins. "History" seems to play the role of logos for Figueira: "History as opposed to myth is shaped by the system in which it is developed. As a combination of a social place, 'scientific' practices, and writing, the historical operation takes limited evidence and seeks to unify it into coherence" (4). While this concept of history is provocative, it seems to require logos ("'scientific' practices") as a necessary third part of the equation (i.e., myth - history - logos). But Figueira does not specifically thematize the logos-driven practices in intellectual discourse; thus history (and everything else a given scholar or intellectual does) is unavoidably consumed by the political content of scholarly myths. 30 In general,

wrote.32 On the other hand, because of its technical nature, scholarly logos tends to be significant for a relatively small group - or even just for the individual scholar, who may be alone in his or her area of expertise. The esotericism of logos in scholarship generally requires framing myths for justification - the stories one tells to one's public, one's institutions, one's colleagues, and even to oneself in order to justify and elucidate work which is for most out of reach. Such stories position technical work, and they can also infuse and distort it; the construction of the "Aryan myth" during the nineteenth century is a good example of a myth that takes over careful logos, but the myth is at the same time buoyed by the authority attributed to and derived from scholarly logos. Nevertheless, as Lincoln suggests, logos can intervene in broader myths and provide important forms of adjustment, proving that it does have an independent basis and function." Myth and logos become the two poles that establish the scope or spectrum of scholarly discourse, from story to technique, from public to private; scholarship can generally be described as myth and logos in dialectical tension. Lincoln's analysis suggests that myth in the German reception of Indian sources does not terminate and then give way to the logos of Indology (as Willson would have it). Rather, myth and logos are in a constant dialectic in intellectual activity, and we can discern historically differentiated and contextually precise interpretive locations by getting a fix on the specific relations that obtain between these two aspects of intellectual - -

-

-

Said himself wrote in 1975, "Mythic language is discourse, that is, it cannot be anything but systematic; one does not really make discourse at will, not statements in it, without first belonging - in some cases unconsciously, but at any rate involuntarily - to the ideology and the institutions that guarantee its existence." "Shattered Myths," in Orientalism: A Reader, 100. 33 Once again, it is important to call Said's version of Foucault to mind here - as a contrast. As many have noted, Said's perspective on the potentially salubrious effects of technical scholarship is hamstrung by polernic. As al-'Azm has written, Said engages in "constant inveighing against Cultural-Academic Orientalism for having categorized, classified, tabulated, codified, indexed, schematized, reduced, and dissected the Orient (and hence for having distorted its reality and disfigured its particular mode of being)." Sadik Jalal al-'Azm, "Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse," in Orientalism: A Reader, 221. On the one hand, these logos-driven techniques can be seen as feeding a myth that "disciplines" India and constitutes it as part of the Western "archive." On the other, such practices have the potential to intervene on mythic representations that are widely held. 32

practice. This study will consider a set of such locations: the hermeneutical footprints of the Gita in the German intellectual tradition. The reception of this text and its constitution as an object of European knowledge are caught in a complex and evolving set of relations between scholarly myth and logos, and this project aims to specify the important early moments in this process. In order to see the full relationship between scholarly myth and logos, however, I would argue that it is necessary to introduce other conceptual elements in order to differentiate the process of reception even further. It should be clear by this point that I take the intellectual community as a mediator between the poles of myth (which tends towards publicity) and logos (which tends towards an insider knowledge maintained by relatively few, or even by one), In my view, the individual scholar or intellectual has the power to add to and craft this mediation, but only under the aegis of guiding terms and concerns that are significant to local discussions and debates. In my investigation of the reception of the Git6 by German intellectuals, I have found that this community tended to orbit around particular, sometimes singular concepts that assumed a prominent role in the interpretation of the Indian source. To put it colorfully, intellectuals often depend on a conceptual currency or intellectual totem, especially when they encounter material that is previously unaccounted for. That is, there are watchwords (we might even call them cliches) that mark local intellectual concern, assist in bringing the data into focus, and organize discussions, debates, and textual practices. I would claim that identifying these preoccupations goes a long way towards understanding how and why Orientalism positioned otherness (embodied, for example, in South Asian texts) in the way it did. My understanding of these middle terms in intellectual discourse (between the poles of myth and logos) has been enhanced by the work of two important theorists: Ludwik Fleck and Hans-Georg Gadamer. Ludwik Fleck, first of all, was a scientist who presented his observations on the social nature of scientific knowledge in a slim but elegant volume, Genesis and Development of a

Scientific Fact ( 1 935). While the main subject of the work is the process by which European medical science developed a vaccine for syphilis (Fleck was himself an immunologist), Fleck clearly wished to make a broader contribution to the sociology of knowledge in his work. Anticipating the more famous framework promoted by Thomas Kuhn, the text argues that facts are the product of intellectual communities and that such communities dictate the correctness of facts through a collective agreement.34 Achieving agreement is complex, but it always has at its center what Fleck calls a "conception" (for example, that syphilis was a "carnal scourge," a mark of sin which resided in the very symbolic essence of humanity: in the blood). From such "conceptions," more rigid "structures" develop: Evidence conforms to conceptions just as often as conceptions conform to evidence. After all, conceptions are not logical systems, no matter how much they aspire to that status. They are stylized units which either develop or atrophy just as they are or merge with their proofs into others. Analogously to social structures, every age has its own dominant conceptions as well as remnants of past ones and rudiments of those of the future. It is one of the most important tasks in comparative epistemology to find out how conceptions and hazy ideas pass from one thought style to another, how they emerge as spontaneously generated pre-ideas, and how they are preserved as enduring, rigid structures [Gebilde] owing to a kind of harmony of illusions. (28) Fleck rejects the suggestion that a truthful picture of the world can be generated through a logical purification of language (an argument put forth by the Vienna school of analytical philosophy, which he specifically targets in his analysis). Rather, an intellectual community, even of scientists, is guided by dominant conception^'^ or "stylized units" that lead to selections of evidence and interpretive options. "Hazy ideas" seemingly give rise to "pre-ideas" that communities of intellectuals in turn solidify through experimentation and method. Such 34

Fleck calls such communities "thought collectives." "If we defme 'thought collective' as a community of persons mutually exchanging ideas or maintaining intellectual interaction, we willfind by implication that it also provides the special 'carrier'for the historical development of anyfield of thought, as well as for the given stock of knowledge and level of culture. This we have designated thought style" (39). In this

solidifications (Gebilde)become dominant in judgments about the content of knowledge, and thus facts are generated. Naturally one wonders about the status of empirical reality in this scheme, for it seems that science must make consistent contact with a world of real things, which is governed by persistent and objective laws. According to Fleck, there is a "passive" element to knowledge that constantly constrains suppositions generated by the intellectual community, and this passive element is precisely the intractable nature of the hard reality science confronts. But the mission of scientific apprehension (the "active" element) is a product of the community and its traditions, which serve to organize a seemingly arbitrary and resistant world. The object of science, then, is to maximize the presence of "passive" elements (contact with the objective world) in an account while minimizing the amount of "caprice" through "active" constraint. As Fleck writes, "This is how afact arises. At first there is a signal of resistance in the chaotic initial thinking, then a

definite thought constraint, and finally aform to be directlyperceived. A fact always occurs in the context of the history of thought and is always the result of a definite thought style" (93). The result is the solid structure (Gebilde)that organizes relevant thought about a given problem. While innovations and solidifications of these frameworks may be products of an individual's work, the collective always guides the individual researcher in his or her investigation, according to Fleck, and once results are achieved, the community once again takes hold. Thoughts pass from one individual to another, each time a little transformed, for each individual can attach to them somewhat different associations. Strictly speaking, the receiver never understands the thought exactly in the way that the transmitter intended it to be understood. After a series of such encounters, practically nothing is left of the original content. Whose thought is it that continues to circulate? (109) --

definition Fleck displays knowledge of developments in the sociology of knowledge, particularly as it was initiated by figures such as Weber and Mannheim.

Fleck continues: Words which formerly were simple terms become slogans; sentences which once were simple statements become calls to battle. This completely alters their sociocognitive value. They no longer influence the mind through their logical meaning - indeed, they often act against it - but rather they acquire a magical power and exert a mental influence simply by being used. As an example, one might consider the effect of terms such as 'materialism' or 'atheism,' which in some countries at once discredit their proponents but in others function as essential passwords of acceptability. This magical power of slogans, with 'vitalism7 in biology, 'specificity' in immunology, and 'bacterial transformation' in bacteriology, clearly extends to the very depth of specialist research. (ibid.) Solid explanatory structures have a "socio-cognitive" surplus when they become the "currency" of debate and discussion within intellectual communities. These over-developed conceptions come to dominate communication at all of its multiple layers, directly impacting the organization of institutional power within the "thought collective." The originators or tenders of a transformative conception then become members of an "esoteric circle" who "initiate" members of more expansive "exoteric circles" into the style of thought required to uphold the central conception. But the insider group simultaneously requires the support of the exoteric groups and even the "public" in order to ground and secure support for its work (105). In turn, an appeal must be made to ever-wider audiences, starting with "journal science," which is designed for the smallest group. Because it is often at the forefront of knowledge, running against what is accepted and yet necessarily using its terms, "journal science" is "fragmentary," "personal," and "provisional" (1 13-1 19); it is the mode of representing knowledge that is closest to purely independent logos. As "journal science" is accepted, it is systematized as "handbook science," which is the most prominent bearer of dominant conceptions and methods (1 19-120). At the broadest level is "popular knowledge," which is the most non-specific (and most imprecise) form of appeal but ironically enough is also presented with the greatest degree of "certainty, simplicity, [and] vividness" (1 15). The nature of "popular knowledge" is simply in keeping with the

intellectual's natural desire to bring his or her results to others in order to benefit them, but Fleck insists that "feJvery communication and, indeed, all nomenclature tends to make any item of knowledge more exoteric andpopular" (1 14).

While there is much todiscuss in Fleck's provocative account of intellectual communities and their epistemologies, I would like to isolate the elements that I find most helpful in adding to an investigation of scholarly myth and logos in Orientalist discourse and its positioning of knowledge about Indian textual sources. Fleck draws our attention to a range of phenomena that represents a mediation between scholarly myth and logos, namely "pre-ideas," "conceptions," "structures" (Gebilde),and "styles." As Fleck illustrates, these phenomena, which are so central to the activity of an intellectual community, represent a differentiation of the middle range between myths (broader public stories which frame the construction of knowledge) and logos (methods or arguments that relatively few are able to marshal in order to establish accepted facts). But, as Fleck also shows, these modalities are tied to the process by which an intellectual community constructs both knowledge and its own identity. One of the most compelling features of this account, in my view, is the way in which certain "pre-ideas" and "conceptions" develop into "structures" and "styles," which in turn become the dominant modalities in the interpretation of worldly reality. In the complex interplay between myth and logos within the intellectual community, these modalities are often marked by watchwords, slogans, formulae, or cliches. The present study will investigate this process in the German reception of Indian sources; Fleck's terms offer considerable nuance to an attempt to understand the way in which the GitZ was constituted as an object of European knowledge. Nevertheless, there is certainly reason to wonder about whether Fleck's model can be applied to humanistic disciplines. As he admits, the "styles" of natural scientists and students of the humanities differ dramatically (108). While in all intellectual communities a "well-organized

collective harbors a quantity of knowledge far exceeding the capacity of any one individual," in "the humanities.. .the organization is less developed" (42). This seems to suggest that the individual intellectual in the humanities has more room to interpret and more power to innovate than his or her colleagues in the natural sciences. This is an appropriate specification of the theory, especially given the often overwhelming quality that Fleck attributes to his "thought collective." But this warning should not be taken to an extreme. Even the decidedly original thinkers who are the subject of this dissertation had to make contact with "conceptions," "structures," and "styles" that were part of their local intellectual context in order to be understood, especially as they attempted to interpret a new and difficult text from India. Gadamer's notion of a hermeneutical "prejudice" is helpful in integrating Fleck's observations within the humanistic disciplines because it takes account of their broader interpretive latitude. Prejudice, as Gadamer understands it, is a necessary aspect of productive hermeneutics, the fundamental art of the human sciences. In his historical reflections, Gadamer argues that the Enlightenment introduced a "prejudice against prejudice,"35 particularly those "pre-judgments" that arose as a product of accepted, traditional authority. Critics of the Enlightenment (including some of the figures investigated in this dissertation) resisted this tendency by asserting the value of tradition and interpretive engagement with it. Heidegger is also important in Gadamer's argument: prejudices are necessary and ineradicable component of the hermeneutical circle: A person who is trying to understand a text is always projecting. He projects a meaning for the text as a whole as soon as some initial meaning emerges in the text. Again, the initial meaning emerges only because he is reading the text with particular expecations in regard to a certain meaning. Working out this foreprojection, which is constantly revised in terms of what emerges as he penetrates into the meaning, is understanding what is there. (267) -

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, Second Revised Edition, translation by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G.Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1994), 270.

35

In the human sciences, which are most often devoted to the interpretation of texts, only working out such "pre-judgments" (Vor-urteilen) and determining whether they are in fact fulfilled can approximate "objectivity" (ibid.). The difference between the model of the natural sciences and that of the human sciences is that the former privileges an objective stance, aiming to eliminate prejudice and proceeding according a narrative of "research and progress" (283). The human sciences, in contrast, can only start from prejudice in the working out of an interpretive circle; in addition, work in the human sciences generally does not cancel out or overcome the error of previous findings. Instead, "Our historical consciousness is always filled with a variety of voices in which the echo of the past is heard. Only in the multifariousness of such voices does it exist: this constitutes the nature of the tradition in which we want to share and have a part" (284). Insight about history or a text can just as easily be gained from an early interpreter as from the most recent article on the subject. As Fleck suggests, an individual interpreter in the human sciences may have more latitude in responding to data than an individual natural scientist, but the fact that an individual takes part in a tradition reinforces the communal aspect of hermeneutics. According to Gadamer, individuals may be subject to "arbitrary fancies and the limitations imposed by imperceptible habits of thought" (266); such "distractions.. .originate in the interpreter himself' (267). But productive prejudices are imparted by an authoritative version of the tradition, "the teacher, the superior, [or] the expert" who is active in education and training (280). Thus, recalling Fleck, Gadamer's prejudices have an inherently communal nature and embrace "conceptions," "styles," and "structures" imparted by the authority of an intellectual community, especially through its modes of training. By entering into the tradition through this authoritative prejudice, one also binds oneself to a community both past and present that takes the tradition as its concern.

Through one's involvement in the act of interpretation, and thus through active involvement with this community, prejudices are fixed, deployed, and continually adjusted in pursuit of understanding. As a number of scholars have recently argued (including Figueria), this model may in fact be quite helpful in correctly ascertaining the Orientalist past. If the work of intellectual communities has been framed on one side by myths, or public stories, and on the other by logos, or technical method and argument, the guiding impulse has been prejudices that were derived from within traditional modes of intellectual inquiry. As those texts that were decisively nontraditional (i.e., non-Western) appeared, "conceptions," "styles," and "structures" were forced to adjust: new bapre-ideas17 were applied, often derived from broad myths; new conceptions developed, and so on. In investigating the reception of Indian sources among their early German interpeters, Gadamer's work suggests that we should be alert to the deployment of prejudices and their adjustment as resistances appear and as further information broadens the herrneneutical circle. According to my understanding of the way the intellectual community in question worked, however, Gadamer's optimism about the adjustability of prejudices should be tempered. While a Gadamerian reading of Orientalism offers an important corrective to the monolithic constraint on this discourse imposed by Foucaultian, Saidian readings, prejudices often persist despite a wider set of interpretive options and challenges to accepted authorities. Gadamer sees such persistence as simply non-hermeneutical, for prejudice (in its positive sense) is inherently open; "fancies," "habits," and "distractions" are simply subjective failures to take up the traditional, communal project of interpretation of the tradition. Subjective idiosyncracies may indeed place obstacles before progress in understanding; however, Gadamer does not seem to acknowledge the potential for an intellectual community to enforce prejudices that have the aura

of both truth and openness but actually foreclose progress in interpretation. This is a particularly difficult and widespread problem in the history of cross-cultural interpretation; the foreign text has often forced a retrenchment of interpretive prejudice, revealing communally reinforced limitations in one tradition's ability to make adjustments in the effort to understand another. One very effective point made by Said (and those who have followed his work in Indology and in the study of religion) is the following: progress in understanding has been hampered by prejudices that have remarkable staying power. Such failures cannot simply be laid at the feet of the individual scholar's failure to engage; as Fleck's analysis suggests, they must be seen in the context of both the intellectual community and its traditional modes of constructing knowledge. Thus, in my examination of the reception of the Gitfi,I will be applying a model that integrates Fleck and Gadamer in order to mark progress, stasis, and failure in the initial German effort to account for Indian textual sources. As a consequence, this project aims to speak to an important theoretical problem in hermeneutics: Gadamer makes us aware of both the necessity and potential of interpretive prejudices, but what limits the scope of the hermeneutical circle, rendering prejudices less able to open onto effective understanding?

Putting Examination of Orientalism in Practice: Translation One last feature of the method that will be employed in this project needs elucidation. I have argued above that the examination of German scholarship on India, which has recently been inflected by Said's critique of Orientalism, continues to display both theoretical and historical problems. Theory and history come together in the following observation: Said guided scholars towards a critique of representations that were embodied primarily in statements about India and Indian religions. Whether Orientalist characterizations of Asian cultures could ever be accurate a fraught question within this line of critique: in Said's version of Foucault, "enunciations"

(Foucault's term) within the discursive formation called Orientalism only had reference to themselves and never to a real, empirical Orient. The intellectualized, labyrinthine tenor of this approach, I would argue, is the product of a methodological decision. Said and his followers have generally focused on scholarly and literary texts in which metaphors and propositions generated broad representations of nonWestern cultures. In such texts, Orientalists summarized and concentrated their understanding of non-Western sources, which were gradually built into an authoritative stockpile in European centers of learning, that is, an "archive," to use another important term from Foucault. Because Said's brand of analysis focuses on the surface of the discourse, the "enunciations," it is quite natural for it to suppose that Orientalism was simply about a mass of such statements that had no contact with the concreteness of the other culture. There is inevitably a form of encounter, however, in the textual practices through which the foreign text is constituted such that it is possible to archive it in the first place - and thereby to make statements about the culture to which it belongs. Attention to these textual practices offers a richer historical account of the Orientalist past. It also disrupts the theoretical premise that the Orient offered no intellectual resistance to the insular, monolithic European discourse that represented and positioned it. Given the Foucaultian impulse behind the critique of Orientalism, it is surprising that the "micro-physics" of its textual practice are rarely explored.36 A full discussion of the practices of textual reception among the European scholars who first encountered Asian sources would take account of a wide range of phenomena, including the nature of the relationship between the native informant (e.g., thepandit) and the European intellectuals who learned, translated, and published

' The "micro-physics" of practice is a concept that guides Foucault's analysis in Discipline and Punish:

The Birth of the Prison (New York: Routledge, 1979), 29-30. My sense of "textual practices" has been helpfully supplemented by Anne M. Blackburn, Buddhist Learning and Textual Practice in EighteenthCentwy Lankan Monastic Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

non-Western texts; the process by which non-Western texts were procured and transported to European centers of learning; and the method through which these texts were identified and catalogued so as to be recognizable to the European interpreter. The present study will only touch on these important issues, locating them with specific regard to the German context for the reception of the Gitii and raising them as important questions for further research. In this project, the treatment of textual practices will remain in much closer proximity to the surface of the European archive, and yet it takes the first step in reconstructing the mediations through which South Asian sources passed as they made their way into the European episteme: it focuses on specific techniques that German intellectuals employed in their effort to translate the Gitii. Translation theory is a wide and ever-growing field, and I dare not attempt to engage it as a whole in this context. Nevertheless, some general observations about translation practice are necessary in order to frame my analysis. First, I would argue that translation is inherently interpretive and thus it is not so distant from ~ommentary.~'It may be suggested that human language has a deep syntactic or semantic structure, and thus direct and correct translation is entirely feasib~e.~'But in my view, constructions of foundational syntax and semantics are far too underdetermined to account for the more complex manifestations of human language like literary or religious texts. Such texts involve a complexity of contextual reference that another language simply cannot fully convey; translation always hovers around a core of untranslatability at the boundary of linguistic and cultural differen~e.~' 37 See Gadamer, Truth and Method, 384: "every translation is at the same time an interpretation. We can even say that the translation is the culmination of the interpretation that the translator has made of the words given him." Gadamer's hermeneutical account of translation guides my understanding of it, up to a limit that is discussed below. 38 Such a view is in accordance with a Chomskyan view of language. Also see Anna Wierzbicka, Semantics, Culture, and Cognition: Universal Human Concepts in Culture-Specific Configurations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). ' I take this to be an important point made in Benjamin's famous essay "The Task of the Translator." See The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti (London and New York: Routledge, 2000)'

This is not to say that we cannot make distinctions between translations that approximate original sources better in the target language from those that do not. In general, a philological, logos-driven approach, which is based on a detailed, technical apprehension of an original language and culture yields a better translation than that which is not so based. Nevertheless, various factors impinge on the logos of translation, giving it its interpretive quality. The translation ethos itself shifts in different contexts, and the philological approach itself is clearly contingent on other factors that support its authority to varying degrees. That is to say, technical translation needs support (perhaps a mythic rationale, in the sense of myth outlined above) in order to rationalize its legitimacy; we can easily discern other approaches to translation that

In addition, gamer equal authority because of their emphasis on, for instance, acce~sibility.~~ even if a certain agreement on the authority of philological and technical logos is achieved, this does not render translation immune from the myths, conceptions, and styles that infuse the intellectual activity of a group of scholars. And yet, further, even with the greatest level of technical specificity, some concepts and grammatical structures simply cannot be conveyed in another language. They require explanations and annotations, and this once again introduces the interpretive, commentarial element into translation practice.

15-25. Foucault outlined the same perspective but was suspicious of its theological underpinnings (which are perhaps correctly diagnosed in the case of Benjamin): "Commentary rests on the postulate that speech (parole) is an act of 'translation', that it has the dangerous privilege images have of showing while concealing, and that it can be substituted for itself indefinitely in the open series of discursive repetitions; in short, it rests on a psychologistic interpretation of language that shows the stigmatas of historical origin. This is an exegesis, which listens, through the prohibitions, the symbols, the concrete images, through the whole apparatus of Revelation, to the Word of God, ever secret, every beyond itself. For years we have been commenting on the language of our culture from the very point where for centuries we had awaited in vain for the decision of the Word." Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology ofMedical Perception, translated by A. M. Sheridan (London: Routledge, 1991), xvii. 40 Herder's Nachdichtungen of Indian sources (free, poetic translations which aim to capture the spirit of the original and convey it to a German audience) are examples of an alternative, authoritative ethos. Such a rationale for translation of Indian sources is hardly a feature of the by-gone past; it remains dominant in popular translations of foundational Asian texts in the contemporary milieu.

Because it is interpretive, translation is a wide-open opportunity for misrepresentation, particularly if technical authority cloaks a lack of expertise in cultural and linguistic context. But it is not productive to read the translations of the past simply in order to castigate them for being incorrect. Rather, translations have played a crucial role in communities of intellectual practice, grounding systems of representations that constitute another culture, and thus distortions in these renderings should be seen in broader context. From a Gadamerian perspective, a translation is a prejudicial structure that probes the original text with its questions. This process takes place within a particular sphere of construction, however, which limits and determines the level of its efficacy: the construction of the GitC as an object for German knowledge in translations indicates rather precisely the limits placed on the interpretation of India within European intellectual discourse, indicating the juncture where (theoretically) Gadamer's account benefits from that offered by Fleck. Translation within Orientalist discourse presents an interesting challenge to the optimism of Gadamer's productive prejudices: renderings of non-westem texts were generally presented as finished and definitive, often because they squared with the broad myths and specific conceptions, styles, and structures that constituted fact when it came to Indian culture. To be historically and descriptively accurate, we must admit that translations more often define rather than question; prejudicial translations have the potential to inhibit understanding because they have an aura of completeness, technicality, and authority. In order to discern both the progress and limits of past inquiry, I have argued for a proper contextualization of German scholarship on India. A significant part of contextualization involves close attention to the translation of the Git6 itself. Thus I will be discussing the development and views of various translators (Herder, F. Schlegel, A.W. Schlegel, von Humboldt) so that the ways in which scholarly myths, conceptions, styles, and structures have affected translation practice become clear. This examination is possible only through a close

comparison with the Sanskrit text, which obviously presented serious but interesting problems for these

translator^.^'

A critique of the enunciations, statements, and representations that early

scholars of India presented does not generally take account of these kinds of d i f f i ~ u l t i e srather, ;~~ it emphasizes the ease with which the other culture was positioned. But close attention to translation practice indicates that otherness is not so easily effaced, even if a text that is so far from home becomes hardly recognizable to itself.

Summary of Chapters This dissertation will trace the beginnings of a relatively new chapter in the Bhagavad Gita's biography: its appearance in Europe, and in Germany in particular. This focus has guided the selection of figures and contexts to be treated, and it cuts a swath through the dominant intellectual traditions in Germany from 1790 to 1830.

In Chapter 2,1 will begin my treatment with an examination of the context for Johann Gottfried Herder's reception of the GitE. In Herder's views, we will discern the origins of the "mythical image" described by Willson: in general, Herder framed his understanding of India

41

On this front, my approach is indebted to the method employed in Figueira's first book, Translating the Orient. In it, Figueira presents an extremely detailed analysis of various European translations of ~5kuntala'sfifth act, delineating the variety of distortions that occur in these renderings. Such distortions are often owed to a lack of Sanskritic knowledge, but they also arise "from various assumptions in the translator's horizon of expectation" (175). Figueira specifies her conclusion and illustrates the way careful analysis of translation both complicates and enriches our understanding of this history: "Sanskrit linguistic idiosyncracies, supporting the specific image of man found in Hinduism, presented further difficulties for the European translator. By conflicting radically with the linguistic and cultural presuppositions of the host language, they engendered curious misreadings. Concepts represented through language, such as abstraction, stress on the universal, absence of individuation, disregard for the particular, expression through the negative, and a fluid sense of syntactic order were interpreted pessimistically by the European translators. They misread into such concepts a fatal vision of destiny and man's impotence vis i vis the cosmos" (ibid.). While I do not believe that such linguistic phenomena led simply to a fatalistic reading of Indian culture and religion, Figueira's point is well taken, and I hope to extend upon it in the pages that follow. 42 A notable exception is found in Tejaswini Niranjana, Siting Translation: History, Post-structuralism, and the Colonial Context (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).

according to a myth developed by Voltaire, namely that India represented the innocent "cradle of humanity." This view became more complex, however, as Herder became better acquainted with Indian sources and the work of early British Orientalists like Alexander Dow. While its innocent primacy is left intact, Herder came to isolate the particular identity of Indian religious thought (in keeping with his theory of the Volk). Herder presented important views on the nature of transmigration but, most importantly, drew India into a local discussion of utmost importance in the German context: the Pantheismusstreit. In Chapter 3 , I turn to Herder's excerpted Nachdichtungen out of the Git2 in 1792 (which are derived in turn from Wilkins' English translation of the work). The presentation of these excerpts was framed by poetic and philosophical concerns: on the one hand, Herder designed his poetic reconstructions according to a blueprint provided by Hebraic and Classical sources in order to enhance the primordial antiquity of the Indian source; on the other, Herder's philosophical experimentation with pantheism, palingenesis, and vitalism expressed itself in the translations. I argue that Herder's construction of the GitC was formative of German discourse on India: based on his research on British sources, Herder provided the conceptions and styles that would eventually be refined into herrneneutical structures of understanding and thus contributed a set of prejudices that initially guided local discussions and constructions of the text.

In Chapter 4 , I will turn to the all-important contributions of Friedrich Schlegel. I will begin with a thorough contextualization of Schlegel's early formulation of the Romantic project and his specific conceptions of India within that framework. Schlegel offered an important innovation on Herder's perspective, arguing that Indian religion represents a particular source for the spiritual renewal of Europe, which had become desiccated by a limited Enlightenment vision. But mid-career Schlegel overturned his own style of thought in the examination of Indian r Sprache und Weisheit der Indier ( 1 808), which I will sources: in the pages of ~ b e die

investigate in some depth, he attempted to develop conceptions that would describe and position South Asian language, and he assembled a more complex interpretive structure for India religious thought, and yet it still orbited around the stigmatic and over-determined conception, "pantheism." Next, I turn to the excerpted GTta translations themselves, which were appended to Uber die Sprache. It will be shown that Schlegel's translation practice is directly inflected by his myth of India and by the conceptions and structures developed in ~ b edie r Sprache, The last part of the chapter illustrates the way in which pantheism was reintroduced into local discussion and debate (with Fichte and Schelling), now tinted by its contact with Indian sources. Chapter 5 treats the contributions of Friedrich's brother, August Wilhelm Schlegel. Again, I will investigate the context for the elder Schlegel's reception of India, arguing that he took up a more philological approach to its sources from the beginning, suggesting a further refinement of the German style of thought in the reception of Indian sources. After Friedrich left the study of India behind, August Wilhelm hesitated and then pursued it with vigor, eventually occupying the first chair of Indology in Germany (Bonn, 1818). Particularly through an investigation of the Indische Bibliothek, the journal founded and edited by Schlegel during the 1820's, a clear example of the dialectic between scholarly myth and logos comes to the fore. The chapter also isolates the new style of thought that dominates Schlegel's apprehension of India, dictated by Bopp's contributions to the technical, scientific approach to language. A classical, philological model guided Schlegel's Latin translation of the GTt6, which appeared in 1823 and was the first translation of the text from original sources in Europe. I engage in careful analysis of the translation, with particular attention to semantic circumlocutions around crucial concepts in the text: dhartna, yoga, and brahman. The chapter concludes with a brief reflection on the theological underpinnings of Schlegel's reception of India in order to establish the way in which a definitive scholarly myth of the study of Indian religion had finally found firm ground.

Chapter 6 is an investigation of the discussion to which Schlegel's translation gave rise. The semantic openness of the translation produced an important set of reactions that reinforced the importance of the technical study of language in the German reception of the Gitii. The plural nature of Schlegel's presentation offered the opportunity for sympathetic discussion and refinement. This opening was explored by Wilhelm von Humboldt, who offered extensive treatments of Schlegel's translation and the text itself in the mid-1820's. The complexity of this discussion also invited the return of old myths and conceptions within the dramatic and imposing prejudicial structures of German intellectualism. This response was represented by Hegel, who reviewed recent work on the Gitti and offered important lectures on Indian religion during the 1820's. Hegel's negative reception of India is well known in the literature on Orientalism, and his representations are indeed worthy of critique. Nevertheless, I will argue that it is necessary to contextualize Hegel's conceptions within local discussions, debates, and concerns, and, in the end, the shifts and surpluses in Hegel's India discourse represent a difficulty with otherness and perhaps a reaffirmation of the Gadamerian framework in the examination of Europe's Orientalist past. The concluding chapter will attend to the two main concerns that guide this dissertation project. On the one hand, it will address and attempt to offer an answer to the historical question posited above: How was the Bhagavad Git6 constituted as an object of European knowledge? On the other hand, this project is also designed to speak to present concerns in the study of religion and in comparative religious thought. It will therefore attend to a set of issues that continue to occupy scholars in the field, namely Romanticism and the study of religion, the status of the text in the study of religion, and the relation of Indian thought and Western philosophy.

I would like to conclude this opening chapter by confessing the limitations of this study. Because I have chosen to focus on the sites where the GitZ received detailed attention, I have

been forced to leave aside a number of areas that are of obvious importance in the German reception of India during the period in question. While it will be necessary to mark specific points of contact between the German discourse and British sources in particular (because the British so often mediated German reception of the Gita), I will not treat the contributions of British and French intellectuals in extensive detail. I do hope to open issues that deserve closer attention in this vast field while maintaining the focus on the German context. The particular focus on the reception of the Git6 by German intellectuals has led me to omit key figures. The traveller, politician, and literary figure Georg Forster, who translated Sakiintala out of William Jones' English in 1791, is not treated, though this work produced much

of the public enthusiasm that fuelled the German investigation of India.43 Goethe was one of the figures who were impacted by this text, but I have not investigated his interpretation of Indian culture in any detail. I will only briefly touch upon figures like Windischmann, Creuzer, and Gorres, though they were extremely important in the post-Schlegelian interpretation of India. Two extremely prominent intellectuals are also not treated because of my chosen focus: Schelling and Schopenhauer. If there were another chapter added to my account charting the later trajectory of German views, it would likely be devoted to these figures. The other chapter that I miss in my own presentation of this history would have been called "South Asian Receptions and Rejoinders." In many ways, this dissertation serves as a propaedeutic to two lines of inquiry that I hope to undertake in the future. First, it clears some of the hermeneutical ground for constructive, comparative work in religious thought, with a particular emphasis on cornrnentarial traditions in religio-philosophical inquiry. Second, from a historical perspective, the way in which the specifically German Orientalist conceptualizations and constructions studied here feed back in the South Asian context remains to be explored. It

would be interesting to know where and how the early Romantic conceptions analyzed in this dissertation were received and responded to during the course of the nineteenth century in India. Specifically, this invites inquiry into the authority of the Gita in modem India, which in turn urges comparison with a genealogy of the ore-modern authority of the text. Given the scope of the present work, which has already opened an extensive inquiry that may try the patience of even the most sympathetic reader, these concerns need to be left for another day.

43

See Figueira's study, Translating the Orient, for an account of this translation and its influence.

CHAPTER 2 - HERDER AND THE EARLY FLOWERS OF INDIA IN GERMANY

Introduction: Hermeneutics and Discourse

If we approach the process by which the GitZ was constituted as an object of German knowledge according to a hermeneutical model, then Johann Gottfried Herder set the interpretive circle in motion. In 1792, Herder became the first intellectual in the German-speaking world to produce translations from the text, and these selections appeared within the frame of prejudices about Indian culture, religion, and philosophy that were subject to testing and adjustment. Wilhelm Halbfass has interpreted Herder's contribution within this hermeneutical framework, focusing on its dialogical nature: Herder was and remained a Christian and a European. Considering this, he exhibited a very remarkable willingness to accept Indian thought and Indian ways of life in their own right, to accede to what he understood as being the Hindu viewpoint, and to look critically at himself as a Christian and European through, so to speak, Indian eyes...The picture Herder painted of India was essentially positive and glorifying, and anticipated in some ways the Romantic understanding of India. His programmatic pluralism and his openness to the diversity of human nature and human cultures did not, however, permit him to accord the Indians any kind of privileged position or meet them with an exclusive interest.' In examining the course of Herder's thought, we discover that this intellectual was indeed a product of his time: Herder was a pastor and rector in the Lutheran church, an ambivalent beneficiary of the Enlightenment, a philosophical contemporary of Kant, a founding member (with his friend Goethe) of the literary Sturm und Drang movement, and a universalist historian of a particularly German character. An open field of "pre-judgmentsyy(Vorurtheilen, prejudices) about India, which were posited and often readjusted as more information and different avenues of approach became available, were embedded in this context. Herder's own theoretical position

I

Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Philosophical Understanding (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1990), 72.

on cultural difference did in fact lead him to a kind of self-scrutiny, which was seemingly an essential aspect of his brand of cross-cultural intepretation and understanding. Some of Herder's judgments about India, however, survived him over the long term and awaited intepretation and adjustment by much later generations; in fact, their aura has momentary flickers even in our day. Willson characterizes the "mythical image" that comprised Herder's judgments: [Tlhe Romanticist perceived the mythical image in their perusal of the essays by Herder, of his poems.. ., and of the articles and disquisitions aroused through a universal interest in India. The chief contributor to the development of this image, and to its enshrinement as the epitome of Romantic longing, was Herder. India was an ancient land watered by a holy river, the Ganges, the river of Paradise, which came to symbolize for the Romanticists the idyllic existence they saw reflected in Hindu culture. A protean spirit served and guarded by a superior class of holy men, implanted into every denizen of that land a simplicity and peace of soul which made for balanced virtues and ease of living. It was a land where poetry permeated every aspect of human wisdom, creating a sublime harmony of all knowledge. Here philosophy was one with religion, and a Universal Spirit was immanent in every creature and in every creation of nature. A mellow kinship pervaded all things. A marvelous magic was the companion of ordinary reality. Here, truly, was aesthetic perfection, and here one could find perfect contentment. This was the kernel of the mythical image of ~ n d i a . ~ Herder's myth of India became an idde repes in his own thought and in the thought of those who would follow him. While the scholarly tradition would ultimately shatter it, Herder's myth proved virtually intractible for his own intellectual community; it was a prejudice with remarkable staying power. For such prejudices to be productive in the herrneneutical sense, they must be open to dialogical scrutiny. As Said and his followers have attempted to show, however, most often the prejudices remained closed in the Orientalist tradition, closed by the functioning of power in the discourses of disciplined knowledge.3 The debate between these two approaches to the Orientalist past can be recharted according to a description of the dialectic between "mythic image" (which does often have a

'Willson, A Mythical Image, 70.

political, power-driven element) and logos (which potentially drives understanding but is easily coopted by grander narratives of cultural meaning and power, i.e., myths). In addition, I have advocated a closer scrutiny of the process whereby knowledge comes to fruition within intellectual communities. In Herder's case, the broad myth of Indian culture (as paradise) served to dislocate the primacy of the Hebrew narrative, offering a broad rationale for the importance of Volk- and Weltliteratur. This program, in turn, was part of an even broader effort to counter the

Enlightenment by offering a mythological, aesthetic basis for cultural truth. Resistance to the Enlightenment in this manner led quite naturally to the predominance of myth in Herder's theory of Indian religion and culture, recalling the reflexive move in Bruce Lincoln's analysis. But logos was not entirely diminished. Herder advocated an anthropological empiricism in his cross-cultural research and simultaneously argued for a systematic and philological approach to literary artifacts. Through careful examination of cultural conditions and products, it was possible to describe the essential logic that characterized a culture. In many of his texts, Herder attempted to apply these methods to the Indian context and was able to present a coherent account based on what was perceived to be the relevant evidence.

In the midst of the push and pull between myth and logos, we find the specific acts that constituted Herder's contribution to knowledge about Indian culture. For Herder, understanding India began as almost purely mythic; the conception of India as paradise led rather directly to a certain selection and interpretation of the empirical evidence. Based on a small but consistently expanding body of British sources, Herder also developed general conceptions of transmigration and brahminical religion. Most interestingly, Herder drew Indian religious thought into an important discussion that was itself in the process of development in the German milieu by identifying foundational Hindu belief as pantheistic. In all of these cases, Herder worked with a

See Orientalism, 116-119.

limited body of evidence, developing conceptions out of it often in accordance with his own cultural framework. These conceptions were barely more than proto-ideas, and yet they would provide the vocabulary for the development of definitive styles and structures of thought within this intellectual community. From the Gadamerian perspective, Herder outlined a set of prejudices that would constitute later questioning about India and Indian sources, including the Gitci. The question is whether these prejudices can be seen in a productive hermeneutical sense, or whether, to use Figueira's phrase, they led Herder and those who followed him down a "garden path" that foreclosed an openness to correction. At the very least, a careful examination of Herder's texts reveals the limits that the late eighteenth century European community of discourse on India imposed on the interpretive potential of his prejudices. This analysis will effectively frame the treatment of Herder's rendering of the text, which will appear in the next chapter.

Foundations of Herder's Thought and the Relativization of the Hebrew Orient As is well known, Herder marks a vital transition between the German Enlightenment project and Romanticism via his important role in the Sturm und Drang movement.' Herder studied under both Kant and Hamann in Konigsberg during the 1760's after switching his course of study from medicine to theology. He was impressed by Kant, but Clark makes an important point: Kant's later contributions were to make him famous, but during this period he was but an obscure regional professor working through problems in Rationalist thought and exploring his interest in

Figueira, The Exotic, 11. Sturm und Drang rejected the rigidity of Classicism and emphasized the distinct feeling, expression, and experience associated with the literary text. Herder spearheaded this proto-Romantic movement along with his protege and friend Goethe, whom he met in 1771. This chapter will not chart Herder's up-and-down relationship with Goethe in detail; for extensive treatments of this topic, see Clark's biography Herder: His Life and Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955).

cosmology and natural s ~ i e n c e Hamann .~ is less known today,' but "the Magus of the North" (as he became known) was likely a more electric personality: "In him were combined a strong sensualism, an acid wit, and an unquestioning, albeit extremely individualistic, religious faith."' Hamann had encountered the French and English Enlightenment and was in fact studying in London when he had a powerful conversion experience (in 1758). After this episode, he took up arms against Enlightenment thinking, forging a strongly fideist position against Enlightenment reason. Further, he was also to inspire his readers with a concept of creation and language that wove them together, for creation was in a sense God's "hieroglyphics," and language, though confused and jumbled, was originally a divine creation (49). This emphasis on "signs" and language was the ground for a potent theory: human thought can only occur in language; it is inextricable from human culture and ~ n d e r s t a n d i n ~In. ~addition, Hamann wrote famously on aesthetics (Aesthetica in nuce, a part of Kreuzzuge eines Philologen, 1762), which connected the reading of nature with artistic creativity. When it came to matters of ultimate truth, Hamann's fideist position led to an emphasis on felt intuition or Gefuhk the artist followed these feelings in an interpretation and manipulation of "natural language" and thus engaged in a kind of communion with the divine.''

Clark, 44-45.

'For an account of Hamann's many admirers (including Goethe, Schelling, Friedrich Schlegel, Hegel, and Kierkegaard), see Frederick C. Beiser, The Fate of Reason (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 16-17. Also see the classic account of Hamann's thought, Isaiah Berlin, The Magus of the North, in Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder, edited by Henry Hardy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000) and the recent work by Oswald Bayer, Vernunft ist Sprache: Hamanns Metakritik Kants (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2002). Clark, 48. See Heidegger's borrowing from one of Hamam's letters in his late essay "Language": '"If I were as eloquent as Demosthenes I would yet have to do nothing more than repeat a single word three times: reason is language, logos. I gnaw at this marrow-bone and will gnaw myself to death over it. There still remains a darkness, always, over this depth for me; I am still waiting for an apocalyptic angel with a key to this abyss.'" Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 191. lo Beiser, 33-37.

All of these principles would become important for anti-Enlightenment Romantic thought, and Herder was one of the first thinkers to elaborate on them. The dynamic whereby an exterior sign pointed to an interior, hidden logic, for example, fascinated him. As a student of classical philology and scriptural hermeneutics, Herder was naturally drawn to the way language expresses inner meaning, particularly in literature. It is not surprising that his first great contribution to German intellectual culture was a collection of fragments (Ueber die neuere

Deutsche Literatur, 1766-1768) that intensively focused on the way in which language and literature expressed an inner cultural meaning. This impulse takes the form of a manifesto at beginning of the very first fragment:

Die Sprache is ein Werkzeug der Wissenschaften,und ein Theil derselben: wer fiber die Litteratur eines Landes schreibt, tnufi ihre Sprache auch nicht aus der Acht lassen. Ein Volk, das ohne Poetische Sprache grofie Dichter, ohne eine biegsatne Sprache gute Prosaisten, ohne eine genaue Sprache grofie Weise gehabt hatte, ist ein Unding... Sie ist aber inehr als Werkzeug: Worte und Ideen sind genau in der Weltweisheit verwandt...durch die Sprache lernen wir bestimmt denken, und bei bestitninten, und lebhaften Gedanken suchen wir deutliche und lebendige Worte... Der Genius der Sprache ist also auch der Genius von der Literatur einer Nation. (SW 1, 147-148) [Language is the tool of the learned disciplines and part of them: whoever writes about the literature of a land must also not fail to pay attention to its language. A people possessing great poets without a poetic language, competent prose writes without a flexible language, great philosophers without an exact language, is an absurdity... But the language is more than a tool. Words and ideas are exactly related in the realm of philosophy...it is through language that we learn to think precisely, and precise and lively thoughts stimulate us to seek clear and living words... The genius of its language therefore is also the genius of a nation's literature.] (101-102)"

" English translations of the Fragments are taken from Johann Gottfiied Herder, Selected Early Works: 1764-1 767, edited by Ernest A. Menze and Karl Menges, translated by Ernest A. Menze with Michael Palma (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992).

Herder's text is an often emotive exhortation to German culture to develop a heightened poetic sense, but it is based on a descriptive theory. First, Herder assumes the Hamannian principle of language and translates it into a modem, axiomatic idiom: "Wir denken in der Sprache; wir mogen erklaren, was da ist, oder was noch nicht da ist, suchen" (SW 2, 18). Second, as a

corollary to this rule, language expresses the inner, intellectual core of a people, the Genius, making detailed knowledge of a language crucial for understanding this inner core: "Jede Nation spricht also, nach dem sie denkt, und denkt, nach dem sie spricht" (SW 2, 18). Herder specifies

his theory further in the passage above: one feature of language is its ability to match signs with concepts, and refining this connection is essential to the philosopher's effort to express Weltweisheit. But language also matches "names" with "things" (Sachen), rendering it "sinnlich und bilderreich" (SW 1,230). This is a more primordial function of language for Herder, and the

poet captures it in the most sophisticated way;I2hence "the genius of language is ...also the genius of the literature of a nation." The precise but prosaic work of the philosopher cannot replace or apprehend this manner of expression:13poetry and literature must also be understood in order to discern a nation's essential truth. Philological analysis and translation of ancient literatures can serve in this effort, but Herder argues that simple imitation of another culture's forms will ultimately fail to convey

l2 See SW 1 , 394: "Jetzt bitte ich einige Dichter etwas beyseit, mit denen ich ein Wort zu sprechen habe. Wenn bei sinnlichen Begriffen, bei Erfahrungsideen, bei einfachen Wahrheiten und in der klaren Sprache des natiirlichen Lebens der Gedanke am Ausdrucke so sehr klebt: so wirdfur den, der meistens aus dieser Quelle schopfen muJ, fur den, der gleichsam der Oberherr dieser Sphare gewesen, (wenigstens in der alten sinnlichen Zeit der Welt)fur ihn muJ der Gedanke zum Ausdrucke sich verhalten, nicht wie der Korper zu Haut, die ihn umziehet; sondern wie die Seele zutn Korper, den sie bewohnet: und so istsfur den Dichter. Er sol1 Empfindungen ausriicken..." l3 Herder expresses concern about the expanding ambitions and increasing proliferation of philosophical German, particularly as it is promulgated by Baumgarten and Kant: "Alle kannst du nicht bestimmen, Philologischer Weltweise! Die wirst du vermuthlich ausweifen wollen? Aber wirst sie auch die Sprache des Umganges aus? Nein! so weit reicht noch nicht dein Gebiet, und noch minder ins Land der Dichter...lmmer ein Gluckfur den Dichter, und ein Ungluckfur den Weltweisen, daJ die ersten Erfmder der Sprache nicht Philosophen und die ersten Ausbilder meistens Dichter gewesen sind" (SW 1, 170). Also see SW 2,98-100 and SW 1,472-476. "Der Dichter wiirde da anfangen, wo der Philosoph aufhoret" (475).

anything of significance. Two cultures are radically different in time, place, and circumstance; thus the modalities of one literature cannot be simplistically transposed into another. Instead, the cultural distinctiveness of a language must be examined in order to locate the source of a culture's own power, and this analysis is meant to be technical, not impressionistic. For example, Herder examines German in order to isolate its strengths and weakness, discerning the particularity of its sounds and forms, including its strong consonantal quality, its relatively limited ability to invert word order and still maintain grammatical sense, and its emphasis on idioms, which are particularly distinctive of national character and particularity. In articulating these principles, Herder resists the all-encompassing aims of Enlightenment universalism by asserting the distinctive and particular nature of cultural truth (particularly as it is mediated by language), but he also imposes rigor on his own brand of analysis.I4 Philological, hermeneutical rigor was yet grounded by a Hamannian myth, however, out of which Herder proposed his own brand of esoteric universalism in the second edition of the fragments. In the text, Herder restates his earlier position on the symbol, now emphasizing a duality that presages mature Romantic theory. Language is composed of "signs," but these signs are at the same time "coverings" (Hiillen)in which thoughts are enveloped; a language is like a vast garden wherein one seeks the distinctive, underlying, living spirit (SW 2, 12-13). But Herder is convinced that interpretation of signs points even deeper than the distinctiveness of individual cultures:

Es giebt eine Symbolik, die alien Menschen gemeitz ist - eine grope Schatzkammer, in welcher die Kanntnisse aufbewahrt liegen, die dem ganzen 14

Zimmerli argues that this sort of duality (between the scientific or empirical and the mythic) is prevalent throughout Herder's work: "It is not an indecisive wavering between extremes, but speculative polar thinking, which (as it were) sees the traces of an all-embracing context in the isolation of the results of the scientific research of the time. This context is expressed in the rational empirical language of scientific research just as in the mythical language of the story of creation." W. Ch. Zimmerli, "Evolution or Development? Questions Concerning the Systematic and Historical Position of Herder," in Herder Today: Contributionsfrom the InternationalHerder Conference, edited by Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1990), 5.

Menschengeschichte gehoren. Der wahre Sprachweise, da ich aber noch nicht kenne, hat zu dieser dunkeln Kammer den Schliissel: er wird sie, wenn er kommt, entsiegeln, Licht in sie bringen, und uns ihre Schatze zeigen - Das wiirde die Semiotik seyn, die wirjetzt blos dein Namen nach in den Registern unsrer Philosophischen Encyclopadien finden: eine Entzieferung der Menschlichen Seele aus ihrer Sprache. (SW 2, 13) [There is a symbolic, which is common to all humanity, a great treasure-chamber, in which knowledge lies preserved, which belongs to the whole of human history. The true sage of language (whom I have still not yet met) has the key to this dark chamber: if he arrives, he will unseal it to bring light into it and to show us its treasure. That key would be semiotics, which we now simply find according to name in the index of our philosophical encyclopedias: it is a decipherment of the human soul via its language.] Rigorous scrutiny of literature and scripture will point not only to a national, cultural genius, but also to the deepest core of humanity," the very language of the divine expressed in human creativity, which is revealed through the art of semiosis. Given this schema, by which the rigorously ascertained particularity of national language points to more primordial truths, it is quite natural that Herder developed an historicist, comparativist ideal in order to invite the search for more keys to the "treasure-chamber" of the "human soul." In the fragments, Herder recognized the diverse contributions of the "Orient," the "Morgenland,"which referred almost exclusively to the nations and literatures of the Ancient Near East and, in particular, to ancient Hebrew literature. Across cultural and historical distances, Herder began to formulate the privileged point of Eastern origin, but not only because of its importance within Western religious narratives. In a search for the essence of language, for example, the "childhood" of language, which could be observed among "the wild Americans" and "the fervid Orientals," expressed a primordial, poetic sensuousness (SW 2,69-71). What Despite the esoteric quality of Herder's examination, the deepest truth embedded in language is never traced directly back to divine origins. Language is very much a human invention, or, rather, the Kantian line is most appropriate: that language is human invention is what we can know; any other claims about its origins are beyond our ability to ascertain. Nevertheless, Herder's Lutheranism and Pietism may very well have been at work in his view: the claim to trace language back to divine origins has the suggestion of a kind of immediacy that could never characterize the relationship between human, cultural activity and a

might it mean for contemporary German culture and for the advancement of human science, Herder asked, to make comparisons between these elemental forms of expression and the accepted foundations of Western knowledge? Herder's manner of approaching this question was in no way simplistic, even in this early stage of his thought. In fact, the second and third collections of the fragments are given over to a critique of the adoption of an "Oriental" or "Classical" tone in contemporary German literature. These ancient sources were important, but Herder clarifies the rules for engaging difference without assimilating it. Technical analysis obviously has an important role to play in this process of clarification, but Herder's imagery captures the appropriate attitude and approach best:

Nicht urn meine Sprache zu verlernen, lerne ich andre Sprachen, nicht urn die Sitten meiner Erziehung umzutauschen, reise ich unterfremde Volker; nicht urn das Burgerrecht meines Vaterlandes zu verlieren, werde ich ein naturalisirter Fremder: denn sonst verliere ich mehr, als ich gewinne. Sondern ich gehe blos durchfremde Garten, urnfitneine Sprache, also eine Verlobte meiner Denkart, Blumen zu holen: ich sehe fremde Sitten, urn die meinigen, wie Friichte, die eine fremde Sonne gereift hat, dem Genius meines Vaterlandeszu opfern. (SW 1,401)

[I do not acquire other languages in order to lose my competence in my own; I do not travel among foreign peoples in order to barter the customs that rule my education; I do not become a naturalized foreigner in order to lose the citizenship of my fatherland; for otherwise I lose more than I gain. Rather, I walk through foreign gardens only to gather flowers for my language, the betrothed of thought; I see strange customs so that I may offer up my own, like fruits that have been ripened under an alien sun, to the genius of my fatherland.] (207) As we have seen, cultural, national, linguistic difference must be recognized through careful analysis according to the Fragments, and different stages of cultural, linguistic development should also be identified; plucking the flowers of the other culture is by no means a simple or careless act of appropriation. In addition, differences are essentially untranslatable: any simplistic modality of assimilation will be both self-defeatingand disruptive of a proper understanding of the other culture. But a properly nuanced sense of difference and development God whose essence is ultimately hidden. See Herder's interesting critique of SiiBmilch's theory of the

seemingly points, if indirectly, to both culturally and universally relevant ideas about what it means to be human. To put it in terms of Herder's imagery, the offerings of difference are not consumed in some altar-fire; rather, they are laid before the altar to bedeck and to ornament it. The altar is the genius of one's nation, and the charming ornaments (paradoxically enough) indirectly refer to humanity's deepest truth. In fact, in a shift (and reversal) of metaphors, the offering is actually one's own customs in the end, but they are only acceptable after having been ripened in the sun of difference.

In the 1769 Kritische Walder, Herder renewed and refined several important strands of his reflections in the Fragments, concretizing his comparavist theory of cultural difference through further analysis of language and mythology. First, the Walder present a theory of language that explores its deep connection to feeling as opposed to concepts. Certainly the classical conception of poetics is correct, according to Herder: the poet is inspired by an idea of the beautiful, which has an intellectual basis. But the poet is also attuned to the sensuous, expressive power of language; thus he or she specializes in individuation of concepts. Herder claims that this function of the poetic is particularly evident in relation to religion and mythology. Homer's gods and heroes, for example, "are not abstract concepts: they are subjects which act out full-voiced individua;" the gods are well-defined persons with a sensuous thickness and complex interior life (SW 3, 103). Empty, conceptual allegory does not constitute the poetic imagination, nor does mystical, esoteric communion (SW3, 114-115): it comes from the primal power of language to combine "name" with "thing," thereby individuating the abstract and conceptual. A renewed attention to mythology was closely coordinated with this highly symbolic,

poetic theory of language. In the second Walder collection, Herder engaged in a spirited defense

origin of language, SW2,66-69.

of the value of mythology against Klotz, a translator of Homer, who diminished mythological content by suggesting that it was merely poetic flourish in the works of great Classical authors. On the one hand, rejection of myth should not be driven by contemporary religious dogmatism:

Der Dichter nimmit den herrschenden Religionsgeschmack, oder besser, sein eignes Religionsgefilhl, wie er dazu gebildet worden, seinen eignen Horizont von Religionsaussichten, und dichtet. Und so mufi der Critikus ihn richten. Nicht daJ er absolute Wahrheit suche, nicht dap erfrage ob diese undjene Religionsvorstellung auch rechtglaubig genau, exegetisch richtig;philosophisch erwiesen; sondern ob sie wahrscheinlich sey, ob sie konne poetisch geglaubt, gefithlt, beherzigt werden. (SW 3,239) [The poet takes the prevailing religious taste, or better, his own religious feeling, because he would have been formed by it, as his own horizon of religious prospects, and writes. And so must the critic address him: not by seeking absolute truth, nor by asking whether this or that religious representation is also orthodox enough, exegetically correct, but rather whether it is probable, whether it could be believed, felt, and taken to heart poetically.] The critic should not be interested in verification of religious manifestations using methods directly imported from the interior of his or her religion. But Herder was also unwilling to accept the Enlightenment attack on aspects of religious expression that are considered superstitious (i.e., mythology). The concern is not to discount or legitimate mythic representations as "historically accurate" (ibid.), nor is to dispel the deception of myth in favor of discerning the underlying (scientific) truth of nature (SW 3,260-261). Myth has its own arena in the human imagination, and it can only be refined and expressed by the poet. As critic, Herder limited his role to determining how the manifestation of religion or myth is authentic in its literary context.

In the early fragments and the Walder, Herder therefore began to establish a theoretical structure for conceptualizing sources from outside the Classical and Judaeo-Christian canons. In keeping with his gestures in these texts, Herder slowly but surely continued to expand his knowledge and concept of the Morgenland. l6 Herder's earlier allusions to the East only

l6 The poetry of Ossian was also an important aspect of Herder's move towards alternative sources of primordial cultural expression. Ossian's work was translated from the Gaelic by James MacPherson and

suggested what he made explicit in the third Walder collection: "Where our religion still makes room for sensuous representations, where it accommodates poetic imagery, there it is - Oriental" (SW 3,398). When the representations and imagery of Western religion are "ripened" by the Oriental "sun," when they are placed next to the culture which represents its god in a variety of ways and honors the symbolic "secrets of the spirit...as revealed beauty" (SW 3,398-399), an obscured aspect of European culture steps forth. A revitalized theory of religion, myth, language, and poetry were thus intertwined with a conception of the Morgenland from a very early point in Herder's thought, and thus a turn to the east was closely connected with Herder's sense of German cultural renewal. It would take time, however, for Herder to refine this conception as he wrestled with new data and his own methodological interests, as we see in his writings from the early 1770's. The Morgenland, as the primordial and authoritative site for the truth of language and culture, was a conception in flux. The Fragmente zu einer Archaologie des Morgenlandes (ca. 1769- 1772), for example, performs a textual, cornmentarial excavation on the myth of creation from Genesis. In the textual garden we find a description of Herder's earliest "Orientals": "yet uncontaminated with the systematizing and classifying spirit of books, they still would have seen only whole, full, living, active nature; what is more, they had enough imagination to enliven everything in the published in a number of editions in the 17603, causing a literary sensation. The texts recounted the acts of traditional Gaelic heroes in archaic but sophisticated verse, and Macpherson claimed that the texts were derived from ancient Scottish manuscripts that dated from the earliest days of the Christian mission in the British Isles. An overly zealous audience subsequently took them as a pagan basis for European myth and culture, an alternative to both Classical and Christian foundations, and Herder was a member of this audience. In the following years, the texts were involved in controversy when leading lights such as Samuel Johnson and David Hume questioned their authenticity. It became clear that in fact MacPherson composed the texts themselves, basing them on Gaelic legends and Hebraic metrical schemes. Ossian was revealed to be a fiction. See Herder's reviews from the period, which earnestly attempt to critique German translations in comparison with the English "original" - which in this case is in fact an original work, by an author named MacPherson: SW4,320-325; 5, 159-207; 5,322-330. In 1775, Herder in fact claimed that Ossian was one of "the three greatest epic poets in all the world," along with Homer and Milton (SW 8, 3 18); by the end of the decade, however, Herder was allowing that Ossian was perhaps not all that he was

realm of creation, to see everything as tangible, acting nature" (SW 6, 18). While distinct from nature by virtue of language and thought, these innocents found themselves in community with their surroundings, learning about the arts, philosophy, and divinity directly from creation itself

(SW 6,25-26). They expressed this earliest possible wisdom symbolically, through "hieroglyphics" (particularly in the form of the seven days of creation), opening up deep but impossibly bygone secrets of human destiny and divine providence. The Archaologie emphasized the Hebraic Orient of antiquity, which was represented by the traditional source of the earliest knowledge of humankind, namely Genesis. But we also find consistent allusions to other lands in this text, including Persia, Chaldaea, Arabia, and even India.

In general, Herder was careful to distinguish the originary and primordial character of Hebrew antiquity from these lands, but it is also clear that his vision of Oriental primordiality had begun to shift and expand. Another step in this process is found in the 1774 publication, Aelteste

Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts, which once again examines the creation story, and the paradisiac Oriental reappears in highly idealized terms:

...der Morgenlander, wie weit mehr im anschaulichen Bilde und Gefuhl! Seine Verehrung der Gottheit in Allem, was groB, schon, machtig, liebreich, wunderbar ist: sein natiirlicher Hang, edles Ansehn des Korpers, verborgnen Rathschlag und Thatigkeit der Seele, Uebermacht, Menschenliebe und Geschlechtsegen, als Gottheit zu erkennen, in sich wiirkend zu fuhlen... (SW 6,251) [...the Oriental, how much more expansive in vivid image and feeling! His worship of divinity in everything that is great, beautiful,powerful, tender, and wonderful: his natural inclination, noble, corporeal aspect, hidden counsel, and action of the soul, superiority, love of mankind, and blessing of race, all to recognize divinity, tofeel it acting in himself...] The primordial Easterner was in immediate proximity with God, with an innate talent for discerning the divine both in the created order that surrounded him and in his own great capacities. The text goes further with its semiosis, however, now in a quasi-technical effort to supposed to be: "Be Ossian completely old or only assembled and produced out of old songs, what a

replicate the vision of the primordial Orient in a number of cultural settings. The seven days of creation in Hebrew scripture again present the reader with a "hieroglyph" of the created order, a sign that expresses its essential logic. Because the seven days represent a primordial symbol that pervades all of creation (including the human mind), it can be demonstrated that the scheme is present in the foundational logics of individual cultures. Herder proceeds to illustrate the way in which a system of seven elements is a foundational religious, cultural Leitmotif among the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Mesopotamians, the Persians, and the Gnostics. Although Herder stretches his evidence (and the reader's credulity) in this text, it represents an important early attempt to develop the mythic, primordial logic of scripture into a systematic historical scheme. In the process, a case is made for a universal, Oriental revelation that is not in fact confined to Hebrew antiquity. The expansion of the primordial Orient continued in the 1775 Erlauterungen zum Neuen

Testament ans einer nenerofneten Morgenlandischen Quelle. In general, the work consists of a commentary on John's gospel, the Christian counterpart to the Genesis creation narrative. Herder's examination of the scripture is framed by yet another fascinating rendering of Near Eastern history. One of the lost tribes of Israel, Herder claims, found itself in the farthest depths of Asia and eventually produced the Persian, Zoroastrian religion, which in turn fed back into the Hebrew, Egyptian, and Greek worlds, all of which were important in the early development of Christianity. Though the text is clearly continuous with Aelteste Urkunde, here there are no kabbalistic hieroglyphs that stretch across the ancient history of Asian cultures. Herder attempts to offer a historical account of scripture in the light of new evidence and suggests that a reader gains an enhanced understanding of the spirit of the text from this analysis." But the

tender soul is in him!" (SW 8,392). " "fmgebrochenen Griechisch der Apostelflossen Ideen und Ideenreihen zusammen aus aller Welt Ende: Judda, Chaldaa, Persien, Aegypten, Griechenland und Rom hatten daran gebildet. ..Auch hier blieb, was

Erlauterungen also displays a further differentiation of sources of Oriental authority, in this case, the Zoroastrian. It is interesting to note that the move towards associating a broad spectrum of Asian cultures with the primordial Orient was connected with a refinement of historical method in Herder's works. In the early 17707s,a period when Herder was occupied both with esoteric readings of scripture and with an expanding conception of the Orient, Herder was also seemingly at a crossroads in terms of this attitudes towards the Enlightenment. In 1769, Herder had departed from Riga (where he had established himself as educator and critic) for Paris in order to experience the French Enlightenment first-hand. While his thought owes a great deal to French empiricism, he was disappointed, or perhaps even threatened, by the radicalism of certain French critiques, which prompted a return to biblical, Hamannian roots.18 On the other hand, Herder simultaneously charted a course that was somewhat friendlier to the Enlightenment vision. In the travel diary that chronicles his sea journey to France, Herder had excitedly anticipated the encounter with French concepts of empiricism and humanity, lamenting his typically German education and life, which had replaced "bodies" and "existing realities" with "abstract shadowimages" (SW 4,349). The text launches into a long song of praise for natural, empirical science, and his comparativist attitude appears again with renewed energy and vigor: Welch ein Werk uber das Menschliche Geschlecht! den Menschlichen Geist! die Cultur der Erde! aller Raume! Zeiten! Volker! Krafte! Mischungen! Gestalten! Asiatische Religion! und Chronologie und Policei und Philosophic! ...Grosses Thema: das Menschengeschlecht wird nicht vergehen, bis dafi es alles geschehe! Bis der Genius der Erleuchtung die Erde durchzogen! Universalgeschichte der Bildung der Welt! (SW 4,353) Gott wahlte, das bests, die Sprache der Unmundigen, Ungriechen, und Ungelehrten, Weisen ein AergerniJ und schonlallenden Griechen eine Thorheit: in ihrem Innern aber Gottliche Kraft und Gottliche Weisheit" (SW7,354). "Now one already makes encyclopedias [in France]. DyAlembertand Diderot even lower themselves to one, and even this book, which is to the French their triumph, is for me the first sign of their downfall. They have nothing to write and make, thus Abregk Dictionaires, Histoires, Vocabulaires, Esprits, Encyclopedieen, etc. The original work has fallen away" (SW4,412).

[What a work it would be about the human race! The human spirit! The cultures of the earth! All places! Times! Peoples! Powers! Mixings! Patterns! Asiatic religion! And chronology and policy-making and philosophy! ...Major theme: the human race will not disappear, until everything comes to pass! Until the genius of illumination has pervaded the earth! Universal history of the formation of the world!] The specificity of inquiry into cultural context (including climate and physical environment) is matched by a hunger for a universal sense embracing this specificity, across cultural lines, with global historical scope." This vision is readily apparent in Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit, which appeared in 1774 (the same year as the Aelteste Urkunde treatise). As if

matching wits with himself, Herder introduces his work with warnings about the way in which difference (as both past and across cultural lines) was being assimilated and appropriated by contemporary European intellectuals, and he argues for an anti-a priorist sense of culture, history, and language that ties together cultural difference and universalist progress. Herder makes a bold claim at the beginning of Auch eine Philosophie: "Niemand in der Weltfuhlt die Schwache des allgemeinen Charakterisirens mehr als ich" (SW 5,501). Given Herder's prior criticisms of

abstraction in language, we can see why general characterizations make him nervous -but we also recognize that Herder himself certainly did not shy from generalization. Nevertheless, matching words with cultures and thereby constructing abstract, universalist histories will now not do. A new method is required, which calls for a sympathetic engagement with the full range

l9 "Die Menschliche Seele, an sich und in ihrer Erscheinung aufdieser Erde, ihre sinnlichen Werkzeuge iind Gewichte und Hoffnungen und Vergnugen,und Charaktere und Pflichten, und alles, was Menschen hier gliicklich machen kann, sei meine erste Aussicht. Alles ubrige werde blos bei Seite gesetzt, so lunge ich hiezu Materialen sammle, und alle Triebfedern, die im Menschlichen Herzen liegen, vom Schreckhaften und Wunderbaren,bis zum Stillnachdenken und Sanftbetaubenden, kennen, erwecken, verwalten und brauchen lernen. Hiezu will ich in der Geschichte aller Zeiten Data sammeln: jede soil mir das Bild ihrer eignen Sitten, Gebrauche, Tugenden, Laster und Gluckseligkeiten liefern, und so will ich alles bis auf unsre Zeit zuriickfiuhren, unddiese recht nutzen lernen" (SW 4,364).

of cultural context, a method that came to be known as ~ i n j u h l u nThis ~ . ~ process ~ delivers up the deeper treasure: clues about the unifying concept for all of humanity.

Ganze Natur der Seele, die durch Alles herrscht, die alle ubrige Neigungen und Seelenkrafte nach sich modelt, noch auch die gleichgiiltigsten Handlungenfarbet - urn diese mitztfuhlen, antworte nicht aus dem Worte, sondern gehe in das Zeitalter, in die Hitnmelsgegend, die ganze Geschichte,juhle dich in alles hinein - nun allein bist du aufdem Wege, das Wort zu verstehen... (SW 5, 503) [The whole nature of the soul, which is prevalent throughout everything, which molds all the other inclinations and powers of the soul according to itself, yet also colors the most indifferent of actions - in order to sympathize with this, answer not to the word; rather go into the period, into the heavenly region, the whole history; feel your way into everything - now alone are you on the way to understanding the word.]

In correctly discerning the highly differentiated patterns of cultural existence, words and characterizations are no longer abstractions: they become part of the deepest possible encounter with humanity and its differentiated but ultimately coherent and visible "plan for forward striving progress" ("Plandes Fortstrebensyy) (SW 5,5 11). In Auch eine Philosophic, scripture does not offer the esoteric code for this plan; rather, it seems to be a project of humanity's own inventing. Applying his warnings against violating the differentiated historical position of other cultures, Herder now criticizes the contruction of the Morgenland by the leading lights of the Enlightenment, suggesting that both its positive and negative versions fail to do justice to its spirit. So, on the one hand, "Oriental despotism" (one of the most common tropes in late eighteenth and nineteenth century thinking about Asian culture) is not properly understood because those who discuss it use a contemporary European notion of despotism and impose it on another world.21 On the other hand, the Orient certainly does not manifest the central values of

20 See SW 5,502-503: "Dasganze lebendige GeMlde von Lebensart, Gewohnheiten, Bediirfhgen, Landes- und Himmelseigenheiten miiJte dazu kommen, oder vorhergegangen seyn; man miiJte erst der Nation sympathisiren, um eine einzige ihrer Neigungen und Handlungen, alle zusammen zu fuhlen, Bin Wortfinden, in seiner Fiille sich alles denken - oder man lieset - ein Wort." ' Herder himself would not fail to discuss "Oriental despotism," only he would attempt to specify it according to its own differentiated character. See SW 9 , 3 19-324.

the French Enlightenment (like philosophical deism) after the fashion of some idealized noble savage, as some (like Voltaire) would propose. To use Herder's metaphor, the Orient was indeed something of a child, but a willful and precocious one with its own distinct personality: it should not be demonized or diluted with the over-the-hill agendas (SW 5,486). In fact, the child is the father of the man: in the same period Herder would write that the Orient is "the fatherland of human culture" (SW 5,60 1).

In its break from Hamannian, Biblicist frameworks, Auch eine Philosophic marks the initial step in Herder's mature historical reflections. It also marks an important moment in Herder's reconstruction of Oriental authority. Because of his direct encounter with French thought on the Orient, Herder no longer conceived the Orient as solely Hebraic. While the metaphors and tropes that had previously been associated with the Hebrew scriptural myth of paradise remained active, they were transported into a much broader cultural sphere and later to other, specific locales (like India). But Herder's developing method also guided him in arguing for a more differentiated sense of Asian cultures and their particularities. The French thinkers, for example, cannot simply characterize the Orient with ethnocentric generalizations and tropes. Thus the mythic conception of the primordial Orient, while often overpowering in its capacity to select evidence, was in tension with the logos of empirical differentiation in Herder's work. During the next decade, Herder extended his inquiry dramatically, embracing the Orient and India within this difficult methodological tension. Hebrew sources would always represent something important; one of Herder's most famous works, Vom Geist der Ebraischen Poesie, occupied his attention during the early 1780's. But this work was clearly part of a broader framework by the time it appeared; Hebrew literature represented but a single important moment in the broad history of volkisch/folk expression. The biblical texts had to be read as the products of human consciousness (SW 10,7) and as expressions of national character during a specific

historical period (SW 10, 12-13). In keeping with these principles, Herder rejected the divine origin of Hebrew and eventually became unconcerned with establishing its absolute primacy (see

s w 11,444). A relativization of Hebrew primordiality was part and parcel with Herder's broad conceptualization of folk literature. The search for a new center was already guided by powerful metaphors adapted from the mythic conception of the Hebrews. As I have argued, however, these metaphors led Herder to continuing differentiation of the Oriental world. In particular, 1778 marked an important turning point. Herder had just published the last of his collections of

~olkslieder2'1and in an essay on the effects of poetry on morality and culture, Herder surveyed the usual set of source-cultures (Hebraic, Greek, Roman), but, interestingly, he also included a long account of the Quryanand its effect on Arabic, Muslim civilization. In the end, Herder circumscribes his account: he cannot go further into the poetry of "the Orient" (Orient), including the literature of Persia, India, and China (SW 8, 365); this same constellation of Oriental nations was repeated in a 1780 essay (SW 9,381). By this point, Herder had clearly expanded his account of what the Orient was; he had not distinguished the Orient (qua Hebraic) from the "Asian," which he had occasionally done to this point. Rather, the Orient shifted away from the Hebrew center and also encompassed more, and yet it retained the aura of Hebrew paradise. The primordial Orient had developed even deeper roots in realms farther east.

*'In 1774, 1775, and 1778 Herder published three collections that contained folk songs and poetry from the German, English, Norse, Scottish, Spanish, Greek, French, Italian, Lithuanian, and Latvian cultural traditions, among many others. Here Herder's sense of national, populist poetics reached a high point. In his privileging of these texts, Herder attacked elitist Classicism, Rationalism, and Enlightenment, but these contributions to the assemblage of a Weltliteraturalso had the effect of relativizing the scriptural center of authority. See SW 25, 88. Herder did not include Hebrew texts in the collection of "folk literature," perhaps out of vestigial deference to its scriptural status, but in his third collection of Zerstreute Blotter (1 787), Herder presented excerpts from the Hebrew Bible alongside of Greek, Arabic, Persian, and Indian examples of "mythological literature." SW26,366.

The Background for Herder's Interpretation of India: French and British Sources The dislocation of Hebrew primordiality was a decisive step in the development of European thought about Indian culture. Hebrew scripture would maintain pride of place because of its canonical status, but figures like Herder made it difficult to sustain the authority of the Hebrew Bible as a reliable historical source - or as a source for deriving underlying cross-cultural logics.

In Herder's thought, the dislocation of the Near Eastern paradise was promoted by the positive conceptualization of Volkslieder, which contributed to the German ideal promoted, in particular, by Herder's close fried Goethe: the study of Weltliteratur. But the specific relocation of the primordial source of humanity was a product of Herder's growing acquaintance with French and British sources that treated a newly discovered cultural arena: India. Before proceeding with Herder's mature views on Indian culture, it is important to survey these sources in order to chart their initial impact on the German intellectual community. As we know, Herder traveled to France in 1769, full of enthusiasm about his imminent encounter with the land that had produced Rousseau, D'Alembert, Diderot, Montesquieu, and Voltaire. Ultimately Herder could not accept the radicalism of some interpretations of religion and history within the French Enlightenment, and he sparred with these interpretations throughout the course of his life, but the emphasis on the material and the empirical in his historical work can certainly be traced to his reliance on French approaches. When it came to the study of the Orient, and India in particular, French intellectuals provided the initial impetus for further study. Two figures are prominent in the expansion of Herder's research: Anquetil Duperron and Voltaire. The influence of Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil Duperron (173 1-1805) is present throughout Herder's writings. Duperron was a rather remarkable adventurer and explorer whose extensive travels carried him as far as India in the 1750's. Along the way, Duperron gathered the data that would allow him to make two dramatic contributions to the European intellectual world.

The first was a translation from the Avesta, the body of canonical texts within the Zoroastrian tradition, published under the title Zend-Avesta: onvrage de Zoroastre, contenant les idkes

thiologiques,physiques & morales de ce ligislateur, les ceremonies dl{ culte religieux qu 'il a etabli, & plnsieurs traits importans relatifs 2 l 'anciennehistoire des Parses in 1 77 1. The second contribution was a dramatic set of texts entitled Oupnek'hat (id est, Secretum tegendum): opus in

India rarissimum, continens antiquatn et Arcanurn, sen theologicam et philosophicam, doctrinain, e quator sacris Indorum libris, Rak Beid, Djedjr Beid, Sam Beid, Athrban Beid [Rg Veda, Yajur Veda, Sdma Veda, Atharva Veda],excerptam (1 801-1802): in other words, a translation of several Upanigds. While Duperron apparently knew some Sanskrit, the texts from which he translated were themselves Persian translations out of the original language.23 These two works, along with his many contributions to nascent comparavist theory in European intellectual circles, lead Halbfass to write, "There is no doubt that he [Duperron] is one of the more impressive and decisive figures in the history of European approaches to Indian and Oriental thought."24 Later generations of German intellectuals were very much aware of Duperron's contribution to the knowledge of Sanskrit sources, and Schopenhauer in particular would identify the Oupnek'hat "as the greatest gift to the nineteenth century" in 1818.~' While this work came too late to take a specific place in Herder's writings, the Zend-Avesta was mentioned often, beginning in the 1775 New Testament Erlautenmgen, and the broad thesis of Duperron's body of -

--

--

-

' Schwab explains the origin of the Persian translation: "In 1665 the Mughal prince of Delhi, Muhammad Dara Shikoh, eldest son and heir apparent of Shah Jahan (r. 1628-58), wanted to compare the sacred books of all peoples in order to attain and adopt the ultimate truth.. .Dara had Moses, the Psalms, and the Gospels explained to him. Not satisfied with that and having heard of the Vedas, he summoned the ascetics of Banaras to instruct him in Brahmanical doctrine. For this occasion he ordered a remarkable version of the Upanishads made in Persian, the lingua franca of Asia at that time. It is this text that, in the following century, found its way to Anquetil.. ." Raymond Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance: Europe's Discovery of India and the East, 1680-1880,translated by Gene Patterson-Black and Victor Reinking (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 245-246. Also see Halbfass, India and Europe, 33-35 India and Europe, 64.

Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1 , translated by E.F.J. Payne (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1969), 355.

25

work was able to take hold even at this early point: Asian sources pointed towards a primal monotheistic revelation, which expressed itself in different terms among the ancient cultures of ~ s i a . 2The ~ Zoroastrian source was the first evidence of this relativizing thesis, and thus it had a broad impact: "The 1771 edition of the Zend Avesta marks the first approach to an Asian text totally independent of the biblical and classical traditions. The history of languages and history

through languages both begin with this work, which is also, we could say, the beginning of world hi~tory."~'In Herder's writings it is clear that Duperron's mediations of Asian texts forced the recognition of alternate and very ancient sources of Oriental culture and authority, contributing to the dislocation of the mythic, Hebrew center. Voltaire (1694-1778) must also be mentioned as an important source for Herder's mature conception of the Orient and of India. Voltaire discussed India in a number of his important works, including Essai sur les moeurs et I 'esprit des nations (1 756 and later revisions), Dieu et

les homtnes (1 769), and La Philosophie de I 'histoire(1 775). Inspired by British sources and by Indian sources that were seemingly original:'

Voltaire celebrated India as the very cradle of

human civilization and culture. Reinforcing Anquetil Duperron's broad myth of India, but

26 King's discussion of Duperron's influence identifies the idealist, perennialist presuppositions that attached itself to Vedanta from its earliest reception in Europe. See Orientalism and Religion, 119-120. Halbfass offers further context, which helps explain the appeal of Duperron's text for certain strands of European intellectualism. The Persian translation of the Upanisads, performed under the auspices of D%ra Shuk6h during the seventeenth century, was already constructed within a Western (Islamic), syncretistic framework: "D%rZShuk6h takes it for granted that Hinduism is basically monotheistic; he considers the monistic-monotheistic source books of Hinduism, the Upanisads, as sources of monotheismper se, antecedent to the Koran, and he is convinced that the Koran itself refers to this 'first heavenly Book, and the fountain-head of the ocean of monotheism.' True and original monotheism is not confined to the Koran." India and Europe, 34. Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance, 17. 28 Voltaire derived many of his representations of Indian religious thought from a text entitled Ezour Vedam. According to Halbfass, "The French text of this false Veda, which had probably been conceived (though never employed) as a device for the Christianization of the Hindus, was cited as a document on ancient Indian religion by Voltaire and others. It was finally published in 1778 and translated into German in 1779. But with its growing popularity came increased criticism. In 1782, P. Sonnerat declared that it was a forgery, and few were left who were willing to defend its authenticity. In 1822, it became known that the Ezourvedam was only one of group of 'Pseudo-Vedas' which had either been produced or solicited

'

intermingling anthropological principles born of his commitment to the French Enlightenment, Voltaire represented ancient India as an innocent paradise that had benefited from a propritious climate in its production of culture. Because nature provided a bounty of nourishment, there was never a struggle for survival in ancient India, and this convivial environment reinforced an abhorrance for killing and a feeling of "universal charity.yy29In short, Voltaire's India, which is characterized by innocence and bounty, looks very much like the Garden of Eden. In this setting, ancient Indian culture was able to produce two insights that would become foundational for human consciousness; "Les Indiens sont Iepremierpeople qzii ait tnontri un

esprit

First, in agreement with Anquetil Duperron, Voltaire asserted that the early

brahmins had established a monotheistic belief in "un Etre supreme qzii a dibroziilli Ie chaos" (292). Voltaire was evidently aware of the multiplicity of gods in the Indian context, but he hypothesized that the appearance of these figures was a later development. The purest, most ancient Indian religious concept of divinity was monotheistic. Second, "L 'idie d'zine &me

distincte dl1 corps, I 'iternit&de cette h e , la mitempsychose sont de l e w [the Indians'] invention" (296). While allowing that the system of transmigration (and particularly potential rebirth as an animal) was difficult for European Christians to accept, Voltaire reminded his reader that it was based on the notion of an eternal soul, which was essential to Christian belief. Christian doctrine itself, Voltaire proposed, was no less strange, particularly when it came to debates about the LLensoulment'y and "mediate animation" of the fetus within the mother's womb (297). In the end, Voltaire was able to rely upon his empirical, historical examinations to explain the importance of transmigration in the Indian context. In such a hospitable environment, where by the Jesuits in India." India and Europe, 46. For further descriptions of Voltaire's reception of the Ezour Vedam and the eventual exposure of its inauthenticity, see Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance, 153-155. ' See La Philosophie de I'histoire, edited by J.H. Brumfitt, Les Oeuvres Completes de Voltaire, Vol. 59

(Geneve and Toronto: Institut et Musie Voltaire and University of Toronto Press, 1969), 145-148.

the fruits of the earth were so readily available, eating meat was hardly necessary, and the hard edges and boundaries between living things were subsequently disrupted. "Universal charity" was extended to all humanity, and to animals, providing the impetus behind the transmigration doctrine, which was seemingly founded on a sympathetic exchange of self and other.31 As Figueira illustrates, Voltaire had a very clear polemical aim in presenting India in the way that he did,32 The work of Anquetil Duperron shows that the theory of the primal revelation can be presented as strong apologetic for Christianity. Even the decentering of Jewish primacy can serve this function by emphasizing the universal revelation that was originally intended by the God of Christianity. Voltaire, on the other hand, used India to attack the Catholic Church. Not only were the concepts presented in revelation historically relativized by early developments in Indian culture, but the Indian context also prophesied the priestly degeneration of Christendom. According to Voltaire, the brahmins had in ancient times discovered a pure, law-driven, monotheistic basis for culture (which, as Halbass suggests, closely resembles aspects of Voltaire's own Deist, Enlightenment sensibility) but had allowed this belief to degenerate into superstition, polytheism, and ceremonialism. Voltaire used India to serve his broad, Enlightenment-based attack on European Christianity. For both Anquetil Duperron and Voltaire, local debates about the status of Christianity and Christian revelation represented the broad prejudicial framework through which India was interpreted. Because of the dearth of reliable source material and the fervency of polemical aims, this framework often led to vague and imaginative suppositions about Indian culture. Nevertheless, Anquetil Duperron and Voltaire did establish important and specific elements of Dieu et les hommes, edited by Roland Mortier, Les Oeuvres Completes de Voltaire, Vol. 69 (Genkve and Toronto: Institut et Musie Voltaire and University of Toronto Press, 1994), 296. 3 1 La Philosophie de I 'histoire, 148-149. 30

the research agenda that took hold in Herder's work and subsequently in the German intellectual context. The myth of paradise and degeneration, for example, proved to be decisively important in the representation of India, leading eventually to a highly idealized concept of Vedic antiquity and a denigration of later developments in Indian religious consciousness, leading up to the dismal state of affairs in the contemporary age. The French mediators also experimented with new methods that would later come to fruition as logoi in the German context. Voltaire supported his myth of Indian paradise through what he deemed to be empirical research, leading to a materialist explanation of Indian sensuousness, sensitivity, and sympathy. Both Duperron and Voltaire also enforced the importance of the encounter with primary sources, and while their experimentations led to limited and sometimes misguided results (e.g., Voltaire's acceptance of inauthentic sources like the Ezour Vedain), it became clear to readers like Herder that apprehension of India was only possible if more texts became available for rigorous analysis. Finally, Voltaire and Duperron combined to establish the specific conceptions with which later interpreters like Herder would have to contend in their effort to define the essential "genius" of India: divine unity (syncretistic for Duperron, Deist for Voltaire) and transmigration. In their articulation of these elements of interpretation, the French mediators provided many of the building blocks of the German reception of Indian sources. Voltaire in particular relied heavily on an early set of British Orientalist sources to present his theories. Before the famous contributions of Jones and Colebrooke, an earlier generation of British scholars had inspired the European discovery of India, and these figures included John Zephaniah Holwell and Alexander Dow. A full treatment of these important early mediators

See "The Authority of an Absent Text: The Veda, Upangas, Upavedas, and Upnekhata in European Thought," in Authority, Anxiety, and Canon: Essays in Vedic Interpretation, edited by Laurie L. Patton (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 202-207. 32

would take the present line of inquiry too far afield:3 but because Herder did receive inspiration from their texts, first indirectly (through Voltaire), and then directly (he eventually read them himself), a brief survey and analysis is necessary. I will focus in particular on Alexander Dow's contribution, because it offered Herder a unique interpretation of foundational Hindu doctrine: it contains significant strands of vitalism and monism, and these conceptions came to play an important role in the ensuing reception of Indian sources in Germany. John Zephaniah Holwell(17 11-1798) was a merchant and doctor who, up until 1760, served within the East India Company for thirty years. Upon his return to England, Holwell produced a text entitled Interesting historical events, relative to the provinces of Bengal, and the Empire of Hindostan, which first appeared in three volumes from 1765 through 1771. Within this treatise, Holwell included extensive treatments of Hindu religiosity, collected under a group of chapters entitled "The Religious Tenets of the ~ e n t o o s . "In ~ ~them, Holwell argues for a sympathetic treatment of "Gentoo" religion, chastising the "Popish authors" who have previously derided it (48) and calling for close attention to the languages and texts of India. Holwell's own treatment is based on a text he calls the "Chatah Bhade Shastah of Bramah," which Trautrnann helpfully translates for us: "This would be something like Catur Veda h s t r a in Sanskrit, an odd title since it combines two classes of Sanskrit literature that are distinct, Veda and hstra. It is a ~ ~ purportedly original text represents confused reference, one supposes, to the four ~ e d a s . "This the earliest, purest expression of "Gentoo" religious consciousness (according to Holwell, it is 5000 years old) and establishes its essential foundations.

33 34

A thorough analysis of early British Orientalism is presented in Trautmann, Aryans and British India. Reprinted in P.J. Marshall, ed., The British Discovery of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970),45-106. 35 Trautmann, Aryans and British India, 68.

While the specific identity of the "Shastah" is obscure, it probably represents a heavily mediated rendition of stories from PurZnic sources.36 The Shastah begins by describing the nature of divinity: "God is One. Creator of all that is. God is like a perfect sphere, without beginning or end. God rules and governs all creation by a general providence resulting from first determined and fixed principles." Holwell's translation of the text continues by dissuading inquiry into the interior nature of God, which is essentially unknowable; "It is enough, that day by day, and night by night, thou seest in his works; his wisdom, power, and his mercy" (66). After establishing this monotheistic principle, the Shastah (in keeping with the requirements of a PiirZna) shifts into a kind of creation narrative. God begins creation by bringing "three angelic persons" into being, namely "Birmah [BrahmZi]," "Bistnoo [Visnu]," and "Sieb [~iva],~' who preside over the other divine hosts. Some of these celestial beings revolt, but God of course quashes the rebellion and casts the offenders into eternal punishment. After the intercession of their former cohorts, God offers the rebels another chance. Creation is ordered: the fallen angels are placed into mortal bodies at many different levels of subjection and difficulty, in accordance with their prior sins.37 Through birth and rebirth, even the most treacherous of the angels (who find themselves in the body of the lowliest creatures) have the opportunity to advance from their station. At the top of this mortal scale is humanity, which is in a position to break out of the cycle of punishment and to return to the heavenly realm through a higher process of worship and purification.

36

Marshall speculates that the text was mediated through "Hindustani," and there is evidence in Holwell's account that it was conveyed mostly through conversation with apandit. See The British Discovery of Hinduism, 56: "we proceed to the Shastah itself; and shall faithfully give a detail of the origin of this book; and the several innovations and changes it has suffered: a detail - which although known by all the learned amongst the Bramins, is yet confessed but by a few, and those only, whose purity of principle and manners, and zeal for the primitive doctrines of Brarnah's Shastah, sets them above disguising the truth; from many of these, we have the following recital.. ." 37 The description in Holwell's text resembles aspects of PurTqic cosmology, as it is presented in general fashion by Klaus K. Klostennaier, A Survey of Hinduism, Second Edition (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 117-124.

This story of a fall from grace, which Holwell consciously compares to Milton (78), has a direct parallel in the historical development of LLGentoo7y religion. The earliest stage of "Gentooyy belief, represented by the Shastah, was pure and unadulterated. Its cornerstone was a monotheistic commitment and a story of fall, forgiveness, faith, and redemption, and thus Holwell's research naturally corroborates a primal, universal Christian revelation. According to Holwell, this pure teaching prevailed in India for some 1500 years, until it was inevitably corrupted by priestly reinterpretation, represented by the eighteen books of the Aughtorrah Bhade Shastah, which seemingly refers to the PurZpas taken as a whole.38 This later stage of religious consciousness obscured the purity of the original teaching through a proliferation of myth and ritualism, leading India to its present state of destitution: For the simple and intelligible tenets and religious duties, enjoined by the Chartah Bhade, being thus absorbed and lost, in the attention and adherence, paid to the extravagant, absurd, and unintelligible non-essentials of worship, instituted by the Aughtorrah Bhade; laid the foundation of the miseries, with which in succeeding times, Indostan was visited; and the merciful intention of God, for the redemption of the delinquent angels, (destined to inhabit this part of the earthly globe) was rendered fruitless. The holy tribe of Bramins, who were chosen and appointed by Bramah himself, to preach the word of God, and labor the salvation of the delinquents; in process of time lost sight of their divine original, and in its place substituted new and strange doctrines; that had no tendency, but to the establishing their own power: the people hearkened unto them, and their minds were subdued and enslaved; their ancient military genius, and spirit of liberty was debilitated; discord and dissention arose amongst the rules of the land, and that state grew ripe for falling at the first convulsion; and in the end suffered an utter subversion, under the yoke of Mahornmeden tyranny; as a just punishment inflicted on them by God, for their neglect of his laws, commands and promises, promulged to them, by his great and favored angel Bramah. (60) In Holwell's account, myth and description quite seamlessly blend together in a remarkable (if misguided) display of explanatory power. The cosmogonic story from the early Shastah reveals

While the complete story of Holwell's encounter with his informant is certainly susceptible to investigation, a full analysis should be reserved for another context. We can speculate, however, that Holwell's authority directed him to privilege a particular strand of Puraic myth out of sectarian commitment, relegating the other sources to the later, degenerate stage in the tradition.

38

that the origin of the human state is to be found in a primal fall from grace, and the text issues a message of redemption. In its historical development, "Gentoo" religion correspondingly fell away from the original teaching, but priestly greed and vulgar superstition covered over the path to cultural salvation. From Holwel17sperspective, European intervention is likely necessary to restore the integrity of the primal revelation. It should be clear that Voltaire derived much of his own account of India from Holwell's vision:9 but the work of Alexander Dow (ca. 1735-1779) was also an important influence. Dow was a soldier in the East India Company's army who eventually turned to literary concerns, and his most important contribution to the early study of India was a translation, The History of

Hindostan;from the earliest account of time, to the death of Akbar (1768-1772), a work that had originally been written in Persian by seventeenth century historian Muhammad Qisim Hindi Shah Astarabiidi Firishtah. Dow appended a treatise to his rendering, "A Dissertation Concerning the Religion and Philosophy of the Brahmins," which attempted to convey the foundations of Hinduism to European readers. Dow was well aware of Holwell's work but thoroughly disputed its findings in the "~issertation."~~ First and foremost, on the question of scripture, Dow rejects the muddled

See in particular Dieu et les hommes, 292-293, which even includes the allusion to Milton. According to his own account, Dow admits that he had formerly allowed himself to be carried along by a "stream of popular prejudice" against "Hindoo" religiosity, but upon entering into conversation "with a noble and learned Brahmin" and studying Hindu teachings with a "Pundit," many of these prejudices were dispelled. Alexander Dow, The History of Hindostan; from the earliest account of time to the death of Akbar, Vol. 1 (London: T. Becket and P.A. De Hondt, 1768), xxii-xxiii. In what appears to be a direct attack on Holwell, Dow advises that his colleagues take more care in picking informants: "Some writers have very lately given to the world, and unintelligible system of the Brahmin religion; and they affirm, that they derived their information from the Hindoos themselves. This may be the case, but they certainly conversed upon that subject only with the inferior tribes, or with the unlearned part of the Brahmins: and it would be as ridiculous to hope for a true state of the religion and philosophy of the Hindoos from those illiterate casts, as ti would be in a Mahornrnedan in London, to rely upon the accounts of a parish beadle, concerning the most abstruse points of the Christian faith; or, to form his opinion of the principles of the Newtonian philosophy, from a conversation with an English carman" (xxxvii-xxxviii). Dow's conclusion: "Mr. Holwell: The author of the dissertation finds himself obliged to differ almost in every particular concerning the religion of the Hindoos, from that gentleman" (mix). 39 40

account associated with Holwell's "'Shastah of Brimha" and correctly identifies the Vedas as the broadly accepted scriptural foundation of Hinduism (xxxviii, xxiv). In addition, Dow offers a set of relatively even-handed descriptions of caste, custom, and morality, providing the European reader with a decent survey of social organization and religious pra~tice.~' Most of Dow's text, however, is devoted to an account of foundational religious concepts, which, while not entirely comprehensive, is significantly more developed and differentiated than that found in Holwell. Dow proposes that two philosophical frameworks dominate within Hinduism, leading into a division between "two great religious sects": "the followers of the doctrine of the Bedang; and those who adhere to the principles of the Neadirsin7' (xxxviii). Here Dow refers to the Vedanta and Nyaya schools of Hindu philosophy. Dow's version of Vedanta ("Bedang") is by no means a rigorous analysis of the philosophical school or of any of its representatives. Nevertheless, his treatise does manage to convey some specific concepts that are indeed foundational for more developed forms of Hindu religious reflection. Like Holwell, Dow presents a rendition of a primary source ("Shaster Bedang"), and this text also seems to bear traces of Purinic mediation; it is staged as a dialogue between "Narud" (Narada) and "Brihma" (Brahma) and contains "a strange allegorical account of the creation, for the purposes of vulgar theology" (xlvi). As a first principle, "Brimha" (the creator) describes the Godhead that stands behind him as follows: "Being immaterial, he is above all conception; being invisible, he can have no form; but, from what we behold in his works, we

Only in his reflections on the path of the samnycisi does Dow veer away from sober description towards derogatory representation. He presents the usual litany of extreme ascetic practices and then expresses particular concern about the manipulation of women: "When this naked army of robust saints direct their march to any temple, the men of the provinces through which their road lies, very often fly before them, notwithstanding of the sanctified character of the Fakiers. But the women are in general more resolute, and not only remain in their dwellings, but apply frequently for the prayers of those holy persons, which are found to be most effectual in cases of sterility.. .Some are really what they seem, enthusiasts; but others put on the character of sanctity, as a cloak for their pleasures. But what actually makes them a public nuisance, and the aversion of poor husbands, is, that the women think they derive some holiness to themselves, from an intimacy with a Fakier" (xxxv-xxxvi). 41

may conclude that he is eternal, omnipotent, knowing all things, and present every where" (XI). God has eternally resided with "Affection," or "maiah" (mdyd), and "Affection" possesses three qualities, that of creation, preservation, and destruction, which come to be represented by the trimzirti. In a gesture that grounds the unfolding of the universe, "affection" gave rise to power, which "embraced goodness ["Pir-kirti," pra&ilYyand thus produced matter. The original qualities acted on newly created matter and imbued it with its own essential nature, divided into three categories: "plasticity" ("Rajas," rajas), "discord" ("Tamas," tamas), and "rest" ("Satig," sattva). From the action of these qualities, the gross elements appeared (space, water, fire, etc.), setting the stage for the development of bodies, which God imbues with "Intellect" ("Mun," manas). Narud inquires, "What dost thou mean, 0 Father! by intellect?'Brimha responds, "It is a portion of the GREAT SOUL of the universe ["P~rmattima,'~paramZtman], breathed into all creatures, to animate them for a certain time," and after the death of the individual, "It animates other bodies, or returns like a drop into that unbounded ocean from which it first arose." If the individual is pure, the individual "Mun" achieves an "absorbed state" ("Muchti," mukti), which is constituted by "participation of the divine nature, where all passions are utterly unknown, and where consciousness is lost in bliss" (xli-xliv). The infrastructure of the system described by Dow closely resembles the Siimkhya view of the created order and its

fundament^!^ Neverthless, the particular representation of mZyi and

liberation in the text, along with the mere presence of theism, does seem to indicate that a Vediintin mediation has taken ~ l a c e . 4While ~ this layering process on the part of Dow's 42 See M. Hiriyama, Essentials of Indian Philosophy (London: Diamond Books, 1996), 107-115 and Gerald James Larson, Classical Siykhya: An Interpretation of Its History and Meaning (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1969), 173-186. 43 A number of clues suggest that Dow's informant was emphasizing a Vaishnavite teaching inspired by RhZnuja. First, Dow argues that the "BedangYy sect is predominant in Southern India, which matches with RiimZnujaYsorigins and traditional sphere of influence. In addition, the creation allegory appended to the "Shaster Bedang" emphasizes the role of Visnu in its narrative. Further, Dow's account seems to emphasize a qualified set of relations between dimity and creation: divinity is essentially "immaterial,"

informant could be pursued further (with interesting results), for present purposes it is most important to delineate Dow's influencial conclusions. First, he reaffirms a common aspect of early Orientalist apology for Hinduism, namely that its core religious commitment is monotheistic: Upon the whole, the opinions of the author of the Bedang, upon the subject of religion, are not unphilosophical. He maintains that the world was created out of nothing by God, and that it will be again annihilated. The unity, infinity and omnipotence of the supreme divinity are inculcated by him: for though he presents us with a long list of inferior beings, it is plain that they are merely allegorical; and neither he nor the sensible part of his followers believe their actual existence. (xliix) While Dow refrains from an historical narrative of degeneration, like Holwell, he affirms the distinction between a pure belief in a single, supreme God and devotion to a wild plurality of "inferior beings." Second, and more importantly, Dow also directs the transmigration doctrine to center stage, which certainly inspired Voltaire to do the same. But Dow's reading (based on his encounter with the "Bedang") is unique, containing elements that only leave traces in Voltaire's interpretation; Herder would eventually encounter these elements directly: The opinion of this philosopher, that the soul, after death, assumes a body of the purer elements, is not peculiar to the Brahmins. It descended from the Druids of Europe, to the Greeks, and was the same with the eidolon of Homer. His idea of the manner of the transmigration of the human soul into various bodies, is peculiar to himself. As he holds it as a maxim that a portion of the GREAT "above all conception," "invisible," and without "form," "but, from what we behold in his works, we may conclude that he is eternal, omnipotent, knowing all things, and present every where." "God" (brahman) is not unreflectively identical with the world but does undergo transformation and modification in order to ground it. For Rbiinuja, "The relationship between the individual self (jiva) and brahman is one of nondifference but not one of unqualified identity. There are many individual selves, but only one brahman or supreme self (paramcitman). Likewise, individual selves are not identical to the world (jagat), nor is that world identical to brahman. Nevertheless, brahman really does transform itself into the universe and the multitude of of individual selves." Richard King, Indian Philosophy: An Introduction to Hindu and Buddhist Thought (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1999), 225. In other words (in Dow's terms), divinity becomes "the GREAT SOUL of the universe." Dow's reading of may5 andpra&i as "affection" and "goodness" is perhaps most indicative of an interpretation out of Riimhuja; as King writes, " R h h u j a suggests that the Advaitin is a crypto-Buddhist (pracchana bauddha) in his use of the notion of may5 and the doctrine of two truths to deny the reality of the world. In contrast, RhZinuja notes, one should understand miyi in its more positive (and earlier) Vedic usage as that which denotes the wonderful effects and manifestation ofpra@ti1' (227).

SOUL or God, animates every living thing; he thinks it no ways inconsistent, that the same portion that gave life to man, should afterwards pass into the body of any other animal. This transmigration does not, in his opinion, debase the quality of the soul: for when it extricates itself from the fetters of the flesh, it reassumes its original nature. (1) Dow proposes that the possibility of rebirth in animal form (a teaching that is broadly scorned by European readers of his day) can be properly understood by acknowledging the vitalistic, monistic element of the "Bedang." In other words, according to Dow, God's animating presence in all living things is a common basis that preserves the dignity of all creation. The presentation of the "Neadirsen Shaster" (the NyayaSZsira) contains an emphasis on the same principle. Here Dow refrains from "free translation" and instead presents a summary of an original text (by "Goutam," suggesting that he is reporting on the NyZya Sutra itself) in order "to adhere to the literal meaning of the words" (hi). The starting point is appropriately the realism and empiricism of the "Neadirsen": "Goutam does not begin to reason, apriori, like the writer of the Bedang" (ibid.). Dow correctly reports that Nyiiya-Vaiiesika enumerates the categories of real entities that populate the world of possible knowledge. He also devotes some attention to the conditions and faculties of knowledge and the Nyiya proofs for the existence of God. While these topics in epistemology and reasoning are generally accepted as the focal points in ~ ~ i i ~ a - ~ a i i e s iDow k a : chooses ~ to focus on the category of eternal substances (nitya dravya) (lviii-li~).~'According to the "Neadirsen," "five things must of necessity be eternal." Time and space are the first two substances, Next is "Akash [ZkaSa],a subtile and pure element, which fills up the vacuum of space, and is compounded of purrnans [parirn@za]or quantities, infinitely

44

See King, Indian Philosophy, 59, 130-137. For treatments of the categories of reality (including substance and the distinction between eternal and non-eternal substances) in Nyiiya-Va%e$ika,see Hiriyanna, Essentials of Indian Philosophy, 85-95; King, Indian Philosophy, 105-115; Wilhelm Halbfass, On Being and What There Is: Classical Vaiiesika and the History of Indian Ontology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 72-74; and Karl H. Potter, ed., Indian Metaphysics and Epistemology: The Tradition of Nycya- Vais'esika up to Gangeia, Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, Volume 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 73-101. 45

small, indivisible and perpetual," which refers to the atomistic teaching prevalent in the NyayaVaiiesika school. Dow's representation, which to this point is standard, takes an interesting turn in its enumeration of the last two substances. First, there is the "Pirrum Attima \paramitman], or the GREAT SOUL,who.. .is immaterial, one, invisible, eternal, and indivisible, possessing omniscience, rest, will, and power." Next we find "the Jive Attima [fivitman], or the vital soul, which.. .is material." Dow's informant takes a decisively theistic turn in his reading of the last two substances, going so far as to square the notion of divinity with the Siimkhya-based views expressed in the "Bedang Shaster" (param~tman).46 Nevertheless, Dow's account does manage to maintain important distinctions between the two "sects," leading an alternate vision of the vitalism expressed above, but ultimately arriving at almost the same point. For "Goutam," the vital soul is different from the great soul, are very numerous, and it is upon this head that the followers of the Bedang and Neadirsen are principally divided. The first affirm that there is no soul in the universe but God, and the second strenuously hold that there is, as they cannot conceive, that God can be subject to such affections and passions as they feel in their own minds; or that he can possibly have a propensity to evil. (lviii) This important difference between the two systems4' is quickly bridged, however, when Dow once again turns to an explanation of the philosophical basis for transmigration. Dow's "Goutam" proclaims, "'God.. .can neither make nor annihilate.. .atoms.. .; but they are.. .totally subservient to his pleasure'' (lix). Atoms are forged into the four elements (fire, air, water, and earth) and fitted to the "vital soul," which can be associated with the elemental arrangement of a From this modification of the last two substances (which are traditionally fitman and manas) we can infer that Dow is not encountering the Nyiya Siitra of Gautarna directly, because divinity is not a significant theme in the text. Nevertheless, as Potter indicates, theism did being to play a role in Nyiiya-Vaiiesika debates from a relatively early point (Indian Metaphysics and Epistemology, 100-101), and it would be unsurprising to find that Dow's informant is guided by a later commentary. I have not yet discovered the precise location for an appropriation of the paramatma concept within Nyi%ya-Vai4e$ika,however; it does seem to suggest a level of syncretism with Vedintin perspectives. 46

man, an animal, or even a plant, '"for plants, as well as animals, are possessed of a portion of the vital soul of the world" (lxv). In this formulation, a step away from the individuality of the jivgtman has certainly taken place; here the "vital soul" becomes a ubiquitous, vitalistic principle. Generalizing this principle leads quite naturally to an immediate association betweenjTv6tman and param&nan, between self, nature, and God. Those who are impure "shall casually associate with the first organized Purman they shall meet" in their next re-birth, for "Goutam supposes, with the author of the Bedang, that the soul after death, assumes a body of fire, air, and akash." But if "it has been so purified by piety and virtue, that it retains no selfish inclinations," "it is absorbed into the GREAT SOUL OF NATURE, never more to reanimate flesh" (lx). Given this description, it is apparent that Dow's accounts of the "Bedang" and the "Neadirsen" end in essentially the same place, namely with a vitalistic principle that is present in all things, animating the created order. Dow's conclusion to the "Dissertation" is fascinating in light of this interpretation of the two "sects." Most Westerners have misunderstood India, because they have failed to discern the foundational doctrine espoused by the more sophisticated members of the "Hindoo" tradition: "the unity, eternity, omniscience and omnipotence of God" (lxvii). Rampant polytheism is seen as merely symbolic by these elites. But as we have seen, Dow is well aware that Hindu belief is not strictly monotheistic in the Western sense, and its tantalizing foundational doctrine has dangerous potential: From a fundamental article in the Hindoo faith, that God is the soul of the world, as is consequently diffused through all of nature, the vulgar revere all the elements, and consequently every great natural object, as containing a potion of God; nor is the infinity of the supreme being, easily comprehended by weak minds, without falling into this error. (Ixix)

47

For a summary of Naiygyika arguments against Vedhtin monism (NyZya-Vaiiesikaasserts a real plurality of selves, whereas Advaita admits of only one true self), see Potter, Indian Metaphysics and Epistemology, 98-99.

This philosophical danger, which Dow so closely associates with Indian thinking, will resonate strongly with German readers, providing them with an immediate (if highly prejudicial) interpretive conception. Having established some of the important texts in the early European interpretation of Indian culture, we can proceed to an examination of Herder's contribution. It should be noted that the survey above has of course been selective. As Ghosh-Shantiniketan has noted, Herder's research on India went through a number of stages, starting with traveller's accounts, moving through the French and British sources discussed above, and probably culminating (at a late moment in Herder's career) in a reading of William Jones' early essays from the Asiatick ~ e s e a r c h e sNevertheless, ~~ the works described above were the first to delineate an important source of logos-driven authority for Herder and those who followed him in the German Orientalist context. Trautmann writes, As against the traveler's testimony of the eye, which reveals only the exterior of things, the Orientalist has access, through language, to the deeper meaning of things, to the intentionality of those he is attempting to understand and describe, which is the ultimate fount of all Orientalist authority. Linguistic capacity is the indispensable means for the new knowledge, and as it is the standard of authority in the claims of the new Orientalism against the travelers, so too is it the standard to which appeal is made in disputes among ~ r i e n t a l i s t s . ~ ~ Early Orientalist sources provided many of the myths, proto-ideas, and conceptions that would guide German inquiry, but perhaps most importantly, the British Orientalists in particular allowed German scholars to collapse the distance between Europe and India and, in fact, to make distance a strength: it allowed German scholars to deploy the logoi associated withpurely textual research. Herder was the first figure to translate this authorizing narrative from British Orientalism into the German intellectual context.

48

Pranabendra Nath Ghosh-Shantiniketan,"Johann Gottfried Herder's Image of India," Martin-LutherUniversitat Halle- Wittenberg Wissenschaftliche Beitrage 53 (1979): 12-14. 49 Aryans and British India, 34.

The Blossoming of India in Herder's Thought

Herder's first flirtation with India had appeared in a set of texts from the early 17707s, Unterhaltungen und Briefe iiber die altesten Urkunden, and it was highly enigmatic. In these texts, Herder continued his speculations on the nature of the creation story, but one of his revisions of this unfinished collection bears a strange and intriguing title: "Gesprach mit dem Braminen." Here Herder reports on a conversation with a "brahmin" who gives voice to the earliest meaning of Biblical formulations such as "God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth." As the "brahmin" says, such representations "occur among us so often in the books of all of our Oriental religions, in all dialects of our oldest languages" (SW 6, 134). Herder urges us to understand the metaphors of the Bible as living, enlivening poetic images, not according to scientific or doctrinal reductions. Nevertheless, the primordial vision of the East is ultimately out of reach for the European, because of the specific context out of which the "Oriental" speaks: Alles zeigt, dafi sie [die Morgenlander] unter den Pflanzen, wie unter Briidern und Schwestern, wie unter Kindern der Natur gelebt, und mit ihnen Lebenzeit, Wuchs, Bluthe, GenuJ, stille Wurksamkeit und stilles Gefuhl der Allbelebenden Mutter Natur getheilet. Die Enpfvzdung ist dunkel, aber vielleicht desto lebender, desto e i n f h i g e r strebend: wenn hier die Rose ihren Busen voll Thau der Morgensonne m e t , dort die Nachtviole unsichtbar wird und ihre duftenden Kelche schliefiet: hier der junge Baum im Wuchse seine Glieder webt, starkt, und seinen Bluthenregen abschauert: die Blumenheere von Reiz und Liebe beseelt, wie sie a h Brdute schimmern und der Zephyr in Wolken von Bluthe und Samen urn sie gaukelt; Alles duftet und hebt sich mit wachsender Wohlluji und filhlt den Othem des Friihlings. (SW 6, 142) [Everything indicates that they have lived among the plants as brothers and sisters, as children of nature, and shared with them the lifetime, growth, blossom, enjoyment, quiet efficacy and quiet feeling of all-animating Mother Nature. Perception is dark, but perhaps all the more living, all the more uniformly striving. Here the rose opens her breast to the dew of the morning sun; there the night violet will be invisible and closes her fragrant calyx. Here the sapling weaves its limbs in growth, becomes stronger, and showers down its rain of blossoms. The horde of flowers animates through charm and love, as shimmering brides are animated, when the wind flutters around them in clouds of

blossoms and seed. Everything has a perfume and raises itself with growing vigor and feels the breath of spring.] Perhaps realizing that he had created a strange hybrid (an Indian brahmin presenting a reading of Hebrew scripture), Herder abandoned this trope in later revisions of this set of fragments. That Herder reached for this persona at all, however, is not surprising, given the analysis presented to this point. The desire to have a literary conversation with a brahmin reveals a growing ambiguity around the primacy of the Hebraic, which was surely based on a growing knowledge of the diversity of Asian lands. In particular, the suggestion that the Indian brahmin has some intuitive knowledge of the interior logic of the Hebrew account of creation points to a reformulation of the historical status of this revelation. Given Herder's sources, described in the section above, details of this portrayal also make a great deal of sense. The brahmin espouses a monotheistic doctrine, but "God the Father" is paired rather strikingly with the "all-animating" feminine principle of nature, inspiring a charming and convivial communion. Despite his close reliance on French and British accounts, however, Herder's enthusiastic description is marked by many of the conventions that would become commonplace within German Romanticism, suggesting the appearance of a new and distinctive style of discourse around India. Obviously Herder's brahmin is mostly the product of imagination. Herder's most famous work, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, appeared in 1784-1785, and it claimed to present a much more scientific vision of non-European cultures, including India. This work synthesized much of Herder's thought to that point and was perhaps his most ambitious attempt to construct a comprehensive, universal history. It gave voice to a concept of cultural distinctiveness and concreteness, while at the same time attempting to inscribe cultures into a coherent developmental scheme. As many have noted, the work would prove profoundly influential for consequent philosophical and historical method: at the most fundamental level,

Herder's philosophy of history suggests that ideas about history must intersect with and be corroborated by the concreteness of history, as it is lived and acted out in specific contexts. The Ideen provides fertile ground for investigation of Western, post-Enlightenment historical consciousness; in this context, the object of analysis is obviously more limited. In the Ideen, Herder presented some of his 'most enduring interpretations of Indian culture, and while these depictions are differentiated in his other writings, the fame of the text meant that they would constitute the most significant part of Herder's legacy for those Europeans who wished to study and understand India. Herder's starting point in the text is expected given the course of his thought, but striking given his intellectual context. World history begins with the world itself and its development, which is an expression of a singular cosmic and organic power. In order to understand the history and development of human culture, Herder suggests, we must understand the natural, environmental contexts in which it arises. These contexts are highly diverse, given different distributions of natural resources and climactic conditions. Human history, as an expression of a particular form of life in a constant encounter with the natural environment, begins with physical geography (SW 13,285).

In all forms of life, organic powers and fundamental organizational laws are expressed in combinations that tend more and more towards unification (SW 13, 167). Humanity, which remains the paragon of creation in Herder's view, represents a balance and concentration of the power to interpret and negotiate an environment. Physiology has contributed mightily to the opening of this middle-niche (including erect posture and the construction of the skull) (SW 13, 128-129), but language and reasons0develop out of a fundamental instinct towards "artfulness"

Herder repeats many of his key sentiments from the much earlier treatise on language: "Ein Volk hat keine Idee, zu der es kein Wort hat: die lebhafteste Anschauung bleibt denkles Gefuhl, bis die Seele ein Merkmalfindet uns es durchs Wort dem Gedachtng, der Ruckerinnerung, dem Verstandeja endlich dem

(Kunst), which is necessary for human survival (SW 13, 144). Because human drive is a kind of construction, an improvisational art, humanity is freed from an immediate, instinctual realm of animal existence: humanity has freedom to range across different environments (SW 13, 150) and to engage in abstract thought and reflection. Striking a blow against the mainstream of the German Enlightenment, Herder claims that there is nothing magical about reason, however: "Theoretically and practically reason is nothing other than something taken in [Vernomrnenes], a learned proportion and direction of ideas and powers, towards which the human has become formed according to his organization and manner of life" (SW 13, 145). The adaptable manner in which the human being is organized (towards language, freedom, and reason) points to yet higher goals that are illuminated by organization itself: "the human has no more noble word for his determination than he himself is, in which lives represented the image of the creator of our earth, as it can be seen in him" (SW 13, 154). The ideality of divine organization points towards a sense of order, harmony, and sociability; human beings seem essentially driven towards harmonious, ethically sound existence (based on the Golden Rule). But human reflection probes deeper: it is quite clear that the created order was not first generated by human activity. Thus religious sentiment develops out of a sense of wonder and awe in the face of the created order; wonder and awe not only depend on an element of fear in the face of great power, but also on a sense of curiosity about that which remains hidden. According to Herder, then, human beings are prone to religiosity through an ethical sense of social ties and through a sense of God's power and image in the created order.

In all of these reflections, it should be clear that Herder ascribed to an evolutionary, progressivist scheme. In the stages of development (both natural and, as it turns out, cultural),

Verstande der Menschen, der Tradition einverleibet: eine reine Vernunjiohne Sprache is auf Erden ein utopisches Land...Nur die Sprache hat den Menschen menschlich gemacht" (SW 13,357).

there is no turning back the clock and returning to an earlier stage. All of creation, and all of human development, is directed through "formation" and "culture" (Bildung)towards an ideality:

Wir sahen, daJ der Zweck unsres jetzigen Daseyns auf Bildung der Humanitat gerichtet sei, der alle niedrige Bediirfnisse der Erde nur dienen und selbst zu ihr filhren sollen. Unsre Vernunftfahigkeitsoil zur Vernunft,unsrefeinern Sinne zur Kunst, unsre Triebe zur achten Freiheit und Schone, unsre Bewegungskrafte zur Menschenliebe gebildet werden; entweder wissen wir nichts von unsrer Bestim~nungund die Gottheit tauschte uns mit alien ihren Anlagen von innen und aussen (welche Lasterung auch nicht einmal einen Sinn hat) oder wir konne dieses Zwecks so sicher seyn als Gottes und unsers Daseyns. (SW 13, 1 89) [We saw that the goal of our present existence is directed towards the formation of Humanity, which all lesser necessities of the earth only serve and to which they alone should lead. Our capacity to reason should only be developed towards reason, our more delicate senses towards art, our drives towards actual freedom and beauty, our power of activity towards love of man. Either we know nothing of our destiny and divinity deceived us with all of its inner and outer constructions (which abuse also has no meaning at all), or we can be as sure about this goal as we are about God and our existence.] Each natural step has proceeded towards this goal, and now, or so Herder's examination would seem to suggest, the next stage is the very self-consciousness or retrieval he aims to perform.51 In this effort, humanity at its present stages gains assurance of the broad, providential design of the universe and directs itself towards full flowering (SW 13, 192). In the grand scheme of the providential, created order of nature, this is the appropriate metaphor for the development of human culture: "The flower appears to our eyes as a bulb, and then as a sprout; the sprout becomes a bud, and now for the first time the flowery growth emerges, which begins its life-span in this earthly economy" (SW 13, 193).

This concept of historical recollection and self-consciousnessshould not be confused with a Hegelian philosophy of history: "The intellectual model of this conception of the human sciences can best be described with terms such as progressive coherence, gradual integration, and enlarging of context. This view of history is determined by meaning and meaningfulness throughout, even if meaning is obscured in the past, does not fully occur in the present, and will not attain self-presence in the future [in contrast with Hegel]. But the idea of a total congruity or a complete relationship of all historical phenomena is always operative in spite of the silent pages of history, its sunken civilizations, lost treasures, and forgotten periods." Ernst Behler, "'The Theory of Art is its own History': Herder and the Schlegel Brothers," in Herder Today: Contributionsfrom the International Herder Conference, edited by Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1990), 264.

When it comes to Herder's specific analysis of human cultures, it is inevitably true that earlier forms correspond to the stages in the flower's development. But this does not suggest that Herder's contemporary Europe is higher than these earlier cultures; humanity in general remains but a Knopfe, a "bud," waiting to flower. In fact, Herder argues consistently against the "sophistication" of his contemporary age (SW 360-362). The cultural force of the Ideen is its argument for a vision of the past that will keep the present from veering away from its proper course, and this aim is achieved through a universal history that progressively charts the development of human civilization from Asia (which in general represents the most archaic past) to the European present as it is directed towards an asymptotic ideal.''

Thus, to return to the

organic metaphor (and to alter it in a way that is consistent with Herder's vision), the previous stages in human culture have produced individual blooms, which, when investigated, instruct humanity on its overall efflorescence. These blooms of human culture are absolutely distinctive in each time and place, because they are, after all, linked with nature's "economy" (to use Herder's term). Herder endeavors to survey human culture in terms of its physical geography from pole to equator, explaining physical characteristics by means of environment. Often Herder's judgments are strikingly problematic as negative, proto-racialist representations:3 but when it comes to one culture in particular, Herder's positive conception is equally dramatic:

Herder writes, "unser Geschlecht bestimmt ist, auf dem ewigen Wege einer Asymptote sich einem Punkt der Vollkommenheit211 nahern, den es nicht kennt und den es mit aller Tantalischen Muhe nie erreichet" (SW 14,38). 53 For a discussion of racialist discourse in late eighteenth century German thought see Suzanne Zantop,

Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770-1870 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 66-80. Zantop argues that the status of Herder's racialism is essentially ambivalent, but it contributes to an anonymous discourse of racist representation: "While the works of individual thinkers, such as Herder's, are deeply inconsistent and contradictory, exhibiting both a tendency toward hierarchical classification and a desire for justice and cultural differentiation, an impersonal racist intertext emerges that 'permits' mixing observations in natural history with aestethic judgment, and aesthetics with conjectures about the course of cultural-political history" (79).

The Hindus are the mildest nation of mankind. They willingly offend no living thing: they honor what life brings and nourish themselves with the most harmless of foods (milk, rice, fruits, and healthy vegetables) that their motherland provides for them. "Their form [Herder quotes traveller Mackintosh] is upright, slender, and fine, their limbs are proportioned, their fingers long and tenderly grasping, their face open and agreeable, the features themselves are among the feminine gender the tenderest lines of beauty and among the masculine those of a manly but tender soul. Their walk and their whole carriage is maximally graceful and charming." (SW 13,222) The Mongols have intermingled with this lovely people, but this description characterizes the "original form of their spirit," which entirely bespeaks the inner genius of the Indian Volk: "Moderation and repose, a tender feeling and a quiet depth of the soul mark their work and their enjoyment, their moral doctrines and mythology, and their arts..." (ibid.). This people only suffers because of oppressors: its own hierarchical priesthood, foreign invaders who come with the sword (the '6Mongols''/Mughuls),and the European, who has the people in "bridle and bit" (SW 13,222-223). These influences have combined "to lay waste to the garden of nature" (which Herder earlier calls a "Parodies") and "to torment the most innocent of humanity's forms with superstition and oppression" (SW 13,221-222). Herder's physiological typing of the Indian clearly extends upon his abiding fascination with the way in which external signs express inner spirit, and in the Ideen this account is grounded in physical geography, which has a positive influence on the formation of the Indian people. This new account, which seems directly inspired by Voltaire, leads to an important recalibration of the Orient, for, as we have seen, the Indians seem to be living in a paradise (in fact, Herder entertains the thought that the original paradise, Eden, was located amidst the Himalayas) (SW 13,432), which enables them to assume many of the characteristics previously attributed to the Hebrews. The Indian exists in a realm where a moderate climate produces good, natural food and little physiological tension; this enables him to become "the finest creature in the enjoyment of the sense organs" (SW 13,293). Surprisingly, this sensitivity makes living a

moderate life easier; "Im warmen Gegenden hat der Mensch mehr Existenz in sich selbst" (SW 14,684). For the Hindu, finely tuned senses promote hygiene and the desire for movement, as well as modertate eating habits (because one is more sensitive, it takes less to satisfy oneself). The result is moderation and repose: "The Indian establishes his bliss in dispassionate repose, in an undisturbed enjoyment of serenity and peace ...he swims in a sea of sweet dreams and invigorating fragrances" (SW 13,295). Among the Indians, sensuousness reigns (as it had for the Hebrews), but Herder admires the way it leads to Mdfiigkeit und Ruhe. While Herder is clearly transposing many images from the Hebrew Orient in his account, these virtues were interestingly not part of his reading of Hebrew sources in his earlier writings, and this is likely attributable to Herder's appropriation of the interpretations presented by Voltaire. Herder's climate-based characterology extends beyond fundamental questions of disposition and lifestyle but continues to support the primordial antiquity of India. Herder is generally convinced that culture and human history arose first in Asia. In India in particular, Herder claims, the language roots are the simplest and fewest (he refers to Bengali) and from themselves produce the full variety of forms necessary for communication (SW 13,407);'~this is an indication of great antiquity in Herder's language scheme. While the earliest sources (the Vedas) remain obscure, Herder also reports on mythological stories of creation (from the water, from which "the first man arose...as a flower," and from an egg) (SW 13,415). In all cases, in Indian mythology the "repose of paradise breathes" in L'Blumenphantasie,"for the gods "bathe in milk and sugar seas" and the goddesses "reside in refreshing pools in the cup of sweet-smelling flowers" (SW 13, 307). 54 As we will see, Friedrich Schlegel's scheme is in many ways a specification of this theory. Herder's source for this judgment is another important text from early British Orientalism, namely A grammar of the Bengal language (1778) by Nathaniel Brassey Halhed. Halhed had also written A code of Gentoo laws, or, ordinations of the pundits, from a Persian translation, madefrom the original, written in the Shanscrit

Herder's analysis does move beyond this paradisiac framing of Indian society and culture. Caste is an important subject in his account, and Herder is particularly drawn to the influence of the brahmins, in continued response to the conceptions of Voltaire. The origin of brahminical religion is entirely native, according to Herder, and its proliferation is almost complete among Hindus; thus there is little or no room for any other cultural influence (SW 14, 28). The code of the brahmins is ubiquitous among the people, comprising "gentleness, civility, moderation, and purity" (ibid.). Herder once again evaluates these "pure and sublime" virtues positively, as they are spurred by a "great and beautiful" idea of God and by "fine and lovely" legends (SW 14,29). But all is not idyllic in Indian culture. Across the vast span of Indian culture from the brahmin is the pariah. The position of the outcast is perhaps explained by the transmigration doctrine (Seelenwandening), for the doctrine itself promotes an attitude that is against the nature of Humanitat: While it ...awakens a false compassion towards every living thing, it diminishes at the same time the true sympathy with the miserable one of our race; one takes the unfortunate to be a malefactor under the burden of a former violation or as one pressed under the hand of destiny which will reward his piety in a future situation. (SW 14, 3 1) The doctrine is a positive and imaginative step in the progressive human ordering of the cosmos, but it is ultimately child-like, "well-meaning delusion" that is "without reason." It becomes particularly harmful when integrated with the practice of morality and the organization of society (SW 14, 89). On this count, Herder expresses concern about the way in which the transmigration doctrine promotes superstition (via the many means employed to adjust or divine future rebirths) and supports the absolutist authority of the brahmin. While the religious or theocratic

language (1778), a work commissionedby Warren Hastings. See Marshall, ed., The British Discovery of Hinduism, 140-1 83.

organization of Indian society has preserved it through the centuries (SW 14,87):'

the

transmigration doctrine is greatly responsible for the external political oppressions India has suffered: the brahmin's authority supercedes that of the warrior (batriyd), and the warrior spirit in India goes into decline. A general spirit of resignation prevails (SW 14,39), indicating that India has always been ripe for subservience, first under its own priests, then under the Mughuls, and finally at the hands of Europe. It goes without saying that Herder's characterizations of Indian culture and religion were severely circumscribed by his source material and by his own scheme for historical development - and the place of Asian cultures within it. While he was right to claim that brahrninical

traditions extend back to deep antiquity, Herder was completely insensitive to diversity and development within the tradition. With brahminical values determined as the Indian essence, Herder wished to claim that they exhaustively define Hindu culture. In addition, Herder's reading of transmigration and caste suggested, in no uncertain terms, that the development of Indian culture was essentially arrested: it had its own integrity, but later, higher ideals will be expressed in other cultural settings. Nevertheless, the Ideen marks a pivotal moment in the German intellectual reception of Indian sources. Perhaps most importantly, Herder adapted proto-ideas from the information that was available to him and firmly established a set of conceptions and styles that would ground the prejudices of later thinkers. Conceptions of the nature of Indian values and beliefs, such as repose and transmigration, assumed a place within a broad myth, which relocated the innocent cultural paradise from ancient Palestine to the shores of the Ganges. The notion of the Indian

55 See SW 14, 87. India shares this cultural form with Hebraic culture, and it also accounts for the staying power of Jewish society, in Herder's opinion. In the Ideen Herder is much more willing to use "Oriental despotism" (the most egregious extension of the theocratic social structure) as a blanket term of description (and abuse, when it comes to his reading of the Catholic influence in Europe) than he had been in Auch eine Philosophic, some ten years earlier.

paradise, which was associated with ancient, brahminical religion, became an abiding image in the representation of India, as did the narrative suggesting that this state degenerated into the rigidity of caste, polytheism, and despotism.56 Herder's adaptation of earlier forms of knowledge also dislayed a particular style of discourse in the representation of Indian culture and religion that is (in a rather precise sense) "flowery." Acting on his conception of folk literature and mythology, Herder moved decisively towards aestheticizing India through his rapturous descriptions, which introduced a distinctive quality to the discussion of India in the German context. The circulation of these conceptions and their styles, in connection with a general myth of Indian culture, would solidify into a prejudicial framework from which the construction of further knowledge necessarily had to proceed. There are also hints of a more logos-driven approach to Indian culture in Herder, but they were dramatically overshadowed by a "harmony of illusions" (to use Fleck's phrase). Herder's philosophy of history dictated a kind of empiricism that was meant to enhance the description of culture; his appeal to this kind of evidence certainly had the potential to offer deeper insight into a cultural setting. But Herder's use of such evidence (which was limited in the first place) was decisively guided by mythic conceptions, such that a theory about the effects of warm climate and a depiction of India as paradise fit seamlessly together. It might also be suggested that our author was not simply blinded by an idealistic, nostalgic picture of ancient Indian ideals; his reading of

56

Slavoj 2iiek presents an interesting reading of this European Tendenz that is so important in the reception of Indian sources: "What characterizes the European civilization is.. .precisely its ex-centered character - the notion that the ultimate pillar of Wisdom, the secret agalma [a pleasing gift, an offering to the gods], the secret treasure, the lost object-cause of desire, which we in the West long ago betrayed, could be recuperated out there, in the forbidden exotic place. Colonization was never simply the imposition of Western values, the assimilation of the Oriental and other Others to the European Sameness; it was always also the search for the lost spiritual innocence of OUR OWN civilization. This story begins at the very dawn of Western civlization, in Ancient Greece: for the Greeks, Egypt was just such a mythic place of the lost ancient wisdom." On Belief(London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 68-69. For a more specific analysis of Herder's role in the process (especially in relation to the displacement of the Hebraic center), see Maurice Olender, The Languages of Paradise: Race, Religion and Philology in the Nineteenth Century, translated by Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992).

the transmigration doctrine represents a moment of critical engagement that perhaps falls outside the realm of mythologizing Indian religio-philosphical concepts. However, this mode of engagement also seems to be framed by a broad myth of Indian degeneration, giving Herder's conception of satnsara a negative valence. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Herder's emphasis on language, its link to culture, and the "spirit of a nation" would fuel a rapidly developing effort to investigate the languages and texts of Indian culture in a disciplined manner. As Herder claims in the Ideen, "The finest effort at the history and diverse characterization of the human understanding and heart would be...aphilosophical comparison of languages" (SW 13, 363). Herder himself would undertake this comparison at the level of textual hermeneutics, translational reconstruction, and investigative poetics, but such techniques continued to be in tense relation with the myths, conceptions, and styles dominating Herder's discourse on India. The Ideen contains what is very likely Herder's most prominent and influencial representation of Indian culture, but it is certainly not the limit of his inquiry. In the fourth collection of Zerstreute Blotter (Scattered Leaves), which appeared in 1792, Herder devotes considerable attention to various aspects of Indian culture that extend upon his observations in the Ideen. Here we have the opportunity to test the positive dynamism of Gadamer's sense of prejudices. Because of the increasing scope of information available to him (exemplified by Dow's "Dissertation"and also enforced by the appearance of primary sources in translation), Herder's conceptions from the Ideen shifted and changed. But do Herder's prejudices show signs of adjustment and progress, or do they simply circulate, taking up different positions within the structure of his Orientalist discourse? I would argue that one crucial conception did undergo significant adaptation as a product of Herder's attention to Dow's treatise: that of divinity. Herder moved away from the standard Orientalist apology for Hinduism, namely that its foundational religious commitment is monotheistic. Instead, Herder's reading of a wider set of

sources allowed him to make a connection with an intellectual framework that dominated his own context: the debate over pantheism. Perhaps the most important event that is registered in the pages of the fourth Zerstreute

Blotter is the appearance of Georg Forster's translation of the drama by Kiilidasi, Sakuntala. William Jones had originally translated the work into English in 1789, and Forster, a well-known travel-writer and political figure:7 presented his English-based rendering in 1791. The response in German intellectual circles was immediate and overwhelmingly enthusiastic. Goethe's song of praise for the work, with which Herder begins his own essay in 1792, runs as follows:

Willt dii die Bliithe desfrilhen, die Friichte des spateren Jahres, Willt du was reizt und entzuckt, willt du was sattigt und nahrt, Willt du den Himmel, die Erde mit Einem Namen begreifen Nenn ' ich Sakontala Dich, und so ist alles gesagt. Despite his enthusiasm for this work, Goethe himself was ambivalent about Indian culture and seemed more attracted to Persian and Arabic sources. But Herder was spurred to further investigation by the appearance of the drama. In terms of the work itself, Herder was as captivated as his friend Goethe. Unsurprisingly, the work was characterized as a "flower," an "unexpected" flower (SW 16, 85), a "true flower of the

"a flower of paradise.yy59In his essay, Herder argues that the play is

a distinctive blossom of Indian culture, requiring a suspension of European standards: it must be read not in a European manner, "in order to know the point out of fleeting curiosity," but instead

bbIndisch,yy "with carefully attending reflection, repose, and scrupulo~sness'~ (SW16, 88; cf. SW 24,577). However, this Indisch style of interpretation was obviously not designed to see the text 57 For an examination of Forster's impact on cross-cultural study in German intellectual life, see Dagrnar Bamouw, "Political Correctness in the 1780's: Kant, Herder, Forster, and the Knowledge of Diversity," Herder Yearbook: Publications of the International Herder Society 2 (1994): 5 1-76. Forster's research, which was based on extensive travel, was often in accord with Herder's theoretical views about the distinctiveness of each individual culture; Bamouw's article explores this relation in detail. From a letter from Herder to Forster, quoted in Figueira, 13.

"through Indian eyes," to use Halbfass' phrase; rather, it is a marker for Herder's own approach, which celebrated the literary expression of an essential "spirit" and "genius" of the culture. The text is prized for its literary, poetic content, and Herder privileges its role in representing Indian culture over all of the "Weda 's, Upaweda 's, Upanga 's... Upnekats und Bagawedatnsyywhich crowd the scene (SW 16,91). Texts like hilaintala are all we need: "Sakontala ist alles, was eine Indische Blume des Reizes, der Zncht und Tiigendseyn kann" (SW 16, 102-103).

While it is clear that Herder was fixated on the literary as an expression of the Indian "genius" (and this is indeed important for an analysis of the style that greeted the Gita), Herder also became better acquainted with the foundations of Hindu myth, religion, and philosophy. This knowledge is apparent in another essay from the 1792 collection, where Herder offers brief descriptions of Brahmii, Visnu, Sarasvati, Krsna, Laksmi, h a , Indra, and Varuna (SW 16,6970).~' Behind these gods and the representation of them is the sensuous but precise foundation provided by brahminical religion. It is worth noting that Herder does not accuse Hinduism of idolatrous excess; rather, he interprets the many elements of Hindu iconography (multiple heads, arms, implements, etc.) as symbolic and allegorical (SW 16, 76-77)61but laments the lack of information that would properly explain the inner meaning of the many signs.

SW24,360, from Herder's preface to the second edition of Forster's translation (1803). Herder does not cite his source for his reflections in the fourth Zerstreute Blotter, and while it is possible that he utilized William Jones' important article "On the God of Greece, Italy, and India," which was first published in 1789, it is more likely that he derived his account from Dow. Herder touches on many of the same themes, and Dow had appended "A Catalogue of the Gods of the Hindoos" to his "Dissertation," which easily could have provided the basis for Herder's descriptions of Hindu polytheism. See Dow, The History of Hindostan, lxxi-lxxvi. 61 Herder writes, "beijedem Symbol,jedem Arm, jedem Kopf konnte eine Geschichte,eine Eigenschaji des 59 60

Gottes erzahlt werden, und an einer einzigen Figur hatte der Lehrer sowohl als der Schuler gleichsam die ganze Epopee des Gottes, ein vollstandiges Inventarium seiner Verhaltnisseund Thaten. Alles war an ihm bedeutend; und ich zweifle, ob die Symbolik der Kunst bei Einem Volke der Erde ausfuhrlicher behandelt sei, als bei den Indiern" (SW 16,76). For an examination of Herder's concept of the symbol in relation to Indian sources, see Saverio Marchignoli, "The Bhagavadgitci as a Forgotten Source for European Aesthetics: The Notions of 'Symbol' and 'Philosophical Poemyin Herder and Humboldt," Frontiers of Transcultwalityin Contemporary Aesthetics, www.i~~~ibo.it/transculturalitv/ tiIes/36%201narchiii11oli.PDF,

43 1-432.

The essay is also characterized by a deeper engagement with fundamental religiophilosophical concepts that ground the Indian worldview. Herder is fascinated by the symbolism of the Hindu trimtirti, BrahmZ, Visnu, and ~ i v a .The three figures represent creation, maintenance, and destruction, but Herder's reading is interesting: these three functions point to a singular "power" (Kraft) which is the "foundation" (Grundlage) of the Hindu religious system, characterized as a ceaseless flow of generation, harmony, destruction, and regeneration (SW 16, 78). In addition, Herder pulls back from his earlier criticisms of the transmigration doctrine, and while he characterizes it as a "dream" and a "delusion," it is seen as an indication of the deeply nuanced sense of human actions and the way they are integrated with the universe (SW 16, 79). Herder also broaches the question of brahman, the deep unifying principle of Hindu religion and philosophy. Herder identifies the principle as that which is both farthest away and nearest to the human soul; he also describes those who attempt to penetrate the illusion that is the world in order to unify with it. Images of brahman (like the symbols of the trimzirti) are but "recollections" (Erinnerungen) of what cannot be represented.62 Here, interestingly enough, Herder cites loose translations from chapters ten and eleven of the Git5 in order to illustrate the manner in which external representation surrounds an essentially unrepresentable core (SW 16, 79-82).

Herder's vision of historical and cultural analysis had finally caught up with India, and in his effort to capture the distinctiveness of the Indian worldview, he finally caught up with specific Indian texts; this engagement was to take specific shape in another section of the Zerstreute Blotter. But in order to see this presentation of texts, and particularly Herder's Gitii, in the

62 In his 1803 preface to ~akuntala, these foundational doctrines will come to fore in Herder's reading of the play. He claims that "Allesis? in der Indischen Natur belebf and that ^Dasganze Schopfung is?Erscheinung, des und des Gottes, in dieser undjener Verwandlung;"everything is interconnected but is may& a "lovely delusion" (SW24,578), but "der innere Sinn, der es am tiefften, innigsten genieJt, is? Ruhe der Seele, Gotterfriede" (579).

correct light, one last stage of contextualization is necessary: Herder's specific role in the philosophical discussions of his day. While it seems that Herder's hermeneutical circle has indeed broadened by the early l79O's, this last layer of contextualization allows for a specification of his innovation in the European interpretation of Indian sources.

The Philosophical World Surrounding Herder's Gita:Kant, Pa~~tlieist~~usstreit, and Indian Belief By 1792, Herder had wandered into deeper waters in his reading of Indian culture. It is particularly important that he began to engage its philosophical doctrines with more care. The representation of India obviously played a role in his broad sense of history, culture, and literature, but it should already be clear that Herder was also actively engaged in the more technical, philosophical debates of the late eighteenth century. It was inevitable that these debates would influence Herder's reception of Indian sources. In this section I will investigate the way in which Herder's interpretation of Indian doctrines intersected with the philosophical concerns of his intellectual community. There is an important consonance between Herder's response to contemporary philosophical debates and his reception of grounding religio-philosophical doctrines from the Indian context. Discerning this intersection between Indian doctrines and German debates provides an important perspective on Herder's presentation of the Bhagavad GitZ. In particular, Herder's reception of the text is framed by his attempt to grapple with Kant's critical philosophy and even more importantly by his participation in one of the most important philosophical episodes in the development of postKantian philosophy, the Pantheismusstreit. The link between foundational Hindu religiophilosophical conceptions and pantheism would prove to be one of Herder's most enduring contributions to the German discourse on India.

This is not to say that Indian philosophical concepts had a direct influence on discussions in post-Kantian philosophy. These local philosophical discussions provided a framework for the reception of Indian concepts, compelling a distinctly German reading of them. But the local philosophical vocabulary, which provided new conceptions for the understanding of Indian doctrines, did take on a different tint after they came into contact with India. This in fact enabled them to play a different role in the local context of their origin after instersecting with Indian sources. To retell the story philosophically, we must return to the beginning. It will be recalled that Herder was a student of Kant at Konigsberg during the later days of his pre-Critical period. Herder certainly learned some of the key points of Rationalist thought from Kant, but the latter was also interested in natural, empirical science. As previously suggested, Herder was certainly motivated to pursue an active study of Enlightenment thinking, perhaps most notably exemplified by his commitment to physical geography as a factor in explaining the "spirit" of a particular arena of human culture. In a number of his early writings, Herder was seemingly quite comfortable with the side of Kantian thinking which famously suggested (in 1781) that "thoughts without content are empty."" But, on the other side, Kant would claim that "intuitions without concepts are blind." Hamann, "the Magus of the North," also had his influence on Herder and his early works, and Sturm and Drang also began to make an impact in the early 1770's. As Zammito shows, Herder's expressivism, emotionalism, and sensualism had only one possible consequence for Kant: Schwarmerei, the worst enemy of rigorous thinking. It could be seen as epoch-making that during this period Kant associated unclear thinking and overweaning enthusiasm with the "Oriental":

Would to God that we could be spared this Oriental wisdom; nothing can be learned from it; the world has received no instruction from them but a kind of mechanical artifice, astronomy and numbers. Once we had Occidental education from the Greeks then we were able to lend some rationality to the Oriental scriptures, but they would never have made themselves understood on their owna Kant has the esoterica of texts like the Aelteste Urkunde in mind here but seems also to know that Herder is ready to push further east to add content to his concept of the Orient. The immediate force of Kant's connection between Sturm tind Drang, the Orient, and Schwarmerei, however, was to produce deep disappointment in his former student. But Herder was not simply an enthusiast. He was well acquainted with the philosophical currents of his day and was, at times, a formidable thinker. Herder's simple rejoinder to Kant was that philosophy and Schwarmerei have something in common: they can both lead to "abstraction," which is the real enemy of reflection and truth. But Herder's reponse to Kant's style of Enlightenment thinking came to be more specific and complex. The initial confrontation with the Kantian style of thinking first appeared in the mid1770's within several revisions of a prize essay, Voin Erkenneiz und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele. In this text, Herder responded to a question from the Berlin Academy of Sciences: "What is the nature of, and the relationship between, the two basic faculties of the soul, knowledge and feeling?" As is clear evem from a superficial reading, Herder simply disagreed with the premise of the question and seemingly as a consequence, did not win the prize. But the essay was extremely important. In its various revisions, Herder attempted to offer a philosophical rationale for previous notions of "spirit," "genius," "Gejuhl," and "life" by

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965),93. 64 Quoted in John H. Zamrnito, The Genesis of Kant 's Critique of Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 39. 63

bringing them together in his conception of be raft."^^ (The concept would also infuse the Ideen.)

In responding to the Academy question, Herder wonders why philosophers had for the most part neglected an inquiry into what a "power" (i.e., a "faculty") itself was (as opposed to simply classifying and enumerating powers of the human mindlsoul) (SW 8, 177). In resisting this trend, Herder argues that the capacities of the human mind are variations on a central theme: Kraft is that which organizes and unifies a diversity; the highest form of power is that which unifies the most, and this highest unifier is the human soul. "It [the soul] makes One out of the many a spiritual, heavenly, divine One, which is its nature" (SW 8,289). This unity is itself an expression of a broader force, for the organized Kraft of the human mind is the extension of Kraft inherent in the created order.66 In an ideal sense, Kraft points to a teleological unity of knowledge, thought as the unity of the created order;67in a real sense, the created order is actually progressing towards higher levels of unity and expression, and human development is part of that process. Herder is convinced that the soul is acting out of its divine origin (it was created in the image of God), and progress towards unification also has a moral sense: it is progress towards that which God created and saw as good. In this text, Herder is often concerned with the power of reason, but it should be clear from these principles that revelation also has a powerful role to play in unifying human capacities towards ever-higher levels of progress.68

As Clark shows, this concept (and much of Herder's thinking at this point) owes its provenance to Leibniz. See 22 1-222. 66 These claims gain concreteness in the physical descriptions of the Ideen; the human balance between "perceptions" and "thoughts" is supported by a particular physiological arrangement, namely, the development of the skull and the fact that it is held aloft among humans (SW 13, 132). This organization is a product of the ever-unifying action of Kraft in the created order, which allows the profound expressions of the human mind: "it is drawn up over all capacities of lesser organizations so far that it not only rules as queen over a thousand organic powers of my body with omnipotence and omnipresence: also (miracle of miracles!) it is able to view and rule over itself (SW 13, 171). 67 See SW 8, 3 14: "Alle Werke Gottes sind unendlich: jedes ist eine Menge kostlicher Gedanken und 65

Krafte, wie Sand am Meer: und wenn ers entwickeln wollte, ein Weltall."

Arguments about the relationship between "reason" and "revelation" are undertaken in earnest in Herder's Studium, das Studium der Theologie betreffend (see especially SW 10,284-291). In short, reason and revelation are not in tension because they are both part of God's created order. Reason organizes

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Though it may not appear so at first glance, these claims start with a critical stance that is consonant with Kant's own. Herder argues that "all of the so-called pure thinking in divinity ...is deception and childsplay, the most wicked Schwarmerei...All of our thinking arose out of and through perception ...The so-calledpure concepts are mostly pure ciphers and zeroes on the mathematical table ..." (SW 8,234). But there was of course much for Kant to disagree with in Herder's philosophical efforts. During the 177OYs,he might very well have suspected Herder of surreptitiously transforming Hamann's dreams into a metaphysical system with the appearance of legitimacy and rigor. In an early edition of the Vom Erkennen essay (1774), for example, Herder argued that the limited nature of the human soul cannot take the whole of creation as its ground; it cannot possibly understand itself as unlimited. So God offers "an imitation extract" (eine kiinstliche Auszug), which presents "an analogy of its powers and an extract, symbol, a representing mirror of the universe," namely the body, or, perhaps, bodies in general. There is obviously a unity to organic bodies, encompassing a vast diversity, and, under the creator's auspices, this creation is good; the same is true of the human soul. And like the human soul, much of the infinite stretch of the universe of "bodies" remains hidden (SW 8,246; also see SW 8, 255). Thus, in the mysterious signs of the world around us (and those indications given by our

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human powers, taking its essential guidance from divine revelation in establishing truth, law, and doctrine. Revelation is expressed throughout the created order: in nature, and in human activity (including imaginatively inspired expression, i.e., scripture). Thus there is "no finer philosophy" than that which treats "languages" and "images" - a serniosis of divine revelation in all of its guises (SW 11, 12). One of the most significant ways tension is built between "reason" and "revelation," according to Herder, is by means of an abstract, a priorist concept of history, which essentially extirpates semiosis of revelational unfolding. When it comes to scripture itself, Herder no longer insists on specific "hieroglyphics" that bespeak some secret logic behind nature and cultures. His early experimentation has evolved into a highly defensible position: scripture articulateskey "ideas" which provide the impetus to progress in human understanding. For example, the Hebrew Bible articulates the idea of creation's unity and design, inspiring exploration of the interlocking cosmos: "Alles ist in Natur gebunden; undjur den menschlichen Blick bindet sich alles menschlich. Tags- und Jahrszeiten sind unsern Lebensaltern ahnlich; Lander und Climata der Erde bindet Ein Menschengeschlecht; Zeiten und Welten bindet Eine ewige Ursache, Gott, Schopfer" (SW 10,296).

own bodies), the divine nature of the human soul is revealed in all of its unitary, but unlimited openness. Despite the constant danger of revived esotericism, Herder once again managed to balance his account, and it ultimately provided a foundation for the all-important Ideen. For example, in introducing his notion of Krajl, Herder plays on the tension between forms of universalism (both religious and secular) and the absolute difference of individual cultures. The

Votn Erkennen essay affirms that there is a "universal human mind-set [Denkart],"based on a universal mode of "human perception [Einpjindung],"which we generally call "human understanding [Menschenverstand};"on this point Herder specifically resists David Hume (SW 8, 300-301).~~ But at the same time, Herder agrees with the force of the classic philosophical example from Hume's writings: he is right to point out that the Indian king will have no idea what ice is. There are striking and insuperable differences between cultures and historical periods (SW 302-303). If one is a rationalist or an a priorist (especially if one thinks further abstraction gives an adequate account of universal human capacities), skepticism around diverse cultural mind-sets presents a threat. But Herder's philosophical view intermingles strong doses of empiricism and teleology with universalism. The highest universal, the ultimate unity, is a goal, not a foundation, for human understanding. Difference is not a threat to a concept of human truth and certain knowledge: it is the foundation, and our inquiry is projected towards a divine ideal.

Die Denkart verschiedner Volker zu scheiden, sie nach den Proben ihrer und Lebensweise zu forschen, zu vergleichen, zu karakterisiren ist ein Blick, des wahren Weltweisen wurdig; der Weltweise ist aber allein Gott. Er ubersieht die Farbenreiche Charte des Menschlichen Herzens und Geistes. Wir sammeln Fragmente dam, die noch immer aufBerichtung, Vermehrung und den Vorurtheilsfreienhellen beugsamen Geist warten derjeder Nation ihren Himmel van Erkenntng uber ihrem duftenden Erdstrich von Empjindungen jinde. (SW 8, 303)

"Moge Hume mit hundert noch scharfsinnigern Zweifeln das Bandzwischen Ursache und Wurkung bestreiten;der Menschenverstand wirds immer sehen und glauben" (301).

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[To analyze the mindset of different peoples, to research them according to their experiments and habits, to compare, to characterize is a glimpse worthy of the true sage, of the way of the world is alone God. He surveys the colorful charter of human heart and spirit. We collect fragments of it, which still always wait for adjustment and improvement, and the bright, humble, prejudice-free spirit of each nation to find its heaven of knowledge over its fragrant region of perceptions.] Here we have a profound restatement of Herder's early metaphor. Proper philosophical knowledge (Weltweise) is constituted by comparison, by the "ripening" of one's view in the sun of difference, especially through the efforts and cultivation of the "aesthetic sciences" (as opposed to the "higher" forms of knowledge, from theology to philosophy of nature) (SW 9,295298). Only then can we properly lay our offering on the altar of cultural genius. While Kant was certainly interested in the question of human progress, he did not share Herder's enthusiasm for cultural difference and, more specifically, challenged the philosophy that grounded it. As Beiser illustrates, Herder's cool reception to the First Critique (1781) produced an animus, and Kant was able to express it in a review of the first edition of the Ideen (1784).~' Herder's work presented an imposing challenge to Kantian thinking: It is a new breed of metaphysics that Kant confronts in the Ideen - one that he does not even consider in the Kritik. This metaphysics does not proceed a priori, applying the Wolffian syllogistic apparatus so ruthlessly exposed in the Kritik. Rather, it operates a posteriori, using the methods and results of natural science. It sees metaphysics as nothing more than a general system of all the various sciences. All in all, it is metaphysics on the model of Kant's "Prize Essay" of 1763: ontology in the manner of Newton. Herder had been influenced by Kant's early work and continued to apply its methodology in his later philosophy. So, ironically, in criticizing the metaphysics of Herder's Ideen, Kant is sparring with his own precritical shadow. (15 1) The "shadow" loomed large and forced the consideration of two issues in particular. First, Herder's notion of Kraft was presented with critical humility, and he pulled up short before suggesting that it was possible to directly "see" power. But on the other hand we certainly know

See Frederick C. Beiser, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophyfrom Kant to Fichte (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 149-150.

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it is present by its effects. Kant's reaction was predictable: Kraft was not "given in possible experience" (ibid.); it was but an example of metaphysics mixing with nature, a move that surely ran afoul of transcendental critique. Second, Herder was a strongly teleological thinker. Thus the challenge to Kant: If teleological explanations are capable of becoming natural laws, then the door is open for a new kind of naturalistic explanation of the origin of human rationality, and explanation on the basis not of mechanical but teleological laws. All our rationality then amounts to nothing more than a manifestation of organic force, so that reason no longer belongs to an autonomous, noumenal realm. (1 54) The second part of Kant's Critique of Judgment ("Critique of Teleological Judgment") (1 790) was clearly born out of these controversies with Herder. But there was another crucial force that spurred this work by Kant and extended well beyond it in the German intellectual world: pantheism. Pantheism became a watchword in German philosophy because of an intellectual scandal. In essence, the so-called

Pantheismusstreit began when minor philosopher F.H. Jacobi revealed a confession made by Lessing, one of the leading lights of the German Enlightenment, late in his life: he was committed to the philosophy of Spinoza, and in the discourse of the day, that made him a pantheist, an irrationalist, and an atheist. The story itself represents a minor academic disturbance, the revelation that a leading intellectual was not quite what he or she was thought to be. But of course Beiser is right on this front: "We have to see that Lessing and Spinoza were only symbols, which had a much wider cultural and philosophical meaning" (48). Reactions to Lessing's confession piled up quickly (Mendelssohn and Kant were famous respondents)." Jacobi himself clearly had a philosophical agenda in making the revelation

'

It seems that the Pantheismusstreit literally killed Mendelssohn: his last statement on the question of Lessing's pantheism was contained in a text called An die Freunde Lessings. Beiser picks up the philosophical legend: "Mendelssohnwas so eager to be done with the whole matter that he decided to deliver the manuscript as soon as it was completed. So on December 3 1, 1785, a bitterly cold day in Berlin, Mendelssohn left his house to hand over the manuscript to his publisher, Voss and S o h . He was in

public: he was surely inspired (like Herder) by his friend Hamann and by his own Lutheran commitment. Jacobi reacted to Spinoza in the same way that the orthodoxy had always done, with disdain. But the key point is that Jacobi thought all philosophical perspectives, including those of the Aufklarer, ended in Spinozist pantheism if they were not undergirded by the centrality of faith and revelation: only faith and revelation could provide the transcendent anchor for reason, lest it slip off into the mechanistic determination of a Leibniz or Spinoza, and subsequently into the dangerous thought that God is everywhere (and thus nowhere). Lessing had accepted the liberal teachings of seventeenth century Rationalism, teachings which were beginning to reach their necessary end, according to Jacobi, in Spinozism, and hence in pantheism, and thence in atheism. Jacobi expected the Streit to produce a referendum on philosophy and particularly on the Enlightenment. The more technical responses would attempt to extricate Lessing, Enlightenment, and reason from the grip of Spinoza. But Jacobi did not perhaps anticipate the heterodox embrace of the association between Lessing and the lens-grinder. Many welcomed the thought that Enlightenment reason had another, more synthetic or dynamic side. By the 178OYs,Herder was indeed heterodox, and his response to the Streit was to welcome Spinoza with open arms.'* This response is expressed in the 1787 text, Gott, Einige Gesprache. Herder at this point was already tussling with Kant, and this text likely pushed the old master over the edge. Only another Kritik could neutralize it. such a hurry that he even forgot his overcoat, as it turned out, a literally fatal mistake. Upon his return, he fell ill. His condition rapidly declined; and on the morning of January 4, 1786 he died" (74). 72 The movement towards "heterodoxy"can be charted by keeping in mind Herder's opinion on Spinoza from 1775, which is quite "orthodox": "Spinosa, ein druchdringenderer [than Descartes] Geist, der Theologe des Kartesianismus brachte beides dahin, wohin Des-Kartes Eins brachte: warum sollte der Gedanke nicht so gut unmittelbare Wurkung und Eigenschaft Gottes seyn, als die Bewegung? Alle Individuen erloschen also dem denkenden wie dem bewegenden Gotte. Beide sind Eigenschaften Eines Wesens,die Spinosa weiter untereinanderzu bring vergaj oder verzweifelte, da er sie so weit von sich geschoben hatte. Er war ins Empyreum der Unendlichkeit so hinaufgeschwindelt, daft alle Einzelheiten ihm fief unterm Auge erblichen: dies ist sein Atheismus und wahrlich kein andrer" (SW 8,266).

Herder had admired Lessing a great deal and was ready to restore Spinoza on his behalf. But Spinoza's philosophy also gave Herder an important opportunity to expand his own. After debunking the standard reading of Spinoza promulgated by Bayle, Herder's first move in Gott, Einige Gesprache is to dissolve the traditional claim that Spinoza was an atheist. This simply cannot be sustained, as the more skeptical character in Herder's dialogue (Philolaus) finally attests: "For him the idea of God is the first and last, yes, I might even say the only idea of all ...Spinoza may have erred in a thousand ways about the idea of God, but how readers of his works could ever say that he denied the idea of God and proved atheism, is incomprehensible to me" (SW 16,438-439; English, 95-96).73 Then Philolaus moves directly to the heart of the matter: the question of Spinoza's pantheism. He questions his colleague, Theophron, who likely speaks for Herder, on the classic Spinozist doctrine, "There is but one Substance, and that is God. All things are but modifications of it." Theophron admits that the formulation is austere, but suggests an initial reading of it, which is something of an interpretive thesis: "The substances of the world are all maintained by divine power [Kraft], just as they derived their existence from it alone. Therefore they constitute, if you will, appearances of divine powers [Krafte], each modified according to the place, the time, and the organs in, and with which, they appear" (SW 16,441; English, 97). From the outset Herder makes it clear that Spinoza's doctrines presage his own conceptualization of Kraft. Throughout the text, Herder continues to expound this rereading of Spinoza's pantheism, wedding it with a vitalism revealed by up-to-date natural ~cience.'~Cartesian dualism is overcome, because "thought and extension" arise out of an essential commonality with different manners of expression. Old Rationalist conundrums about the consistency of "attributes" are

' English translations come from Johann Gottfried Herder, God: Some Conversations, translated by Frederick H. Burkhardt (New York: Veritas Press, 1940).

eliminated as "attributes" and transformed into powers: "theDeity reveals Himself in an infinite number offorces in an infinite number of ways" (SW 16,451; English, 103). Nowhere is this more evident than in scientific observation, where an infinitude of "organic forces" is in evidence; hence, "Everywhere organic forces alone can be active, and every one of them makes attributes of an infinite God known to us" (SW 16,451-452; English, 104). But this does not lead to the pantheistic problem of dividing God into finite units: I am afraid, my friend, that few will understand this distinction between the infinite-in-itself and the endless conceived in the imagination in terms of time and space, a distinction which is yet true and necessary. As limited beings we swim in space and time. We count and measure everything by them, and rise with difficulty from figures of the imagination to the pure idea which excludes all spatial and temporal measure. If this distinction had been understood, there would certainly not have been so much said of the mundane and extra-mundane God. Still less would Spinoza have ever been accused of enclosing his God within the world and identifying him with it. His infinite and most real Being is no more the world itself than the infinite of reason is the same as the endless of the imagination. And thus, no part of the world can also be a part of God, because the simple highest Essence has no parts whatsoever. I now see clearly that our philosopher has been as unjustly accused of pantheism as of atheism. (SW 16,456-457; English, 107) Conceived as "endless" in space in time, God is indeed sectioned off according to a multiplication of units or extended things. But the infinitude of "powers" is quite different as a function of observing reason: the stronger form of the "infinite" is the dynamism of sustaining powers in immeasurable, interwoven combinations. There is simply no way to see "power" as an extended thing, especially when posited within the whole of the created order. This work provoked yet another rancorous response from Kant and his followers and was one of the important stimuli for the Third C'ritique?' The battle between Herder and his old teacher would continue for yet another decade, but here we leave it behind, having established the contours of Herder's engagement with the philosophy of his day. We turn instead to India once 74 Notes from the Ideen show that Herder linked his theory of Kraft with Spinoza quite early on; Krafte and their "determinations" are outlined in terms of Spinoza's modifications of divine substance (SW 14, 606).

again, for it becomes quite clear that Herder makes rather explicit philosophical associations between his own vision of vitalistic pantheism and the doctrines he discerns in the Indian context, and this is a fateful connection, opening an important channel in the German intellectual discourse on India. At first glance, it may appear that this connection is not going to be made. In Gott, Einige Gesprache, Herder's fourth conversation turns back to Lessing, who had pronounced, "The orthodox conceptions of the Deity are no longer for me. I can take no pleasure in them." "Nor I," responds Philolaus, "now that the stumbling blocks have been removed from Spinoza for me. The inactive Being who sits outside the world and contemplates Himself, even as He contemplated Himself throughout eternities before He finished the plan of the world, is not for me." Theophron objects: didn't Lessing give even the "orthodox" short shrift with this "dreary, idle God"? The only orthodoxy that adheres to such a God is Hindu: s ~ ~ god, Jagranat [presumably Such a God is indeed orthodox to the ~ i n d u whose Jaganniitha], has sat for many milleniums with his arms hanging folded on his belly, quite contented thus. Another of their gods has been lying asleep for aeons. His head rests in the lap of one of his wives who scratches his crown; his feet in the lap of another who strokes his soles. Incessantly the stream of milk and honey flows in him. He is content therewith, and rests in dreamy selfcontemplation. These are veritably orthodox gods of the Hindus! But I do not see why our God must be a Jagranat or a Vishnu. (SW 16,496; English, 137) From this passage it appears that Herder is making a clear (and derogatory) distinction between the dynamic, complex all-in-one god of the new Spinozism and the passive, withdrawn gods of Hinduism. But in 1792 (returning now the the fourth collection of Zerstreute Blatter), Herder reflected deeper knowledge and decided to push India and neo-Spinozism closer together by

See Zammito, 246-247. In his 1800 edition of this text, Herder is not so certain in his judgment; he emends the sentence to read "Such a god may be orthodox for the Indians." 75 76

attempting a more comprehensive explanation of the Indian religious worldview in this text. His description is telling: Each flower teaches us this system (the Indians loved flowers), and what any one of them taught is attested by the flowers of the heavens: the solar system, the Milky Way, all parts of the universe. Creation, maintenance, and destruction are the three points of their great or small epochs. The creating power, BrahmZ, was among the Indians soon pushed into the shadows and deprived of the loudest part of their honors (for how little we know of creation!). Meanwhile, Visnu and ~ i v athe , pervading maintainer and destroyer of things, shared in the throne of world dominance. In this poem of the universe it was also quite fine that the propagation of beings was a middlepoint of unification between all three powers [Krafte], which encounter each other, appear to sublate [aufzuheben] each other, and through that precisely organize the chain of nature even further. Fruitfulness destroys the flower, and all its powers indeed strive to this height; what fruitfulness destroys, creation contains. (SW 16, 78) Herder's account of the trimzirti is reasonable, but given the context for his comments, it is clear that something besides the desire to offer a responsible description of a foreign worldview motivates this description. Rejuvenation provides the unification of "powers," which are in complex interactions; they build towards higher layers of organization and are entirely contained within the unity of all creation. In Gott, Einige Gesprache, Herder had presented virtually the same picture, down to the very image he used, except that it extended from his rereading of ~ ~ i n o z a But . ~ ' this very connection is the crucial point: Herder is beginning to associate vitalist pantheism with foundational religio-philosophical doctrines from the Indian context. This connection was affirmed by Dow's readings of the "Bedang" and the "Neadir~en.~~

' See S W 16,546-547,563-568;English 172-173, 185-189. "Every finite being, as a phenomenon, brings the seed of destruction with it" (565; 186), but "There is...no death in creation. It is a hastening away of that which cannot remain; it is the working of an eternally young, indefatigable, enduring force, which in accordance with its nature cannot be inactive, motionless, or unoccupied for a moment...In a world in which everything changes, every force is in eternal activity, and hence in eternal metamorphosis of its organs. For this transformation itself is the expression of its indestructible activity, replete with wisdom, goodness, and beauty. As long as the flower lived, it worked toward its own bloom, and toward the reproduction of its existence. Through its own organic powers it became a creator, the highest thing a creature can become. When it died, it withdrew a spent appearance from the world. The inner living force which produced and maintained it drew back into itself, in order to reveal itself once more to the world in rejuvenated beauty" (566; 187-188).

Given the philosophical setting, then, it is natural that Herder was also drawn to the concept of transmigration in the Indian context. As Karl J. Fink has noted,78Herder's later thought became particularly occupied with examinations of change, development, continuity, regeneration, and immortality. Herder gravitated towards the transmigration doctrine seemingly because it spoke to these themes, all of which were synthesized by a foundational commitment to vitalist pantheism. We have seen already that the transmigration doctrine was an object of critique in the Ideen. In the same year during which these criticisms appeared (1785), Herder also published a lengthy dialogue on the question in his first collection of Zerstreute Blotter (Scattered Leaves). The discussion begins with an important distinction: on the one hand, there is the notion that the soul has proceeded "from below on up," from plant to animal and finally to the human being. But the "brahminical hypothesis" suggests that the soul moves "from above on down": the good person ends up as a cow or an elephant, the bad person ends up as tiger or a pig, and the one in the middle just goes around again (presumably as a human) (SW 15,245). Herder is fascinated by the first concept; he devotes most of his attention to it in the dialogue because it quite naturally touches upon the progressivist scheme in the Ideen. Given the pessimistic casting of the second hypothesis (which is something of a mi~re~resentation),'~ Herder's attacks on the doctrine become more clear: he is unable to understand why the divine would fit a being for progress (reason, understanding, etc.), just to take it away (SW 15,298-299). Herder's reflections in the 1792 collection are somewhat more measured. The doctrine is still a "dream for those beings who are not at all able to break into the realm of invisible powers [Krafte]" (SW 16,78). But it does attest to the highly complex system of "fine distributions of

See "Tithonism, Herder's Concept of Literary Revival," in Johann Gottfried Herder: Language, History. and the Enlightenment, edited by Wulf Koepke (Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1990), 196-208. 79 Reni Gerard, L 'Orient et la pensie romantique allemande (Paris: Marcel Didier, 1963), 51-52.

world elements, senses and powers of the soul, of duties and burdens, indeed the finest effects of the human spirit" (SW 15, 79). Even later (in 1797) Herder would extend this examination, and while he would remain critical of the doctrine, the further association between Indian belief and pantheism becomes clear. The transmigration doctrine again stems from the ease and comfort of the Indian climate, which leads Hindus to repose "in a tender confluence of elements," but now Herder is armed with further knowledge about Indian philosophical foundations, and he seemingly knows how to position them according to his own philosophical concerns and those of his intellectual community: The life-soul is to them thus a subtle element, which permeates all things, and in this or that form, which is easily brought together and easily divided, it only influences a time according to its present condition and organs. These are its malleable vessels, in which it is poured out; without any trouble it can be poured out in another vessel and animate it. A stream of easy metamorphoses is their world; even their maintaining divinity has itself often transformed. It is only illusion, they claim, that things are as firmly and harshly distinguished as we think they are; their philosophy as well as their morality thus aim to mitigate these harsh divisions, to banish the delusion of difference, and to endorse the attitude where everything for us is the same, while nothing affects us. An organization of this kind makes transmigration into a pleasant dream. The animating oil of life flows to and fro; the soul comes and goes. (SW 16,347-348) Indeed, as Herder had suggested in Gott, Einige Gesprache, "forces ...are eternally changing their organic dress" (SW 16,567; English, 188). Despite what might be characterized as a positive connection between vitalistic pantheism and foundational Indian views, Herder retained a critical perspective on their moral effects. In Herder's judgment, the transmigration doctrine is an "opiate" that leads to equanimity and withdrawal into the inner self. The laws of moral progress and repentance are left unclear because any sense of a universal law that permeates nature and humanity remains unclarified. How, for example, is an animal meant to progress morally, if it cannot come to consciousness of moral laws (SW 16,348-349)? Because of its inadequacies on this front, the transmigration

doctrine remains a teaching "for children, for sensuous men," leading to cultural stagnation and supporting brahmical rule. Nevertheless, the doctrine is the expression of a "true and great principle: one in all, everything to one'' (SW 16,367). In making this philosophical connection based on sources like

Dow's "Dissertation," Herder prepared the way for pantheistic vitalism to be a striking conception in the German examination of Indian culture and religion.

Conclusion: Return to Theory This survey of Herder's intellectual development and his conceptualization of Indian culture throws us back on the theoretical debate that opened the chapter. From the hermeneutical standpoint, Herder inherited a set of preconceived notions or "pre-judgments" about India and attempted to put them into play. As he gathered more information, his judgments shifted and changed, perhaps indicating progress towards better understanding. The methodological commitment to empirical data and cultural distinctiveness perhaps served this aim, furthering Herder's intellectual dialogue with the other culture. It might be argued that this dialogue eventually led to something of a "fusion of horizons" in the connection between the vitalistic pantheism espoused by Herder himself and foundational Indian religious concepts. On the other hand, it seems that no amount of methodological rigor or interpretive engagement could dislodge certain repeated myths that were important for the German reception of the Orient. While Herder's evaluation of India was often positive, the typing of India as sensual and caste-bound had a derogatory quality that supported a European sense of ascendency. In addition, the supposed "fusion of horizons" around pantheism merely solidified another derogatory representation: the foundation of Hindu religious thought is essentially a muddyheaded blankness, which contrasts unfavorably with European reason.

Ill

The opening to this chapter suggested that such a debate has an unpleasant element of untractability; my aim is not to work it out philosophically, though I believe it could be done. Instead, another response is to plunge more deeply into the texts and contexts which give rise to the debate. It will be noted that the account to this point remains on the level of representations, what Foucault called "enunciations" about Indian culture. A thoroughgoing investigation of such statements is extremely important. But the next chapter and those that follow attempt to go deeper into territory which combatants in the debate about Orientalism rarely explore: the textual practices whereby Indian sources like the Git6 were actually constituted as an object of knowledge. This kind of investigation can only add nuance and complexity to the theoretical debate.

CHAPTER 3 - HERDER GATHERS THE GITA's FLOWERS

Introduction

We turn at last to Herder's presentation of the Bhagavadgitii. The foregoing analysis has set the stage for the appearance of this textual visitor by articulating the prejudicial structure that surrounded it. First, we have witnessed a complex dialectic of intellectual myth and logos at play in Herder's thought about India and Indian sources. The myths of South Asian primordiality often guide the logos in his approach to the topic; for example, the empirical, climatological analysis of Indian culture is thoroughly guided by a narrative of paradise or of a golden age derived from Hebrew and Classical sources. In addition, the previous analysis has delineated the specific conceptions and styles that became dominant in the early Orientalist effort to establish facts about India. Following the lead of his French and British sources, Herder established an intellectual agenda for the examination of the Indian "spirit," which demanded attention to issues such as caste, transmigration, sensuousness, and repose. Herder also broadened the hermeneutical circle as a response to new information and in conjunction with one a main concern in his own intellectual community: thanks to Herder's work, vitalist pantheism would become another important conception in the German consideration of Indian culture and religion. Herder's style in presenting these conceptions must also be taken into consideration: he sets the tone for the reception of Indian sources by speaking about them with poetic flourish. Indian religion thereby becomes an aesthetic, imaginative object that is primarily mediated by its volkisch literary expression.

This structure of interpretation guides Herder's engagement with Indian textual sources and his encounter with the Gitii in particular. It should be recalled that the gradual move towards privileging such textual sources is itself a function of early Orientalist prejudice. Broadly

speaking, translation and analysis of texts are aspects of Orientalist logos that was, in turn, authorized by its own scholarly myth: texts (as opposed to direct experience) afford access to the essential basis of Indian culture and religion, so it was all for the better that German efforts were purely textual. In order to understand the early unfolding of this Orientalist construction of

authority (which becomes dogma for the European study of Indian religion in the nineteenth century), guiding conceptions and styles must be seen in action, as they penetrate the textual practices whereby the text was constituted as an object of knowledge. Consequently, my analysis of Herder's Git6 will focus on acts of selection, anthologization, and translation. As a result, we will begin to discern the way in which prejudicial structures infuse the most intimate and technical of scholarly acts, embedding prejudicial interpretive structures, which are meant to remain open, according to Gadamer's view, in a closed, authoritative object: the translated, excerpted text.

Herder's Theory of Translation All the way back in the late 1760's, Herder had developed important views on translation that would remain prominent through the course of this thinking career. In a 1767 review, Herder was explicit about why translation is important in the first place. For the development of "taste" in Germany, i.e., in order to engender a "cultured public," German readers must have translations of important works available to them. French translations of these works will simply not do: they appeal to different, "Latinate" sensibilities (SW4,279-280). They presumably assist in supporting and developing French culture, not that of Germany. In the Kritische W'dlder,Herder continued with this argument: it is all-important that Germans come to Classical texts and give them voice in the new target language. Commenting on the case of Homer, Herder argues that it is crucial "to feel him with the entire soul...through a

rapid transformation in [the] mentality and language" (SW 3, 127). One may have access to Homer in the original Greek, but Herder suggests that even in such cases this transformation involves a surreptitious translation into one's own language.' The great translator gives expression to this secret operation, but Herder is insistent that it is not captured by mere literalism. This position seems to build on what Herder had claimed in the Fragments (1767). There he doubted whether the characteristic parts of a particular language could be translated at all,2 surmising that a literal approach to translation would always run into fundamental problems. As a response, Herder argued that translation is essentially a recreation by a process of selfimmersion. "Der beste Uebersetzer kann sich auf Nebenbegriffe geheftet haben, und der Leser macht sich wieder neue Nebenbegriffe." Translation must aim to produce new thought, and not just reproduce the old or "capture" the language of the original text (SW 2,360).~ While he was committed to the concept, Herder's version of fidelity in translation was idiosyncratic from the contemporary perspective. Translation must indeed be faithful. A bad translation of Pindar from 1771, for example, failed to capture the Greek poet's "spirit and taste" ("Geist und Geschmack"), because it was merely an "after-image" (Nachbild), "ignoble, circumscribing, dissolved, prosaicizing to the extreme, and out of a totally false taste for allegory" (SW 5,427). But the fundamental criterion for fidelity is not whether the translator has accurately rendered content and form; it is rather whether the "tone" of the original work has been conveyed. This ethos is on decisive display in Herder's Volkslieder. The content of the original

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Cf. Ernest A. Menze, "On Herder as a Translator and on Translating Herder," 1nJohann Gottfried Herder: Language, History, and the Enlightenment, edited by Wulf Koepke (Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1990), 158-159. See Katherine Arens, "Translators Who Are Not Traitors: Herder's and Lessing's Enlightenments," Herder Jahrbuch 5 (2000): 100. "Thus, for Herder, when one translates (ubersetzen), one is either paraphrasing (umschreiben) or reformulating the text for another audience (umbilden). At best, a translation can reinvoke some image of how a text is situated within the four realms of culture, but it can never recreate those relationships, since no two cultures share experiences and history...what needs to be recaptured in a translation is many faceted: a way of thinking and living, a specific form of creativity, a poetic tone, and a specific coloration."

folk songs counts for little; the most difficult thing to "carry over" into the target language (but also the most important thing) is the Ton, especially when it comes to popular songs, which are meant to be heard, not "seen" (SW 25, 333). Despite this challenge, Herder urged that the translator should attempt to be "authentic" (eigentlich) - but only according to his own (eigene) terms. Herder admitted that some of his selections in the Volkslieder were not originally proper folk songs at all; we note that many of the excerpts are from Shakespeare, which were originally in sophisticated and dramatic hexameter. The work of translation can in fact be a recreation of a "tone" or a "spirit" that is but implicit in the original work itself. The culmination of this theory of translation is seemingly the renderings that appeared in the pages of Herder's later collections, beginning with the Volkslieder, continuing in the Zerstreute Blatter and, even later, in the Adrastea. In the first edition of the Zerstreute Blatter, Herder announced his intention from the very beginning: the Greek epigrams that anthologized are "flowers" to be "transplanted" in German soil. In order to effect this transplantation, some flexibility in the translation is obviously required (SW 15, 191-193,205-206). To convey the "spirit" and "tone" in German, Herder aims to present Nachbildungen ("imitations," "reproductions") out of the originals, not literal translations (SW 15,200). But often Herder's renderings go further than simply imitating. Following the principles outlined above, Herder knew that translating often meant creating anew in order to communicate a certain "spirit" in the target language. Thus Nachbildung slides easily Nachdichtung ("free adaptation"), which essentially re-composes the original according to the mission of the translator!

Arens, "Translators Who Are Not Traitors," 101. As Muller-Michaels shows, Herder's advocacy of free translation runs parallel with an aspect of his educational program: "produktive Rezeption." This type of pedagogy suggests that the text should be actively engaged not only through analytic discussion: in addition, the "spirit" of the text should be understood and responded to in German. This kind of "productive"learning is not accomplished through

In such an instance, it is an open question as to whether the original has any status, authority, or identity beyond that established by the one doing the translating. Following a framework established by Herder's friend Goethe, the translations of Indian sources that we are

In about to take up are "Parodisch, free rendering in conformity with the translator's intenti~n."~ the most general sense, theparodisch approach lends itself to an emphasis on the centrality of the translator and a minimization of the authority of the original, but it should be recalled that for Herder, this is often what fidelity entailed. On the one hand, it is the "spirit" of the original that must be conveyed, not literal, word-for-word meanings; on the other, the essential problem of incommensurability meant that a translation was a new creation for a new context in any case. To be a faithful translator was to be faithful to one's ideas of the original and to the creativity that would reconstitute it and effectively transplant the flower in foreign soil. We gather the last important clues about the framework for Herder's selection and translation of excerpts from a reconsideration of the poetical concerns that guided his work in other areas of ancient literature. This mode of reflection rather precisely identifies the style that dominated in Herder's presentation of Indian sources. I will demonstrate that Herder transposed a number of the criteria that he derived from other poetic traditions into his recomposition of the

GitZ in order to present it as an ancient, volkisch work of literature. From his reflections on word for word translations. Harro Miiller-Michaels, "Literatur und Abitur: ~ b e die r Zusammenhange zwischen Liteaturtheorie und Bildungspraxis in Herders Schulreden," in Herder Today, 238-239. Herder's translation ethos can also be linked to the foundational concept in Herder's hermeneutic: Einfihiung. Texts are read for their "spirit" and not just for how signs map concepts and things. Engaging the text at this level calls for empathy and activity. Helmut Mueller-Sievers has argued that this modality of reading can be linked to a particularly Protestant mode of reading, which advocates not only the individual communion of sofa scriptura, but also emphasizes the tropological mode of interpretation, which was borrowed from the classic medieval framework (scripture can be read literally, allegorically, tropologically/morally, or anagogically). Herder's henneneutic suggested that the text be read out of active engagement, as an inspiration to do, and thus to create anew. Helmut Mueller-Sievers, "Herder and the Hermeneutic Tradition," in Herder Today: Contributionsfrom the International Herder Conference, edited by Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1990), 328-329.

Volkslieder we know that he expected an ancient work such as the GitZ to be sensuous and concrete, with an emphasis on sound (versus imagery) and tone (versus content). Herder's concept of Hebrew poetry also came into play. In the most potent works of Hebrew "folk" poetry (the Psalms in particular), Herder noticed a prevalence of personification, fable, and traditional sayings. In terms of the technical aspects of the language, he isolated a set of repeated strategies: free meters, parallelism (e.g., "Er spricht, so geschiehts,/ Er gebeut, so stehets da"), inversion (" Vernehmt ihr Himmel, meinen Gesang!/ UndErde, hore die Worte meines Mundes!"), and repetition ("Gott sprach: sei Licht!! Und es ward Licht!") (SW 1 1,258). In addition, Herder was clearly captivated by the force of the Greek epigram as he was composing his collections of Zerstrente Blotter. The epigram was associated with a youthful wit or cleverness; epigrams were individual flowers of early cultural thought, but the essence of the epigram, according to Herder's theory, is a kind of immediate, sentimental identification with the object of the epigram that is directed towards the goal of a direct teaching or a clear perception (SW 15,2 19,344). Thus it often uses a concrete image or likeness to produce an emblematic, analogical effect, but the poem itself must be brief and unitary (SW, 15, 374). When we bring these foundational poetic concepts together, it is easy to see why Herder might have been attracted to the Hitopadeia or Bhartrhari's sayings (he also translated excerpts from both works). But the GTt6 does not fit very precisely into these frames; however, in Herder's Nachdichtungen, its excerpts are made to fit: the Git6 is constructed as an epigrammatic text by composing the excerpts as coherent wholes, each directed to a singular purpose.6 But

Quoted in Figueira, Translating the Orient, 19. The other categories are "Prosaic, substance-oriented" (which is a good characterizationof Wilkins' original English translation of the Gitli) and "Artistic, parallel to the original, both in spirit and in texture." Once this mode of re-fitting the GitE is brought into focus, we can see how problematic Willson's judgment is: "Much of Hindu literature has a sententious character: the fables and maxims all point up a moral and are essentially didactic in nature. Herder, basically a product of the rational thought of the

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Herder wishes to add a more archaic touch to his renderings. Because the source was a translation in English prose, Herder was essentially unconstrained in terms of the techniques he would use in recomposing the text. Quite often the techniques he chose are borrowed from Hebrew poetry. In sum, the Indian source presents the free translator with an opportunity to build a literary hybrid, an archaic text with touches of both the Classical and the Hebrew. In terms of the conceptions that guide Herder's reconstitution of the Git6, it is important to recall the discussion of the local philosophical concerns that troubled his intellectual community. It is clear, first of all, that Herder did in fact recognize a brand of foundational philosophical discourse in the Indian cultural context. There was therefore some philosophical expectation about what a text like the Git6 might contain. In general, Herder's battle with Kant was always a factor in Herder's deliberations. But in 1792, when Herder's Git5 appeared, the most pressing thought was vitalistic pantheism. Herder's version of Spinoza led him to articulate this view, which led to reflection on the creative unfolding and telos of humanity. The center of this theory was a concept of rejuvenation and replication, a kind of eternal dynamism, which even encompassed decay, degeneration, and death. Given these concerns, the rationale for many of Herder's selections from the GitC and the manner of their translation become clear.

Textual Analysis The texts themselves are collected in a section of the fourth Zerstreute Blatter that Herder entitles "Gedanken einiger Bramanen" ("Thoughts of Some ~rahrnins").' In this section, Herder presents

forty-six Nachdichtungen derived from Indian sources. Twenty-three of the excerpts come from Enlightenment, found the gnomic trait of Sanskrit literature appealing to his own didactic predisposition" (Willson, The Mythical Image, 64). For an examination of the Blatter collections and the fourth collection in particular, see Wulf Koepke, "HerdersZerstreute Blatter und die Struktur der Sammlung," Herder Yearbook: Publications of the

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the recently published English translation of the Hitopadeia (Charles Wilkins, 1787), sixteen come from a German translation (through the Danish) of the sayings of Bhartrhari, and seven come from Wilkins' 1785 translation of the Bhagavad GitZ. Given this context, it immediately becomes evident that the first appearance of the GitZ in the German context is hardly a full manifestation. Separated from their original context, re-titled according to an epigrammatic scheme, and placed alongside excerpts from texts that were originally quite distinct in setting and style, the selections from GitZ have been mined as poetic thoughts that hardly represent the original text as a whole. But, as we shall see, the selection and construction of these Nachdichtungen were made quite deliberately to express Herder's poetic and philosophical positioning of the Indian s o ~ r c e . ~ In "Die Verstorbenen" (2.1 1-15), we begin to see the way in which style and conception intervene with the textual practices that constitute the text. Freund, du klagest urn die, die keiner Klage bedurfen; Weder urn Lebende klaget der Weise, noch urn die Gestorbnen. Fund in dieser Umhiillung die Seele Jugend und Alter, Wird sie es einst auchfinden injeder andern Umhiillung. Kalt ' und Hitze, Vergniigen und Schmerz sind K6rper-Etnpfindung; Alle das kommt und geht, und hat nicht bleibende Dauer. Trag 'es geduldig, o Bharats Sohn. Der Weise, den nichts stort, Dem Vergniigen und Schtnerz Ein Ding ist, der ist unsterblich; Was die Gestaltenformt, ist unvergiinglich und ewig. (SW 26,408) [Thou grievest for those who are unworthy to be lamented, whilst thy sentiments are those of the wise men. The wise neither grieve for the dead nor for the living. I myself never was not, nor thou, nor all the princes of the earth; nor shall we ever hereafter cease to be. As the soul in this mortal frame findeth infancy, youth, and old age; so, in some future frame, will it find the like. One who is confirmed in this belief, is not disturbed by any thing that may come to pass. The sensibility of the faculties giveth heat and cold, pleasure and pain; which come and go, and are transient and inconstant. Bear them with patience, 0 son of International Herder Society 1 (1992), 98-1 17. The article offers important background on the principles underlying collections and anthologies in Herder's intellectual context. 8 As Koepke argues, "Sammlungen sind per definitionemfur eine ~ffentlichkeitgedacht; sie ordnen, stellen Zusammenhange her undsind das Ergebnis einer prufenden Auswahl, in derjeder Einzeltext eine eigene Bedeutung und Eigenwert, aber gleichzeitig einen Stellenwert in Ganzen erhalten sol" (99).

Bharat; for the wise man, whom these disturb not, and to whom pain and pleasure are the same, is formed from immortality.19 Turning first to style, we note that the Nachdichtung omits a line from Wilkins' English ("whilst thy sentiments are those of the wise men"). Why would Herder make this move? Examining the poetic reconstruction in his first two lines, the answer becomes clear: removing the line from the Wilkins text allows Herder to achieve desirous poetic effects that imitate those found in the Hebrew sources. Thus, repetition ("m~urn[ing]~'),parallelism ("klagest ...klaget"), and inversion of normal phrasing ("Weder urn Lebende klaget der Weise...") can be combined to construct a particularly archaic couplet.10Herder's poetical framework for reconstructing the ancient spirit of the poem also seems to appear in the reversal of the third line, "Fund in dieser Urnhullung die Seele..." Through this manner of excerpting and reconstruction, Herder has opened this fragment in a way that bespeaks its great antiquity. These poetic suggestions quickly meet with another impulse. Herder was likely attracted to the sensuous quality of the image of a "covering" or a "sheath" (Umhullung), which is worn, discarded, and replaced in the cycle of re-birth. As he had suggested in Gott, Einige Gesprache, everything is constantly changing its "organic dress" and assuming yet another "cover." To convey the palingenetic idea, Umhiillung is a highly effective translational choice. This underlying sense of "easy metamorphosis" (to use Herder's phrase) also points to one of Herder's favorite themes in characterizing Indian culture and religiosity. The constant cycle of things 9

The Bhagvat-Geeta, translated by Charles Wilkins (1785; reprint, Delmar, N.Y.: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1972), 33-36. 10 Curiously enough, Herder's condensation of the two lines does in fact capture the poetics of the original Sanskrit. 2.1 1: "aiocyan anvaiocas tvay prajfiZv6dZy.i ca bhiQase/gatWn a g a t w s ' ca nZnuiocanti pap$itcih [You sorrow over men you should not be sorry for, and yet you speak to sage issues. The wise are not sorry for either the living or the dead]." Herder could have had no idea that the root behind Wilkins' "grievest" was the same as that behind "those who are not worthy to be lamented" (iuc). This will not be the first time that the idionsyncratic reading of the German intellectual will somehow manage to produce something quite challenging or even correct about the text or tradition in question. English translations of the Gila presented for reference only and are derived from the van Buitenen edition: The

leads to Mafiigkeit und Ruhe, moderation and repose, an important conception guiding this reading of the text. The last line must typically encapsulate an epigram, and in this excerpt stylistic form meets conceptual function. Herder closely follows the Wilkins text ("Der Weise, den nichts

stort,/Dem Vergnugen und Schmerz Ein Ding 1st") up to the last line, where he takes some liberties. Wilkins' rendering of so 'mrtatv6ya kalpate ("[he] is formed from immortality") clearly directs ~erder,"and he extends on this mistranslation by substantializing the concept of immortality, making much more of the line than is present in Wilkins (or the original Sanskrit). Instead of "moderation and repose" leading to "fitness" for immortality, Herder makes a claim that surely links with his own philosophical preconceptions: "what forms the patterns, is unchangeable and eternal." That is to say, the same "force" is behind all of the alterations and yet is not itself altered. This preoccupation is also on display in other excerpts. For example, in "Religion" (3.10-16), Herder reaches into Indian mythology to present an emblem of the divine, cyclical nature of vitalistic pantheism:

Als in den alten Lagen der Herr der Schopfungen Menschen Bildet 'und lehrete sie, die Gotter verehren, da sprach er: "Denkt der Gotter, o Menschen, so werden sie Euer gedenken; Aber gedenkt auch Euer einander, und schafet das Gluck euch. Wer von den Gottern Gaben erhalt, und weihet der Gaben Keine znm Danke zuriick, der begeht an den himmlischen Diebstal. Also wer nurftir sich das Mahl bereitet, der isset Brot der Siinde. Was lebt, empfing vom Brote das Leben, Brot erzeugte der Regen, den Regen gegen die Gotter, Huld der Gotter erwarben der Menschen giitige Werke, Gutige Werke kommen von Gott; so lebet die Gottheit Allenthalben in Allem mit ewig-rollendem Kreise. Wer dem gottlichen Kreise nichtfolgt, der lebet vergeblich. (SW 26,409-410)

Bhagavadgitci in the Mahcibhcirata, translated by J.A.B. van Buitenen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). " Van Buitenen translates the phrase "[he] is fit for immortality."

[When in ancient days Br hmd, the lord of creation, had formed mankind, and, at the same time, appointed his worship, he spoke and said: '...With this remember the Gods, that the Gods may remember you. Remember one another, and ye shall obtain supreme happiness...He who enjoyeth what hath been given unto him by them, and offereth not a portion unto them, is even as a thief. ...Those who dress their meat but for themselves, eat the bread of sin. All things which have life are generated from the bread which they eat...Bread is generated from rain; rain from divine worship, and divine worship from good works. Know that good works come from Br hm, whose nature is incorruptible; wherefore the omnipresent Br hm is present in the worship...who...followeth not the wheel, thus revolving in the world, liveth but in vain.] (45-46) Even though this is his longest excerpt, Herder excises a number of lines from Wilkins' original in order to condense the passage and shorten the brief fable from the pages of the Gitd even further. The form of the passage naturally fits into Herder's framework for literary expression; it represents a tale of primordial antiquity, an ancient legend. Herder removes several verses from the original in order to begin with four strongly rhythmic, repetitive lines: "Denkt der Goiter, o

Menschen, so werden sie Euer gedenken;/ aber gedenkt auch Euer einander, und schaffet das Gliick ench./ Wer von den Gottern Gaben erhalt, und weihet der Gaben/ Keine zum Danke zuriick, der begeht an den himmlischen Diebstal." In fact, the entire fable is characterized by repetitions and parallel structures, which Herder is happy to emphasize in his stylized reinvention of the text. But the ancient story of creation and the institution of worship is also constructed so as to continue the expression of vitalistic pantheism. The course of this dissertation will reveal that one of the most thorny problems in the German translation of Indian sources is the rendering of the simplest terms; thus, in the previous excerpt, Herder follows Wilkins and inserts the word "soul" (Seele)to stand for the "embodied self' (dehin) in 2.13. In this passage, brahman becomes "God," and the content is immediately transformed in response to a fundamental

translational challenge. The passage is bent towards Herder's specific conception of Indian belief, however, by means of free translational improvisation. Once again, the last line is meant to bring the passage to a decisive conclusion; the fable must have its moral. The full version of the end of the passage in Wilkins runs as follows: "Know that good works come from Brahm, whose nature is incorruptible; wherefore the omnipresent Brfihm is present in the worship." The sinful mortal, who delighteth in the gratification of his passions, and followeth not the wheel, thus revolving in the world, liveth but in vain. (46) In his version, Herder obfuscates the end of the quoted matter in order for the passage to convey his point. The quotation of the fable opens, but it is not closed, suggesting that the last line is in fact the moral to the story. But more importantly, Herder once again substantiates a doctrine that is not apparent in the Wilkins' text. In Herder's version, the excerpt concludes, "Thus divinity lives/ everywhere in everything in an eternally rolling circle./ He who does not follow the divine cycle lives in vain [so lehet die Gottheit/ allenthalhen in Allem mit ewig-rollendem Kreise.; Wer dem goltlichen Kreise nicht folgt, der lebet vergehlich]." Perhaps Herder's translation simply makes the Upanishadic doctrine discussed in this passage clear: a divine principle resides in all of the unfolding layers of the created order. But he does so with a rather explicit connection to the philosophical concerns that were present to him and his intellectual community. We need look no further than one of Herder's favorite images, as reported in Gott, Einige Gesprache: "We swim in an ocean of omnipotence, so that the old metaphor still remains true: 'God is a circle [Kreis] whose center is everywhere [allenthalben], whose circumference is nowhere" (SW 16,456; English, 107). The passage from the Gila becomes an Indian expression

of the active, dynamic, present God of Spinozist heterodoxy - still transcendent (as the "lord of creation7')and yet present in all actions and all things. To his credit, Herder seems to acknowledge a tension in his own philosophical view that carries over into the original text itself: if divinity is present in everything, then how are we to conceive action and human freedom? The selections in his text suggest that Herder is compelled by the repeated insistence on "Maffigkeitund Ruhe." Action and freedom have an essential connection with recognizing the "ease" with which divine force undergoes its various transformations, both in the created order and in human nature. Only desires seem to get in the way, as Herder evinces in "Andacht7'(4.19-24):

Von Begierden frei undfrei von I,ohnsucht 7'hut der Weise Guts und we@ es selbst nicht.

Unbefangen vom Erfolg der Thaten Weiht er sie der Andacht reinem Feuer. Colt 1st seine Gabe, Gott das Opfer, Gott des Altars Flamme, Gott der Opfrer, Und nur Gott kann seines Opfers Lohn seyn. (SW 26,4 16) [Wise men call him a Pandeet, whose every undertaking is free from the idea of desire, and whose actions are consumed by the fire of wisdom. He abandoneth the desire of a reward of his actions.. .God is the gift of charity; God is the offering; God is in the fire of the altar; by God is the sacrifice performed; and God is to be obtained by him who maketh God alone the object of his works.] (53-54) In the latter part of this passage, Herder effectively renders the repetitions from the Wilkins source according to his poetic model, emphasizing the parallel structures that announce the presence of the divine in sacrifice and action. This theme was treated in relationship to the previous excerpt, but the present selection adds something new: a pairing of divine immanence and human restraint.

Here the epigrammatic framework is very much in place as Herder transforms Wilkins' prose. The antiquity of the text once again speaks in the inversion of the first line: "Van Begierdenfrei undfrei von Lohnsucht," But the epigrammatic mold is filled by a much more striking gesture: Herder captures the beginning and end of what is a paragraph in the Wilkins text, but the middle is gutted, l4 emphasizing the tight connection between the sacrifice of "seeking reward" (Lohnsucht) in the "pure fire" of "devotion" (~ndacht)"and the divinity that is present in the sacrifice itself, representing the only possible "reward" (Lohn). The poetic effect is a neat encapsulation of a doctrine of action in close connection with a philosophical conception of divinity. The epigram therefore announces a response to the question of action that arises from pantheism: a correct response will have something to do with freedom from desire and a renunciation of reward. But once again, Herder engages in a rather creative translation of the text that moves away from the Wilkins rendering (and from the specificity of the original). In the English, it is clear that this section of the text refers to the karmayoga doctrine, which R s n a has already introduced in the original text. The notion of sacrifice is directly related to discipline, the details of which Herder omits, and karmayoga allows the practitioner to follow the model of the renunciant while remaining in the world of action. In effect, as Wilkins has it, "he is always contented and independent; and although he may be engaged in a work, he, as it were, doeth nothing" (53). Herder is not as clear on the context here, and this ambiguity will not allow his

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Herder eliminates five sentences in Wilkins' text, what amounts to about three verses of the original Sanskrit. l5 Herder's introduction of Andacht for Wilkins' "wisdom" is simply a choice driven by his own translational aims; the original text indeed suggests that actions are sacrificed in the fire ofjiitina, knowledge or wisdom. The goal is to present this portion of the text as a coherent epigram, and given the context for the rest of the passage, Herder likely thought that "wisdom" would cloud the issue.

epigram to proclaim the value of "doing nothing.'y16Instead, Herder's wise man is "free from desires and free from seeking reward"; he "does good and doesn't even know it." We can trace this rendering of the text, on the one hand, to the conceptions of Indian culture that are intimately tied to the Edenic innocence and ease of its people. But on the other hand, there is also the desire to connect the Spinozist, devotional strand of the passage, where Godlbrahrnan is present in all manifestations of worshipful action, to moderate action that is directed towards a "good." In short, Herder's creative translation reflects his anxiety over standard moral objections to pantheistic, vitalist philosophical systems. This is an extremely pressing issue for him, because he seems to have adopted such a system himself. Given what Herder said in other texts about the challenge of higher moral reflection in the Indian context, it is unlikely that he was expecting a resolution to the problem from its texts.

In fact, Herder feels the necessity to add basic moral categories to this passage in Gitti where they are simply not present. This is designed to cover over a lack in the text, which, according to Herder's model, translators sometimes must do. But the text does set a course for action that is at least consistent with vitalistic pantheism, and Herder wishes to commend it: action must be guided by restraint, moderation, and repose in order to fit itself to the unfolding of the divine force in all things. This is clear in "Herrschende Sinnlichkeity' (2.62-70): Wer den Sinnen wird gefangen, Der gefallet sich in ihnen. Aus Gefallen wird Begierde, Ans Begierden Angst und Thorheit. Er verlieret das GedachtniJ, Die Vernunft, und mit ihr Alles. Wie der Sturm auf Meeres Wellen Mit dem schwachen Kahne spielend, Spielt Begierde mit Gedanken.

16

See 4.20: "tyaktvci karmaphalisangam nityatrpto )'iriirayah/ karmany abhipravrttopi naiva kimcit karoti sah [If one engages in an act while forgetting about its fruit, being already fully satisfied and in need of nothing, one does not incur any karman at all]."

Gliick und Ruhe sind verschwunden; Denn nur der, o Mensch, ist glucklich, Dem zujliessen die Gefiihie, Wie ins stille Meer die Strhe. (SW 26,414) [The man who attendeth to the inclinations of the senses, in them hath a concern; from this concern is created passion, from passion anger, from anger is produced folly, from folly a depravation of the memory, from the loss of memory the loss of reason, and from the loss of reason the loss of all!. ..The heart, which followeth the dictates of the moving passions, carrieth away his reason, as the storm the bark in the raging ocean.. .The man whose passions enter his heart as waters run into the unswelling passive ocean, obtaineth happiness; not he who lusteth in his lusts.] (42-43) Here a somewhat different poetic quality stands out in Herder's decision to shorten the lines and break the material from Wilkins into two stanzas. In this manner of construction, the ode to restraint gives way to lyrical presentation of two famous images from the GitC. The passage is heavily edited to focus on these images in the second stanza. Herder's version of action guided by restraint in the first stanza is fairly consistent with the Wilkins text. The stakes are high in undertaking action properly, for a lack of restraint leads to a loss of memory, reason, and "everything."" But in coalescing the two images of the "skiff' (Kahne)on the raging sea of passions (which corresponds to one's "wits," Gedanken)and the "still sea" of the human interior (which absorbs all of one's "feelings"), Herder emphasizes the vast human capacity for stabilizing one's position. What should be noted in this style of presentation is the way in which discipline, which is in the foreground of the original account and in the Wilkins translation, actually recedes in this rendering of the two images. By placing humanity amidst a "sea" of passions, Herder recalls the "sea of omnipotence," which characterizes his vitalist perspective. Passions batter the "wits" and " 2.63: "krodhid bhavati sammohah sammohit smrtivibhramah/smrtibhray&id buddhinao buddhiniiat pranaiyati [from anger rises delusion, from delusion loss of memory, from loss of memory the death of the spirit, and from the death of the spirit ones perishes]." The translation of buddhi is of course a persistent

problem, extending to the present day, as van Buitenen's rendering illustrates. "Spirit," for example, seems

take away "happiness and repose." How then can we find peace? In Herder's poetic rendering, the answer is not yogic discipline, strictly speaking. According to that model, the image of the interior sea in which everything flows is taken to represent an absolute curtailment of exterior impressions. But the image of absorbing "feelings" (Wilkins more correctly repeats "passions") in a still, composed center does not seem to correspond with this type of restraint. Given the broader context of Herder's thought, the precursor for stability and action seems to align more closely with the capacity to concentrate and unify "feelings" and "passions" in the individual subject, who becomes a center of force(s). This is not to say that one can build stability and action on the world of flowing forces without assistance. In the 1797 Zerstreute Blatter, Herder includes one his own poetic efforts and seems to borrow from the GitC:

Das Leben is ein Strom Von wechselnden Gestalten. Welle treibt Die Welle, die sie hebet und begrdbt. Derselbe Strom, und keinen Augenblick An keinem Ort, in keinem Tropfen mehr Derselbe, von der Quelle bis zum Meer. Und solch ein Trugbild soil dir Grundgaban Von deiner Pflicht und Hoffnung, deinem Gluck Und Ungluckseyn? Auf einen Schatten willst Du stiitzen dich? (SW 29, 133) The shifting "patterns" of the world, its "waves" and "streams," which ultimately find their way to the indifferent sea, cannot support the human drive towards progress and completion. Despite the powerful flow of forces, which are entirely differentiated and infinitely recombined, humanity seeks a unification of these forces that is not randomly directed. Herder finds a profound statement of this sensibility in "Eigener Glaube" (3.33-35):

Suche, was deiner Nature gemaJ ist. Jegliches Wesen far too broad for a concept that generally denotes "human intellect," "awareness," or, more specifically, a form of distinction and determination that is often linked to taking action in Indian philosophical contexts.

Wirkt in eigner Natur, in ihr nur ruhig und glucklich. Wer sich der dufferen Wirkung ergiebt, wird Feinden gefangen; Auch in Religion. Der Glaube, der deines Gemuths ist, 1st dir besser, o Freund, als des Fremden besserer Glaube. (SW 26,426) [But the wise man also seeketh for that which is homogeneous to his own nature. All things act according to their natures, what then will restraint effect? In every purpose of the senses are fixed affection and dislike. A wise man should not put himself in their power, for both of them are his opponents. A man's own religion, though contrary to, is better than the faith of another, let it be ever so well followed.] (48) Here Herder adopts one of the more famous teachings from the GitZ, working with a passage that quite naturally lends itself to the epigrammatic form. The final lines are a natural maxim, even in the original text," and Herder's rendering nicely performs a set of repetitions and inversions ("Der Glaube, der deines Gemiiths ist...des Fremden besserer Glaube") to capture the force of the doctrine. In his continuing effort to discern a message about the proper basis of human action and

its completion, Herder once again selects a passage that speaks to Gluck and Ruhe, happiness and repose. The interior turn is more specifically thematized here, in accordance with the retreat from the shifting world of "exterior result," and the concentration of forces in the human mind is thought to be synonymous with recognizing its true "nature." The firm basis of action, the passage suggests, has to do with a distinctive sort of confessional knowledge; dharma (and svadharma) has become (through Wilkins' filter) "religion" (Religion) and "belief' (Glaube). Herder personalizes the passage ("deines Gemiith...dir...o Freund"), which suggests a highly individual search for identity and con~iction.~~ But in reading this passage, we should also remember Herder's many calls for recognition of cultural difference and injunctions against an

l8 3.35: "s'reyin svadharmo vigunah paradharm~itsvanufihiWsvadharme nidhanap s'reyah paradharmodayCd api [It is more salutary to carry out your own Law poorly than another's Law well; it is better to die in your own Law than to prosper in another's]." l9 In a brief couplet from Herder's hand-written manuscripts, we see a similar call: "LaJ sie sprechen, die Menschen; der Eine Boses, der Andref Gutes; vergnuge du dir selbst nur dein eigen Gemiith" (SW 26, 137).

assimilation of other worldviews. The firm basis for action, the centralization of forces, is seemingly accomplished by a concentration on one's essential identity, both individual and cultural. Herder is clearly interested in the possible connections between his own speculative philosophy and the theoretical insights present in the Indian source. In a sense it appears that Herder is driven by his ownjiiZnavoga in approaching the text. But at the same time, he is also interested in the potential for action within a vitalist, pantheist scheme. Herder derives what he can from the text, tilting his translations in a certain direction, and thereby seemingly imputing limitations to its teachings. This likely derives from his own conceptions about the Indian cultural and religious context: while propounding a strong doctrine of Maffigkeit und Ruhe, Hindu theories of action are severely limited because of an essential, autochthonous passivity and a limited moral scope. For this reason, the Gitii is generally constituted as a "wisdom" text, with less of significance to say about the question of human action. This reading is particularly evident in the translation of 3.35 above, a statement about duty and action, in which Herder follows Wilkins quite closely and produces a call to self-knowledge. This turn in the collection of excerpts is particularly evident in the next GitZ epigram,

"Sache und Erfolg" (2.47-49): Was Dich reget, sei die Sache, Die du thust, nicht ihre Folgen. Elend wird, wer sie berechnet; Weisheit ruhet in der Handlung. (SW 26,413) [Let the motive be in the deed, and not in the event. Be not one whose motive for action is the hope of reward.. .Seek an asylum then in wisdom alone; for the miserable and unhappy are so on account of the event of things.] (40) The subject matter is so poetically condensed and heavily reconstructed here that the excerpt bears little resemblance to the original source. But the karmayoga doctrine is somewhat

recognizable here (the passage corresponds to the formulation of adhikcra in the second chapter of the Git6) through the haze of Herder's German via Wilkins' ~ n ~ l i s h . ~ ' Most important is the last line, which seems designed to put a point on Herder's general reading of the text. It should be noted that this line is not even present in the original; it roughly corresponds to "buddhati iarawm anviccha ,b-payGh phalahetavah [Seek shelter in this singlemindedness - pitiful are those who are motivated by fruits!]." Free translation from an already distant rendering leaves a wide-open field for Herder to project himself into the text. The "impoverished" one is he who makes a mistake about the relationship between "wisdom"

(Weisheit)and "action" (Handlung). This one "reckons" that wisdom "reposes" in action, that somehow it is supported by action or is easy as a result of it. Herder's goal is not to present an effective poetic encapsulation of the doctrine of action that this passage originally conveyed; it is to reinforce the sense that the teaching of the GitG (and Indian culture) is essentially oriented towards "wisdom." But in the end, this is not to say that Herder discounts the synthetic potential of the GitG's teachings. While it cannot provide a full rationale for the combination of theory and practice that satisfies his moral concerns, it does at least recognize that there is a problem in dividing the two, which is more than can be said for many in the local intellectual context that surrounds Herder. This is evident in the selection "Wissen und Thun" (5.4-10):

Kinder sprechen von Wissen und Thun als doppelten Dingen; Beide werden nur Eins in des ubenden Mannes Getnuthe, Dessen Seele des Ewigen Sinn, die Seele der Welt ist. Horen and Sehen, Gefuhl und Bewegung, Essen und Trinken, Schlaf und Wachen,Handeln und Ruhn, und welche Vermogen Sonst er iibe, sie trilben ihm nicht die Stille des Geistes, Wie von der Meereswelle der Lotos nimmer befleckt wird. (SW 26,414) In 2.47, which is not effectively conveyed in these translations, lQ$na initiates his teaching on the karmayoga doctrine with a strong appeal to Arjuna's sense of his preordained dharma. Thus Arjuna has the "entitlement," the "right," only to the actions that he must take according to his duty, not to the consequences that will result.

[Children only, and not the learned, speak of the speculative and practical doctrines as two. They are but one, for both obtain the self-same end, and the place which is gained by the followers of one, is gained by the followers of the other.. .The man who, employed in the practice of works, is of a purified soul, a subdued spirit, and restrained passions, and whose soul is the universal soul, is not affected by so being. The attentive man, who is acquainted with the principles of thing, in feeling, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, moving, sleeping, breathing talking, quitting, taking, opening and closing his eyes, thinketh that he doeth nothing; but that the faculties are only employed in the several objects. The man who, performing the duties of life, and quitting all interest in them, placeth them upon Brahm, the Supreme, is not tainted by sin; but remaineth like the leaf of the lotus unaffected by the waters.] (57-58) The flower of the Giti blooms brilliantly in Herder's translation of this passage with the final image that once again drives home his view of the distinctly Indian emphasis on conceptions of moderation and repose in the face of a constantly changing world. This poetic reconstruction serves as a tour deforce of Herder's style in composing his Nachdichtungen. Poetic effect is served by repetition ("Dessen Seele...die Seeley'),by a series of dualities that appear in parallel in the middle lines, and by a highly condensed rendering in the last lines, which also offer inverted phrasing ("welche Vermogenf Sonst er ube, sie trilben ihm nicht die Stille des Geistes"). Once again, all of these poetic choices are made to position the Indian text so that it compares favorably to sources from Hebrew and Classical antiquity. The philosophical implications of the excerpt, however, are even more striking. The original text makes a technical distinction in verse 4 that is often missed by early translators. But Herder's misreading (of Wilkins even) produces interesting results. The excerpt boils the "speculative and practical doctrines" down to "Wissen und Thun," "knowledge and doing." In Herder's philosophical world, such a distinction can only point to one person: Kant. According to ancient "wisdom," only children dwell on such distinctions. While it cannot quite spell out the technical aspects of the synthesis between the two, it holds out a promise of unity, which Herder freely renders: "Both will only become one in the mind of the practicing man, whose soul of

eternal essence is the soul of the world." Anticipating the impetus behind later German Idealism, Herder discovers a doctrine in the GTfa that breaks down boundaries between subject and object, that describes the human place in the midst of the vitalist swirl of forces, and that bases action on moderation. This vision speaks with archaic authority directly to the philosophical concerns that surrounded the German reception of the text.

Conclusion In a first turn of the hermeneutical circle that is the subject of this dissertation, Herder accepted a main premise of early Orientalism, namely that the determination of authoritative facts about India required close attention to primary sources. Although Herder's reading of the Gitli was heavily mediated, his encounter with the text forced a reevaluation of simplistic myths and a differentiation of interpretive approaches to Indian religion and culture. Nevertheless, in the principle that grounds the selection of these excerpts, and in the strategies that mark their translations, specific styles and conceptions were arrayed in Herder's reconstitution of the text. A coherent set of poetic and philosophical concerns blanketed the Nachdichtungen and guided the assimilation and representation of the Giti and its culture, suggesting that the prejudicial structure at work in Herder's reception remained quite circumscribed. As the first member of his intellectual community to devote attention to the Gitli, Herder was a pioneer, but it could also be suggested that Herder established a limited vocabulary for discourse about Indian texts, leading the German Romantic reception of Indian sources down an interpretive path that was much more about German and European concern than it was about understanding India. This claim can only be evaluated by continuing to follow the progress of the strange textual visitor in the exotic land of German intellectualism.

Herder directs us towards the next stage in this adventure in the fourth Zerstreufe Blatter, which seems to represent an important moment of renewal in Herder's thought. While often selecting materials that pointed to mortality and death, Herder also devoted himself to a concept of renewal, regeneration, "palingenesis," and rejuvenation. This ethos is encapsulated in one last excerpt, "Ilreifacher Zustancf (2.27-28):

Was gebohren ward, mujS sferben; Was da stirht, wird neu gebohren. Mensch, civ we@ nicht, was du warest; Was dujetzt hist, lerne kennen; Und erwarfe, was du seyn wirst. (SW 26,408-409) [Death is certain to all things which are subject to birth, and regeneration to all things which are mortal.. .The former state of beings is unknown; the middle state is evident, and their future state is not to be discovered.] (37) The crucial turn in this typically epigrammatic rendering is in the last line. Where Wilkins presents the future as an impossible mystery, Herder greets it with open expectation. This is entirely consonant with his progressivist, palingenetic view of natural and historical development. During the early 1 7 9 0 ' ~Herder ~ directed concern about renewal towards European and specifically German culture. If a culture lost itself, it could find itself again (or so Herder hoped), not necessarily through revolution (events in France had obviously made an impression), but potentially through evolution.' Obviously the investigation of India, Indian sources, and the

Bhagavad Gita was an important part of that program. As Koepke says, "das Beispiel der fremden Kulfur isf notig zur Erneuerung der eigenen" ( 1 1 5). While taken up in a Eurocentric vision, wrapped in Western modalities, and interpreted for the European present, Herder's India played an authoritative role in the call for cultural renewal. This call to difference, served by

' See Koepke, "HerdersZerstreute Blatter," 1 1 1.

some of Herder's myths, styles, conceptions, and proto-fogoi, would be decisively important in the next major stage of German discourse on India.

CHAPTER 4 - THE DILEMMA OF PANTHEISM IN FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL'S GITA

Introduction In 1789, Friedrich and August Wilhelm von Schlegel received some terrible news: their brother Karl August, who had gone to India to work, soldier, and explore under the auspices of the British East India Company, had died of disease in Madras. The loss was deeply felt, as is evidenced particularly in the youthful poetic writings of August Wilhelm and, almost twenty years later, in Friedrich's memorial and dedication to his brother in the introduction to his famous work, ~ b e r die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier. Such sentiments expressed the deep, primordial interior of German Romanticism: Sehnsucht, longing for what is lost. Given this experience, it is no surprise that India came to represent something both powerful and attractive to the brothers Schlegel. One does not need to be a disciple of Freud to acknowledge that the site of a deep loss is often revisited in the imagination, both consciously and otherwise: both Friedrich and August Wilhelm made the intellectual journey to India again and again in the following decades. This kind of fixation fits rather precisely into a general paradigm for interpreting the European encounter with otherness: it represents a fantasy of the exotic, projected onto an ultimately exterior loss, which in turn becomes authoritative in one's interpretation of the world. Such fantasies, of course, tend towards further disappointment when reality is ultimately confronted. This psychoanalytic reading of the Schlegelian encounter with India certainly has its merits in describing a myth that drives a new branch of scholarship, but it tends to emphasize individual, personal dynamics in the German encounter with Indian otherness. Figueira's work, for instance, has emphasized reflection on Friedrich Schlegel's personal aesthetic and religious

crises in order to disrupt over-blown construction of the Orientalist past.' As suggested in the introduction to this dissertation, I am sympathetic with this general aim. But as Figueira also admits, recourse to the "personal7'is not nearly enough to stage the Orientalist past more accurately. Indeed, Schlegel's sense of disappointment and loss, perhaps leading his religious deliberations on and conversion to Catholicism (less than a week after the publication of his most famous work on India) are important for understanding the representation of India in the text, but this interpretation must be properly contextualized within the intellectual concerns of the day. For Friedrich Schlegel, there was no religious conversion without intellectual (philosophical) deliberation and negotiation3 Interpretations of Indian otherness are carried aloft by guiding themes that are accepted as significant among intellectual communities through their debates and discussions. Keeping this context in mind provides an appropriate mediation between the "personal" and Foucaultian (Saidian) fatalism, which suggests discourses of power and knowledge are always already in control. In this chapter, I aim to trace the development of German conceptions of India by taking up Friedrich Schlegel's writings with particular attention to the debates that motivated their production. We will first discern a specification of Herder's myth of Indian origins. In

See The Exotic, 57 and Translating the Orient, 206-208. Figueira's reading of Friedrich Schlegel's work on India (and of the nineteenth century German encounter with India in general) actually trades on a dynamic identified by Said: early, unbridled enthusiasm reverses into intense disillusionment and pessimism. This pessimism is thus projected onto and inextricably linked to the Orient. In my view, Figueira herself relies upon an overblown version of this framework inspired by psychoanalysis, causing her to make extreme claims that sometimes seem to exhibit animus towards the figures she investigates. Recent work has begun to properly contextualize German Indology this way. See Peter Park's essay, "A Catholic Apologist in a Pantheistic World: New Approaches to Friedrich Schlegel; or The First Chapter in the History of German Indology and Comparative Linguistics," in Sanskrit and "Orientalism ":Indology and Comparative Linguistics in Germany, 1750-1958, edited by Douglas T. McGetchin, Peter K. J. Park, and Damodar SarDesai (New Delhi: Manohar, forthcoming, 2003). This has become strikingly clear with the appearance of Schlegel's "Orientalia" Nachlass, volume 15 of the Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, edited by Ursula Struc-Oppenberg, which came out in 2002. All references to the Kritische Ausgabe in this chapter will appear within the text as K A with the volume and page number in parentheses. English translations will be specified. Otherwise, the translations are my own.

Schlegel's early thought, which will be inspected in the first section of the chapter, this myth was reframed as part of the emerging Romantic program in an explicit attempt to establish Indian culture and religion as a source for European cultural renewal. As a part of this narrative, Schlegel continued to specify an important conception of foundational Hindu doctrine that began to emerge in Herder's thought: at its core, Hinduism is pantheistic. In the wake of the Pantheismusstreit, however, one has the sense that this conception became something of a slogan in the reading of Indian religion and philosophy, rather than a productive prejudice (as it may well have been in Herder's work). Schlegel's interpretations eventually displayed an awaremess of this limitation in his community's discourse by virtue of an important decision: like Herder, Schlegel turned to translation of Indian texts (including excerpts from the GitZ) in order to enhance his understanding. But unlike his predecessor, Schlegel went to Paris to learn the original language and to examine the primary texts first-hand. In response to the interpretations being developed by his British counterparts, Schlegel designed structures for the interpretation of Indian religious doctrine based on a logos-driven approach to language. Myths of paradise and degeneration persisted, but with the marks of a new logos that was founded on systematicity, differentiation, taxonomy, and comparativism. The development of a relatively complex prejudical structure for the interpretation of Indian religious doctrine is present in Schlegel's famous work, Uber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier. Schlegel's translations of excerpts from the GitZ, which were appended to ~ b edie r Sprache, bear the imprint of his interpretive structure at the level of textual practices. To put it in Gadamerian terms, Schlegel's translations are indeed interpretations, prejudicial gestures in the effort to convey and understand the foreign text. But (to invoke Fleck) the translations also convey limitation and perhaps even closure: the evidence (that is, the text in its original language) is selected and processed through a structure that bears the particular commitments of

Schlegel and his intellectual community. It could be suggested that Schlegel's work represents only a more sophisticated recirculation of Herder's conceptions and styles. In the end, the same prejudicial structure (and, in particular, its broad myths) remained essentially intact. Nevertheless, authorizing myths and static conceptions of India did open a space for a more disciplined approach to Indian sources. Schlegel followed through on the continuing effort to develop a logos-driven approach to India, even if it was heavily inflected by broad narratives and essentializing notions. Interestingly enough, however, he would abandon serious study of Indian sources at the moment of his greatest level of mastery, leaving German intellectual discourse on India at an interesting juncture, somewhere in between myth and discipline.

Background for Schlegel's India Enthusiasm Because of the nature of the German "early Romantic" program, it is notoriously difficult to summarize and delineate important themes in a cursory manner. We might cite the "co-presence of the fragmentary and the

in the discourse of Jena Romanticism to illustrate this

difficulty. And yet it is important to contextualize Friedrich Schlegel's reception of the GitE through an examination of his earlier views. In general, I wish to characterize his theoretical, philosophical perspective during the Jena period in order to add to my account of the role played by conceptions of pantheism in the local reception of Indian sources. In Schlegel's early thought, pantheism was recast to reflect the Romantic desire for a universal and unifying poetic sense, and India was taken up within this mission.

4

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism, translated by Philip Bamard and Cheryl Lester (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 42.

We can begin where the inquiry left off in the previous chapter. Like ~erder,'Friedrich Schlegel found things to like in the "modem" (Kantian) philosophy -and many more things to dislike. He was (again like Herder) a literary, textual critic by training, and this seemingly led him to a more synthetic view from early on. As Schlegel wrote in one of his fragments, it is "necessary to remember that pure reason alone doesn't make one educated" (U II, 220; English,

63).6 At a very basic level, while Kantian philosophy promoted reflection on the modes of criticism to be employed in the search for truth, it would not ultimately allow for a unity of the philosophical and poetic as the mediation of human perfectibility,7 and for Schlegel, the

Pantheismusstreit had surely highlighted the need for such a unity in the face of the stringent and divisive A u f k l h n g . Philosophers like Fichte, Schelling, and eventually Hegel were to give the instinct about the limits of Kantianism its technical elaboration.' But Schlegel had his own philologically informed critique that recast enthusiasm for Spinozist pantheism and, in fact, provided the bridge to German Idealism. As a starting point, it should be recalled that Schlegel conceived postcritical philosophy as the "philology of philosophy" (KA II,24 1-242; English, 8 1-82): "to do any 5

As Behler indicates, F. Schlegel was reading Herder from a relatively early point, beginning in 1791. See his thorough investigation of Herder's influence on both Friedrich and August Wilhelm, Ernst Behler, '"The Theory of Art is its own History': Herder and the Schlegel Brothers," in Herder Today: Contributionsfrom the International Herder Conference, edited by Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gmyter, 1990), 246-267. 6 English translations of Schlegel's fragments in this chapter are taken from the volume Philosophical Fragments, translated by Peter Firchow (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991) and are cited within the text alongside references to the Kritische Ausgabe. The relationship between Kant and the Fruhromantik movement is highly complex, especially in light of Kant's teachings in the Third Critique. For a discussion of this relationship, see Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, The Literary Absolute, 30-33 and 104-106, Steven E. Alford, Irony and the Logic of the Romantic Imagination (New York: Peter Lang, 1984), 6-7, and Ernst Behler, German Romantic Literary Theory (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 74-79. 8 Once again, the exchange between "early Romanticism" and Idealism is a thicket, especially because of the immediate (and intimate) personal contacts that developed between the Schlegel brothers and figures like Fichte and Schelling during the late 1790's and early 1800's. I will touch on moments of intellectual contact as the chapter proceeds, but in no way do I claim to be comprehensive in these accounts. For a

justice" to a philosophical system, "the critic must seek to place himself within the perspective of [it] with the highest level of versatility and universality," and this required an in-depth philological attention to the history of philosophy.9 Kant did not pursue this kind of knowledge, and this lack of textualism limited his level of his philosophical attainment. While the contributions of Spinoza had to be honored ("Every philosophy of philosophy that excludes Spinoza must be spurious" [KA 11,211; English, 56]), he was guilty of the same omission (KA VIII, 58-59). This did not mean, of course, that philosophy should be reduced to a review and classification of past thoughtt0or that it should give in to the tendency of the age and become Rather, the philological orientation in philosophy was to remain true to the merely "~ritical."~~ original (Socratic) philosophical impulse and mission: a love of eternal wisdom in eternal dialogical questioning. The questioning and interpretation of texts, for Schlegel, was the most profound contemporary expression of this spirit, particularly in the deployment of the

brief summary of Fichte and Schelling's views during the course of the Jena movement, see Behler, German Romantic Literary Theory, 17-22. Ernst Behler, introduction to KA VIII, XXVII. See also KA 11,236; English, 78: "Every philosopher has his impulsive moments that frequently are real limitations for him, and to which he accommodates himself, etc. Hence those obscure places in a system for the investigator who isolates the system and doesn't study the philosophy historically and as a whole." l o This is made clear in F. Schlegel's 1797 critique of a journal of philosophical reviews brought out by Jena philosopher F.J. Niethammer (see KA VIII, 30-32). Schlegel examines the genre of the review itself and wonders whether "every philosopher can once again write something philosophical about every philosophical text." A reviewer may be able to classify philosophical writings (like a botanist classifying plants), but this activity must also have a "positive" side that determines the "worth" and "inner ground" of the works in question; simple survey and dogmatic refutation are not enough. " "Kant introduced the concept of the negative into philosophy. Wouldn't it be worthwhile trying now to introduce the concept of the positive into philosophy as well?'((KA 11, 166; English, 18). Criticism, as another word for "philosophy as philology," was of utmost importance for Schlegel, but in a way that would "construct [authors and works] genetically in relation to that great organism of all art and all science." This process would take the text as an open opportunity for productive interpretation and recreation, not as "existing, finished, and withered." F. Schlegel quoted in Herman, The Experience of the Foreign: Culture and Translation in Romantic Germany, translated by S. Heyvaert (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 123.

fragmentary, aphoristic form of response, which was meant to raise the dialogue to the level of art.I2 The back and forth of textual interpretation was to play a fundamental role in Schlegel's early thought. It seems to represent the grounding metaphor for the Friihromantik logic, a more technical expression of which was called for by the expectations of the contemporary intellectual community. As the anti-Kantian tradition would have it, stringent Enlightenment thinking failed to bridge the broad, ugly ditch (to appropriate Lessing7sphrase) between subjectivity and the world, between the I and the not-I, between identity and difference, between the theoretical and the practical, between the divine and the human. The synthesis between such dualities remained to be thought, and recourse to Spinoza showed the importance and potential of such inquiry. While Fichte was the philosophical champion of a view that extended Kant's views to the point of absolute identity, Schlegel devised his own solution that took its impulse from the mediating dynamism of imagination and textual interpretation and attempted to fulfill the aims of a great post-Kantian mission: "all art should become science and all science art; poetry and philosophy should be made one" (KA 11, 161; English, 14). A reading of Spinoza played a significant role in this mission. As Schlegel wrote in the

Athenaum, Spinoza was the "perfect Christian" because, for him, "everything" was a "mediator"

(KA 11,203; English, 50); put another way, "The scientific ideal of Christianity is to portray God in an infinite series of variations" (KA11,243; English, 82). The sophisticated formulation of a pantheistic, all-in-one doctrine suggests that all things (texts, individuals, etc.) mediate each l2 In response to the persistent problem of foundations (and to the relentless idealist tendency towards systematicity), Friedrich Schlegel presented a decidedly hermeneutical model of philosophical inquiry: philosophy, "like epic poetry, always begins in medias res" (KA 11, 178; English, 28). "Es ist ein Ganzes, und der Weg es zu erkennen is! also keine grade Linie, sondem ein Kreis." Quoted in Behler introduction, KA VIII, XLIII. Schlegel suggested that only the textual work of art, with its layers, shifts, and surprises could prompt or express the unending, Socratic Wissenstrieb. The model called for a new form of philosophizing that brought together poetry and philosophy: the fragmentary and aphoristic Athenlium

other, for "no idea is isolated, but is what it is only in combination with all other ideas"

(KA II, x;

English, l02).I3 But Schlegel did not wish to conceive this "combination" as a synthetic, systematic unity (as was the case in Spinoza's mathematical form and would come to be the case in Hegel's dialectical "identity of identity and difference"). Dialectical infinitude was seen as organic and coherent, but as a combination of disparate elements, not as a systematic synthesis. To this extent, the imagination represented a higher unifying function, but only in its strange power to bring the disparate together: imagination portrays both identity and difference simultaneously and thus performs the infinite quality of thought.I4 According to Schlegel, three inter-related practices were meant to enact this theory. First, the fragmentary form of discourse embodied a kind of incompleteness that invoked the possibility of infinite reflection and development. Second, a pure poetic spirit was to be taken up, one that traded on the activity of the imagination in order to unify the rich multiplicity and differentiation of the world. This spirit certainly had a mythopoetic character and referred rather directly to a classical, primordial vision. Third, Schlegel consistently emphasized the importance of the Witz and Ironie as the practices that best performed the Romantic logic. In its standard definition, irony is of course saying the opposite of what one intends in order to achieve a comic effect, and

presents an example of this new form. For further discussion of the fragmentary method and its link to philosophical dialogue, see Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, The Literary Absolute, 39-58and 84-86. l 3 Antoine Berman, The Experience of the Foreign, 76-80. This sophisticated form of pantheism gains Romantic expression in Novalis' concept "infinite versability." l4 As Alford puts it, "A Romantic poet.. seeks to write affectively not because emotions are better than thoughts, but because affective discourse appeals to the Imagination, which is inclusive of both thought and emotion. The heart, that metaphorical seat of the Imagination, is a spriritually cognitive power capable of transcending the difference between reason and unreason. Sense and understanding are not to be avoided; they are merely a reductive form of a higher mode of expression and apprehension." Irony and the Logic of the Romantic Imagination, 12. Behler specifies the point: "from the point of view of knowledge, the imagination seems to have supremacy over reason if we compare the two in epistemologicalterms. Whereas reason tends to unify its elements of knowledge as concepts, the imagination not only embraces the greatest abundance and manifoldness, but also includes the comical, droll, and quaint features of life that reason is inclined to eliminate." Behler, German Romantic Literary Theory, 78-79. And further with Behler, to drive the point home: "What is denied...is systemtic coherence, or Hegel's doctrine: 'The truth

a Witz is simply a joke or a jest. For Schlegel, these literary figures had the highest philosophical status. As Alford illustrates, Witz is in some sense the microcosmic form of lronie.'' A simple, witzige statement is the suprising combination of elements. In its higher form, as dialectical, complex notions are wedded into a statement that requires the imagination of the reader for its unpacking. The Witz is not nonsense, nor is it straightforward "sense" (as is the case in a logically coherent proposition). Instead, it brings the two together in a higher unity that requires the participation of the reader to assemble. Irony trades on a similar logic for Schlegel. Irony could be used rhetorically (for example, to say "What a beautiful day!" when it is raining and miserable outside), and stylistic irony denotes the presence of multiple perspectives on a situation brought together within an organic whole.16 Schlegel was interested in both of these forms of irony, but he placed the most emphasis on a third form, metaphysical irony, which is consonant with Socratic irony. Again we encounter the importance of the dialogical form discussed above: "the technical term" for Schlegel's sense of metaphysical irony "is Socratic or Platonic 'dialectics', thought and counterthought as a progressive movement of thinking."" The performance of irony therefore represented Schlegel's direct response to the heights of German Idealism: "An idea is a concept perfected to the point of irony, an absolute synthesis of absolute antitheses, the continual self-creating interchange of two conflicting thoughts"

(KA II, 184;

English, 33).

is the whole.' Completion and totality in any realizable fashion are questioned by a type of writing that, from the outset, rejects any type of closure and pospones it to an unrealizable future" (153). See Alford's discussion of these matters in Irony and the Romantic Imagination, 30-32 and 67-70. 16 Thus, an ironic drama might juxtapose a character who extols the virtues of marriage with a young man (perhaps the older man's trusted employee), who sings the praises of his lover's ability in bed - and unbeknownst to both, the lover and and wife are the same person. Behler, German Romantic Literary Theory, 147. Also see KA 11, 152; English, 5-6. "Philosophy is the real homeland of irony, which one would like to define as logical beauty: for wherever philosophy appears in oral or written dialogues - and is not simply confined into rigid systems - there irony should be asked for and provided."

Despite its predilection for flights into dialogical infinitude, Romantic mediation also had a historical grounding. For the early Romantics, dynamism and process were of course allimportant, and following the influence of figures like Herder, they sought to project the progress of human attainment through its diachronic dimension. History had to be accounted for not as a value in itself, but the historical (embodied particularly in classic texts) interrogated the present and contributed to the further progress of Bildung and Humanitat. Schlegel celebrated the ancient; he became well known on the strength of his History of Poetry of the Greek and Romans. Without a doubt, "In der transzendentalen Geschichte des Bewnfitseins hat das Phanomen des Klassichen den Charakter eines Postulates, eines absoluten .."18 Imperativsfur den ~enschen

But Schlegel did not ultimately become a classicist. The

classical postulate was counterposed by "progression," ceaseless and open creativity on the part of the contemporary, future-looking intellectual. Ancient literature was natural, organic, coherent, and whole, while the efforts of the present fascinated and seduced. Proper Bildung took place when dialectical mediation was achieved between these two positions. Pure investment in the classical resulted in sterility and desiccation ("regression"), and pure unfettered creativity, unbounded by the guidance of tradition, resulted in aimlessness and annihilation (with decadence as a final consequence). Holding both together became a crucial aspect of the Romantic hermene~tic.'~ As Schlegel wrote, "From what the modems aim at, we learn what poetry should become; from what the ancients have done, what it has to be" (KA II, 157; English, 10). While it is quite clear that the historical referred primarily to Western cultures for Schlegel, it was also a watchword for cultural difference, as was the case for Herder. The "classical" surely referred to the Greek and Roman, but because Greece and Rome were victims of history, their disappearance marked an absolute difference that was mirrored in the texts. Behler, introduction, KA VIII, LXX.

Mediating such a gap had a dramatic effectyaccording to Schlegel: L'Njchtsbefreit den ~nenschlichenGeist so sicher und dennoch so sun3 von Einseitigkeit der Meinung und des Geschnzacks, als Beschafiigung Init dem Geiste anderer Nationen und anderer ~eitalter."'~In his famous open letter ~ b ePhilosophie r (1 799)?where he strongly advocated this historical, crosscultural searchySchlegel also suggested that investigation of myth and religion afforded enlivening glimpses and hints of this spirit.'' The result was that the history of the ancientythe history of the other landyand the history of religion were tied together in Schlegelian 'bencyclopedic"discourseyand the investigation proceeded in two directions: on the one handyit moved towards the depth and origin of the human imagination, which in its earliest moments was seen to make more immediate contact with the infiniteyand on the other, it was directed towards the future unfolding of the human spirit. What this suggests is that the progress inculcated by the dialogue with the historically and culturally different was only meaningful to the present of the modem European; to this extent Romantic historicism was a kind of centricyperhaps even intellectually imperialist appropriation." Neverthelessythe assertion of the importance and concreteness of otherness in the distant past and across cultural boundaries was a significant rejoinder to Idealist tendencies of the day. Thought about religion, for exampleywas certainly conceived as "religion within the limits of art"'3 - "art" taken here as the marker of Romantic conceptions of the infinite and

See Behler, German Rolnantic Literary Theo~y,105-110. Behler, introduction, K4 VIII, LXXIII. " K4 VIII, 48. "Vor allen Dingen aber kann es mich reizen, den Geist der Zeitalter und der Nationen, auch in der Religion zu erspahen und zu erraten." " This thesis can be easily supported, especially given the way Schlegel chose to model the encounter with difference: "A work is cultivated when it is everywhere sharply delimitedybut within those limits limitless and inexhaustible; when it is completely faithfhl to itself, entirely homogeneousyand nonetheless exalted above itself. Like the education of young Englishmen, the most important thing about it is le grand tour. It should have traveled through all the three or f o u continents of humanity, not in order to round off the edges of individuality,but to broaden its vision and give its spirit more fieedom and inner versatility; and thereby greater independence and self-sufficiency" (KA 11, 215; English, 59). 23 Lacoue-Labarthe and NancyyThe Literary Absolute, 77. Also see k2 11,221-222; Englishy65. l9

'O

eternal nature of creativity - but this brand of thinking drew attention to the curious combination of the infinite and the finite in "symbolic formsy""whose symbolism consisted ...in 'that by which' everywhere' the appearance of the finite is placed in relation with the truth of the eternal and in this manner, precisely dissolved therein.'"24 The symbol (for exampleyin the textual mythology of a religious tradition) lent Romantic inquiry a level of concreteness, but certainly as a part of a broader mission?' Investigation of such forms in their primordial manifestations contributed directly to the mediation at the heart of the early Romantic project (as Schwab puts it, Y J r ' was the key to ' ~ y m ' " )where ~ ~ ~ the prospects of human infinitude were discerned in the junction between the inspiration of the deepest past and a "new mythology" of the imagination:

"die Unendlichkeit des menschlichen Geistes, die Gottlichkeit aller naturlichen Dinge, und die Menschlichkeit der Gotter, wurde das ewige groJe Thema aller dieser Variationen bleiben" (&I VIII' 60). Many of the themes described above have distinct relevance for the history of the study of religion (e.g.? the importance of experience' the theory of the symbolythe emphasis on myth)Â and these influences deserve to be explored in detail. But in keeping with my chosen theme' I wish to finish this survey by investigating the places where India shines through these vast intellectual clouds as an object of intense enthusiasm. Early in his career Schlegel was perhaps less than impressed by Herder's reading of Indian sources, but by 1797 he was without a doubt

? ~ enthusiasm took on a decisive form fiom caught up in the excitement about ~ ~ k u n t a l aThis 1800 to 1804, a period which marked Schlegel 's transition to Paris and his initial studies of

24

Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy' ibid.

" For a discussion of the relation between Schlegel's

conceptualization of the symbol and the philosophical currents of his time' see Behler, German Romantic Literary Theory' 139-141. 26 The Oriental Renaissancey2 16. 27 Will~on~ A Mythical Image' 202-203.

Jndian texts themselve~.~'As Halbfass suggestsythis move to India and the Orient was generally fuelled by a desire to critique the European present through the use of the Indian past?9 This is certainly true*but especially in light of the summary aboveythis critique can be placed more precisely within the Friihromantik logic. This becomes clear in a brief investigation of two key texts: Gesprach uber die Poesie fiom the Athenaum (1800) and Reise nach Frankreich fiom the journal Europa (1803). The Gesprach fits directly into the Romantic model of theory and practice: it portrays a conversation about the importance and nature of Romantic poetry between fiiends. The discussion begins in earnest with a lengthy survey of the history of literature by one of the three women in the group9Andrea. In her speechyAndrea repeats a common Romantic themey asserting the importance of classical and medieval literature in enlivening the present. The group deliberates over Andrea's reflectionsysearching for the guiding thread or deep rationale behind her historical presentation. Is it desirable to make distinctions between genres and practices? Is it possible to discern (and create) an art that unifies all the different forms of literature? What*in

" It

should be noted that Schlegel met Friedrich Majer at Jena (summer 1800), which likely had an important impact on him. WillsonyA Mythic01 Image*88. Majer (1772-1818) was fiom Thuringia and came to study law at Jena. He eventually became a professional student and tutor to royal houses, and India became his main preoccupation. This interest was spurred mostly by Herder*whom Majer met in Weimar in the late 1790's. During this period Majer became Herder's apprentice and apparently befiiended his family (to the extent that Herder's wife asked Majer to look out for one of the Herder boys at university in Gottingen). In 1798ÂMajer published Zur Kulturgeschichte der Volker*which was heavily influenced by Herder*and the teacher was obliged to write a preface to the work. Further travels brought Majer back to Jena?where he came in contact with the leading lights of the Friihromantik circle. In this way, Herder's enthusiasm for Indian sources was passed along to the next generationyespecially Schlegel. Majer turned his attention to publishing articles for a new periodical brought out by Julius Klaprothythe Asiatisches Magazin, and in its pages*Majer published a long article on the avatars of Vivnu, and*most importantlyya full translation of the Bhagavad Giti in German out of Wilkins*English version (18021803). In I803 Majer also produced the Allgemeines Mythologisches Lexicon aus Original Quellen bearbeiter* a massive alphabetical dictionav of important concepts fiom world mythologies. Afier this productive period, Majer continued his tutoring and literary efforts but only produced one more important work7Brahma oder die Religion der Indier aIs Brahmani~rnus~ which appeared in 1818, the year of his death. 29 Wilhelm Halbfass*India and Europey72-73. Also see Figueira, Translating the Orient*206 and Ernst Behler, "Das Indienbild der deutschen Romantik*** Germunisch-Romanische Monatsschr$l (1968): 2024.

the end?makes art powerful? Ludoviko volunteers a response7which he calls "Rede uber die Mythologie," for mythology gives the answer to these questions. The modem breakdown of culture?Ludoviko suggests?can be traced to its lack of mythology: Wir haben keine Mythologie" (&I11,312). A "new mythology" will ground a "

contemporary reunification?as classical mythology infused the "organic7' power of Greek and Roman literature. It must reach back to the "deepest depth of spirit'' and provide "a new bed and vessel for the ancient eternal origin of poesy'' (&II? I 3 12). This new inspiration is thought to come from a rather surprising source: Idealism. For Idealism (and here Ludoviko has Fichte in mind) offers the essential rationale?the "myth" of human spirit, through its articulation of dynamic, progressive7active knowing. It grounds human freedom in progress, thereby offering a framework for understanding the meaning and purpose of the historical. In fact7Idealism expresses the whole of the human encounter with rea1iQ7revealing "the secret power...through the unbounded plenitude of new invention?through universal mediation and through living efficacy" (K411,315). Thus it also embraces and inspires "Realism7' (and here Ludoviko is referring to Schelling), which marks an enlivened return to the natural, both in poetry and and natural science. Realism then opens a pathway to a "transcendental unity" of the imagination?a 'LwissenschafilicheFantasie," which is the "mother and source of all mythology7'(&I117 3 16).

In articulating this point, it is clear that Ludoviko is expressing views that are at the heart of Schlege17sown perspective - and at the heart of his response to contemporary intellectual debates. Idealism is "only a first, effecting impetus and beginning for intellectual development, alteration, and re-birth'?: it must be unified at a higher level by LLwissenscha)licheFantasie7" which is best represented by Spinoza's system (&I1173 16). Spinoza7srecombination of elements is the all-embracing form of myth and mysticism, wherein

ein klarer Dujl schwebt unsichtbar sichtbar uber dem Ganzen, uberallfindet die ewige Sehnsucht einen Anklang aus den Tiefen des einfachen Werh, welches in stiller GroJe den Geist der urspriinglichen Liebe atmet. (U IIy3 17) Such a system?which offers a higherymediating unity of differenceyis directly related to the historicizing function in Romanticism; it embraces the bbsacrality"of the ancient and of the culturally differentyfor in the "twofoSd light of revelation and world-history" there is "a purer cognition of the divine; a new or newly rejuvenated science of spirit and of the soul in God blooms forth and develops, ever richer" (U 11,316). But within this logic, an alternative to even

Spinoza" must be elicited in order to

"speed along" the philosophical reinvigoration of "beauty" and 'bcultivation." The West must bbresuscitate"other mythologies (U 11,319), and here Ludoviko turns east. "Im Orient mussen

wir das hochste Romantische suchen," he proclaimsyspeciQing India as the essential target of this quest:

Welche neue Quelle von Poesie konnte uns aus Indienjliepen, wenn einige deutsche Kunstler mit der Universalitat und Tiefe des Sinns, mit dem Genie der Ubersetzung, das ihnen eigen ist, die Gelegenheit besapen, welche eine Nation, die itnmer stumpfer und brutaler wird, wenig zu brauchen versteht. (K4I&3 19320)

According to Ludoviko, India presents an opportunity for a reinvigoration of the "symbolic" realm, what Schlegel often called a new "hieroglyphic" orientation to nature, recalling Herder's formulations. But this is not random poesy, a random plucking of nature's flowers; the Indian approach bestows a conscious, holistic attention to the natural world (KA 11, 320) and possesses the dual perspective of wholeness and difference (aggregated by the symbolic imagination) that was so important from the Romantic perspective. Thus, while Spinoza's system was certainly intertwined with the Romantic pantheism of art and history, Schlegel recommends a new source (India) that adumbrates this theoretical system in a new way and represents a more powerful source for cultural renewal. In Reise nach Frankreich, which appeared in the journal Europa (1803), this new

mediation of Romantic is even clearer. In his initial encounter with French culture, Schlegel is surprised by the artificiality on display in the marketplaces and in the French themselves, noting that a kind of pedantry and sensualism dominates. What is striking is the lack of "imagination" (Phantasie), which gives rise to a panoply of negative cultural tenden~ies.~'According to Schlegel, imagination is of course an integral part of German identity, which displays an "original and durable romantic" character, "als selbst die orientalische Marchenwelt" (5). This is not a simple announcement of German superiority; what Schlegel finds in France is pervasive throughout Europe. But the German propensity perhaps offers something of a solution to Europe's degeneration. Schlegel searches for a new "middle point" for Europe, a point of gravity that can unify the disparate geography of intellectual pursuit. As it is, the European divides philosophy and poetry, the sciences and the arts, the ancient and the modem, and insists on divisions generally. Schlegel recalls the character of the Orient as a contrast:

Was im Oriente alles in Einem mit ungeteilter Kraft aus der Quelle springt, das sollte hier sich mannigfach teilen und kiinstlicher engalten. Der Geist des Menschen sollte sich hier zersetzen, seine Kraft sich ins Unendlichetrennen und eben darum zu manchemfdhig werden, wozu er es sonst nicht sein wurde. (14) In India, however, even the most difficult distinctions are overcome:

in Indien zur hochsten Schonheit vereint ist...in kraftigster Eigentiimlichkeit ohne gegenseite Ausschliefiung dicht nebeneinander besteht, Urn ein Beispiel zu geben was dem Mittelpunkte der innern Krafte besonders nahe liegt: die geistige Selbstvernichtung der Christen, und der iippigste wildeste Materialismus in der Religion der Griechen, beidejnd ihr hoheres Urbild im gemeinschaftlichen Vaterlande, in Indien. (14-15) Even such radically distinguished concepts are brought together in this "sublime manner of thinking," which certainly recalls the combinatorial, mediating logic of Jena Romanticism, described above. Becoming acquainted with the foundations of this "truly universal culture

[ B i l d ~ n g and ] , ~ with the the concept of divinity "without difference in its infinity" inspired by it, introduces the European to "religion." If one wants to see real religion, Schlegel claims, one should visit India (and perhaps a textual visit would suffice), "as one goes to Italy to learn art"

This kind of visit was all the more necessary because this organic, unifying religious vision was entirely lacking in Europe: "Man hat es in der Kunst der willkiirlichen Trennung,

o h was dasselbe ist, im Mechanismus in der Tat sehr weit gebracht, und so ist denn auch der Mensch selbst fast zur Maschine geworden, in der nur gerade so vie1 Geist noch ubrig geblieben ist..." In short, "a person cannot sink any deeper" (16). Religion and mythology come from the Orient and address the mechanistic quality of the age through its inexhaustible source of enthusiasm and renewal (ibid.). This prompts Schlegel to recommend a new harmony between the "North" and "the Orient" (17) that effectively circumvents the classical. Schlegel is emphatic about this new orientation in a letter to Tieck from the same year: "Hier ist eigentlich die Quelle

30

Friedrich Schlegel, Studienausgabe: Kritische Schriften und Fragmente [1803-1812l, vol. 3, edited by

alter Sprachen, aller Gedanken und Gedichte des tnenschlichen Geistes; alles, alles stamrnt aus Indien ohne Ausnahme. Ich habe fiber vieles eine ganz andere Ansicht und Einsicht bekommen,

seit ich aus dieser Quelle schopfen k ~ n n . " ~ ' In India, the specific brand of Romantic pantheism and a drive towards dialogue with the primordial past come together. While the importance of the relation to primordial antiquity was initially forged in a relation to the classical, now European culture must go even deeper for renewal. This is made quite clear when Schlegel criticizes European philosophy for executing a mere "continuation" of the classical. Spinoza, interestingly enough, is included in this judgment. But even the classical authors seemed to be reacting to a more primordial religious source in their own context (1 5). Schlegel insisted on the presence of a deeper, more profound pantheism in India, which he clarified in specifying the concept of divinity there, which was "without difference in its infinity." In this pantheistic conception of Indian religious and cultural consciousness, Schlegel refined and reaffirmed Herder's earlier formulation. While he would later differentiate his interpretation of India, presenting a more sophisticated account based on direct encounter with texts, the pantheism conception would persist in Schlegel's reading. In reflecting on Schlegel's early thinking on India, we should also notice the full fruition of the "myth of Romanticism" and the way in which it surrounds India. Recalling Lincoln, Schlegel's approach exemplifies the double bind so common to theorists of myth. On the one hand, mythology is central in a Romantic theory of cultural renewal, and Indian myth in particular is expected to reinvigorate Europe because of its unified sense of creativity, imagination, and vitality. On the other, this theory of myth is itself mythic: Indian religion and religious thought is caught up within an authorizing narrative that speaks directly to the European Publikum, drawing certain conceptions Emst Behler and Hans Eichner (Paderbom: Schoningh, 1988), 11-12.

forth, reinforcing enthusiastic stylizations, and placing Romantic method (that of dialogical interpretation) in a specific context. In his early reception of an imagined India, Schlegel adopted the myths, styles, and conceptions that Herder had introduced, and he established a prejudicial structure that would enable his later, more mature work.

Purification of the India Impulse: Incomprehension and Uber die Sprache By 1800, it was becoming clear that the Romantic mediation (particularly as proposed in the Athenlium) was largely misunderstood by the learned public. While Uber die Philosophie continued to express an almost messianic hope for the communication of Romantic principles ("die Zeit der Popularitat ist gekommen") (KA VIII, 60), Schlegel seemed to have hit an intractable barrier by the next year, as we see in the famous "Uber die Unverstandlichkeit" essay. The essay is very much an appendix to and reflection on the reception to the Athenhm, the Fruhromantik journal that had articulated the theoretical standpoints discussed above. Almost across the board, critics had labeled it "unintelligible" (unverstandlich). In the essay on Unverstandlichkeit, these difficulties in reception coalesced in questions about whether communication of ideas was possible at all - or whether it was in fact desirable. What made the Athenhm hard to understand, according to Schlegel, was its irony. On one level, readers were not able to detect its subtlety and profundity (KA 11, 366-367). But on another, the Athenaum found itself in the midst of a "blaze of irony," which ironically enough was a tendency of the age. Thus, while more profoundly ironic than commonplace irony, the Athenaum was misunderstood because it was not distinguished (or distinguishable) from the milieu (KA II 370). "But is unintelligibility so objectionable and bad?" In the essay, Schlegel suggests that it is not:

" Quoted in Willson, A

"

Wahrlich es wiirde euch bange werden, wenn die ganze Welt, wie ihr es

Mythical Image, 210-21 1.

fodert, einmal im Ernst durchaus verstandlich wurde. Und ist sie selbst dies unendliche Welt nicht (lurch den Verstand aus der Unverstandlichkeit oder dem Chaos gebildet? (KA II, 370)"~'

In fact, Schlegel laments the passing of the "storm" of unintelligibility that surrounded the Athensum, for the clearing of these storrnclouds represents the moment "wird auchjenes Ratsel von der Unverstandlichkeitdes Athenaeums gelost sein. Welche Katastrophe!" In the oncoming nineteenth century, Schlegel predicts that readers will be able to sit down comfortably with its fragments and peruse them while digesting their dinner. But perhaps there will be another fate for the Athenaum (and the texts of Jena Romanticism). As one of its fragments suggests, "A classical text must never be entirely comprehensible. But those who are cultivated and who cultivate themselves must always want to learn more from it" (KA 11, 149, 371; English, 2). What is Schlegel's conclusion from all of this? The difference between the understood and the un-understood will continue to become more general, passionate, and clear. The hidden "unintelligible" must continue to break through, but the understanding will assert its dominance, contributing to what is highest in the human being (character, genius, and art) until finally it understands itself and its own basis, namely that "each can acquire the highest and that humanity to this point was neither malicious or stupid, just awkward and new." And at this point Schlegel breaks off with a poem; he exercises restraint in order not to "profane" his "reverence" of the "highest divinity." "Aber die grofien Grundsatze, die Gesinnungen, worauf es dabei ankommt,

diirfen ohne Entweihung mitgeteilt werden; un ich habe versucht das Wesentliche davon auszudrucken..." (KA 11, 371). Schlegel seemingly recognized the flashes of profound, unintelligible origins of meaning in the release of authorial control; that is, the "storm" of unintelligibility that surrounded the 3' In an earlier fragment, Schlegel had presented another formulation of this thought: "If in communicating a thought, one fluctuates between absolute comprehension and absolute incomprehension, then this process

Athenautn had to do with the release of the text to its reception. And in the moments of misunderstanding, the Friihromantik body of work looked more like a "classical text" that continued to demand attention. Thus, despite the closure of the text in pleasurable reading, which Schlegel saw as the inevitable fate of his fragments, he attempted to revalue the contributions of Jena Romanticism out of the logic of their reception. In short, he was able to restore the present as "awkward" but "new," drawing upon the honored past and projecting towards a distant future where humanity truly "understands" itself as participatory in the highest, deepest divinity. In this sense, Schlegel offered up the Athentim as a sacrifice that would yet usher in a new age. The

""Unverstandlichkeit" essay ultimately conveyed a deep hope for the persistence of the Romantic program. Unintelligibility was, in a basic sense, the marker of a classic text, interrogating the present and inculcating the eternal dialectic at the heart of the Romantic poetic-philosophical mediation. Nevertheless, the essay registered disillusionment. As much as one might ironically assert that being misunderstood is actually quite good, the "human, all too human" desire is in fact to find kindred souls through one's writing. In this effort, the Athenaum project seemingly failed. Schlegel was clearly ready for something new, departing for Paris in 1802, hoping "eine

andre auffre Existenz zufinden, als die literarische, van welcher zu leben mirje longerje unertrliglicher ~ i r d . "This ~ ~"other, exterior existence" was to be found, at least in part, in Sanskrit manuscripts. It very well may be that disillusionment around classically based Jena Romanticism prompted Schlegel to look for an even deeper source, the "geheimeOrdnungsverbindung" (KA II, might already be termed a philosophical friendship. For it's no different with ourselves. Is the life of a thinking human being anything else than a continuous inner symphilosophy?" (KA 11, 164; English, 17). 33 From an 1802 letter, quoted in Behler, introduction, K A VIII, CXI. Disillusionment about the reception of the Romantic mission was surely supplemented by the disappointing dissolution of the group of friends

364) that was entirely missed by modem, "progressive" intellectual efforts. The deep interrogation, which had previously come from the Greek and Roman classics, needed to come from an even richer source in order to shake loose modem complacency, abstraction, and banality. While recourse to the Middle Ages was a running theme in the search for this richer model,34the principle that drove Schlegel's Jena Romanticism (eternally progressive Bildung through dialectic with the past) was eventually to overcome the force of medieval sources. The

Friihromantik logic of history surely had suggested that the deeper the source of the interrogation, the more profound the dialogue, and thus the higher the levels of attainment, and this is the initial position from which we can understand Schlegel's interest in Indian texts. Schlegel began his work on Asian sources towards the end of the summer of 1802. Apparently he began by working on Persian but quickly turned his attention to Sanskrit under the tutelage of Scotsman Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton had been an officer in the British navy stationed in Bengal and had learned Sanskrit alongside William Jones and the other Asiatic Society Orientalists. As the hostilities between Napoleon and the British flared up, Hamilton found himself in France, and in 1802, he was confined in Paris. Because of his knowledge of Indian sources, Hamilton was put to work in the Bibliotheque Nationale cataloging the many Sanskrit sources that had been collected by missionaries and by participants in France's own colonial adventure in ~ndia.~'

and colleagues who had championed it. See Theodore Ziolkowski, German Romanticism and Its Institutions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 268. 34 The Schlegel brothers had variously privileged the literature of the Middle Ages (e.g., Dante), the Renaissance, and early modernity (e.g., Shakespeare) as models of contemporary Romanticism because of the progressive re-interpretationof the classical found in these periods. As Gerard suggests, these interests certainly conditioned Friedrich Schlegel's move to Paris. See L 'Orient et la pensbe romantique allemande, 87-88. ' See Raymond Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance, 67-69 and Frans Plank, "What Friedrich Schlegel Could Have Learned from Alexander ("Sanscrit") Hamilton besides Sanskrit," Lingua e Stile 22, no. 3 (September, 1987), 367-384. Plank argues that Hamilton's influence on Schlegel was considerably more extensive than has previously been thought: the Sanskrit teacher also passed along insights that would influence Schlegel's theory of languages.

Schlegel obviously found a willing teacher in Hamilton (and he was a fastidious student),36because by the fall of 1803 he reported being facile with the devanZgari script and Sanskrit grammar. While Schlegel lectured in Paris on topics in European literature, "the most important yield" of the sojourn in Paris was the work in Indian

source^.^'

The original plan was

to produce several volumes under the title Indisches Museums, within which he would present both essays on Indian texts and the texts themselves in metrical translation. In addition, he hoped to produce a new, metrical translation of ~akuntalaout of the original Sanskrit. Schlegel never produced the translation of the famous drama,38but the the Indisches Museums gradually evolved r Sprache und Weisheit der Indier, which Schlegel worked on consistently until into ~ b e die 1807.~' It was finally published in Heidelberg in 1808.

In the text itself, Schlegel reiterates some standard themes in the German reception of Indian texts and also offers much that is new. In keeping with my theme in this project I will investigate the henneutical structure established by Schlegel in his treatise. I will not offer a comprehensive analysis of Uber die Sprache, but it is necessary to identify the myths, conceptions, and methods presented in the work in order to frame inquiry into Schlegel's

36

Schlegel also utilized a set of original manuscripts (seemingly transcribed by or at the behest of missionaries) to learn the language: the Mugdhabodha of Vopadeva (Instruction of the Ignorant, an eighteenth century grammar), the the Kavikalpadruma (also by Vopadeva, a dictionary of roots for poets), and the Amarakoia of Amarasinha (a vocabulary). 37 Letter to prospective publisher Georg Reimer, quoted in Ursula Struc-Oppenberg's introduction to Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe VIII, CXCIII. 38 For a rather cynical analysis of this failure, see Figueira, Translating the Orient, 19-20. ' In the preface of the text itself Schlegel reports that his original plan was to produce an "indische Chrestomathie" with selections in the original devancjguri script accompanied by Latin translations. This model was to falter, however, because of the impracticality of printing the original characters. KA VIII, 109; English, 427. All references to the English translation of Schlegel's text are from The Aesthetic and Miscellaneous Works of Frederick von Schlegel, translated by E.J. Millington (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1849). Modifications or retranslations will be inserted when necessary.

engagement with the Git6. It is particularly important to discern the way in which Schlegel conceives Indian pantheism.40 From the very outset, Schlegel announces that the study of Indian sources will represent a kind of "Copernican revolution" in European culture. Raymond Schwab's "Oriental ~enaissance~'~' is proclaimed in specific terms in the preface: The study of Indian literature requires to be embraced by such students and patrons as in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries suddenly kindled in Italy and Germany an ardent appreciation of the beauty of classical learning, and in so short a time invested it with such prevailing importance, that the form of all wisdom and science, and almost all of the world itself, was changed and renovated by the influence of that re-awakened knowledge. I venture to predict that the Indian study, if embraced with equal energy, will prove no less grand and universal in its operation, and have no less influence on the sphere of European intelligence. (KA VIII, 111; English, 427) In positioning the study of India this way, Schlegel announces several important themes from the outset. As was the case in the Renaissance, the cultural revolution will require patronage from those in power, and the prestige of opening up this new era of inquiry will be bestowed back on them. This argument was to become a consistent theme in Germany as scholars and intellectuals argued for the resources that would put the study of India on firm institutional footing. Also, by comparing the study of India to the recovery of Greek and Roman culture in the Renaissance, Schlegel implicitly argues for Indian sources to be taken as seriously as classical sources, and this implies the application of philological, textual discipline. It also presupposes a broad, humanistic impulse, where textual practice and philosophical knowledge were placed in constant dialogue to enhance the impact of the past on the present (see KA VIII, 309-3 11; English, 522). As Gary Handwerk suggests, " ~ b edie r Sprache served...as self-critique in assessing the implications of the pantheistic tendencies that had played a significant role in earlier German Romantic thought." "Envisioning India: Friedrich Schlegel's Sanskrit Studies and the Emergence of Romantic Historiography," European Romantic Review 9 (1998): 234. 41 Schwab, 72: b6Schlegel was literally the inventor of the Oriental Renaissance...because it was Schlegel who made what could have been no more than a pastime into a vital reality, who created a general cultural movement out of one particular field of knowledge. And he was able to do this because he, alone among all the others, saw this first and foremost as a spiritual event." 40

In reflecting on the content of Ober die Sprache, it is initially important to focus on the influential theory of language presented in the text.42 While Schlegel's comparison of cognates and grammatical structure is on occasion ~ ~ e c u l a t i he v efollowed ~~ through on the work of Sir William Jones and proliferated the examples supporting linguistic connections between languages, leading eventually to the formulation of the Indo-European hypothesis. One of the most important aspects of this research focused on firming up the case for a close relationship between Sanskrit and Classical languages. As Schlegel suggests in his analysis of grammatical structure, "The Indian grammar harmonizes so completely with the Greek and Latin, that it appears to be scarcely less closely connected with those languages than they themselves are with each other" (KA VIII, 143-144; English, 443). Discerning this continuity between Sanskrit and the Classical languages was a crucial part of the case for the dignity and antiquity of Indian language in European eyes. But Schlegel adds to the case that Sanskrit also has a resonance with Germanic roots, suggesting a deeper, more ancient continuity between European languages: "the study of these old monuments of the German language will undeniably establish the fact, that their grammatical structure was originally the same as that of the Latin and Greek" (KA VIII, 141; English, 442). While such insights became crucial for the development of the Lido-European hypothesis, for Schlegel they led to the suggestion that Sanskrit itselfwas the root for these European forms.44 The chapter on comparative grammatical structure opens with this very

' The importance of Schlegel's treatise for linguistics is well documented. See, for example, Ernst Behler,

"Die Sprachtheorie in Friedrich Schlegels fitihen Schriften (1795-1803)," in Idealismus mit Folgen: Die Epochenwelle um 1800 in Kunst und Geisteswissenschaften,edited by Hans-Jiirgen Gawoll and Christoph Jamme (Munchen: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1994), 75-86. For a critical account, see Erik Eisel, "The r Sprache und Weisheit der Indier," New German Metaphor of Organicity in Friedrich Schlegel's ~ b e die Review 9 (1993): 45-61. 43 The connection drawn between "Rome" and "Rha," for example, is tenuous at best. KA VIII, 129; English, 435. 44 Schlegel was of course well aware of the variety of contemporary languages spoken in India. He posited that these languages stood in the same relationship to Sanskrit as modem Italian stood with Latin. See K A

thought (KA VIII, 137; English, 439). In order to explore the point, Schlegel initially establishes a language theory that fits within the Romantic, intellectual myth of India: he is attracted to the thought that language has an original, aesthetic eloquence that is "effaced" by differentiation and use. The artistic construction [kunstreiche Struktur] of the language becomes obliterated and worn off [lit. it "goes through a grinding down," Abschleifung] by common daily use, especially during a long period of rudeness and barbarity; and is at length completely lost sight of, either disappearing by slow degrees, or in some instances effaced, as it were, in a moment; a grammar, constructed by the aid of auxiliaries and prepositions, being in fact the shortest and most convenient, presenting an easy abridgement adapted for general use. (KA VIII, 143; English, 442) In the case of India (and this judgment is the product of the comparative method, according to Schlegel), "The Indian grammar.. .is.. .more truly simple and artistic" than that of the Classical languages (KA VIII, 147; English, 444), and this in turn suggests the "greater antiquity" of Sanskrit (KA VIII, 149; English, 445). Schlegel concludes by reinscribing Herder's stylized conception of the aesthetic India but now supported by the rigor of comparative linguistic history: It is necessary.. .to pre-suppose one property of the mind, in order to explain.. .the origin of that language; a peculiarly fine feeling [Gefuhfl of the separate value and appropriate meaning.. .of the radical words or syllables; a perception [Gefuha of the whole activity and influence of which we can hardly be fully sensible, the ear being now dulled and confused by a multiplicity of various impressions, and the original stamp of each word being obliterated by long use. Still it cannot be doubted that it once acted powerfully on the minds of men, as without its influence no language could have been framed, or at least none like the Indian. (KA Vffl, 151; English, 445-446)45 Schlegel's argument for this position claims several pieces of evidence for support. The basis for the primal eloquence and ingenuity of a language is its ability to convey grammatical relations through inflection alone. While Greek and Latin are heavily inflected, both also require VIII, 143; English, 442. Therefore Sanskrit is the target for the deeper historical analysis. He was also aware that Vedic represented an earlier linguistic stage in Indian languages, but his theory of linguistic development led him to suggest that Sanskrit provided a relatively transparent window into Indian language in its primal form.

the use of prepositions, which detract from the simplicity of the language structure. Sanskrit, Schlegel contends, requires no such prepositions. Grammatical relations can be conveyed by noun case alone. In addition, Sanskrit verbs have a wide range of expression through systematic and consistent inflection of roots, and adjectives are derived from verbs in a consistent manner. Sanskrit, in short, produces meaning through a kind of inner order and necessity, whereas other languages produce meaning through an arbitrary manifold of terms and forms. This distinction is encapsulated by Schlegel's use of two related German terms: the systematic eloquence of a heavily inflected language displays "artfulness" (it displays Kunst); the arbitrary proliferation of terms that comes to afflict language through everyday use and cultural degeneration is kunstlos or kiinstlich ("artless" or "artificialyy). This argument is of course highly debatable on the facts alone. For example, it is impossible to attribute the order of Sanskrit to a primal or essential origin of language, because we are able to locate intentional efforts to systematize Sanskrit with particular individuals, in particular times;46thus the apparent order of Sanskrit itself is in many ways "artificial." In general, Schlegel's value judgments about the aesthetics of entire language traditions or periods within language traditions are particularly problematic from the contemporary perspective.47

45 Also see KA

VIII, 169; English, 455.

' As Figueira points out, Piiqini's grammar was published for the first time in 1810, and this surely would have caused Schlegel to hesitate before insisting on the "organic purity" of Sanskrit. Figueira, The Exotic, 55. 47 Schlegel introduces the metaphor of an organism to support his claims (see Eisel's article, cited above), suggesting that one group of languages (the one inspired by the primal Indian source) unfolds out of its own inner necessity like a seed which grows into a vast "organic tissue." The "threads" of this tissue (and here Schlegel mixes his metaphors) can be unraveled and the logic of the original source determined. But where arbitrary grammatical forms dominate and proliferate in another set of languages (e.g., Native American, Chinese, Arabic), no such inquiry is possible, belying an "artificialityy'and a lack of "beauty" and "facility." KA, VIII, 159; English, 449. While Schlegel allows that Arabic, for example, can be a powerful mode of expression, "languages in which the grammar is one of inflexion are usually preferable, as evincing higher art in their construction." fL4, VIII, 163; English, 45 1. In this distinction, Schlegel admits that he is departing from the teachings of William Jones, who wished "to derive all [languages] from a common source" (KA VIII, 189; English, 465). For accounts of Jones' theory of language and culture see Lincoln, Theorizing Myth, 83-100 and Trautrnann, Aryans and British India, 28-61.

Two claims are particularly difficult: that a kind of purity resides in the ancient Indian form of language, which is debased and rendered common through the centuries, and that the "Semitic" languages (Hebrew and Arabic) are from the outset debased. I will not engage these debates in depth at this point, except to suggest that Schlegel's judgments were the product of a persistent mythic construction of India inherited from a previous layer of reflection, represented most notably by Herder. Here the myth was in a dialectic with comparative method, producing some new insights into the development of languages and the place of Sanskrit within it. Herder's stylized myth was modified: Schlegel's Kunst was clearly not the same as flowery fancy and poesy. But India remained a primal, linguistic paradise; the myth proved to be intractable, now utilizing the comparative method in its deployment. Schlegel's theory of Indian language was directly related to his theory of Indian religion. Because of its nature, Indian language retarded degeneration because of the particular "mentality and disposition" (Denkart und Vefassung) of the Indian people (KA VIII, 173). Sanskrit was fundamentally a religious and philosophical language, and this enforced a certain conservative rigor on its forms. It is true that the Indian is almost entirely a philosophical or rather a religious language, and perhaps none, not even excepting the Greek, is so philosophically clear and sharply defined: it has no variable or arbitrary combination of abstractions, but is formed on a permanent system, in which the deep symbolic signification of words and expressions reciprocally explain, elucidate, and support each other. This lofty spirituality is at the same time extremely simple, not originally conveyed through the medium of representations of merely sensual expressions, but primarily based upon the peculiar and appropriate signification of the fundamental elements as originally established. (KA VIII, 173; English, 457) The particular use of Sanskrit as a philosophical, religious language consistently guided it back to first principles, producing a unified, recombinant system of reflection that bespoke a consistent mission. Sanskrit revealed a primordial integrity of religious and philosophical ideals that could be retraced by the informed student who penetrated the historical layers and acts on "a sort of

linguistic emanationi~m."~~ In the second book of the treatise, Schlegel attempts to perform this operation guided by a scheme analogous to that applied to language: the primordial clarity and "artfulness" of language is a feature of the noble simplicity of a primal revelation. The content of this revelation has been "ground down," however, by vulgarization, abstraction, and admixture. 49 Schlegel's detailed account of Indian religio-philosophical thought is guided by two main conceptions that bespeak this pure and primordial revelation: emanationism and dualism. In each case, the pantheism conception is also invoked as an important point of reference: as a contrast (in the case of emanation) and as an outgrowth (in the case of dualism). Schlegel acts on r Sprache, but he also positions pantheism within a Herder's hermeneutical innovation in ~ b e die

more complex structure of interpretation. The first of the grounding principles that was present in the Indian context is emanation, a doctrine that Schlegel discerns most notably in the Manu text." What is initially most prominent in the emantionist system is a sad sense of the world's degradation and its distance from the divine. While the "self of the infinite entity" is the source of all things, each step away from this divine source represents a degeneration and degradation, until finally humankind is found in its 48

Handwerk, "Envisioning India," 237. Both Behler and Droit have noted the resurgence of a neo-Platonic framework in Schlegel's thought. This becomes even clearer as we turn to Schlegel's account of Indian religio-philosophical views. That Schlegel would turn to the primordial past as a source of meaning discerned through the veils of text and language is no surprise, given the summary of his early views presented above. What is surprising, however, is the shift from "dialogue" to "anarnnesis" that seems to be r Sprache. Whereas mediation and dialogue were in some sense ends in themselves in evident in ~ b e die the Jena period, recollection of the primal revelatory moment now seems to be the emphasis. Schlegel has in a sense returned to Hamam's theory of a divine inspiration for language, cast in emanationist, neoPlatonic terms. See Behler, "DasIndienbiId der deutschen Romantik," Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 1 (1968): 34, and Roger-Pol Droit, L 'oubli de I'Inde: Une amnksie philosophique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1989), 131. Also see Peter Park's essay, "A Catholic Apologist in a Pantheistic World." ' Inevitably this revelation has a Christian character, and this is an important indicator of the transitional quality of the treatise. As Schlegel suggests in the final chapter of the work, "the Indian records reveal the first growth of error and superstition, which, when the simplicity of divine faith and knowledge had once been abandoned, became continually more false and exaggerated, yet ever retained, even in its darkest loom, some feeble gleams of celestial and glorious light." KA,VIII, 295-297; English, 5 16. In 1794 Jones had published translation of The Laws of Manu under the title Institutes of Hindu Law: or, the ordinances of Menu, according to the gloss of Culldca.

'

present state, with traces of the divine but with a long ladder to climb in order to achieve proper unity. Despite the gloominess and austerity that can accompany this view, however, emanation has a decidedly "noble" aspect, for "the divine origin of humanity is throughout taken as a reason for one to be mindful of the return and to consider the the reunification with divinity as the singular goal of all of one's actions and strivings" (KA VIII, 213). Nevertheless, the teaching is fraught with dangers. The divine essence is surely in continuity with creation, but the distance is so great for most that a variation on the emanationist theme begins to take over in order to fill the gap: "Everything is...a consequence of the effluence of divinity; each being itself is only a limited, bound up, and obscured god" (KAVIII, 209). All of creation takes on a glow that is dimly divine, providing an impetus for the free play of imagination (Phantasie) and poetic invention (Dichtung). Hence the vast proliferation of gods in the Indian context expresses a modified form of emanation that Schlegel identifies with "Hylozoismus" or "Allgotterei" (KA VIII, 209-21 1 ; English, 474). In his treatise, Schlegel is seemingly ambivalent about this development, because on the one hand it provided a spur to poetry and mythology, but on the other it was surely the root of "of all primitive superstition" (KA VIII, 209; English, 474). Schlegel's degenerative model for Indian culture ultimately overtakes his ambivalence, for in the end, these emanationist principles result in "Oriental materialism," an abased form of belief and worship.5' This degenerative model is quite clear in Schlegel's discussion of two specifically Indian concepts, which are closely related to emanationism: the avatar and transmigration (Seelenwanderung). With regard to avatars, Schlegel suggests that it is natural for divinity to take

'

At a later point Schlegel hypothesizes that, in effect, flights of the imagination serve as compensation for moral despair about the state of the world and the possibility for redemption: "Die unendliche Fulle der Phantasie hat dieser orientalische Materialismus mit dem System der Emanation gemein;ja die wilde Begeisterung, welche nun an die Stelle der alien Betriibnis trat, ist die eigentliche Quelle aller Riesengeburten der Dichtung und Fabel." KA VIII, 225.

the form of men (or vice versa) in the emanationist system, and it might be suggested that he felt the tug of his Romantic past in discussing this development: emanation provokes thought about the divinity of humankind (a theme which is repeated again and again in Schlegel's earlier writings), and the avatar concept expresses this fundamental belief. But in the Indian context divinity also takes the form of animals, and this is seemingly the product of an arbitrary imagination, leading to a problematic divinization of nature.52 This prompted Schlegel to re-think the issue, now in Christian terms. In his notebooks from 1805, Schlegel observed that there are "Nur zwei Awatars ...vor Xp [Christus]" (KA XV, 6). In 1806, he clarified the idea: the key points of Christian mythology are the worshiped hero and the suffering god-man (KA XV, 40). These thoughts led him to believe that the avatar concept clearly had "noble" content, but it could easily stray into dangerous, idolotrous territory. From the combination of the two main emanationist tenets (the endless striving for reunification and the manifestation of the divine in all entities), along with an abiding, and perhaps more primal belief in the immortality of the soul, the transmigration doctrine arose. Here we find the emanationist reunification theme quintessentially expressed. But Schlegel argues that the belief in transmigration is part and parcel with an intensely pessimistic view of the world and, ultimately, a kind of fatalism. It is linked to a cosmological principle that emphasizes the endless cycling of creation and the divine caprice driving it (KA VIII, 213-217; English, 476-477).53 In both of these cases, then, emanation dangerously borders on a vitalist, pantheistic principle, in the divinization of nature (which Fichte will later call the "pantheism of the imagination") and in its fatalistic departure from morality, and these recall standard concerns

'

See K A VIII, 233; English, 485. The fundamental problem is the resulting reduction of divine transcendence, "where the adoration of the Creator so easily sinks and degenerates into that of the thing created." KA VIII, 2 19; English, 478. 53 For Schlegel, astrology and divination are markers of this kind of fatalism, which embodies itself in a desperate attempt to read the signs of divine intention in nature. See KA VIII, 219; English, 478.

about Spinozistic pantheism from the time of the Streit. Despite these dangers, however, Schlegel is careful to distinguish emanationism from pantheism.54 On one hand, pantheism assumes that the "return of individual entities to divinity" occurs necessarily; in the emanationist system, this return is only "possible" (KA VIII, 199). By implication, no action is genuinely required to achieve reunion if pantheism is accepted. This leads into the crucial moral point: in pantheism all creation is essentially good, because it is already identical with divinity; "what we call 'a wrong' or 'bad'" is "only an empty illusion [T&schung]" (KA VIII, 201). This leads to a fundamental indifference when it comes to moral action. In the emanationist system, however, the world is in an essential state of disrepair, ruination, and evil; it is "a mournful degradation from the complete bliss of the divine essence" (ibid.). Nevertheless, despite the limitations of the doctrine, emanation retains a moral dualism that can provide the spur to moral action. Pantheism cannot do so.

In the text, the dualist principle in Indian religious thought is of prime importance for Schlegel because it seemingly rescues primal forms of emanation from complete degradation. In its most fundamental form, dualism has an essentially moral character: it stems from the battle between the principle of light and the principle of darkness, between good and evil. Zoroastrianism offers the most famous example of this model, which Schlegel calls the "doctrine of the Two Principles," but the conception of life as a very real struggle against evil is thought to be pervasive in the East. In India, a shining and active subjectivity was constantly invoked, a trend that managed to stand up to rampant materialist imagination and polytheistic worship (KA

VIII, 229; English, 482). The avatars of Visnu provide clear evidence o f the "doctrine of the Two

54 As Gerard shows, this distinction, which was well-developed with the assistance of South Asian sources already in 1805, was crucial in Schlegel's break from his Jena past - and his move towards Christianity. In 1805, however, emanationism was seen as a doctrine that is traditionally compatible with certain forms of Christianity, and pantheism was not. However, by the time of ~ b edie r Sprache, even emanationism was in question.

Principles" in its pure form, for Visnu "frequently appeared upon earth, under the various forms of a king, a sage, a wonder-making warrior and hero, but always with the intention of checking the progress of crime" (KA VIII, 233; English, 485). The self-denial of the yogi and renunciant is also cited as an example of this model in action (ibid.). For Schlegel, the battle of the two principles gained its power from mythic, poetic construction. It has an epic quality. But the opposition of two forces of good and evil again led to potentially dangerous consequences. Strict application of the "doctrine of Two Principles" easily led to intense mortification of the body, overwhelming concerns about purity, and various forms of esotericism. The philosophical abstraction of the two principles, which became "Dualism," is the most dangerous development, however. Borrowing from his scant knowledge of Chinese religious philosophy, Schlegel presents the following hypothesis: "When the doctrine of the Two Principles ceased to be a religious belief, and was degraded into a merely philosophical system, the idea of the two primal powers being united and absorbed into one higher being could hardly fail to be admitted" (KA VIII, 247; English, 492). The result was of course pantheism. According to Schlegel's scheme, pantheism was directly derived from a degradation of the dualist principle. It was the latest development to come onto the scene and was at the greatest distance from more "noble" principles. The appearance of pantheism had a detrimental moral effect, but theological issues are also at stake, for India does display deep knowledge of "the true God." Manu's emanationist system (according to Schlegel) posited Brahm3 as "the actual He, God himself," "the eternal spirit," "the infinite I," "king and lord of the existence," and "father and ancestor of the universe" (KA VIII, 205). These principles certainly square with "the true God" with which Schlegel and his audience were familiar. But this principle was obviously

sapped of its energy by emerging forms of philosophical abstraction, which reduced dualism and transcendence to an "all in one" doctrine: I shall merely remark in this place, that the profound and vital idea originally entertained of the Eternal and his almighty power, must have been greatly vitiated and enfeebled before it could descend to lose itself in the false and visionary notion of the oneness or unity of all things, so distant too from the doctrine of their nullity. (KA VIII, 243; English, 489-490) Before moving on to a detailed analysis of Schlegel's GitZ translation, where many of these conceptions are expressed through the act of translation itself, I would like to conclude this r Sprache by engaging two points that are important in the brief summary of ~ b e die

contemporary interpretation of this work. First, there is significant concern about the location of Schlegel's text in relation to the development of the Indo-Aryan myth. In general, Schlegel's inquiry into language is often conceived to be directed towards an understanding of the historical development and dispersal of civilization, and the conclusion drawn from his specific combination of myth and method is fateful: there is an essential connection between the Indian (Aryan) and the Germanic. Thus, Schlegel outlined a proto-racialist theory of origins that was eventually to have devastating effects.55 This thesis, however, is not altogether clear in Schlegel's work. Schlegel often advocated caution in developing singular historical judgments of this kind and seemed to think that race (as a concept of the difference of physical characteristics) was a fluid and non-valenced factor. As Gerard shows, there was in fact a cultural dualism that divided the "Orient" and the "North" in Schlegel's thought in this period, and while the two were allies in combatting the mechanism and rationalism of his age, this connection was not for the most part essentiali~ed.'~

55 This thesis is famously introduced in Orientalism, where Said claims that "the racism in Schlegel's strictures upon the Semites and other 'low' Orientals was widely diffused in European culture." Orientalism, 99. L 'Orient et la pensee romantique allemande, 92-93.

'

Given these facts, it becomes difficult to sustain the judgment that Schlegel "made the case for India as the Aryan h~rneland."~'Here Lincoln repeats a common trope from the

r secondary literature, for Schlegel did not "make the case" for an "Aryan" homeland in ~ b e die Sprache, if by "making a case" we mean confidently arguing for a position. Schlegel was essentially (and admittedly) engaging in guesswork when he suggested that Indic tribes could have dispersed themselves in "the North" (KA VIII, 291-293; English, 514). While ~ b e die r

Sprache may have inspired later authors to "make" the case by presenting provocative questions, and while the distinction between "Indo-European" languages and "Semitic" languages is certainly problematic on the facts alone, Schlegel himself was tentative about the Indo-Aryan

Heimat thesis. As Sheldon Pollack argues, "This romantic dream seems to have sharpened into the vision of an Indo-Germanic Geisteswelt only gradually,yy58 that is to say, out of a growing patchwork of guesses, hypotheses, and half-argued positions. This is a difficult truth when so much seems to be at stake. Out of a desire to "clear up" this difficult aspect of the past history of scholarly encounter with India, it is often tempting to repeat the "Romantic logic" in the interpretation of Schlegel himself, but the facts of the matter are as follows: While Friedrich Schlegel's thinking may have been appropriated in order to contribute to what would become a coherent "racist" discourse, it does not represent a pure, primordial origin for this damaging set of views. On another note, it is important to address the way in which scholars have generally configured Schlegel's thought about India. Without a doubt, Schlegel had already begun to depart from the enthusiasm that gave rise to Uber die Sprache before it was published, before it

57 58

Theorizing Myth, 56. Sheldon Pollack, "Deep Orientalism?", 82.

was even completed.59 As Behler has suggested, the text marks Schlegel's disengagement from both romanticism and idealism, foreshadowing his conversion to Catholicism and his attempts to discover "cine...innigere Integration van Vernunft und christlicher Offenbarung, Glaube und

iss sen."^^ The move to Christian commitment called for a perspective that was incompatible with the intellectual strands composing his development to this point: Aujklarung, Idealism, his own Romantic humanism. It also called for a recasting of Indian philosophy and religion, whereby the unbridled enthusiasm of earlier years was tempered. As we have seen, this transformation was tied quite inextricably to a re-positioning of pantheism in Schlegel's interpretations. But can disillusionment and disappointment explain the transformation in Schlegel's views? The prevailing thesis suggests that Schlegel's positive myth was left ultimately unfulfilled when Schlegel actually studied Indian sources, thus driving him to a more objective, scholarly stance on India and a Christan fall-back position in his own spiritual life. This is an extremely common trope in the contemporary interpretation of Uber die Sprache, found in Willson, Said, Halbfass, Figueira, and many others who simply repeat the story. In truth, Uber die Sprache does not display disappointment, even though the theory of a degeneration from a

primal revelation is present.61If anything, it was positioned by its author as a forward-looking,

59 Through careful analysis of the

sources, Gerard shows that this development was well under way by

1805, when he delivered a series of lectures on the history of philosophy. While Schlegel utilized his newly apprehended knowledge of Indian sources to construct a philosophical system (based on emanation and the all-encompassing development of the self), he found it necessary to "rectify" the pessimism of Indian philosophy. Here we find the seeds of the reading given in ~ b e die r Sprache. Gerard, L 'Orient et la pensie ro~nantiqueallemande, 95-106. 60 Behler, introduction, K A VIII, XIX. Also see CXV: "Freilich war auch dieser Versuch, die Mythologie und Religion historisch druch cine vergleichende Erforschung vergangener Mythologien in Indien, Persien, Griechenland zu erwecken, nur ein anderer Pfad in Schlegels Annaherung an das Christentum. Denn das Resultat seiner Forschungen scien ihm darin zu bestehen, daft alle Mythologien nur entstellte Formen einer urspriinglichen Offenbarung, einer Urreligion waren, in der sich Gott als Voter und Konig den Menschen mitgeteilt habe." As Handwerk suggests, the "idea of an originary model does not really provide a simple or inevitable model of historical decline and fall...Indeed, the force behind Schlegel's effort at recovering the Indian past

pioneering work, as all contemporary interpreters also acknowledge. And the myth of India was not cleansed in favor of objective study: it was simply reconfigured, and, as we shall see, it still played a fundamental role in Schlegel's critique of the European present. The dialectic of myth and logos in scholarship, in short, is always active, just in shifting forms of relation. The limitations of the psychologized, biographical disappointment thesis become clear when interpretations are seen as part of on ongoing discussion within a local intellectual which announces its pervasive presence in the work of the individual scholar. As I proceed to the next section, I wish to reinforce this point. Interpretation of India and Indian sources continued to be tied to the positioning of particular conceptions, especially pantheism, which was of decisive importance for local, German debates. The system of conceptions constructed by Schlegel is active in the most technical areas of his textual practice, i.e., in the intellectual's micro-techniques, which are performed in the scholarly rituals of anthologization and translation.

To specify this point, we should outline Schlegel's specific thoughts on the Gita in Uber die Sprache, which constitute the hermeneutic that he applied. Schlegel argues that the Gitii is is overlaid with (and overwhelmed by) pantheism as a Denkart and Gesinnung (as opposed to a abstract, "scientific" recombination of elements, such as that found in the I Ching, or, one might suppose, in Spinoza) (KA VIII, 247; English, 492). This disposition and sentiment is the product of historical development; as we have seen, primordial India was able to think two foundational principles: Emanation and Dualism. Emanation degenerated into astrological superstition and wild materialism. Dualism degenerated into Pantheism. In keeping with this model, the Gitii was his implicit belief that such revelations can be sparked by an immersion in those earlier breakthrough moments." Further, "it is not immediately clear that some sort of study ostensibly for its own sake would have been a more desirable alternative, or that study of the other for the sake of that other would have implied less pretension. Much depends upon the specific dynamics that a writer like Schlegel saw governing the potential impact of Asia upon Europe." "Envisioning India," 235.

shows the degeneracy of the dualistic principle within Samkhya, which simultaneously gained support from and supplemented Vedanta, the quintessentially pantheistic system, whose doctrines are constantly interpolated in the text. The Gitd, then, falls squarely within the degeneration from dualism to pantheism; in fact, it is "pure Pantheism," which can be seen "even from the translation" (KA VIII, 249; English, 493). The (unintentional) irony of this phrase will become evident, for in his construction of the text, Schlegel guarantees that the pantheism conception will be seen especially in the translation.

Rendering the Gitain Light of Pantheism

In his rendering of excerpts from the Git6, Schlegel clearly made use of Wilkins' early translation, the same work out of which Herder had performed his Nachdichtungen. Nevertheless, Schlegel had devoted himself to a study of the language itself and gained something of an independent purchase on the text. Rendering it metrically, of course, was a significant challenge, though a major step forward for the translation of a text whose original adheres to strict metrical

Schlegel was also quite aware of the potential depth of the text

and wished to capture it in a way (according to him) that English prose (and thus German relying on English) could not. The Gitd "ist einphilosophisches Gedicht ...dessen Subtilitat und

Erhabenheit aber wohl in.keiner Sprache (seit das Griechische ausgestorben) als in der Deutschen nachgebildet werdeii k ~ n n . "This ~ ~ privilege of the German was a common motif during the golden age of German Romantic translation; we will have the opportunity to test Schlegel's assumption about its capacity.

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Handwerk supports this judgment. "Envisioning India," 233. Schlegel later would offer a colorful description of the iloka: "den ehrwijrdigen alten indischen viereckten Schloka undgeviert einherschreitenden Elafanten, dieses erhabane Metrum der antediluvianischen Vorzeit." Quoted in Ernst Behler, "Das Indienbild der deutschen Romantik," 31. 64 1805 letter, quoted in Struc-Oppenberg's introduction, KA VIII, CXCIV. 63

Before moving to the text itself, however, other important features of Schlegel's translation ethos should be clarified. As Berman argues, translation was part and parcel of the Romantic vision, on the one hand as the function of gathering all that is foreign into a unifying

Weltliteratur (Goethe's term), and on the other (particularly with reference to Schlegel), as an important metaphor for the nature of the Romantic logic, where the "circular,cyclical, and

alternating nature of Bildung implies in itself something like trans-lation, Ubersetzung, a positing of oneself beyond oneself."65This certainly fits with the concepts of Romantic mediation, philology, and antiquity discussed above, but this general ethos of translation should be specified.

In one of his fragments from the Athendurn days (KA 11,239; English, 80), Schlegel tells us much about his methodology:

In order to translate perfectly from the classics into a modem language, the translator would have to be so expert in his language that, if need be, he could make everything modem; but at the same time he would have to understand antiquity so well that he would be able not just to imitate it but, if necessary, recreate it. This revealing statement should prepare us for certain dynamics in Schlegel's translation of the

~ i t 6 In. short, as a translator, Schlegel attempted to improve the original, to lend it modem importance, but also to recreate the antiquity of the work in the heart of modernity. Such a process meant that translation contributed to interrogation of the present and to the

Bildungsprozess of humanity. While Schlegel attempted to be more rigorously faithful in his translation (than, say, Herder), it is clear that he allowed himself some freedom in his attempt to understand the work better than it understood itself.67 And, it should be noted, this form of 65

Berman, The Experience of the Foreign, 47. Even though the fragment hearkens to an earlier period, its ethos is certainly present in the Indian translations. Schlegel's GitZ translations probably come from the early stages of his time in Paris, perhaps as early as 1804. See Struc-Oppenberg introduction, KA VIII, CCXXIX. 67 As we have seen in Herder's work, for German Romantic translation theory, fidelity and re-creation were not incompatible: "translation is a genuine metamorphosis for the work, an actual Veranderung - all the more so in proportion as the latter is more faithful, more 'literal.' In truth, unfaithful translation simply annuls this dialectic." Berman, The Experience of the Foreign, 127. But fidelity as a singular goal also 66

translation had to be supplemented by critical commentary, which completed the poeticization of the original work for the present age.68 In the case of the GitZ, Uber die Sprache in fact represents this critical commentary. We must begin with the most obvious feature of Schlegel's presentation of the text: it is excerpted. As was the case with Herder's Nachdichtungen, excerpting condensed the spirit of the text and was designed to provide the most potent portions for the reader's consideration. According to Schlegel's thinking, however, this essentialization of the text was completed, ironically enough, by its fragmentary nature, for ancient, fragmentary works are "wholes": "Many of the works of the ancients have become fragments [my emphasis]" (KA II 169; English, 2 1). We might suggest that the Friihromantik conceptualization of the fragment authorizes

selectivity and is formative in Schlegel's approach, particularly as a manner of stylizing India according to a preconceived notion of the classic text. This ethos produced a striking interpretive act that covered its own tracks; many readers would not bother to examine the rest of the text in order to determine what was left out. Therefore, in order to understand how Schlegel's concern configured the foreign text, it is necessary to begin negatively, with what was omitted. As it turns out, the lacunae are quite systematic. Even a cursory review reveals the most glaring absence in Schlegel's presentation of the GitZ: we find nothing beyond its eighth chapter. Such an omission may simply suggest that

Schlegel was unable to complete his work or that he decided to move on to something else. But even this decision necessarily implies that the remainder of the text is somehow less important

"annuls" the dialectic, for, as Schlegel himself said, "What is lost in average, good, or even first-rate translations is precisely the best part" (KA 11, 156; English, 9). 68 Bennan, The Experience of the Foreign, 107-109. While Uber die Sprache is not specifically a work of literary criticism, as Handwerk points out ("Envisioning India," 232), it fits quite directly into the aesthetic model of criticism and scholarship outlined in an early fragment: "Notes are philological epigrams; translations are philological mimes; some commentaries, where the text is only the point of departure or the non-self, are philological idylls" (KA 11, 156; English, 9).

than that which is actually presented. To this extent, it is safe to say that Schlegel found it unnecessary to present the devotional content of the text (which dominates chapters 9-12) and the details of its Siimkhya strand (which organizes the reflections in chapters 14 and 17-18). In addition, we might suppose that Schlegel found most of the thirteenth and fifteenth chapters repetitive and superfluous. We can be more specific about Schlegel's strategy of omission, however, by investigating its function in his presentation of the earlier part of the work. In doing so, we find two aspects of the text that are consistently left aside: 1) the teachings on action (kartnayoga) and its relation to the other yogas described in the text (particularly bhakti), and 2) the specificity of cultural practice that frames speculative, philosophical passages in the text. First, it is striking to see the manner in which the kartnayoga doctrine is excised from Schlegel's GitL For example, Schlegel translates the second chapter up to verse 38 but then omits the rest of the chapter (which includes the first formulation of the karmayoga doctrine at v. 47) and also the whole of chapter 3, which is devoted to the discussion of action. In his presentation of chapter 5, the same pattern is repeated: Schlegel omits the opening question (which frames the following discussion in terms of the distinction between discipline and renunciation) and then leaps over the detailed discusion of this issue in verses 5-18. In these verses, the text also begins to link the doctrine of action with the philosophical framework, but because both the devotional content of the text and its specific teaching on action are omitted, it is extremely difficult for the casual reader to see how IQsna actually addresses Arjuna's original dilemma. This difficulty is enhanced by Schlegel's other strand of omission, which targets the specificity of the life-world that frames and nourishes the reflections in the text. From the outset Schlegel leaves aside sections that bespeak specific religious and cultural concerns. For example, Schlegel's rehearsal of Aquna's complaint leaves off the warrior's concern with social order in

the form of family and caste duty. These issues are almost entirely omitted from Schlegel's ~ i t ~though i , ~they ~ are obviously central to the original text, particularly in light of the last two

chapters. But the most consistent gap in Schlegel's collection is the lack of specifics surrounding yogic practice. As mentioned above, chapter 3, which begins to introduce this form of knowledge and practice, is omitted, as well as the end of chapter 4, which elaborates on the connection between discipline and action. Schlegel's strategy (and here we might even call it a bias) is most clear in chapter 6. The excerpts here begin at v. 10, leaving behind a set of verses that extol discipline, tranquillity, and equanmity. Schlegel then proceeds to leave out verses 11-14 and 1617, which contain clear formulations of yogic practice. Once again, without the backdrop of specifically South Asian concepts such as caste duty, social order, and yogic discipline, it is difficult to discern the particularity of the GitZs teaching. Instead, Schlegel isolates intellectual, philosophical strands of the text that focus on approaches to conceiving the divine, which happens to correspond quite directly with his interpretive aims. In the traditional categorization of the Gita's teachings, Schlegel focused on the fundamental, doctrinal aspects ofjZZnayoga, or the discipline of knowledge. This is entirely in line with Schlegel's philosophical interests outlined in Uber die Sprache. More specifically, a brief survey of the selections indicates that Schlegel found a particular set of concepts compelling: dualism (discussed in 2.1 1-38), the avatar (in 4.1-lo), the "godhead" (in excerpts from chapter 5 and in 7.1-28), inner unification with the divine (in 6.25-3 I), and the final goal of liberation (in the concluding verse, 8.15-16). A certain logic can be discerned, even in this brief outline. We should recall that Schlegel developed a model for charting the development of thought in India, where at first "noble" and "pure" ideas appeared (as a feature of a primal The one exception appears in Schlegel's presentation of 2.3 1-38, where Q$na appeals to Arjuna's duty as warrior, but these verses do not elaborate on the complex interrelation of order, duty, and action. Rather,

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revelation). These ideas were emanationism, dualism, and a unitary concept of divinity. But these foundational ideas underwent degeneration: emanation devolved into a veneration of nature and polytheism; dualism devolved into pantheism. The combination of these degenerative moments inevitably proved deleterious to the concept and worship of divinity. In his selections from the Gitii, Schlegel articulates this movement by putting on display the moments where foundational ideas shine through, but he also selects passages that for him indicate interpolation and degeneration. What marks the interpretive selection of passages most strikingly is the conception that is so specific to his cornmentarial community: Pantheismus. Selection is one important textual practice that registers the presence of a circumscribed hermeneutical structure. Translation itself is subtler. As I have suggested above, Schlegel's theory of translation left an opening for a certain level of interpretive choice. If philosophy and philology go together, then translation cannot simply be workmanlike: it must be informed by philosophical interpretation. In examining the translation itself, we can discern moments where the trajectory of the text is bent by the gravity of Schlegel's intepretive concern. That is, the case for Schlegel's framework for asserting facts about Indian culture and religion is enhanced by slight distortions and exaggerations that appear in his translation of the text. This is not to suggest (as is certainly the case with selection) that Schlegel distorted the translation in accordance with consistent intention, though this may sometimes be the case. What is more significant is the way in which Schlegel expressed the concerns of his community and language through the translational act. In translating the way he did, Schlegel took the text up within a certain discourse, a certain discussion, and this manner of appropriation points to a much broader phenomenon in scholarly, intellectual life, even at its most technical level.

Qsna attempts to shame Arjuna into action by reminding him that his cowardice will be endlessly repeated

in memory and legend.

It will be recalled that the first "noble" foundational idea to be discerned in India's primal vision is emanationism. Given this hypothesis, it is unsurprising that Schlegel turns to verses from the beginning of chapter 4 (1-10).~' Here Qsna engages in an initial description of his divine nature and the dynamics that inhere within it. Verse 5 introduces the concept of mayti, and Schlegel is keen to translate: "Ungebohren, tinwandelbar bin ich, auch aller Wesen Herr;/Mein eignen Wesen beherrschend, ensteh ' ich durch den eignen ~chein."~'At the level of semantics, we note initially that Schlegel conflates two important terms (bhEt6s andpraMi) and renders them both as Wesen, though use of the German word could be seen as a successful negotiation of the ambivalent tension between "beings" and "material essence" or "nature." More importantly, GtmamEyay6 is rendered as "durch den eignen Schein," removing the reflexive character conveyed by the tatpunva compound; it takes a footnote to clear the matter up.72 Syntactical problems also affect Schlegel's rendition of the verse. The force of the api construction ("although ...nevertheless") is diluted, glossing over the difficult point that Qsna is making: though birthless and eternal, divinity comes into being (or is "born") in the world of appearance. The cumulative effect of these points is to play up the transcendence of divinity by distancing it from mEyE (it is an "effect of the power of God," not "my own mEya"). There is no question about the "reality" of the divine appearance for Schlegel: it is not real; rather, it is a mere effect of divine power. Such appearances have but an ethical and edifying purpose: to reestablish Recht (dharma, v. 8) and to illuminate a path back to proper union (v. 9-10). Schlegel is

70 My readings of these

passages are assisted by Ursual Oppenberg's Quellenstudienzu Friedrich Schlegels ~bersetzun~en aus dem Sanskrit (Marburg: N.G. Elwert Verlag, 1965), which is of inestimable value for the comparative analysis I wish to perform. 71 4.6: "ajo pi sann avyayZtmii bhtjtinim is'varo pi san/pra&tim svcim a d h i e y a sambhaviimy itmamiiyayci [Although indeed I am unborn and imperishable, although I am the lord of the creatures, I do resort to nature, which is mine, and take on birth by my own wizardry]." English translations (by van Buitenen) are again provided only for easy reference, not to establish the most precise standard for translating the text. 72 So Schlegel: "Das Entstehen und Vergehen ist nur eine Tiiuschung, Maya. Diese Maya aber, welche die Quelle der Welt der Erscheinungen ist, ist eine Wirkung der Kraft des Gottes."

so anxious to establish this latter point that he inserts a footnote on the usage ofyukta in verse 10, which he generally translates as vereint or vollendet, even though the Sanskrit term does not actually occur in the line. These themes are clearly evocative of the emanationist framework established in ~ b e die r Sprache, and we can summarize his reading of these verses in three points: First, the Gitti offers a clear formulation of the nobility of the emanation doctrine. It has an immediate ethical impact, and because the world of appearance has no reality, it calls for a Stoic mastery in returning to divine union.73 Second, while the pervasiveness of divine power and will is clear, Schlegel is careful to insist ultimately on divine transcendence in his translation. Consequently, the primal quality of this revelation remains clear, according to the interpretive framework already laid out. Third, the translation is also careful to eliminate any ambiguity about whether divine appearance in the world is somehow "real." It becomes quite clear that there is no theory of a singular revelation in the Indian tradition, just a noble emanationist logic. The Indian tradition surely does not allow for an authoritative moment of divine-human conjunction. This is of course part and parcel with an emantionist system (as formulated within NeoPlatonism), and the individual human quest for union with the divine takes center stage in the rest of Schlegel's Gitii. The Gita's brahman is of course Gott for ~ c h l e ~ eand l , ~in~his further selections from the text Schlegel offers his understanding of the yoga concept. As suggested

73 Oppenberg emphasizes this reading of the translation, suggesting (against those who interpret it as another piece of evidence within a case for Christian primal revelation) that Schlegel actually sees the text in close connection with Stoic doctrines. This is an interesting point, but Oppenberg does not support it through an analysis of other sources. I believe that ~ b edie r Sprache does offer a concrete orientation, such that we can see the specific way in which, as Oppenberg correctly notes, the "translation...is at the same time an interpretation" (52). This is always a troublesome issue in the translation of the text, which is generally resolved in more recent renditions of it by letting brahman stand. Usually we would suggest that translating brahman as "God" insists on a kind of theism that is thoroughly complicated by the work. Interestingly enough, that criticism does not quite apply to Schlegel. Schlegel in fact deemphasizes the theistic elements of the text, specifically its personal theism. Brahman as "God" in Schlegel is somewhat indeterminate, but most clearly indicates the God at the center of an emanationist system.

above, yoga is consistently a form of inner union and completion with and within God according to Schlegel. Thus, in 5.2 1 brahmayogayuktatmci becomes "Mit Gott die Einung vollendend," which brings the two semantic threads together. The formulation suggests both the possibility of union and a process that is undertaken to complete it. This duality within Schlegel's yoga concept has the effect of denying one possibility: that the yogi has become identical to brahman. But that is exactly what is suggested in 5.24, where "sa yogi brahmanirvmam brahmabhiito 'dhigacchati." Schlegel's rendering of the passage is telling ("Der geht a h Frommer Gotterfullt wieder in Gottes Wesen ein") because it entirely elides the identity suggested by brahmabhiito ("having become brahman"). Instead, the yogi "enters into" the divine nature (instead of into brahmanirv6na, which is of course what the text actually says) and allows for a subtle differentiation at the heart of divinity." Curiously enough, Schlegel pushes the pantheistic conception away in this part of the text. Why? As we will recall, emanation borders on pantheism but is ultimately different from it: in emanationism union is merely "possible," in pantheism it is "necessary." In accordance with Schlegel's intepretive framework, the emanationist casting of these passages must, at least at the beginning, attempt to expel overtly pantheistic tones. The excerpt that best supports Schlegel's overall interpretation of emanationist doctrine in the Git6 is 7.1-28, which is the longest excerpt in the collection. In this passage Krsna proposes to unfold the nature of his being, in a sense "unpacking" the concept of Ztmam@ii doctrine described above. Crucial positions are set forth: in verses 4 and 5, the distinction is made between the higher and lower natures of divinity, and in his translation Schlegel is again quite insistent on distinguishing the highest order from the layers of its emanation. For example, Schlegel highlights 6.15 (excerpting carefully around it) to support the precise nature of "union" and "completion" that he is after: "Wer vereinigt sein Innres stets, und als Frommer den Geist beherrscht,/ Die

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in verse 5,76Schlegel proposes that the "higher essence [Wesen]" "die ird'schen belebt." The key term here isjivabhuta, which modifies theparaprakfli. Schlegel's reading suggests that the higher divine nature bestows life or spirit on ("animates") that which is lower and "earthly." Once again, Schlegel wants to eliminate the possibility that the higher divine nature here has become "soul" or "life," which is the literal meaning of the phrase. The translation itself continues to exhibit distinctions elucidated in his commentary, Uber die Sprache. Even without these refractions in his translation, however, there is much to support Schlegel's reading of the philosophical sentiment presented in this passage, and thus it is well selected. While the world is shown to be the total creation of the unmanifest, invisible divine center, and while the divine is in all things because they flow from it, "they are in me," "but I am not in them," as Krsna says in verse 12. The path back to the divine is found in the divinely produced essences of things, "die eigenthiimliche Q~alitat,'~ that inheres in the things of the world, which Q s n a enumerates in verses 8-1 1 ("In water I am the taste ...in sun and moon the light, in all the Vedas the syllable OM, in ether the sound, in men their manhood," etc.). But the presentation of these examples has a dual effect in supporting Schlegel's interpretive agenda. Indeed, the noble thought of emanation is on display here, but such examples also point to one of the dangers of emanationism in the Indian context: here is a precise example of a kind of hylozoism, where nature is infused with a universally permeating, activating force that is identified with the divine. In this passage, the force is differentiated: it is seen as quite different depending on the entity that it enlivens, and it is different from the entity itself. Nevertheless,

hochste geistige Ruhe erreicht der, die da wohnt in mir." Abiding within the divine is certainly quite different from becoming the divine, which is suggested by the earlier passage. 76 7.5: "apareyamitas tv anycim praktim viddhi meparim/jTvabhiitim mahCbZho yayedam dhciryatejagat [This is my lower nature, but know that I have another, higher nature which comprises the order of souls: it is by the latter that this world is sustained, strong-armed prince]."

here is certainly a point where Schlegel discerns the danger of a rampant, materialist Allgotterei, should the "inherent quality" become confused with the thing itself. In the analysis up to this point, we have seen Schlegel attempting to deflect pantheism in passages that both support his attribution of a noble emanationist principle to the Git6 and also hint that the doctrine is in danger of decline. As we have seen, what is more characteristic of this text, according to Schlegel, is a dualistic teaching that has degenerated into pantheism in the strict sense, which has been interpolated into the text itself. Let us begin the investigation of this point with the first excerpt that begins to articulate Krsna's response to Ar~una'sdilemma (2.1 1-38). Here &sna outlines an initial philosophical response by suggesting that there is an imperishable, eternal element in existence that does not perish when an individual body dies. Schlegel translates verse

in the following manner: "Wie im sterblichen Leibe hier Kindheit,

Jugend und Alter sind,/Wechselt des Lebens Hulle auch; wer diefifesthalt, den irret nichts." Schlegel's metrical translation of the verse represents a genuine improvement on those of his forebears (Wilkins, Herder, and Majer). The insistence on a vaguely ChristianICartesian dualism was present in previous renditions; translators had consistently inserted the opposition between a "soul" or "Seele" and the "mortal frame." Schlegel does not make this initial move. The verse only refers to "bodies," and Schlegel maintains this usage. Nevertheless, Schlegel does add his own reading; sterbliche is added as a modifier of Leib, even though the original text does not modify deha in this manner. Also, Schlegel picks up on the earlier translations through the metaphor of the Hulle, which is not present in the original, but persists in the Wilkins-inspired line of German translation. While he is closer to the original, Schlegel still wishes to play up a kind of dualism through the highlighted "mortality" of the body.

" 2.13: "dehino 'sminyath5 dehe kaumciram yauvanam jariVtath5 dehcintarapriptirdhiras tatra nu muhyati [Just as creatures with bodies pass through childhood, youth, and old age in their bodies, so there is a passage to another body, and a wise man is not confused about it]."

His word choice also emphasizes the discontinuity of the transitions outlined here (in the "exchange" of the "outward form of life"), rather than continuity, a theme that is certainly present in the original. While his effort in verse 18 is once again an improvement on earlier renditions, Schlegel reduces the the complexity of the first line, which becomes, "These finite bodies are here only the outward forms of the eternal [Hiille des Ewigen].' In contrast to the CartesianJChristian dualism of the Wilkins strand, Schlegel correctly discerns that the "eternal" here does not only refer to individual "souls;" there is a broader principle at work. Nevertheless, Schlegel is still tilting the text in a direction that is favorable to his own interpretation of dualism in the South Asian religious and philosophical tradition. While his translation is certainly more accurate than those of his predecessors, Schlegel draws lines clearly in translating the text, lines that are perhaps not as clear in the original, and this is another act of interpretation which positions the text in a particular way. A further example of this kind of activity within the passage from chapter 2 is the manner in which a complex translational issue is handled: How does one contend with the variety of terms that stem from uses of iarira and deha, two Sanskrit terms that both mean "body," but in seemingly different senses? Deha and its derivatives appear throughout the passage, indeed denoting something like the "mortal body" in verses 13, 18,22, and 30, and Schlegel generally a also seemingly used in this sense at translates these terms using the German term Leib. ~ a r i r is 20 and 22; Schlegel employs the term Leib in these places also.78 But both terms are associated with the "immortal" as well, which causes problems for a simple co-ordination of the semantic

In order to maintain the clear content of the text and a dualistic translation andlor interpretati~n.~~

78

In verse 22, Schlegel actually condenses the use of both Sanskrit terms into a single phrase, bringing both iarira and deha under one instance of the term Leib. It is interesting to note that German has the inherent lexical range to capture two terms that refer to the body (through Leib and Korper). 79 See v. 30 ("dehi nityam avadhyo yam dehe sarvasya Bhirata [This embodied being is in anyone's body forever beyond killing]") and v. 18 ("antavanta ime dehi nityayoki@ iaririnah/anZiino prameyasya

dualistic sense of the passage, Schlegel uses terms such as Wesen and Ewige both to substantialize the opposition between the "mortal body" and the "immortal" and to efface the confusing quality of the "eternal embodied one." Without launching into a full exegesis of this issue in the text, we can safely say that there is a positive relationship between "mortal embodiment" (where iarira and deha refer simply to bodies) and "eternal embodiment" (where closely related terms refer to a broader principle, as in 2.18 and 2.30), calling for an interpretation (and a translation) that does not fit the relation for an oppositional, dualist framework. Why did Schlegel translate this section of the text in the way he did? The translation uses terms that are neutral, conveying the sense of a "living" body through Leib and a less determinate immortal essence through das Wesen and das Ewige. This certainly reflects attention to the original language, which was not present in the Herder translations. Nevertheless, Schlegel has still drawn the semantic lines clearly, and the more neutral usage actually serves to support his broader interpretive strategy. It is necessary not only to establish the presence of a philosophical dualism in the Git4 but also to show how a pantheistic teaching is consistently "interpolated" within the text. Schlegel seems to be suggesting, through his translation, that dualism has indeed become philosophically abstract and indeterminate by the time of the GitZ, and this paves the way for pantheistic interventions. It is likely that Schlegel discerned such interventions in verses 17 and 30, where the abstract, eternal essence is conflated with a grander cosmological principle. In short, this passage was well selected and interpretively translated to support the degenerative model (Two Principles to Dualism to Pantheism) proposed in Uber die Sprache.

tasmZd yudhyasva BhZrata [What ends of this unending embodied, indestructible, and immeasurable being is just its bodies - therefore fight, BhZrata!]").

This logic is reinforced in later excerpts. Schlegel extracts verses 3 and 4 from chapter 5 seemingly in order to reinforce the point.80 Here the text posits the duality of hate and desire and recommends a transcendence of dualities in general, but this moment of distancing from duality ("fern von Zwiespaltyy)has an idiosyncratic form in Schlegel's translation, particularly in verse 4. Here only children divide "ErkenntnzJ3" and "Handeln" (the translation of s@nkhyayogau), a decidedly post-Kantian rendering that follows Herder's Nachdichtung of the same verse. And then, according to Schlegel's version, Wer an dem Einen stetsfesthalt, findet der beiden Frucht zugleich." Why does Schlegel substantialize the "One," when it is clear that the "one" is simply pronomial ("if you get one you'll get the result of both")? Perhaps Schlegel is simply following Wilkins, who renders the line "They are but one, for both obtain the self-same end" (57). But it is clear that more is at stake, as Schlegel reveals in an explanatory note: "Dieses ist ganz tnetaphysisch zu verstehen: fern van aller Dualitat, alles auf die Einheit beziehend, wie es in mehreren Stellen des Gedichts zur Geniige auseinandergesetzt wird." Thus, as Einen, ekam becomes "the One" or "Oneness," which in Schlegel's mind is clearly a "metaphysical" interpolation, a pantheistic encroachment on dualistic principle. Schlegel's interpretive translation is even more striking because the context of the passage isprecisely about the distinction between the "metaphysical" and "action," but in verse 2 (which Schlegel leaves out), karma-yoga is privileged over the philosophical. Therefore, in a sense, Schlegel enters into the general debate about this passage in the Indian cornmentarial tradition and would insist that the text actually privilegesj Z n a -but in reality Schlegel is only insisting on the "metaphysical" in order to make it conform to his peripheral interpretive model. 5.3-4: "jfieyahsa nityasamnyisiyo na dvedi na k&ik.pti/nirdvamdvohi mahibiho sukham bandhit pramucyate//simkhyayogau pphag bilih pravadanti nu p a y & f i hekam / apy isthitah samyag ubhayor vindate phalam [He is to be counted a perpetual renouncer who neither hates nor desires, for, strong-armed

prince, if one transcends the pairs of opposites, one is easily freed from bondage. Only fools propound (hat

The metaphysical "oneness" that interrupts the moral content of dualism is further exemplified through Schlegel's presentation of excerpts from chapter 6. As we already saw, Schlegel gravitates both towards the herioic appearance of Krsna in chapter 4, where the god comes into being in order to battle injustice, and towards the inner quest of the jiitinayogi, who pursues a fundamentally moral quest for "union" and "completion" within the divine." These are important themes, where emanationism and dualism fruitfully mix and produce a noble synthesis, which is mirrored in traditional Western forms of thinking. These themes persist in the rendering of 6.25-28, but at verse 29 the pantheistic danger is suddenly interpolated, and Schlegel surely wishes to draw this to our attention: "In alien Wesen das Selbst, sieht wieder die Wesen all im Selbst,/ Welcher wiedervereinten Sinns, alles mit gleichem Muthe ~ c h a u t . "The ~ ~ conclusion of the teaching is indeed sarvatrasama-darianah, "seeing everything the same," which is taken to mean seeing "everything with the same spirit," or, more precisely, seeing "everything with indifference." This is a common teaching in the GitZ, but Schlegel's presentation plays up a contrast between pursuit of the "Good" (verses 21,22,27, and 28) and this "indifferent" attitude. "Indifference" is precisely the moral danger of pantheism, as it is laid out in Uber die Sprache, especially when "adhering" to metaphysical Einheit (cf. verse 3 1) is taken necessarily to be the same as seeing the personal God everywhere and seeing everything in the personal God, as is certainly the case in verse 30. If one is "never ...divided" ("Nirnmer. ..getrennt9') from divinity,

insight and the practice of acts are different things, not the wise: by undertaking one you find the fall fruit of both]." On this latter point, Schlegel offers a decidedly Platonic, or Neo-Platonic reading of verses 6.20-22. Here, instead of the thoughts "ceasing" (niruddham)through yogic practice (yogasevayti), thought "works happily" ("das Denken freudig wirkt") through Frommigkeit. Thus the continuing quest towards divinity continues, and not through restraint of thought, but through ongoing intellectual activity. This does not result in "endless pleasure" (sukham ityantikam) as the text would have it, but instead in "das unendliche Gut." This highest "good" is grasped by the Geist (Schlegel translates both titman and buddhi with this term) and is beyond the senses. The yogic practice of restraint in the hopes of absorption in contentment is then recast as an intellectual quest for "the Good" in a purely Platonic and emanationist sense. 6.29: "sarvabhtitasthamtitminam sarvabhUt&zictitmani/ ikate yogayuktitmi sarvatra samadarianah [Yoked in yoga, he sees himself in all creatures, all creatures in himself - he sees everything the same]."

then the pantheistic danger rushes forth: one sees oneself as "necessarily" unified with the divine, and not just "potentially" so, and this leads to theological and moral degeneration. In the end, Schlegel engaged in a strategy of selection that had the effect of supporting

r Sprache. In addition, in a variety of cases, his interpretive framework as presented in ~ b e die Schlegel refracted his translation in order to achieve the same effect. In a number of cases, we might be tempted to say that this relatively inexperienced translator of Sanskrit simply reached the limits of his abilities - and the limits of his own language. But mistakes were very rarely simple or straightforward for a committed interpreter of texts like Schlegel. Limits and gaps in understanding (as Schlegel himself once suggested) often present the opportunity for inserting strong interpretation; the power of a classical text is, after all, its indeterminacy. We have seen the way in which Schlegel greeted the difficulty of the Gitci with an agenda where the pantheism conception played a major role. Reflecting on this dynamic, it is next important to discern the way in which this conception, now newly inflected, was reintroduced to its native community of discussion.

Pantheism Discussion Renewed In his account of Indian religion and philosophy, Schlegel discerned the dangerous path of conceptual degeneration that gave rise to a celebration of the multiplicity of natural forms and to the doctrine that "all is one." A historical account of Indian antiquity illustrated that India experienced a pure, original revelation. Emanantionist and dualist schemes were not in and of themselves problematic; in fact, these are noble philosophical thoughts. But as these thoughts became more generalized and intermingled with less enlightened cultural forms in the history of Indian religion, degeneration ensued. The GitZ was positioned as a text that announced these themes - but it was also presented as a kind of prophetic warning to European observers. The

historical end of the degenerative movement is surprising: Schlegel writes, "All other Oriental doctrines, however disguised by error and fiction, are founded in, and dependent on, divine and marvellous revelations; but Pantheism is the offspring of unassisted reason [badly mistranslated: "ist das System der reinen Vernzinft," "is the system of pure reason"], and therefore marks the transition [Ubergang] from the Oriental to the European philosophy" (KA VIII, 243; English, 490). We can explain this fascinating judgment by recalling that the concern about pantheism was a product of a local scandal and discussion in the German intellectual world. Schlegel seemed to feel the continuing threat of pantheism in the forms of idealism that were taking shape during the time of his study of South Asian texts, and this inflected his treatise on them. As a consequence, Schlegel specified his judgment about the Ubergang described above in his description of Oriental dualism: the ideal consistently asserted itself against the rampant materialism of Indian worship in "der Begr~ff'der selbsttatigen Ichheit," the "spiritual essence" from which "all material forces flow" (KA VIII, 229). In this sense, it had to be said that "[tlhe peculiar affinity of Oriental and European Idealism consists principally in the opinion that activity, life, and freedom alone cam be recognised as actually effective in their operation; dead repose and motionless inactivity being condemned as utterly void and ineffective." Here the allusion to thinkers like Schelling and Fichte is quite clear. But Schlegel continued his thoughtexperiment: the ideal was posited over and against the real, the material, the "evil," but eventually these opposites of the ideal had to be overcome (as is the case, in a primordial form, in Zoroastrianism). The result: "everything melts pantheistically [pantheistich] into one single essence, and the eternal distinction between good and evil is completely set aside"

(KA VIII, 229;

English, 483). The danger in Oriental (Indian) degeneration has made its passage into German Idealism, into the best philosophical minds of the day.83 r Sprache, we can By examining other writings that came closely on the heels of ~ b e die

see quite clearly how the pantheism conception, which came to reflect the new light of its role in interpreting India, fit into local debate. Ernst Behler has shown that Uber die Sprache had an immediate impact on Schelling, who responded directly to the text in his own Philosophischen Untersuchnngen iiber das Wesen der menschlichen ~ r e i h e i t This . ~ ~ connection deserves to be

pursued, but in this section of the chapter I would like to remain with Schlegel himself to show how the newly reconstructed pantheism concept affected his interpretation of another key figure, namely Fichte. In his 1808 review of several of Fichte's works,85Schlegel claimed that the dominant rejection of Fichte's concepts of nature and freedom by Naturphilosophie (represented most distinctively by Schelling) was a misunderstanding that seemed inspired by an acceptance of Spinozist pantheism (KA VIII, 68-69). According to Schlegel, Fichte specifically thematized this problem in his new texts, thereby diagnosing what afflicted his detractors, but Schlegel showed that Fichte's theory in the end actually folded in on itself and gave rise to the same danger. This

A historical scheme grounds this judgment: Schlegel reguarly suggested that Oriental concepts had intersected with Western philosophy. Thus Greek philosophy, Neo-Platonism, medieval mysticism (e.g., Bohme), and Spinoza formed a chain that led back to Oriental sources. Contemporary German philosophy erformed the coup de grace, as it were, on thoughts that were once primordially pure. See Behler, "Das Indienbild der deutschen Romantik," 36. As I have been suggesting, Schlegel renews the Pantheismusstreit based on his Indian recasting of the pantheism conception: "Mit der Darstellung der indischen Philosophie stellte Schlegel somit die Auseinandersetzung urn den Pantheismus erneut in das Zentrum der deutschen Philosophie und loste eine Kontroverse aus, die in ihrer Bedeutung der Spinozakontroverse Herders, Mendelssohns und Goethes, wie auch den spateren Auseinandersetzungen urn dieses System bei Hegel, Heine, und Nietzsche nicht nachsteht." 85 ~ b e das r Wesen des Gelehrten und seine Erscheinungen im Gebiete der Freiheit (1805), Die Grundzuge des gegenwartigen Zeitalters (1806), and Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben, oder auch die Religionslehre (1806). J.G. Fichte, Siimmtliche Werke,edited by J.H. Fichte (Berlin: Verlag von Veit und Comp., 18451846): VI, 349-447; VII, 3-256; V, 399-580.

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judgment was mediated by a new understanding of pantheism, which came specifically out of its encounter with India. According to Schlegel's text, Fichte on the one hand claims that the present age is one that is dominated by the "concept of concepts," where one is to "value nothing other than that which is conceived;" it is an age dominated by systematic conception (Wissenschaft), particularly of empirical experience.86But because of his ongoing work with Indian sources, we might assume, Schlegel is more interested in the Fichtean claim that at a deeper level this obsession with external observation (of nature, in particular), intermingled with the license of unfettered poesy, leads to pantheistic error and Schwarmerei: "alle Schwlhnerei ist und wird nothwendig Naturphilosophie" (1 18).87 For Fichte, this tendency leads away from scientific systematicity because in the end it tends to posit an inconceivable ground for itself and prevents determinate reflection. The age of conceptualization inverts and disperses itself in a dialectical downfall. Schlegel highlights the Fichtean claim that "false universalities" abound. The pantheism guiding them leads to an "aesthetic religion," which is only "valid and applicable in the world of appearance and imagination" (KA VIII, 70). Following Fichte's lead, Schlegel offers historical context and contrast in order to understand this claim. While Spinoza, for example, must be recognized for presenting the strongest case for pantheism possible, more recent interpreters have intermingled elements with "pure" Spinozism, resulting in "various peculiar religious hybrids

[Religions~nischungen].~' Schelling is singled out as a thinker who takes up thoughts from "the most ancient oriental philosophy" within his "basic metaphysical principles." The problem with Schelling is not simply that his philosophy has an "Oriental'yinfluence, which in the recent past

" Fichte, S W VII, 71.

87 See SWVI, 363-364: "Lassen Sie sich ...ja nicht blenden oder irre machen durch eine Philosophie, die sich selbst den Namen der Natur-Philosophie beilegt, und welche alle bisherige Philosophie dadurch zu iibertreffen glaubt, dass sie die Natur zum Absoluten zu machen, und sie zu vergottern strebt. Von aller

would have been enough to condemn a thinker. Rather, according to Schlegel, he fails be "mindful [eingedenk]"of the philosophical connections and distinctions between Spinozism and "Asiatic philosophy" at a higher, more systematic level (KA VIII, 71). "Oriental pantheism" is not a simple term of abuse: Schlegel seems to be suggesting that Schelling can be a pantheist if he wishes, but if so he should be an informed pantheist. And this requires a developed understanding of Asian sources. Ultimately, however, one should not be a pantheist. It is still a dangerous doctrine, and Fichte's recent writings help to diagnose its presence in figures like Schelling, but, as Schlegel shows, Fichte himself needs to be cautious. The review turns to a twofold characterization of approaches to the absolute, which is inspired by Fichte's writings. On the one hand, we can identify a "rational" approach to the "absolute" in which "the totality of ideal and real activity [Tatigkeit] is construed from the first identity to the last difference" (KA VIII, 72). This is of course Fichte's philosophy itself, and while it has its "imitators" who produce an empty, formalistic system of thought, it certainly stands up to the other approach - or at least Fichte claims that it does. This other approach is the real source of Schw&rmerei,where man die absolute nennen konnte, wo alles Konstruieren vollig aufhort, und die chaotische Fulle, die selbst der Phantasie angehort, auch keine andre Gestaltung und Einheit leidet als die von ihr gegebene. Es wird vollkommen deutlich sein, was hier gemeint sei, wenn wir hinzufugen, dafi ein solcher Pantheistnus der Phantasie aller alien Mythologie zum Grunde liege, die grofitenteils aus ihm hervorgegangen ist. (hid.) As Schlegel reports, Fichte is quite worried about this approach, which he obviously thinks is rampant.88 And now Schlegel offers a coy response: this second, pantheistic approach belongs to a former age and is therefore not of great concern - but empty dialectic is everywhere.

Zeit her haben sowohl alle theoretischen Irrthumer, als alle sittlichen Verderbnisseder Menschheit darauf sich gegriindet ..." This diagnosis often takes on a moralistic tone, where the Pantheismus der Phantasie gives a rationale for the sensual, "animalisticyyenjoyment of various forms of art. Fichte, S W VI, 396.

This comment must be seen alongside the judgments made in ~ b e die r Sprache, where pantheism makes its ~ b e r g a n ginto Europe and becomes the "system of pure reason," where Idealism, as a system of dialectical activity, almost necessarily gives itself over to a panthestic destruction of oppositions and ends in formal emptiness. Fichte clearly defends himself against the imputation of pantheism (and atheism) by consistently asserting God's tran~cendence.'~ While God is absolute being, with nothing outside of Him, and while human thought and action (which are ultimately the same) takes its infinite form from the divine, the world is a necessarily posited Anstofi, the resistant non-being (characterized by Schlegel as Niederschlag, a "precipitate"). As Nichtsein, it is essentially "dead." Only human consciousness can in some sense "enliven" it through knowledge. Human consciousness is always already entangled with the world, however, and this has two important consequences for Fichte: 1) human life is life in God as a recapitulation of "infinite form" in unending reflection on individual objects, but we cannot know God in any immediate way, and thus God remains "foreign" and "withdrawn," and

2) we can not "deal with" God as we contend with other objects. This explains why seeing God as something to be experienced directly (as in mysticism) or in the things of the world (stones, plants, animals) represent "shadow concepts" [Schattenbegriffe], leading to dangerous forms of ~chwar~nerei.~~ Nevertheless, Schlegel's review suggests that Fichte misunderstood pantheism and the pantheistic impulse. Fichte defends himself against a particular kind of pantheism (Pantheismus der Phantasie), which is surely an important part of its development as a doctrine. It is in evidence in India, as Schlegel had shown in ~ b e die r Sprache. But this text had also shown that pantheism has the potential to make yet another advance, beyond the imaginative, mythic concept

* The point is entirely relevant because Fichte found himself involved in his own Streit, one that would accuse him of atheism and eventually force him to give up his position in Jena. Fichte. SW V,470-47 1.

- to a pure abstraction of reason. Fichte's protestations are positioned in a particular way through

Schlegel's investigation of Indian pantheism, and Fichte is shown to be part of a broader development, of which he is simply unaware. Through an examination of Uber die Sprache and the texts contemporaneous with it we witness the continuing role of the pantheism conception in early nineteenth century German intellectual life. Schlegel inherited this concern from Herder and the Pantheismusstreit, deployed it within his own commentary on Indian sources, and then involved it once again, changed through its encounter with India, in the context that gave birth to it.

Conclusion: Understanding India Scholarship Biographically speaking, it is very easy to see Friedrich Schlegel's interest in India as misbegotten and Uber die Sprache as a dead letter. While this characterization is probably too strong, Schlegel did abandon rigorous study of India after the text appeared. For this reason we depart from Friedrich Schlegel mid-career and turn to his brother, who seemingly picked up the torch.91This transition marks an important moment in the constitution of India and the GitG as objects of European knowledge, the moment where new forms of logos and discipline assert their dominance over Romantic enthusiasm. Friedrich Schlegel's work on India, however, remains both fascinating and enigmatic, for it laid the seeds for an enhancement of logos and discipline but also reinforced mythic forms of 91 For

an account of Friedrich Schlegel's later views on India, see Gerard, 121-128. In general, while Schlegel continued to include India in his reflections on philosophy, he completely deconstructed the Romantic myth of India's primal origins. Indian thought had its place, but it lost any sense of primacy in Schlegel's historical schemes. This primacy shifted to Old Testament origins and universalist Christian revelation, and it must be said that a conservative, almost authoritarian Catholicism took over in Schlegel's thought. "Toutse passe comme si, a la veille de sa mart, Fr. Schlegel, compl4tment intigrt! duns /'Occident, avait abandonni, nun settlement I'idie d'une rivolution occidentale axie sur I'Orient, mais encore celle d'un humanisme occidentalo-oriental. Parti a la recherche de I'Un oriental, il aboutit d 1 'universalismecatholique p i dibouche duns Ie totalitarisme occidental'' (127). Such developments were

discourse about India and Indian sources. At a broad level, Schlegel was an innovator in the construction of a scholarly myth around India. Myths of paradise and cultural renewal were transmogrified and applied very specifically to the work of the intellectual working in a disciplined setting. An anonymous review announcing the publication of Uber die Sprache (from the April 21, 1808 Morgenblatt) seemed to respond directly to this developing configuration of authority. The learned public is invited to read Schlegel's text, first through standard mythic enticements:

Die Wichtigkeit und Zweckmafiigkeit dieser Unternehmung mufijedem einleuchten, der nur einige Kenntnis von dem Gange hat, den unsere philosophische und historische Forschung in diesem Augenblicke nimmt. In Indien ist ja die Wiege der Kultur. Dort suchen undfinden unsere Naturphilosophen die achte ungetrennte ~ r - ~ ~ t h o l o ~ i e . ~ ' The "cradle" metaphor is familiar as an image that Herder adapted out of Voltaire; it was to persist as a trope in the cultured reception of India. But the announcement also recommends Schlegel's text because of its technical authority, suggesting it is not the kind of "shadow of a shadow" or "translation from translation" that one finds so often in texts on the East (ibid.). To dicover the origins, the bbUr-Mythologie," the author urges that we trust the disciplined inquiry of the philologically-minded scholar. This connection, nascent in Herder, came to fruition in Schlegel's work. In the midst of scholarly myth and logos, Schlegel was also able to foster herrneneutical progress by proliferating and differentiating the conceptions that characterized Indian culture and religion. While a broad historical narrative of degeneration remained in place (harkening to hypotheses presented by many of the earliest European interpreters), Schlegel was able to differentiate his account to register a diversity of perspectives in the history of Indian religious

clearly on the way in the period I have discussed (see fragment 265 from 1806, KA XV, 72), but it would require another detailed strand of analysis to unearth them in Schlegel's cultural, political writings. 92 Quoted in Struc-Oppenberg's introduction, K A VIII, CCII.

consciousness. This differentiated interpretive structure in many ways dislodged the style that had often blanketed Indian sources in Herder's work; flowery, poetic representation was replaced by careful, prosaic engagement with language and doctrine. Careful attention to language and text therefore unearthed noble principles such as emanationism and dualism, giving voice to different strands of inquiry in the history of Indian religion. As a conception in the reading of Indian sources, vitalist pantheism was also disputed; Schlegel did not see the doctrine as the essence of Hindu religious consciousness, only as a seemingly inevitable historical result. Here we once again confront an important dilemma in examining the early German reception of Indian sources. From a Gadamerian perspective, Schlegel's treatment seems to represent something of an advance, for vitalist pantheism was only an aspect of conceiving Indian sources; other doctrines also had to be taken into account. But local concerns seemed to fuel this conception, reinforcing it as a consistent occupation in the reading of India. In fact, Schlegel seemed to open the hermeneutical circle a bit wider in ~ b e r die S'che, and thus in the translation and intepretation of the Git6, only to close it down again by returning to sloganeering about India, using it and its association with pantheism in contemporary philosophical debates. We can only conclude that herrneneutical progress in crosscultural understanding often has faced significant resistance in the conservatism of Orientalist discourse, where one step forward is followed by two steps back.

CHAPTER 5 - A.W. SCHLEGEL'S "INDIAN SPHINX": THE RIDDLE OF ~ f Z 3 f TRANSLATION

Introduction A transformation occurred between Friedrich Schlegel's translation and intepretation of the Gila and his brother August Wilhelm's full translation of the work in 1823. Herder had gathered the charm of the "cradle of humanity," and Friedrich Schlegel was prone to a philosophical positioning of Indian sources. But F. Schlegel had also devoted himself to the texts in a much more meticulous manner. He had applied the tools of philology, recognizing that philosophy and philology were intimately combined, even (or especially) when it came to the texts of India. August Wilhelm Schlegel was even more philologically inclined. He was decidedly a mediator of literary texts and paid less attention to the philosophical discussions of his day. While he was certainly a driving force behind the theories and program of Jena Romanticism, he devoted himself to the act of translation in an effort to capture and transmit the texts that founded the idea of the Romantic, especially Shakespeare. As his brother was turning to India in Paris, A.W. Schlegel was continuing his translation program and offering several important lecture series on literature and the fine arts. In short, he persisted in his identity as a literary critic and translator, while his brother significantly expanded this identity.

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In looking for the ways in which August Wilhelm contributed to the construction of India and the Gitd as objects of German knowledge, we must therefore be ready to discern the different

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This difference in temperment is captured by August Wilhelm in a poem to his brother, "An Friedrich Schlegel" (1802): "Ichm e : La) die Wurzel~dFest in den Boden wurzel~dZu griinden unser Hal../ Dll sagtest: Treib die Sqfte/ Hinan aim Wipfel stolz." S&mmtliche Werke,Band 1 , hrsg. von Eduard Bocking (Leipzig: Weidmann'sche Buchhandlung, 1847), 246. (All further references to Schlegel's Sammtliche Werke will appear as SW followed by volume and page numbers.) Allowing the "roots to take root" entails a simple pairing of tasks: On one hand, "Die Krifikist es, welche die Geschichte der Kunste aufklart, z~nd ihre Theoriejhichtbarmachf (SW 5.4); on the other, the translator brings texts to light and reconstitutes them such that they set the firm rooting for contemporary renewal.

ways in which his work intersected with the local intellectual discussions of his day. A.W. Schlegel was well aware of the primordial myths that initially constituted India with the German intellectual community, but he followed his brother in adapting them for the purpose of authorizing scholarly apprehension of Indian sources. He was also acquainted with the conceptions that had dominated German thought about India, including pantheism. But by the time Schlegel arrived at a detailed encounter with Indian sources (from the point, say, where he assumed the first chair of Indology in Germany at Bonn in 1818), new forces were at work. As Halbfass puts it, In the life and work of the Schlegel brothers and some of their contemporaries, the Romantic fascination with India merges into academic Indology; the yearning for alternatives and self-transformation leads to the systematic exploration of the sources, and the methodological accumulation of 'objective' knowledge about India. The dialectical irony in this development is o b ~ i o u s . ~ That is to say, mythic enthusiasm for that which would address the impoverishment of the European present had given rise to the decisive enhancement of logos and to the establishment of academic discipline? Halbfass' use of the phrase 'cdialectical irony" is richly suggestive: in the old ("early") Romanticism, the concept was of decisive importance as a name for organic wholeness, for holding together difference in unifying mediation. Is this perhaps the logic at the very heart of scholarship on religion, that myths of enthusiasm are radically distinct from the methods that are employed to give them expression - and that the enterprise is a constant exercise in the mediation of myth and method?

Halbfass, India and Europe, 83. Raymond Schwab also makes the point in his own inimitable way: "For different reasons, and with a behavior no less militant than England's (and soon military), Germany would seek temporal well-being in the remote spiritual past of Asia. Its multiform orientalismwould retain the mark of an essentially dualistic and contradictory f a t cause: in the shadow of the Schlegels it would be impetuous, eager, and partial; in the wake of Franz Bopp it would be methodical and blind to everything not precise, rigorous, and delimited." Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance, 45.

An examination of August Wilhelm Schlegel's work on India and his Gitci translation illustrates a clear example of this kind of mediation. In the wake of figures like Bopp (and in contrast to the Heidelberg Symbolists, who surely would have claimed Friedrich Schlegel as their progenitor), A.W. Schlegel was required to position India in a different way, according to a scholarly myth, i.e., a myth that would thoroughly acknowledge the force of the newly developing

human sciences, and linguistics in particular. This chapter therefore aims to specify this myth and the role it plays in Schlegel's presentation of the Gitci. First, I will harken to earlier days through an examination of Schlegel's early thought about India. Next we must take note of the r Sprache und Weisheit der Indier developments that took place between F. Schlegel's ~ b e die

and A.W. Schlegel's return to Indian sources. Then we turn to the specific framing of India and Indian sources in A.W. Schlegel's Indische Bibliothek, a project which played on the lines between scholarly techne and open popularization: the journal, viewed as a whole, is a strange and almost schizophrenic "textual museum" with a split mission in the presentation of India. Finally we turn to Schlegel's Gitii translation itself, which embodies central aspects of the new stance towards Indian sources. The way the translation was executed (which trades on Schlegel's understanding of translation as a poetic craft) displays an emphasis on style and technique. Whereas conceptual structures had previously guided textual practices, attention to language took its place at the center of A.W. Schlegel's interpretation of the Indian source. Because of its particular concentration on language, Schlegel's Gitci opened up a broad scholarly conversation about the text in 1820's Germany, one that would invite both an enhancement of technical scholarship (in the reflections of Wilhelm von Humboldt) - and a modified retrenchment of old myths and conceptions (in the thought of Hegel).

A.W. Schlegel's Early Thought on India and Its Context

Schlegel's interest in India seemingly began at a very early point and was inspired by his elder brother's travels in the sub-continent. August Wilhelm in fact offers eerily prophetic tribute to Karl August's endeavors in a 1787 poem, "Bestatttingdes Brahminen. Eine Phantasie an

meinem Bruder in Ostindien." Schlegel's poem begins with an image of far-flung otherness: the two brothers gathered under the cooling shade of a palm-tree, attempting to find rest and relief. The author bursts forth: "Briider,hier ergiefi' ich was ichfuhle,/Hauche du dein Mitgefuhl mir

zu" (SW 1, 82). Let us consider the lot of man, he suggests -but it can only be (in the end) "the womb of the dark grave." This melancholic tone is of course commonplace in the Sturm und

Drang and early Romantic period: the poet's soul is tormented and imprisoned, seeking liberation in "eternal beauty," a "homeland" where one bathes "in an ocean of light." Back under the palm tree, a noise is heard. At first it is a dull roar, and then it becomes louder as something nears, until finally the sound is quite deafening. It is a funeral procession, for the brothers find themselves in the midst of a cremation ground covered with the "black wings of death," clouded by Todtenstaub,the ash of the dead (SW 1, 83). The procession comes forth with men, elders, mothers, and children; the wives appear and with tear-stained faces prepare the funeral pyre: "Lafi uns naher an den Schauplatz treten" (SW 1,84), says the poet. The deceased, who has just been unveiled, can be seen, and the author is transfixed:

Sehnlich soll mein Blick an ihnen hangen, Bis vom Holzstofi helle Flammen wehn. Lachelndfuhltest du die Stirn erkalten, Lachelnd sunken die die Augen zu; EngelfiiJe pragten in die Falten Wonn ' und Paradiesesruh. (ibid.)

In Schlegel's imagination, the dead man calls out to his god with a song of praise and a request for guidance: "Lehrtedoch dein Bildnifijeden muden/Pilger, wie er sterben soll ...0 wie

oft.../Lehrtest du erhabne Weisheit mich" (83-84). The imagined pilgrim hangs on the god's

judgment as he looks towards his "fresh well" of rebirth. This reverie breaks off as the intensity of the mourning increases, for the time has come to offer a last farewell. The boy who is meant to light the pyre clings closely to his mother; he eventually steps forth and sets the fire. The flames rise "like lightning" and the observer "feels death deep in the interior" (85). The mourning continues and the fire blazes up, but after some time the mourners begin to depart, abandoning the dead man to his pyre: "They disappear from my view: but never1 from my mind their sorrowful image" (86). The west wind plays with the ashes, and the dissolving smoke shrouds the scene in a blue haze. In the end, "The flame alone mourns! Dully it flickers1 from the shores of the horizon back here,/ Dying, like a dim lamp for the sick, flickers,/ it trembles, and is no more" (86). Such morbid and prescient writing makes one wonder about the information that August Wilhelm was receiving from his brother. That the last image of the poem (a Krankenlhpchen) so strongly invokes death by a slow illness suggests that the author somehow had an inkling of his brother's fate. Did Karl August report on witnessing an Indian funeral or, indeed, on his fear of dying by slow illness? These questions have no clear resolution without intensive research,

4

In A.W. Schlegel's collected letters, only the report of Karl August's death is present, and none of the scholars I have read (including the formidable Behler) mentions letters from him. The report from August von Honstedt does describe the way in which Karl August was weakened by a "two-year-old affliction" that involved "abundant discharge of bilious material" and "frequent vomiting," suggesting any one of a variety of maladies. According to the letter, Karl August's limbs eventually became numb and he was unable to leave his sick bed. A month before his death (and now Honsted quotes out of a letter written to him from the sick man himself), he knew that his end was near: "Das habe ich mir schon Jahre lang gesagt, und beynahejeder Tag ist ein Beweis gewesen, daft ich schon zu lange gelebt ..." On the ninth of September Karl August experienced a "chest spasm," which seemed to subside, but as he rested on a chair, he "cast eyes towards heaven, held his breath - and perished." At the end of his report, Honstedt does in fact mention Karl August's papers, which were meant to go to August Wilhelm. The bundle was apparently "zu stark" to be sent by the normal means, so Honstedt proposes to send it with someone who is travelling to Germany, or to bring it himself at the end of the year. Briefe von und an August Wilhelm Schlegel, Erster Teil: Die Texts, edited by Josef Komer (Leipzig: Amalthea-Verlag, 1930), 5-9. It is unclear whether these papers actually arrived, though Friedrich's tribute in ~ b e die r Sprache suggests that he was aware of a body of research that his eldest brother had begun to carry out.

but at the most basic level August Wilhelm had early on formed some idea of India that was closely linked to proto-Romantic themes: death, melancholy, and Sehnsucht. But August Wilhelm did not immediately pursue these themes in connection with India. Only in a 1791 review did he take note of the Sakuntala, registering a typically Herderian impression: "Die Scenen sind voll sufien kindlichen Geschwatzes, voll unschuldiger, naiver Koketterie; es herrscht einefeine Sensibilitat darin, welche die zartesten Bluten des Genuffesmit schonender Hand zu pfliicken we$" (SW 10,34). During the early 179OYs,he turned to translating Italian poetry, including some of Petrarch and Ariosto's works, but especially Dante. The Divine Comedy clearly made a deep impression on Schlegel; he translated major sections of the Inferno and commented heavily on the work (which is in no way discontinuous with a meditation on his brother's death), urging an understanding of the Italian poet's individual spirit in his art, rather than abstracted commentary on the poem's doctrines (SW 3, 199-202). Schlegel was thus careful to contextualize the work and the poet's life. In the poem itself the young critic and translator was especially attracted to its allegorical quality, its "hieroglyphics," which recall the obscure but fascinating modes of lost antiquity (226-227)' Mere "concepts of the understanding," he suggests, "have neither life nor beauty for the imagination," so allegory is often employed to give them substance. But for most poets the allegorical figures hang lifelessly on the concepts. In Dante it is entirely different: the characters in his poem have independent life and vividness. "We everywhere step on fixed ground" and enter "a world of reality and individual being" (226). This emphasis on symbolic vividness and aesthetic individuality are of course common themes marking the transition from Stur~nand Drang to the Friihromantik movement. These themes were reinforced in Schlegel's 1795 work, Briefe uber Poesie, SilbenmaJ und Sprache, but

here the spirit of proto-Romanticism met its necessary counterparts: the discipline of philology and the study of language. The poet, Schlegel argues, is everything that Dante was in the earlier commentary, and perhaps even something more:

Der Dichter ...ist vor alien andern Sterblichen ein begilnstiger Liebling der Natur, ein Vertrauer und Bote der Gotter, deren Offenbarungen erjenen iiberbringt. Die irdische Sprache, die nur zu imverkennbar die Spuren des Bedurfnisses und der Eingeschranktheit, welche sie erzeugten, an sich t r e t , kann ihm hiezu nicht genugen; die seinige athmet in reinem Aether, sie ist eine Tochter der unsterblichen Harmonic. (SW 7,98) But poetry "only arises out of verses, verses out of words, words out of syllables, and syllables out of individual sounds." A more technical appraisal of technique and language is therefore necessary in order to understand the "pure ether" that the poet breathes. In a sense, this medium surrounds all of humanity, from the "icy seas" to the "South Sea islands," from "Ontario" to "the Ganges," for the "rythmic movement of poesy is no less natural to humanity than it is itself' (SW 7, 103). The most natural, primordial mode of language, Schlegel claims, is the musical, the dance-like, the rhythmic. This suggests that language is essentially aesthetic, a product of the inherently human "faculty for poetics," and is itself "so to say, the great, never completed poetic work" (SW 7, 104). Within this grand capacity, humanity necessarily finds itself conceptualizing the world and nature according to concepts of the understanding, and thus the grand unifying power of aesthetic speech is limited and dispersed. But even in the "cultured language" of sophisticated science the traces of the original rhythm shines through: the poet recognizes these traces and is able to reconstitute the original aesthetic whole (SW 7, 105). In order to understand and support this enterprise, Schlegel urges investigation of the

structures of meter and verse, but not in contemporary poesy. "Nein,la! uns in jene fruheren

Zeiten zuriickkehren, wo die erst unmiindige, bald kindliche, dannjugendliehe Kunst ...von der

This sense is captured in one ofschlegel's own fragments from the Athenaum: "Im Stil des achten Dichters ist Nichts Schmuck, Alles nothwendige Hieroglyphe" (SW 8, 15).

giltigen Natur selbst gepflegt imd erzogen ward"' (SW 7, 108). When one examines this past, one finds a general phenomenon: the poet reaches for metrical artifice to attain a "higher perfection" in the connection with its original power. This aesthetic synthesis between the purely natural expression (a cry in response to direct experience) and a highly conceptual orientation (categorizing objects) is, in short, a basic formulation of Schlegel's theory of the origin of language (cf. SW 7, 117-118). While Schlegel's view is surprisingly non-reductionistic, he maintained a consistent discourse of origins around questions of language and poetry that makes familiar references to the "childhood" of humanity and its innocent connection with nature. It is unsurprising also that Schlegel drew upon morgelandisclze examples to support his theories, including songs and tales from the Arabs (1 17, 134) and Chinese (122-123), which emphasize the quality of language's spontaneous, musical, rhythmic origins. While Schlegel did not include India in this list, he certainly could have, as we see in the 1798 work from the Athenaum, Der Wettstreit der Sprachen. In this text, Poesie engages in dialogue with personifications of the major European languages, and also with her counterpart Grammatik. After the first phase of arguments between the languages about their particularities, Poesie announces her global agenda: she has wandered the world from "the beautiful shores of the Ganges" to "Ohio," to Africa and the Siberian steppes, from the "fog of the Scottish highlands" to the "South Sea Hesperides" (SW 7,210),' and in these far-flung places she has found languages that embody the poetic spirit because they are closer to natural origins. Sanskrit is set aside for particular praise: "thus the delicate Sanskrit or 'the completed,' for which divinity itself devised the means of writing" (SW 7,214). One wonders

In this vein Poesie chastises Italian: "Was ist das heutige Europa gegen den Umfang des Menschengeschlechts in den verschiedensten Himmelstrichen und Zeitaltern? Europaischer Geschmack ist nur ein erweiterer Nationalgeschmack" (2 10).

why Sanskrit itself is not sitting at the table, engaging in conversation, but it is nevertheless unsurprising that its particularity (with which Schlegel was not yet familiar) would be displaced by the overwhelming personality of Poesie, given Schlegel's perspective and context. In these discussions (and particularly in the Wettstreit text), Schlegel acted on his interest in language uberhaupt, displaying a broad interest and familiarity with linguistic and poetic forms. His interest (as we reach the Jena period)7remained less targeted on India than that of his brother, but in 1802, the year in which Friedrich made his commitment to learning Indian sources, August Wilhelm seemed to absorb his brother's enthusiasm. In his writings from the period, August Wilhelm looked upon Friedrich with admiration as he takes up his Sanskrit study in Paris, reinstating the usual myth of Indian culture in the process, but adding the technical "deciphering" of Sanskrit to the story: "Und schon dich dein Gemfithe/Hinlockt mit kuhnerm Triebe,/ Gleich

welumfahrnen Schlffern,/ ZU lauschen, wie am Ganges/ Getont voll sel 'gen Klanged Munch indisch Blumenlied,/ Und Weisheit zu entziffern/ Aus heiliger Sanskrit" (SW 1,245). During the same year, August Wilhelm presented a more developed position, which placed India within the context of a public contribution to local cultural debates. This position appeared in a series of lectures delivered in Berlin towards the end of 1802 called ~ b eLiteratur, r Kunst und Geist des Zeitalters, which was printed the following year in the second volume of the Europa journal. Friedrich's important contribution to this journal was already discussed, and August Wilhelm's position was essentially in harmony with his brother's. After opening with a survey of the state of German literature (novels, drama, poetry, journals), as

'

Because I have discussed Friedrich Schlegel's understanding of the Fruhromantik program above in some detail, I will not delve into A.W. Schlegel's particular perspective on it. Surely the brothers agreed on a great deal, although, as I have been suggesting, A.W. was more theoretically, philosophically reserved, restricting himself primarily to philological and literary critical matters. Nevertheless, his rhetoric during this period was in no way discontinuous with that of his brother.

well as that of the French and the English, Schlegel concludes that there is not much to report8 The present state of the arts in Europe can only look to and honor the past. Why is this the case?

In short, the present age is entirely concerned with "the real," "the useful," "the scientific" (44). This outlook can be traced to the Enlightenment, according to ~ c h l e ~ e lwhich : foreclosed higher aims through its negative critique and led to the principle of the LbNiitzlichesan sich" (64). The result is a materialist, mechanistic, economic outlook and, in its worst form, a total disruption of morality and religion: "Wer nun das Nutzliche als das Oberste setzt, der mufi einsehen, dafi es damit zuletzt auf sinnlichen Genufi hinauslauft, und bei einiger Klarheit und Konsequenz sich zu dem krassesten Epikurais~nus,zur Vergottening des Vergniigens bekennen" (63). This "crassest

Epicureanism" is accompanied by a lofty esotericism, a sense of speculative creation, whereby the "Enlighteners" say "let there be light" - and supposedly there is (64). Schlegel allows that humanity is certainly directed to "conditioned goals," which fall under the label of the "useful." But humanity is also directed to "unconditioned goals," "goods" that critical reason cannot fully decipher, nor can abstract speculation simply launch itself into them. According to Schlegel, it is crucial to think of these goods as "ideas," which are discerned through "spiritual intuition," "with unusual energy and clarity" (64). Evoking common

"Dieserkune ~berblickkann ims schon lehren, d-1~3 von demjetzigen Zustande der schonen Literatur bei den ails gezeichnetsten Nationen Europas nicht vie1 zu riihmen ist; daJ sie, wo wie die Deutschen darin seit dem Anfange der gelehrteren Bildung, noch nie recht emporgekommen...von ehemaligen Hohen heruntergesunken." August Wilhelm Schlegel, Kritische Schriften und Briefe 111: Geschichte der klassischen Literatur, edited by Edgar Lohner (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1964), 41. See Gerard's account of this text, which is in fundamental agreement with my own, in L 'Orient et la Penske Romantique Allemande, 130-133. 9 Schlegel rarely "names names" in his polemic, and while he surely targets the German Aufklarer through

parody of stock phrases from the Kantian corpus, the cultural developments he targets seem to be more of a product of the British and French Enlightenments, as Schlegel sees them. Thus, in a very curious portrayal of the history of European intellectual development, Schlegel argues that the Enlightenment arose out of the Reformation (which was originally an authentic German movement), but France and England took over this genealogy and now perpetrate their intellectual colonialism over Germany, which has become "the actual Orient of Europe" (73-74). Thus Germany, like India or Egypt, is the source of great historical, cultural developments, but its ancestors have turned around and colonized it with a tranformed version of its own ideas.

Friihromantik themes, Schlegel argues that progress towards these higher, clearer ideas has always been achieved within the great spheres of culture (philosophy, poetry, religion, and morality). Properly conceived, these spheres are the ground for the ideas that orient life, but in the present age ideas have failed, because, in a sense, the idea of them has failed. It is an age full of ideas (qua "Idealism"), but the pure sense of Platonic ideas has been lost, whereby der darunter die Urbilder der Dinge im gottlichen Verstande, in welchem, Denken undAnschauen eins ist, versteht, denen allein wahres Sein zukomme, und worin Allgemeines und Besonderes nicht, wie in der Erscheuinungswelt Begriff und Individuum, getrennt, sondern unzertrennlich verknupft sei. (49) Instead of pursuing these "materialisierte Ideen" (66),the present age throws the spheres of culture into confusion, reducing art and poetry, for example, to a simple reading of nature (Verstandesprosa). Philosophy urges a return to direct experience, but it also limits experience and takes blank speculation as "absolute knowledge." Religion is also placed in limits "because ...it allows of no scientific demonstration," so it is dismissed as an "empty, flat phantom," useful only for morality. For Schlegel, the spheres of culture have been diminished because the ideas that simultaneously arise from and guide them have been diminished by the negative critique of the Enlightenment, such that they are entirely drained of their power. If we continue to define all true speculation as transcendence, as aberration of reason beyond its limits, all religious mysticism as heresy and Schwarmerei, all genial poetry as eccentricity of imagination, and to substitute in the place of the genuine ideas of these things their empty concepts: so must we have something completely different chosen as the most important and best ... (50-51) Schlegel requires a reorientation towards culture that will circumvent and supplant the interruption of Enlightenment thinking. The "something completely different" Schlegel mentions is a higher mediation that will free "Vernunft und Fantasie" from the "Herrschafl des

Verstandes" such that culture can once again touch upon the bLGrundkraft"that stands behind both (45, 72).1Â

This new relation is a mediated synthesis that surely trades on the "new mythology" of the Friihromantiker (like that discussed by his brother in the Athenam). Symbols naturally play an important role in this effort, and the "materialized ideas" discussed above are homologous with symbols in A.W. Schlegel's thinking. Thus the Enlightenment critique of religion, which attempts to resist "all secrets and mysteries," rejecting all outer trappings of religion in favor of an individual, personal faith, is essentially misguided. In order to deserve its name, [the Enlightenment] should have instead known to enliven the so to speak petrified and lifeless symbol once again. Instead it wants a pure, rational religion, without mythology, without images and signs, and without rites. (70)

By sapping religion of its symbolic power, the Enlightenment also robs the poet, for the symbol is the unifying and fructifying point of connection between religion and poetry. Enlightenment concern about anthropomorphism may be appropriate, but the answer does not lie in purifying symbol-making out of existence; rather, symbols should be "enlivened" and thought more grandly. It is one thing to think about everything, for example, within an earthly, corporeal frame, which is the consequence of the Enlightenment itself. But what if the imagination were put to work on an allegorization of the world, such that the universe were thought of as the "body of God"? According to Schlegel, "so bekomtnt der Anthropomorphismus eine ganz andere Gestalt, und eine Bedeutung, die welt fiber den Horizont der gewohnlichen Aufkliimng hinansgeht" (70). This sense of allegorization has broad application in Schlegel's text. The four spheres of culture, for example, are compared to the four cardinal directions and the four elements (46-48) in lo Also see 65: "beide sindgleich schafend und allmachtig, und ob sie sich wohl unendlich entgegengesetzt scheinen, indem die Vernunji unbedingt auf Einheit dringt, die Fantasie in grenzenloser

lengthy conceits. And here we arrive at the crucial point for Schlegel's more developed conceptualization of India. It is interesting (but perhaps unsurprising) that religion is associated with the east: "Die Religion is der Osten, die Region der Erwartung; ewige Morgenrote ist ihr

Symbol, indem die Sonne, die von sterblichen Augen nicht ohne Blendung angeschaut werden kann, aus den irdischen Diinsten einen Schleier urn sich zieht, der in den schonsten Farben spielt" (47). This region of religious expectation is rather precisely identified later on as India. Z.B. von der indischen Mythologie, Geschichte und Literatur sind gew$ die wichtigsten Aufschlusse uber die Geschichte des Menschengeschlechts zu erwarten, wenn man erst in ihren Sinn eingedrungen sein wird; man hat den Anfang damit gemacht, diese ehrwurdigen Urkunden zuganglich zu machen, allein noch warten sie auf ihre Entratselung. (5 1 ) The response to the desiccation of Enlightenment thinking, according to Schlegel, is an expansion of European knowledge that discerns a locale for the reinvigoration of symbolic thinking, thereby actually touching upon the unifying, mediating Grundkraft behind all things. One very promising possibility, according to Schlegel, is the "decipherment" of Indian antiquity. It becomes evident that Schlegel offered a position that supports his brother's in the pages of the Europa journal. August Wilhelm was not quite as fixated on India as the site for the spiritual renewal of Europe, nor was he as precise in positioning it with regard to local philosophical debates," but his openness to the Romantic myth of India is quite clear. August Wilhelm was more tempered, however, and this leads to an important point of distinction. Despite his support of Fruhromantik sensibilities, August Wilhelm's comments about symbolic, spiritual renewal are framed by a call to the developing academic disciplines within the human sciences. The arts were once not "mechanical," but philosophy, history, and philology all play an important role (as well as mathematics, and the physical sciences) in retrieving older, more

Mannigfaltigkeit ihr Spiel treibt, sind sie doch die gemeinschaftliche Grundkraft unseres Wesens." " The Grundkraft to which Schlegel consistently refers could easily be related to a Romantic version of pantheism, like the one articulated in Friedrich's thought, but August Wilhelm did not develop the doctrine.

powerful forms, as long as the disciplines are understood in the correct manner (according to genuine "ideas") and are trained on the right objects. The scholar therefore plays a pivotal role. Friedrich certainly heard this call in writing his book on India (even if it was intermingled with mythic enthusiasm), and August Wilhelm himself would heed to it rigorously later in his life, After the Jena period, while his brother was turning to Indian sources in Paris, August Wilhelm continued to add to his mass of translations. In the BlumenstrauJi'en collection of 1804, he offered translations out of Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese sources. In certain ways this turn to the south of Europe was August Wilhelm's answer to Friedrich's interest in the East, and translations from both sources were often presented side by side in the pages of the Europa journal. But A.W. Schlegel continued to express a desire to study Indian texts himself, as he indicated in an 1806 letter.I2 Nevertheless, this desire was seemingly thwarted. In his 1808 Vienna lectures on drama, Schlegel stepped away from the myth of India, perhaps in response to his brother's conversion. The early Romantics (but particularly the Schlegels) had a global, universal sense of the way in which Bildung and Humanitat were to be fostered, such that they remained quite open to diversity. As August Wilhelm wrote in his 1808 lectures, one cannot be a true expert without universality of spirit, i.e., without flexibility, which puts us in the position to transpose ourselves into the qualities of other peoples and times with a renunciation of personal predilections and blind habituation, to sense them, as it were, out of their own focal point; it is necessary to honor properly and to recognize what ennobles human nature, everything beautiful and good, from amidst external ingredients, indeed from among disguises which appear quite strange. (SW5,5)

12

SW 8 , 150: "Er [Friedrich] hat mir eine grofle Lust zur orientalischen Literatur gemacht, besonders zu persischen und indischen, und ich gehe gew$ daran, sobald sich Gelegenheitfindet, was aber nicht eher sein diirfte a h bei einem liingern Aufenthalt in Paris oder London."

Once again, this turn to otherness proceeds in the direction of an ancient origin that simultaneouslypoints to the future: "To the root of our existence must everything lead back: from there it has sprung up, and thus it also without a doubt has its value" (ibid.). In the Europa text, the suggestion was that this root perhaps was to be found in India. But this possibility was foreclosed in 1808. Pursuit of the rootedness of culture is surely not meant to be a naive quest for a "golden age" or a garden where innocent children "here and there pluck branches and flowers" and plant them again, rootless in the soil (SW5'5). For the critic also makes careful distinctions and places boundaries on the inquiry in the service of the present. Schlegel encloses his inquiry within classical and European borders, suggesting that he wishes to investigate the cultural forces that had the most influence on contemporary Europe (and on the "Romantic") (SW5, 12). He resists the literary appraisal of India and the East that had so commonly been pursued using precisely the metaphors he derides: the innocent garden with children plucking flowers. Schlegel is disturbed by the "rootlessnessy' of this endeavor and by the effort at foreign transplantation, which is precisely what Herder had previously attempted to do.I3 In the present context, the question arises: How did Schlegel return to India, such that he would eventually be the first to occupy a chair of Indology in Germany? To answer this question thoroughly would require an in-depth analysis of Schlegel's biography, the negotiations that brought him to Bonn, and an examination of the development of the new institution itself. This represents a major project; here we can simply locate some moments where Schlegel's interest in Inida obviously returned, eventually emerging in a mature form.

l3 In his survey of "world dramatic literature," Schlegel does briefly mention Sakuntala and connects it directly with the "Romantic" spririt of Shakespeare. Nevertheless, he wishes to establish no deep genetic, genealogical connection here; in fact, he suggests that one would have thought that William Jones made the play up after the fashion of Shakespeare, if its Indian origin had not been independently attested. SW5,26.

1815, for example, was obviously a pivotal year for Schlegel's pursuit of Indian studies.I4 During that year, he returned to Paris and was actually able to take up Sanskrit with the assistance of the pioneering French Sanskritist Antoine-Leonard de Chezy and Franz Bopp. Bopp had been studying Sankrit in Paris for about two years. In a letter, Schlegel writes about his strange "enfentillage [sic],'ya new set of "folies crudites" - namely the study of Sanskrit and original sources (including parts of the MahCbhZrata and ~ C m C ~ a n a )Meanwhile .'~ he had written a review that eventually appeared in the HeidelbergischeJahrbiich der Literatur, which indicated that the study of Indian sources was not just folly or child~play.'~ The review ostensibly treats Chizy's translation Yadjnadatta-Badha ou La mort d'yadhnadatta, episode extrait et tradnit dii Ramayana, pogme &piqueSanskrit and a lecture presented by the French scholar at the opening of the course in Sanskrit at the College Royal de France, but it also presents us with a glimpse into Schlegel's attitude about India during this time. The lecture had apparently laid out the agenda for the French study of Indian antiquity: first, the "beauty and significance of the language itself, the completeness of its construction, the deep scientific sense of Indian doctrine on language; the intimate relationship with Latin and Greek"; then the texts (the Vedas, the Law of Manu, and the epics); and finally the other cultural 14

Up to this time Schlegel had traveled widely and was often in residence at Coppet with Madame de Stael, the famous (and scandalous) French interpreter of German Romanticism. Schlegel served as the tutor to de Stael's children and was her companion since around 1804. During the Wars of Liberation, Schlegel served as the secretary to the prince of Sweden and then traveled on to Germany, which had just been freed from Napoleonic rule. 15 Quoted in Theodor Benfey, Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaji und orientalischen Philologie in Deutschland seit dem Anfange des 19. Jahrhunderts mit einem Ruckblick auf die fruheren Zeiten, 1869 (Reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint, 1965), 372. 16 The motivation for this initial move is unclear. Schlegel had always expressed interest in studying Sanskrit, as we have seen above, and it may simply be that he finally found the right opportunity to travel to France and to engage in this study with willing teachers (Chdzy and Bopp). It is clear that Schlegel discerned a continuity between his study of Sanskrit and his previous concerns: "Ich habejetzt das Sanskritanische zu erlernen angefangen, und dies ist nicht so entlegen von rneinen bisherigen Studien, als es aufden ersten Blick scheinen mochte; vielmehr gehe ich dabey auf eine grammatische und etymologogische Zusammenstellung des Indischen rnit dem Griechischen und Lateinischen nicht nur,

accomplishments of India (including history, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and poetry) (SW 12,427-428). Translations from the RZmZya~awere also recited in Chizy's lecture, and

excerpts were presented in the volume under review. It is not a surprise that Schlegel fails to examine the translation in detail (as he had done so many times, and with such precision, in many other earlier reviews). He was quite new to the original language was unable to subject the translation to technical analysis.'' Instead, he briefly praises the efforts of the author and engages in a survey of Sanskrit study in Europe. This discussion begins innocently enough. Schlegel discusses the problem of producing the "Dinavdgari-Schrift [sic]" and indicates that only two sets of letters are available, one in England and one in Paris. In addition, he expresses concern about finding a standard way to represent Sanskrit words in Roman characters (SW 12,429-43 1). But now the review takes a critical turn. Schlegel also writes at length about British scholarship on India (this in a review of a prominent French scholar's work), complaining in particular about the way in which the "barbarity of the so called Continental-System" has blocked the arrival of British sources in Germany (particularly Wilkins' Sanskrit grammar, which came out in 1808) (433). But apparently Schlegel had gained access to some of the sources, because he criticizes the British themselves for failing in their responsibility to deliver the texts to Europe with any degree of scholarly rigor. The British, Schlegel claims, have only a political purpose in attempting to understand India, and they are only interested in translating Sanskrit texts so they can rule more effectively. The purpose is practical and governmental, and translations are made in that spirit, rendering into "everyday arithmetic" the "profound algebra" of the original sondern mit den samtlichen altdeutschen Mundarten aus..." Letter to Friedrich Wilken, May, 1815. Komer, Briefe, 305. " Schlegel admits as much in his letter to Tieck in April, 1815: "Ich war auJerst beschaftigt, urn meinen Aufenthalt in Paris an einigen Manuscripten und sonst, zu benutzen. Nun zeigt sichs, daJ ich noch nicht

language (436-437). In addition, while England itself is a proud bearer of classical, philological knowledge, those who go out to India most often lack this sort of training, according to Schlegel. (William Jones is exempted from this generalization.) The British deserve thanks, but their work on India does not satisfy (435). The alternative is quite clear: direct, rigorous, German study of Indian sources, for "the political purpose of the English is foreign to the German." The Germans therefore "have a special call [ B e 4 to get to the bottom of Indian antiquity" (437). At this point, Schlegel suggests, anyone can render an English translation of Indian texts into German (as Herder and his student Majer had done), but this is not the proper goal:

Unsers Erachtens ware diefi kein erspriefiliches Unternehmen; denn wenn von einer eigentlichen Uebersetzung eines Gedichtes die Rede ist, so sind wir gewohnt, in Deutschland ganz andere Forderungen zu inachen, und ohne Zweifel kaizn unsre Sprache sich dem Original weit naheren, wie schon Fr. Schlegel gezeigt hat. (SW 12,432) The "demands" that German scholarship places on itself are quite important here, along with the suggestion that German can do a much better job in translating Sanskrit, as Friedrich Schlegel had previously argued.'' Certainly in contrast to Wilkins' rendering of the Gitci, August Wilhelm has a point: philological rigor and artful German did often improve on the efforts in English in his brother's renderings. But philological rigor may suggest another linguistic alternative. British renderings of crucial texts are generally found without detailed annotation or commentary and are thus "unphilologisch"and "unkritisch"(435); this lack needed to be addressed by the experienced translator and philologist. Further, the translations are hardly faithful, requiring something of an innovation: "Sie sind nicht wortlich, und konnen es nach dem Wesen der englischen Sprache flegig genuggewesen: ich habe nicht aus-hren konnen, was ich wollte, da die Begebenheiten uns bewogen plotzlich abzureisen." Komer, Briefe, 301. See 437: "Wirkennen noch kein andres Buch, worin die etymologischen, historischen und philosophischen Gesichtspunkterdieser Forschung so weitumfapend und tief eindringend aufgestellt

nicht sein: eine lateinische mochte sich wenigstens der Wortstellunggenau anschliebn, wenn sie auch bei den Zusammensetztungen helfen milfite7' (SW 12,434). In this text, Schlegel already outlined the main contours of his approach to Indian sources. It is clear from what he admired in his brother's work that the tenor of this examination underwent a transformation. A.W. Schlegel pushed aside preconceptions about the content of Indian sources and focused on them as objects of philological method in keeping with a classical model. The old myths and conceptions that had framed the reception of Indian sources have seemingly disappeared. That a scholarly myth has solidified is without question, however, as the following quotation from Schlegel's text indicates:

Fiir jetzt ware es noch zu frith, in Deutschland Lehrstellenfilr die indische Sprache stiffen zu wollen. Bis man einen reicheren gedruckten Vorrath hat, kann diefi nur da gedeihlich werden, wo eine Sammlung von Handschriften ist, und daranfehit es bei uns: wir haben keinen Nachlafi der Missionare. Das Niitzlichste wird also vor der Hand sein,junge Manner von Geist und besonders von beharrlichem Eifer zu diesem Behuf reisen zu laJen. Zuerst nach Paris, dann nach England, und wen sein Muth und seine Mittel so weit tragen, der wallfahrte zu den geheiligten Fluten des Ganges, befrage die Weisen zu Benares! (437) It is hard to read this passage without thinking about August Wilhelm's dead brother, Karl August, but this traumatic memory obviously did not make Schlegel hesitate before sending "young men" along to India to gather its textual treasures. Perhaps the memory of loss in India has simply been overcome, overwhelmed by the drive to scholarship. Or perhaps Schlegel knew full well that no one needed to go off to India, that there was yet a wealth of texts waiting in Paris, and out of those texts, an entire German discipline could be born. Before closing this survey of Schlegel's early views, it is important to take note of a biographical factor that seemed to play a role in his move towards Indology. In the summer of 1817, Madame de Stael, who had been Schlegel's companion for 15 years, died after a long -

wdren, als in Friedrich Schlegels Schrift fiber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier. DieJ bleibtfiir tins der

illness. Schlegel went first to Switzerland to recuperate and then directly to Paris, where he again studied Sanskrit with Bopp. From there he wrote to Bopp's patron, Ludwig, the Crown Prince of Bavaria, reporting that the support was not going to waste: according to Schlegel, Bopp had become largely fluent in all matters of Sanskrit language. Bopp's rigorous work suggested that "it is reserved to the Germans alone to bring to light7'the implications of Indian texts for "the theory and history of languages" and for an understanding of the "religious and philosophical concepts" of the ancient world in a scientific manner.19 It was clear what the next step for Germany should be: LbVielleicht ist der Zeitpunkt nicht entfernt, wo man in Deutschland einen Lehrstuhl der Indischen Sprache und Litteratur, sowohl als der Arabsichen und Persischen, zu der Vollstandigkeit einer Universitat vom ersten Range rechnen wird" (3 18). In the following year, this suggestion took hold, not in Bavaria, but in Prussia. In 1817, Schlegel had renewed his old friendship with Wilhelm von Humboldt, who undertook to appoint him at Berlin. After a lengthy discussion between Schlegel and the Prussian Minister of Culture, it was decided that he should take up a position in the new university at Bonn, which Schlegel did in the fall of 1818. It is interesting that in all of the discussion leading up to Schlegel's appointment, there was little discussion of its ostensible purpose, to further the study of Indian texts, myth, religion, and culture. No case seemingly needed to be made; everyone involved acknowledged that this new branch of scholarship was important, but perhaps not for the most noble of reasons. Put simply, France had chairs of Asian learning, and now, especially after Napoleon's defeat, Germany needed to have them as well. In addition, it is quite clear that the Prussia wanted Schlegel, the famous translator of Shakespeare, to bolster the reputation of the new German universities. The great intellectual was given carte blanche. Negotiating his own life-course after the death of his companion, Schlegel took advantage of this freedom and acted on his Grundstein des Gebaudes."

persistent impulse towards India, re-making himself as a settled academic and forging a new discipline in the process.

Intervening Moments - The Heidelberg Symbolists and Franz Bopp Willson consistently argues for the thesis that a decisive break occurred between the early dreaming about India in Herder's work (and in the early thought of both Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel) and developments in the later part of the 18lo's, when German Indology truly developed. This break is thought to have already begun in the work of Friedrich Schlegel, who supposedly registered his disappointment with India in ~ b e die r Sprache. More importantly, according to Willson, "Friedrich Schlegel's study was a scientific work, and the mythical image of India, which held his attention at first and spurred him on to investigate further into the culture of the Hindus through their language, could not survive the scrutiny of scientific inquiry."20 That A.W. Schlegel brought a decisively philological orientation to the study of India is also seen as decisive in the breakdown of the Romantic "mythical image" (90). Willson's depiction of these developments is compelling, as many narratives of lost innocence are. But this account too is a kind of myth that continues to wrap itself around the depiction of the early reception of India in German thought. As both Said and Inden have shown, both "positive" myths and "negative" myths are part of a single discourse, and scholarship itself has its own myth and rituals. Indeed, the move to "science" (to scholarly logos) does not simply destroy myths; rather, they are reforged, reconfigured, and repositioned, as the C h k y review by Schlegel shows. The only way to see these developments correctly, I argue, is to discern the rather consistent operation of a dialectic between scholarly myth and logos and to identify the conceptions and styles that constitute the vocabulary of an intellectual community and lend

representations an aura of plausibility. Given my analysis, ~ b e die r Sprache then does not represent a simple break between two worlds (one of the "mythical image" and one of "science"), and neither does A.W. Schlegel's approach after 1818 represent a simple annihilation of what had gone before or what continued to concern his intellectual community. In order to support these points, and the last one in particular, a brief reflection on other developments during the period between 1808 and 1818 is necessary to complete the bridge between the earlier efforts of Friedrich Schlegel and the context in which his brother studied Indian sources in depth. Activities in Heidelberg must first occupy our attention. Friedrich Creuzer (1771-1858)~' had studied in Marburg and Jena and eventually came to hold a chair in Philology and Ancient History at Heidelberg. There he was involved in the Romantic circle of Brentano, von h i m , and von Giinderode. The enthusiasms of this group (which involved intense excitement over the Orient and India) carried over from their poetic activities into Creuzer's scholarship. In 1810, he began publishing a major work, the Symbolik und Mythologie der alien Volker besonders der Griechen, which traced Greek religion to Indian origins via the import of a priestly class who taught a pantheistic doctrine. These teachings were particularly manifest in the esoteric rites of the Greeks but were also in dialogue with the public arts, which brought them forth in symbolic forms. Symbols shifted and transformed through time, in relation to differing cultural circumstance, revealing essential truths and yet at the same time concealing the very thing they were meant to express.22 The thought that Greek symbols (which within Classicism represented -

Willson, A Mythical Image, 220. See Jochen Fried, "Creuzer, (Georg) Friedrich," in Literaturlexikon, Vol. 2, edited by Walther Lilly (Munchen: Gutersloh, 1989),476-477; Figueira, "The Authority of an Absent Text: The Veda, Upangas, Upavedas, and Upnekhata in European Thought," 2 12-213; Jan de Vries, Perspectives in the History of Religions, translated by Kees W. Bolle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 49-52; and Willson, A Mythical Image, 108-110. 22 he framework obviously gains inspiration from Herder; as Schwab reports, the influential French historian of religion Quinet visited Creuzer in 1827 and found "but a single portrait on the wall - Herder's." Oriental Renaissance, 277. Thus de Vries is hardly right to locate the originality of these conceptions with Creuzer just because he happens to be a "Symbolist." De Vries, 50. 20

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pure, eternal reflections of the beautiful) were the historical product of a more primordial revelation was of course profoundly challenging, and the work became the subject of intense controversy. Nevertheless, Creuzer's place was secure as a Romantic interpreter of India during the years leading up to A.W. Schlegel's contributions. Heidelberg was also the home of Johann Joseph von Gorres (1776-1848):~ with whom Creuzer often collaborated. Gorres had studied and taught at Koblenz, distancing himself from his Catholic background first through his enthusiasm for the French Revolution and then by way of his adherence to Heidelberg Romanticism. In 1806, he began his teaching career at Heidelberg and moved from physics to literary and historical concerns. The product of these years was Mythengeschichte der asiatischen Welt (18 10). In this work, Gorres locates the Ur-revelation in India, where (recalling Herder) humanity lived in an innocent, organic, pantheistic unity with the world. This unity is expressed most profoundly in Indian myth, literature, and philosophy, effectively displacing the primordiality of Greek origins. Gorres was eventually to be expelled from Prussia for his political activism, during which time he settled in Strasbourg. During his exile, Gorres reached a full rapprochement with his Catholicism, of which he became one of the most prominent spokesmen in Germany during the 1820's and 1830's. It is well known that Goethe reacted quite negatively to F. Schlegel's Uber die Sprache, claiming that it was simply veiled Christian theology. In my judgment, there is much more to the text. Nevertheless, Goethe's attitude towards Schlegel's work is analogous to positions established in opposition to appropriations of India by the Heidelberg group, and perhaps the charge is more appropriate in the latter case. As Schwab shows, Creuzer's work found its enemies in the schools of classical philologists, 24 who resisted its relativization of Greek beauty.

See Figueira, "The Authority of an Absent Text," 213-214; de Vries, Perspectives in the History of Religions, 48; and Willson, A Mythical Image, 106-108. 24 Oriental Renaissance, 188. 23

But we also might suppose that there was a resistance to the lack of philological rigor found in Creuzer and Gorres' textsY2'along with a suspicion that the theological agenda, which asserted a proto-Christian Ur-revelation in India, was directly related to a lack of "science" in the investigation of South Asian s~urces.'~ It was perhaps the French who acted on the Heidelberg agenda most decisively, often giving it a distinctively Catholic, mystical, apologetic cast.?' But the fact that the Romantic, Catholic-tinged discourse was dominating discussion of India in Germany since F. Schlegel's masterpiece was bound to provoke a specific and targeted reaction with regard to the study of India. This reaction is a crucial part of the context for the birth of Indology in Germany, particularly under the aegis of Franz Bopp's study of Sanskrit and analysis of language structures. One might very well suggest that German Indology was born from a desire to purify the study of India of Catholic, mystical, Romantic overtones. More provocatively, one might trace this effort to Protestant insistence on hermeneutical and philological rigor, an association that had already been made in F. Schlegel's Athendurn fragments (perhaps as he reflected on the work of his friend

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Schlegel says as much with regard to Gorres in 1815: "HE. Gorres hat nun vollends eine Gabe, alles diwcheinander zu wirren, daJ einem wirklich schwindlich dabey wird. Am wenigsten kann ich ihmfolgen, wenn er von den Indischen Althertiimern ohne alle KenntniJ der Sprache Rechenschaft zu geben unternimmt." Korner, Briefe, 305. 26 As Schwab reminds us, Heinrich Heine would later (1835) write that ~ b e die r Sprache was guided by an "ulterior motive," namely "ultramontanism." He continues, characterizing the "school" as a whole: "These good people had not only discovered the mysteries of the Roman priesthood in Indic poetry, but all its hierarchy and all its struggles with temporal power as well." The contrast is clear (one that leaves aside A.W. Schlegel as well): "the only scientific side to Wilhelm's Indic studies was 'the well-known work of his scholarly colloborator, Lassen; Franz Bopp, in Berlin, is Germany's genuine Sanskrit erudite, the most important of all.'" Oriental Renaissance, 74-75. A.W. Schlegel himself was drawn into the postHeidelberg discussions in 1825, when a French journal attempted to out Schlegel as a "portion" Catholic. Schlegel's reaction to this charge will be treated in the last section of this chapter. 27 See Michel Despland, L 'emergence des sciences de la religion (Paris and Montreal: L'Harmattan, 1999) and Arthur McCalla, "The Structure of French Romantic Histories of Religions," Numen: International Review for the History of Religions 45 (1998): 258-286 for further discussion of these developments. The formulation of the Romantic symbol as a fundamental feature of the study of religion was a particularly important contribution by French thinkers and scholars. Neverthless, the tense interplay between the German Romantic conceptualization of religion and Indian sources is quite evident in French thinkers who follow out of these developments. See Schwab's summary of Quinet and Michelet's views (Oriental Renaissance, 284-286,392-393).

~chleierrnacher).~~ Here we arrive at an important moment in the geneaology of the Protestant legacy in the history of the study of religion: philology, the emphasis on the "text alone," and a negative identification over and against Catholic mysticism and ritualism go together in the birth of Indology in Germany. At the very least, previous myths and conceptions were met head on by Franz Bopp, whose inquiry was indeed shed of Romantic trappings. But the dialectic of myth and logos was simply repositioned around new centers of gravity because of his work, particularly by A.W. Schlegel. Franz Bopp's contributions are distinctive and well known, so I will not belabor them here. A brief account of his contributions in the groundbreaking 1816 work Uber die Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache should suffice to fill out the context for Schlegel's work.

In his early career, Bopp (1791-1867)~~ was the protege of Karl Joseph Windischmann at Mainz and then Aschaffenburg. Windischmann was a physician who was also quite interested in the philosophical trends of the earliest years of the nineteenth century, particularly Schelling. According to Benfey, this contact drove his interest in the history of philosophy and in particular a Romantic interest in the ~ a s t . ~Windischmann ' imparted his interest to Bopp, who went to Paris in 1812 with the support of the Bavarian government to study Persian and Sanskrit. In Paris, he studied with the assistance of the aforementioned Chizy, and he quickly focused on the languages of India. In 1817, Bopp traveled to London to continue his studies, and there he met Wilhelm von Humboldt, who was serving as Prussian ambassador to England. Later von Humboldt would

28 These suggestions arise out of Peter Park's essay, "A Catholic Apologist in a Pantheistic World: New Approaches to Friedrich Schlegel; or The First Chapter in the History of German Indology and Comparative Linguistics," 110-111. 29 See Theodor Benfey, Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft und orientalischen Philologie in Deutschland (Miinchen: J. G. Cotta'schen Buchhandlung, 1869), 370-379; Roy Harris, introduction to Franz Bopp, ~ b edas r Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache and ~ b edie r celtischen Sprache (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 7-8; and Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance, 177-180. 30 Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, 370.

bring Bopp to Berlin (1821), where he became Professor of Oriental Literature and General Philology, a position he held for almost fifty years.

In the present context, the work that most draws our attention is the groundbreaking ~ b e r das Conjugationssystern der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mitjenem der griechischen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprache, which appeared in 1816. The text looks r Sprache, but with a singular focus on very much like an update of F. Schlegel's ~ b e die linguistic issues. Bopp engages in extensive analyses of linguistic structures in various languages and then presents German translations of excerpts from the MahZbhZrata, the RZmiyana, and the Vedas (Bopp translated the epic texts in verse from original sources; the Veda translations are out of Colebrooke's English). It is clear, however, that Bopp situated the study of India within a new framework. It should be noted first that Bopp entirely refrains from intepretation of Indian religious and philosophical doctrines. Windischmann's preface offers a lengthy treatment of the concepts contained in the texts Bopp translates, but Bopp himself seems entirely uninterested in this kind of interpretation. Instead, India is marked by just one thing: its language.31 Sanskrit is thus treated in intensive detail, but it is not framed according to the originocentric myth found in F, Schlegel, Some of the ideas are similar, for Sanskrit expresses meaning "in a truly organic manner through the inner transformation and arrangement of the root syllable.'y32But Bopp does not insist that this organic elegance provides proof of Sanskrit's original priority. In fact, Sanskrit is part of a family of languages that very likely points to an earlier Ursprache. One of the aims of the analysis is to point back to this origin through the comparison of conjugation structures. 31 See Foucault's account of Bopp in The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), 280-294. 32 Bopp, ~ b e das r Conjugationssystem,7. As Schwab argues, Bopp continued to trade on earlier ideas, for r Conjugationssystem was "the he was yet "a man of the eighteenth century;" it is hard to deny that ~ b e das

As is well known, Bopp's work was innovative because of its thoroughgoing attention to structure. It is notjust that languages seem to share cognates; they also have syntatical structures in common, and tracing the development of these structures is more scientifically precise than simply comparing words." In pursuing the historical development of language, then, Sanskrit is extremely important because it probably reflects an earlier historical moment than Greek or Latin; its structures are indeed "pure" of the auxiliary verbal forms that are so prevalent in Latin and then in Germanic languages. But Sanskrit is not the Ursprache itself. In fact, there is no particular valence to the development of languages that lean heavily on auxiliaries (i.e., this does not represent some kind of degeneration). Rather, the move to the more "mechanical" way of constructing verbal meaning simply marks the "appearance of a new organism."34 Thus Bopp built from and modified Schlegel's mythically framed theory, rejecting the Romantic fixation on Indian origins and placing India within an objective, scientific framework. While a technical logos was therefore prevalent in Bopp's thinking, this does not mean that there was no framing myth. According to ~taal?'Bopp's translations in the appendix to the

Conjugationssystembook are faulty, suggesting that he cared little about the faithful rendering of Sanskrit texts or about their content. In fact, as he wrote in 1829, Sanskrit itself was not the target of his inquiries:

Mir ist von Allem, was Indien anbelangt, die Sprache das wichtigste, und nur in Zergliederung ihres Organismus, in Untersuchungen liber ihr Verhaltnisszu den verwandten Dialekten und ihre Bedeutung in der allgemeinen Sprachenwelt trete ich mit wahrer Lust und innigem Vertrauen als Schriftsteller auf.36

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first work in which William Jones's lucky intuition became a method." Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance, 178. See 95 for an example of this kind of analysis. Bopp, Conjugationssystem, 11. ''J. F. Staal, ed., A Reader on the Sanskrit Grammarians (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972), 52. 36 Quoted in Staal, 52.

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Bopp pursued his studies in Indic literature in order that they might assist in constituting a relatively new object of European knowledge, namely " ~ a n ~ u a ~ e .It"becomes ~' evident that this is the most important conception at play in the interpretation of India, as Schwab suggests: Bopp...contemplated language per se, excluding any parasitic considerations in order to isolate its autonomous modes of life, laws of structure, and internal evolution. He founded a new world of language, clearing away residual ideas concerning Indic languages as well as European ones. India was extraordinarily blessed with grammatical genius, but endless points of form were but one chapter in a ritual book encompassing all human activities; Bopp broke away from all external liturgy.38 Thus the devotees of this new faith in the "internal liturgy" of humanity attempted to displace conceptions like pantheism and the mythic framework of Romantic origins, but they nonetheless remained devotees, even though their "science" might have given them a different appearance. This becomes all the more apparent as we turn back to August Wilhelm Schlegel, who gives Bopp's approach to Indian sources a clear and public rationale in the pages of his journal, the Indische Bibliothek.

A Textual Museum?: Indische Bibliothek One of the most important projects launched by Schlegel in his new capacity at Bonn was the publication of a new journal for Indological studies. There had been sporadic and short-lived projects in the German-speaking world before Schlegel came onto the scene (like the Asiatisches Magazin, in which Friedrich Majer had published his GitG translation), but the Indische Bibliothek, which appeared from 1820 to 1830, was the first sustained effort of its kind in

37 This is the fundamental point in Foucault's analysis: "From the nineteenth century, language began to fold in upon itself, to acquire its own particular density, to deploy a history, an objectivity, and laws of its own. It became one object of knowledge among others, on the same level as living beings, wealth and value, and the history of events and men...To know language is no longer to come as close as possible to knowledge itself; it is merely to apply the methods of understanding in general to a particular domain of objectivity." The Order of Things, 296. 38 Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance, 180.

Germany. Schlegel knew the texts presented by the British Orientalists, and it is likely that he took these "researches" as his model in presenting Indological knowledge. This meant that the Indische Bibliothek would present a rather eclectic mix of material, but especially in light of the new argument for philological rigor in German study of Indian texts, the mix appears all the more strange. In a basic sense, the Indische Bibliothek presented a split (even schizophrenic) body of material. On the one hand, the journal contains articles and reviews that we would consider "scholarly." That is, they attempt to respond to the logos-driven approach to India that had been developing in the work of both Schlegel himself and Bopp. On the other hand, Schlegel included entries that I group under the category employed by Schlegel himself in the pages of the journal: the "Indian Sphinx." These entries are "popular;" they treat a wide diversity of curiosities that are seemingly designed to peak the interest of the learned public, but they do not seem to be presented with the technician in mind. This mixture makes for a somewhat strange publication, unified only by a concept that Schlegel uses again and again in describing the object of his inquiry: the quest is to elucidate "schri~licheDenkmale," the "written monuments," in order to open the ancient, influential past of Indian culture and its religiosity. Under this aegis, a conception of Indian language was persistently deployed, marking an important feature in the newly configured dialectic of scholarly technique and myth. Schlegel opens the text with two important entries that indicate the general direction of the project. In the preface to the first issue, Schlegel announces the appearance of the new journal by suggesting that its form is particularly well suited to the field, whose boundaries are unclear and wherein new discoveries are being made on a daily basis. But the editor and sometime author works alone on this "wide and wonderful region" "between the Indus and the

Ganges," "where the manifold richness for investigation is ine~haustible;"~~ he calls for others to join him in the project, recalling the mythic injunction from his 1815 review of Chbzy. These scholars, he claims, will unlock the mysteries of "the histories and the traditions of other peoples" through the study of India, which remains entirely "enigmatic [ratselha//lYy- but its important influence on Asia, Persia, Greece, Rome, and Europe will eventually shine through (IB I, xii). The key that will unlock these mysteries is philology, and here Schlegel likely targets the Heidelberg Symbolists with an incisive metaphor: "Indessen darf es dock nicht vergessen werden, dafi griindliche Sprachkunde iinmer die Gmndlage aller zu hoffenden wahrhaft erspriefilichen Ergebnisse bleibt, und daft wir, sobald diese vernachlafiigt wird, nur auf den Sand batten" (IB I, xiii). Philological rigor can no longer be constituted by "unfruitful amazement over

single selective resemblances and etymological groping," i.e., the usual litanies of cognates shared between Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. Following Bopp, Schlegel urges a "systematic and complete comparison" of the "inner structure of the languages" (IB I, xv-xvi). Through this kind of careful attention to languages and texts, philology paves the way to dramatic disclosure of "the hidden truth" of "the history of the ancient world" (IB I, xiv, ~ v i ) . ~ ' The first proper article in the journal is another text that offers perspective on the purpose and orientation of the project. Schlegel's essay, "Ueber den gegenwartigen Zustand der Indischen Philologie," was originally written in 1819 and had since appeared in three other 39

August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Indische Bibliothek, 2 Bande (Bonn: Eduard Weber, 1823-1830),I: xi. Hereafter cited as IB with volume and page number following. 40 The scholarly myth that is composed by Schlegel is particularly apparent in these two passages: "Die Neigung denkender Gelehrten, welche sich durch keine Miihiseligkeit abschrecken lassen, wo es auf Entdeckung der verborgen Wahrheit ankommt, wie es deren in Deutschland so viele gibt; die Neigung, sage ich, durch Erlernung des Sanskrit an der reinsten Quelle Inner-Asiatischer Ueberlieferungen selbst zu schopfen, hat sich bisher, wegen der Unzuganglichkeitdieser Quelle, nicht in ihrem ganzen Umfange kund geben konnen. Ich darfaber dem Deutschen Publicum eine hierin bevorstehende giinstige Veranderung mit Ziiversicht ankundigen" (xiv). Also see xvi: "Wo uns die schriflichen Zeugnisse verlassen, zeugen noch die steinernen Denkmale, wo diese, die Sprachen van den alien Menschengeschlechtern. Die Geschichte der Urwelt ist nicht durch eine unubersteigliche Kluji vor uns verschlossen: nur mussen wir

places.41 Here the scholarly myth takes on a particularly national character, as Schlegel surveys European knowledge about Indian sources and language. It is certainly the case, as Schlegel suggests, that Germany is "dependent" on other nations for the means of furthering the progress of Indological philology, and this is quite problematic. The French have the massive "stockpile [Vorrath]' of texts, but Schlegel suspects their accuracy and authenticity; the example of the "false Veda" (the Ezour-Vedatn) that had so badly fooled Voltaire is surely at the behind Schlegel's concern about missionary admixture and distortion in the French collection of texts (IB

But according to Schlegel, the British are the present arbiters of Indian knowledge. They are not only in possession of the material riches of India, but "they also have the key to its spiritual treasures, to the scriptural and aesthetic monuments of antiquity" (IB I, 2). The question is whether this should continue to be the case. Scholars like Jones opened up the language to Europe and performed a tremendous service. British Sanskrit grammars and dictionaries, including editions of texts by Sanskrit grammarians:3 provided the basis for European study. But Schlegel registers some of the same doubts that appeared in his 1815 review: the British learn India in order to rule, in order to smooth the way of commerce; thus, the British publications and translations often suffered from a lack of precision that stems from their lack of a singularly humanistic, scientific orientation. In short, "Shall the British make a claim to some kind of

(lurch die rechte Pforte zu ihren Weihungen eingehn, und nicht auf Nebenwegen einen apokryphischen Besitz edangen wollen." 41 As Staal notes, "how much in demand such information must have been!" A Reader on the Sanskrit Grammarians (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972), 50. We may also be able to attribute the wide proliferation of the essay to Schlegel himself, his reputation or, perhaps, his desire to promote the new field opened up by him and his German colleagues. 42 Events surrounding this scandal are described in Figueira, "The Authority of an Absent Text," 202-207. Schlegel himself reminds the European learned public of these events himself in 1824 (IB II,50-56). 43 For an interesting survey of these contributions, see Vivien Law, "Processes of Assimilation: European Grammars of Sanskrit in the Early Decades of the Nineteenth Century," in La Linguistique entre myth et histoire, edited by Daniel Droixhe and Chantal Grell (Minister: Nodus, 1993), 238-248.

monopoly [Monopoll over Indian literature? It would be too late. The cinnamon and clove may remain theirs; the spiritual treasures are a common good of the cultured world" (IB I, 15). Of course, this spiritual booty is to be wrestled from the British by a clear-thinking and rigorously scientific group of scholars, namely those in Germany. The motives of German scholars are purely "world-historical, philological, and philosophical" ( ~ b edie r Sprache is cited to support this claim) (IB I, 4-5) and have nothing to do with politics, according to Schlegel. Indian texts are to be understood by "going to school" with the Brahmins, for whom Sanskrit is a living language; thus "we must learn to understand the scriptural monuments of India as both Brahmins and as European critics" (IB I, 22). Schlegel celebrates the travels of Alexander von Humboldt, who traveled to India, and dreams of many more such travelers bringing back the wisdom of this kind of immediate contact, and also "manuscripts and art objects" for display in "an Indian museum in Germany," if it would please the royal government to found one. For now, the textual museum (which Indische Bibliothek seems to represent) will have to suffice. Though it is a fascinating point, approaching the Brahmins, however, is not discussed in detail. Much more ink is spilled on meeting Indian texts with "the grounding principles of classical philology, and indeed with scientific rigor" (IB I, 22),44bringing Indian texts under scholarly control through fundamentally European methods. While Schlegel had an idea about it was classical native forms of interpretation (i.e., "going to school with the ~rahmins")>~ philology that marked his notion of scientifically apprehending the text. In keeping with this -

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Schlegel enumerates these "grounding principles": "Ausmittelungder Aechtheit oder Unachtheitgamer Schriften und einzelner Stellen; Vergleichung der Handschriften, Wahl der Lesearten und zuweilen Conjectural-Kritik; endlich Anwendung aller Kunstgriffeder scharfsinnigsten Hermeneutik." IB 1,23. In later controversies with Bopp, Schlegel would indeed advocate the importance of studying the Indian grammarians in order to gain a purchase on the structure of the language. This debate seems to begin in the pages of the fndische Bibliothek, in Schlegel's review of Bopp's translation o f the Nala text. See IB I, 123124. Also see Law, "Processes of Assimilation," 248-257. In addition, Schlegel consistently argued that most philosophical judgments about Indian scriptures should be resisted until one had a solid knowledge of the South Asian cornmentarial tradition which accompanied the text. See IB I, 21-22 and below in the treatment of the GitZ.

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model (and with his anti-British polemic), Schlegel once again argues that Latin, not English, is the appropriate language for the translation of Sanskrit (IB I, 23).46

In all of these preparatory remarks, the newly reformulated scholarly myth of India spoke. India was no longer an innocent, poetic paradise, though it certainly was still the bearer of great antiquity. It remained a place of secrets and riddles, however, which were to be unlocked by the key of scientific philology, not aesthetic or philosophical communion. According to the Indische Bibliothek, this philological portal opened onto "stockpiles," "treasures," and "riches,"

all geistig of course, but certainly in intentional homology with the materialism of the colonial enterprise. But monopolies were not allowed: Steadfast application of many people in several ensuing generations will be necessary to perform such extensive labors and to fulfill such comprehensive tasks [i.e., in researching India]. But we are Europeans, and our pre-eminence, our spiritual maturity arises precisely in the fact that we survey the globe with its inhabitants and nourish the impulse to pursue the history of both back until the remotest primordiality. It should not be in vain, therefore, to address a new interpretation to any monument of venerable antiquity. (IB I, 25) "We are Europeans" is a statement that entitles a scholarly approach to the world that uncovers its secrets4' and also prevents one nation from holding exclusive control. But perhaps it happens that The argument is repeated in Schlegel's review of Bopp: "The Latin language is...more appropriate than some others: partly in the external connection, because the Indian books will be published for the learned in different countries, but still more in essence, on account of the freedom of word-placement, and because of some affinities between its grammatical structure and that of the Indian" (IB I, 103). Nevertheless, Latin has difficulties with compounds, which are so prevalent in Sanskrit; Greek and German are actually better suited for that aspect of the translation effort. Schlegel continued to defend the use of Latin as a universal, technical languge in his preface to a study of comparative etymology, presented in the Indische Bibliothek (IB I, 274-276); the work itself never appeared. Taking ownership over Indian antiquity is a running theme in the journal that certainly bespeaks a kind of intellectual imperialism. Schlegel consistently argued for establishing a press that could produce the devanigari script in Germany (which he eventually accomplished), suggesting (among other things) that the printing capacity in India itself was rather limited. But in addition, Schlegel was quite concerned about the deterioration of original manuscripts in the Indian climate, and thus he wanted "Europe" to get to work collecting them, so this "spiritual treasure" and "common good" would not be lost. Schlegel perhaps had a patronizing attitude (cf. IB 2,39: Schlegel suggests that the "brahmins" might be "astounded" that "Mlechas and Yavanas" can "emulate their holy language so well"!), but his impulse has been acted on again and again among Western Indologists who have indeed "saved" a great number of texts from deterioration and eventual disappearance. For the material and institutional side of Schlegel's efforts in founding the new field, see his proposal to Karl Freiherm von Altenstein, Prussian Minister of Culture, for 46

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the right spirit and method is for a time found in one place before the others. Indeed, in deciphering secrets more profound, more noble even than deciphering the hieroglyphics (IB 1,5), the philological and philosophical keys have been placed in the hands of the Germans.

In surveying the content of the journal, let us begin with the technical side of this decipherment, leaving the mythic riddles of the "Indian Sphinx" for last. Over the decade of its publication, Schlegel included a set of philologically rigorous articles in the Indische Bibliothek that identified the technical appraisal of text and language as the locus for the interpretation of Indian religion.' Perhaps the crowning moment of these technical contributions is the article written by Wilhelm von Humboldt, Schlegel's friend and patron, who took up Sanskrit after Schlegel but seemingly surpassed him in technical apprehension of it. The article begins as the last entry in

1822 and takes up a question that surely gripped the attention of the entire German cultured public: what is the nature of the -ya and -tvZ verbal endings in Sanskrit, and are these endings related to phenomena in other languages? The analysis breaks off at the end of the issue, and von Humboldt leaves us with a suspenseful question: "are the verbal forms in -twi and -ya participles that join onto the subject of the main clause, or gerunds that join onto the verb of the main clause?'(IB I, 467). The article concludes in the 1824 issue, with fifty more pages of analysis.

funds to build up the "infrastructure" of the new field (a press, grants for students, purchase of texts, etc.) in his letter from March, 1820. Komer, Briefe, 373-377. For a highly critical discussion of Schlegel's stance in relation to colonialism, see Murti, India: The Seductive and Seduced "Other" of German Orientalism, 16-18. This Saidian critique is helpfully tempered by Anil Bhatti, "August Wilhelm Schlegels Indiemezeption und der Kolonialismus," in Konflikt Grenze Dialog: Kulturkontrastive und interdisziplinare Textzugange, ed. by Jiirgen Lehmann, Tilman Lang, Fred Lonker, and Thorsten Unger (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1997), 185-193. Schlegel might have seen himself as "European," and thus entitled (at least rhetorically),but he was entirely opposed to most manifestations of actual, political colonialism, as Bhatti shows. 48 Several examples appear in the pages of the text: the first substantive article in the journal includes a rather technical examination of epic meter; Schlegel also offers a fairly precise review of Bopp's translation of the Nala from 1819; a review of Hayrnan Wilson's 1819 Sanskrit-Englishdictionary (1822) also appears, along with an examination of Bopp's linguistic studies by Schlegel's student, Christian Lassen (1830).

The essay is quite sophisticated as an effort in grammatical, philological analysis, and on that front, the questions it asks are completely ~ o r t h w h i l e .What ~ ~ should be noted is the dramatic contrast between an essay like von Humboldt's and other entries that appear in the Indische Bibliothek. This contrast will become clear in a moment. But first, it is important to acknowledge that the all-embracing purpose of these technical inquiries was announced in the very first substantive article that Schlegel published in the journal, "Indische Dichtungen." In a rather striking turn against a position that prevailed particularly among the British missionaries (a turn which marks the connection between Romantic myth and the new philological emphasis), Schlegel argues that the interpretation of Indian religion should not read its "wonderfully bold creations of an ...astonishing imagination [Einbildungskraft}" as "abominable absurdities" (IB I,

35). Nor should this religious system be understood according to "the common understanding," "outer appearances," "bourgeois moral" judgements, open derisiveness, or poor representations.

"In this way one will surely never attain to conceptualizing the origin of this poetic belief. ..nor will one decipher the hieroglyphic traditions of the fore-world historically and philosophically" (IB 1, 35). This rhetoric of the "hieroglyphic" is quite familiar by now. Schlegel is referring to the importance of philology in combatting the usual way in which Indian religion is understood and misunderstood. Philology as logos, in short, combats the negative prejudices that so commonly attend to representations of Indian religion. Nevertheless, in the same article Schlegel presents a translation of a section of the RZmiyaya that is something less than rigorous. He admits that it is a Nachbildung instead of a

Verbal forms with these endings are called "gerunds," but the issue to which von Hurnboldt points is easily glossed, probably because of the nature of the usage of these forms. Whitney's Sanskrit grammar, for example, describes the function of a Sanskrit gerund in the following way: "The so-called gerund is a stereotyped case (doubtless instrumental) of a verbal noun, used generally as adjunct to the logical subject of the clause, denoting an accompanying or (more often) a preceding action to that signified by the verb of the clause. It has thus the virtual value of an indeclinable participle, present or past, qualifying the actor whose action it describes." William Dwight Whitney, Sanskrit Grammar (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

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proper Uebersetzung (echoing the approach of Herder from a supposedly by-gone era), and despite the more technical aspects of the essay, it is quite clear that Schlegel is most interested in conveying the charm and interest of the text to his German-speaking audience." Some "hieroglyphics" are seemingly not to be entirely uncoded but instead are merely rendered or presented as a curious and enticing object. These are the words of the "Indian Sphinx," at the feet of which are gathered an attractive collection of LLschriftliche Denkmale." The "Indian Sphinx" was a quasi-regular feature of the journal, and it was introduced initially in the second issue (1820). Schlegel warns that the "Indian Sphinx" is not a section where he, like Oedipus, solves the riddles of India, but rather it is a place where such riddles are posed. Under this heading I will ...from time to time present questions and doubts, communicate hints, vaguenesses, and provisional groupings, and to point out tracks which can perhaps subsequently put us on course one day. Here then risky suppositions and etymological dream-reading will also be allowed a place. (233) Schlegel continues on to say that he wishes to take up these issues in a more "scientific" manner at some point in the future, but we might see these suggestions as more of an invitation to spark the interest of prospective students in the field and to bolster the interest of his reading public. Among these riddles are the following: Are the tribal names of the Gothic kings related to Indic names? What contact did the Germans of the Middle Ages have with India or Indians? Are the names of metals in Sanskrit and in Western languages related? Did the Norse God Wodan grow from the same etymological and mythological tree as the Buddha? Why do words for "light" and "speech" seem to be cognate in Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit? Is reverance for the cow a pervasive phenomenon in the ancient world? Is it apparent in comparative etymology? And so on. University Press, 1987), 355. The essay by von Humboldt inquires about the status o f the "so-called gerund" and its "virtual value" as a participle.

In addition to these entries, however, I would include other articles that could easily have been collected under the "Indian Sphinx" rubric, if it were more broadly conceived. Examples include translated excerpts and summaries from the thirteenth edition of Asiatick Researches from Calcutta (on botany, zoology, the tapir, etc.). Perhaps the best example appears in the second issue of the journal, namely an extensive (100-page) article called "Towards a History of the Elephant" (IB I, 129-231). This is certainly a worthy and interesting topic, particularly in connection with Indian myth and religion. But first we are offered a lengthy survey of classical authors and their reports about elephants, focusing mostly on histories of Alexander the Great, Rome, and the pachydermal role in ancient warfare. When the article does turn to India, Schlegel first engages in an etymological investigation of the names for the elephant in ancient times. This nod towards philology moves quickly into a survey of the "amazing," "unbelievable," and "fantastic," including a relatively interesting (if somewhat spectacularist) account of the symbolism of Ganesa, a description of the madness of elephants during rutting season, and then a report about elephants themselves having a religion. Schlegel also takes time to lament the sad state of elephants in European zoos. Indian texts are sampled, and Schlegel includes references to elephants from the Hitopadeia, the RimGyana, and The Laws of Manu, but obviously the point here is not to engage in rigorous textual analysis; rather, the elephant is a kind of textual attraction that is designed to invite the interest of the reader into the investigation of India, with which the great animal is directly associated. At one point, Schlegel wonders why the Egyptians did not represent an elephant in their hieroglyphic forms, despite their preoccupation with animal life and the presence of African elephants. Perhaps the elephant was just too big for hieroglyphic

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The distinction is clearly marked in his comment on the notes to the text: "Die Gelehrten werden entschnldigen, wenn sie hier manches ihnen schon bekannte wiederjinden; ich wiinsche, bei einem Gedicht besonders, den Bedilrfnissen aller gebildeten Leser entgegen zu kommen" (IB I , 80).

representation, as the deployment of the public myth of India is yet too big (and too important) for subsumption into the mysteries of philological decipherment. In reflecting on this journal project, the opportunity to explore the dialectic between

scholarly myth and logos once again presents itself. Schlegel's text marks a moment where old Romantic myths were still at play but were receding in the face of a scientific approach (in the form of linguistics and philology). But did this logos simply dissipate myths? Clearly not. Myths were reconfigured and reconstituted in order to frame and authorize the technical practice of Schlegel's scholar, giving this practice a nationalist and colonialist tint, positioning India as a proper and profound realm of antiquity (alongside the Egyptian and the Classicial), and veiling this realm in enticing mystery to invite the interest of the "cultured public." As the fundamental premise of this dynamic, Schlegel reinforced the traditional Orientalist connection between the study of Indian religion and the study of texts, but he also displayed a more differentiated knowledge, based on a more expansive array of materials available for study. Schlegel was aware that 1) South Asia had its own, highly developed linguistic and hermeneutical systems and that 2) all-important South Asian religious texts were accompanied by commentarial practice. Yet he insisted that the European investigation of Indian sources must proceed according to the rules of classical philology, which isolates texts and passages from their commentarial contexts and imposes foreign standards on the sources. To this extent, Schlegel's new emphasis on method was yet intertwined with a prejudicial structure that was borrowed from European hermeneutics, foreclosing advances that might have been obtained if he had attended more closely to native commentaria1traditions. Logos was authorized by an appeal to styles of interpretation that were familiar to the European learned public, leading to a conservatism in the Schlegelian reading and translation of Indian texts. This decision about

method would lead to styles of inquiry that had an important effect on Schlegel's framing and translation the GitZ. Nevertheless, another methodological decision was to have a crucial impact on disciplined study of Indian texts, and many would suggest that it led to significant hermeneutical progress. In effect, Schlegel abandoned many of the conceptions of India that his intellectual community had developed, arguing that attempts to determine the "spirit" of India and its history were premature without careful, rigorous attention to Indian sources. In a way, Schlegel was arguing for a "bracketing" of such theories while intensive textual research was carried out. There were traces of old conceptions in Schlegel's work; he did allude to the specific capacity of Sanskrit to carry abstract religious concepts, leading him to suggest that the ancient religious practitioners of Sanskrit were directly in touch with divinity, which was best named through abstract universality, "free from any sensuous intermingling." Polytheism and anthropomorphism were "later ingredients" in the development of religious consciousness (IB II, 425). Gerard insists that Schlegel's judgments indicate his commitment to "la rdvdlation primitive" in India." While he may have believed in this theory (or something like it), the center of gravity in Schlegel's public work was different from that which anchored the work of his brother, who was clearly committed to the idea of a "primative revelation" in Uber die Sprache. The original Indian unity of religious consciousness was for August Wilhelm a part of an authorizing myth, not a conception of cultural fact. Schlegel showed that the conception may indeed have content, but he was in no way preoccupied with making this case; rather, he alluded to this conception, which most in his milieu would have known, in order to gain instant legitimacy for his work. In general, Gerard takes Schlegel's philosophical and theoretical allusions quite seriously as concrete views because he wishes to maintain the consistency of his account of the German -

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L 'Orient et la pensee romantique allemande, 134-135.

Romantic interpretation of India; I am skeptical. In my opinion, Schlegel's attention was actually trained on language in the study of India.

A.W. Schlegel's Protean GIta Schlegel's attempts to bolster the new field that he played a major part in founding involved putting India on textual display. The accounts of Indian curiosities drew upon broad myths and stereotypes about India that persisted among the learned public. But Schlegel did indeed balance these appeals with the technical appraisal of language and texts according to a classical philological method. Translating texts (with full and complete annotation) was a crucial aspect of Schlegel's mission. His first major project was a translation of the Giti, which appeared in 1823. As he made clear, the translation came from original manuscripts and was the first complete nonEnglish translation of the work from original sources produced in ~ u r o ~ e . ' *

In the investigation of the text, we again wish to discern the way in which translation practice constitutes the text as an object for European knowledge by incorporating aspects of a broad hermeneutical structure. But shifts have occurred in German discourse on Indian sources, requiring a slightly different approach. For the most part, Schlegel bracketed many of the conceptions that had driven previous manifestations of the text and instead focused on the language itselfSs3While this approach encouraged the disappearance of myths and conceptions in

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It should be noted that Schlegel's student, Christian Lassen, seems to have played a significant role in the construction of the translation, both from Schlegel's own comments and from circumstantial evidence (Lassen, for example, took Schlegel's chair after his death and one of his first acts was to issue a corrected, updated version of the translation: an honorific gesture, as it seems in Lassen's preface, or an attempt to claim ownership?). See August Wilhelm von Schlegel, trans., Bhagavad-Gita, id est Thespesion Melos sive Almi Crishae et Arjunae Colloquium de Rebus Divinis, edited and emended by Christian Lassen (Bonn: Eduard Weber, 1846). 53 In his preface to the translation (in Latin) Schlegel launches into a history of his engagement with the et text, and the shift from the philosophical orientation to the philological becomes apparent: LLcriticam grammaticam Bhagavad-Gitae rationem... satis expedisse mihi videor; philosophicam nondum attigi [it seems appropriate to me to have worked out the critical and grammatical scheme of the Giti; the philosophical I have not yet touched on]" (xxiv). Thus Schlegel presents the work within a technical frame

in scholarly, scientific, and philologically rigorous logos, a particular style frames Schlegel's method, recalling a prejudicial structure that was quite familiar to readers in his context, and casting the progress represented by this pioneering translation into doubt. Nevertheless, in my detailed analysis of the text, I will show that Schlegel's approach to translating Indian sources did have hermeneutically productive results, even if they were somewhat unintentional. In examining the translation, I will follow the lead of a rather naive and perhaps even specious challenge presented to Schlegel's text by French scholar Langlois in 1824: Langlois' main objection to the translation was that it used different Latin words to translate single Sanskrit terms. Anyone who has attempted translation knows that this standard is highly problematic: it is unreasonable to expect a translator to match a term or a root in the source language with a single term or root in the target language; languages simply use individual words in different ways, and different contexts often dictate different meanings. But Schlegel imposed his own technical standard on his translation, leading to the hermeneutical value of Langlois' question: Schlegel insisted on translating every word into the target language, leaving no terms in the original Sanskrit, even the most difficult. This standard, along with Langlois' challenge, led to a careful, technical consideration of important terms in the text and inevitably forced a reconsideration of the conceptions dominating the interpretation of Indian religion, as I will illustrate by investigating Schlegel's rendering of three key terms in the Gitii: dhar~na,yoga, and in the preface: he discusses of the reliability of the source manuscript (v-xiv), variations in typography (xiv-xvii), the nature of the Gita's meter (xviii-xxi), and the appropriateness of Latin for translating Sanskrit (xxi-xxiv). Schlegel allows himself one philosophical hint which harkens to his brother's earlier master-work and trades on a more philosophical construction of the text: that it seems quite likely that Indian philosophical reflection is an ancient precursor to Pythagoras and Plato. "But this aside: the matter must indeed be completed with more rigorous arguments, on the one hand from the character and style of the religious formula itself, on the other from a whole history of religions and especially philosophy pursued throughout India [Sed haec obiter: res enirn strictioribus argumentis, turn e carminis ipsius indole et stilo, turn ex universa religionurn ac philosphiae per Indium historia petitis, erit conficienda]" (xxv). Indeed, philosophicaljudgments should be restrained about the Giti in particular unless one has "carefully investigated" the many "written commentaries" on the work which exist (xxiv-xxv). This judgment was

brahman. In Schlegel's context, logos-driven translation, which had bracketed familiar conceptions, actually led back to a highly differentiated discussion of foundational concepts in Hindu religious thought. This suggests that Schlegel's translation marked a moment where logos had effectively intervened in broad myth, conception, and stereotype in the German representation of India. Turning to the matter at hand, we must first inquire about the way in which Schlegel approached the translation project in general.54 To put it briefly, August Wilhelm Schlegel thought of translation as a creative aesthetic act with fidelity to the original at its center. To begin demonstrating this general principle, we can consult his preface to translations of Dante. There Schlegel claimed that the artist, because he was but an individual, was subject to certain levels of arbitrariness in his work that are identified only in later eras. Hence, "Warumsollt ' es daher dem

Uebersetzer nicht erlaubt sein, den Leser ihrer zu iiberheben, das Harte zu mildern, das Dunkel aufzuklaren, das Verfehlte in der Darstelhg zu berichtigen, mit Einem Worte,zu verschonen?" (SW3,228). This is an early, enthusiastic view, not the perspective of a seasoned translator. But translation was endowed with a creative power for Schlegel at an early stage, and this idea, that the translator can "beautify" or even "embellish," persisted throughout his career.

In 1798, Schlegel put forth a more tempered description of the translator's work. In Der Wettstreit der Sprachen from the pages of the Athenaum, the personification of the German language engages in an important exchange with French. French criticizes the German spirit of translation, which seems to want to translate everything: "We either refrain from translating, or proceed after our own taste." "That means," German says, "that you paraphrase and travesty." French replies that it is necessary for the foreign to adjust to the standards of the French culture, established as early as 1820, when Schlegel fist wrote about in-depth study of the Gitci in letters to Windischmann (Komer, Briefe, 379,384) and persisted after its publication (IB 2, 31-32).

which is not in fact a narrow-minded approach, but rather "the effect of specificity and culture. Didn't the Greeks also hellenize everything?'German responds, affirming Schlegel's ethos: "With you that's an effect of one-sided specificity and conventional culture. With us even flexibility is characteristic" (SW 7,246-247). Schlegel therefore affirmed a translation ethos that emphasized a level of empathy and a certain measure of aesthetically powered understanding the author better than he understood himself. This meant that the target language for translation could sometimes be denatured in the translator's effort to convey and admit foreign meaning, but Schlegel thought that this kind of flexibility was a necessary part of the process. He affirmed a kind of openness to the challenge of translation that was lacking in the French model and, presumably, in previous theories of translation in his own national context. Nevertheless, Schlegel was well aware of the risks of his approach. In the Wettstreit text, for example, Poesie immediately warns German not to go too far with openness, for "boundaryless flexibility would be characterlessness." As an additional warning, the discussion between French and German leads into a colloquy of untranslatable lines from several of the assembled languages. How far can flexibility go before reaching a breaking point? (S W 7,247) ." These principles and concerns were still at work in the 1823 Gitti translation. But the most obvious factor to isolate in Schlegel's translational positioning of the text is the fact that it appeared in Latin, which is something of a surprising development, given the tenor of his day. While all educated people had some classical training, the emphasis was on national languages during this period, and Latin was gradually being replaced in the universities. But Schlegel urged

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For an interesting if somewhat eclectic reading of Schlegel's "will to translate everything," see Berman,

The Experience of the Foreign, 129-140. 5s These thoughts were pre-saged in a 1796 review of the translation of Homer by VoB: 'Yrn Geiste unsrer Sprache liegt namlich, wie im Charakter unsrer Nation, wenn andres beide nicht vollig eins sind, eine sehr

that Latin be retained for its ability to cross the boundaries of nationalist learning in ~ u r o ~ e . ' ~ Nevertheless, this universality was certainly bordered by a nationalist sense of the project of retrieving Indian sources and also by a more specific sense of reconstructing the Indian text as an object of classical philology. Technically speaking, in his preface to the Gitci, Schlegel sets forth specific reasons for translating Sanskrit into Latin, suggesting that it is particularly facile in handling Sanskrit word order and the propensity to abstract conceptualization. Heavy inflection is the key to this connection, and, according to Schlegel, Greek would have been even more preferable, if it were more accessible to the readership. This argument of course trades on old distinctions originally made by his brother and later specified by Bopp, which contrasted the agglutinative or "degenerated" languages from those that are heavily inflected. Latin is not burdened by that bundle of particles, articles (definite and indefinite), personal pronouns, and auxiliary words of various kinds, into which most of the languages of more recent European peoples are forced to draw themselves because of a lack of endings, by which the gender, number, and case of nouns and person, tense, and mood of verbs are precisely and to a certain extent pleasantly distinguished by sound, (xxii)"

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vielseitige Bildsamkeit. Der Eifer des Deutschen, alles Auslandische grundlich zu kennen" (SW 10, 116). But at the same time, "Bildsamkeit ohne eignen Geist, was ware sie anders als erklarte Nulllitat?l (152). 56 See Ralf-Georg Czalpa, "Die Apologie des Lateinischen als Wissenschafissprache: Anmerkungen zu August Wilhelm Schlegels letzter bffentlicher Rede als Banner Professor," Jahrbuch jur Internationale Germanistik 30 (1990): 37-38. "Wenn Schlegel sich also im Widerspruchzu den Tendenzen seiner Zeit zum Apologeten des Lateinischen erhob, so geschah dies nicht etwa deshalb, well er dem Herrschajisanspruch einer elitfiren Minoritat das Wort reden wollte, sondern well er diese Sprache a h das Band einer internationalen Gelehrtenrepublikjenseits nationalstaatlichen, konfessionalen oder rassischen Konditionierung begr~ff-l1Czalpa also argues that Latin captures Schlegel's general sense of nostalgia for the Middle Ages, during which Latin provided the medium for a broad unity between governance, the church, and the university (39). This impulse towards the organic universality and unity of the cultural order surely influenced Romantic ideas about European renewal (43), which were forcefully presented in the Europa text some twenty years earlier. 57 Latin: 'Won gravatur ea sarcinis istis particularum, articulorum, tum definiti turn indefiniti,pronomium personalium, verorumque diversi generis auxiliarium, quas pleraeque popularurn Europae recentiorum linguae secum trahere coguntur,propter terminationurn inopiam, quibus genera, numeri, casus nominum, personae, tempora, modi verborum apte et cum sonora quadam suavitate discriminentur." Schlegel seems to wish to make his point about the merits of Latin in the execution of this sentence itself.

Schlegel had repeated these arguments for about eight years before finally finding application for them in the translation of the Giti. What one wonders about in reflecting on Schlegel's reasons for choosing Latin for the Gitd is the following: how much does word order and matching grammatical structure matter, if one is translating Sanskrit ilokas into Latin prose, which is what Schlegel did? If Latin is ultimately too imprecise for a verse translation, then perhaps the choice of Latin is in fact the reason for the prose translation. Choosing Latin for translation of the Giti starts to appear dogmatic, especially given Schlegel's emphasis on the importance of verse and meter from his earliest days as a great translator. These points suggest that Schlegel was deeply committed to Latin as his language for India, such that it would speak to the widest possible audience and partake of the authority afforded the classical in his intellectual milieu.'* Thus an ostensibly scientific choice was actually guided by a scholarly myth, and this framework has its effects in the translation itself. Despite the obvious limitations of Latin, Schlegel's confidence in the choice was high: in his preface, he chides those who leave difficult terms in the Sanskrit as they are (e.g., yoga, dharma, etc.), saying that this is "nothing other than to write Sanskrit words with Latin lettering." Schlegel therefore announces that he has attempted an exhaustive translation: "conatussum omnia Latina facere, et notionum quoquephilosophicanim veram vim et indolem exprimere, ~ translator takes up the quatenus id sine longis verborum ambagibusfieriposset" ( x x i ~ ) . ' Our

58 Bhatti's point that Schlegel's study of Indian sources, and his comparison between Indian culture and the Classical, was directed "towards recognition of difference" and not "towards cultural identity construction" is simply incorrect. As we have seen, Schlegel's ethos did recommend a certain kind of openness that was perhaps rare for his cultural circumstance. Nevertheless, as Bhatti himself acknowledges, the classical ultimately proved superior when it came to textual hermeneutics. See Bhatti, "August Wilhelm Schlegels Indienrezeption," 195. 59 English: "I have attempted to render all in Latin, and also to express the true force and character of philosophical notions in so far as it is possible without long verbal circumlocutions."

imposing challenge of rendering some of the more difficult terms from the text in his target language, a challenge that many contemporary translators refuse. To summarize these points and specify Schlegel's approach to translating the Gitci: Schlegel was a translator who approached his text with fidelity in mind, but fidelity meant, on the one hand, that the translator takes an active and sometimes ameliorating role in representing his text, and on the other hand, that the target language must leave itself open to the foreign text and not impose itself. This implies that the target language will sometimes experience difficult and unusual adjustments in the translation process. In addition, Schlegel's particular understanding of logos in the apprehension of foreign text involved the application of tools borrowed from classical philology. This model dictated that the text be rendered in Latin, which in turn had the function of producing the Git6 as an object of European philology, taken in its classical mode. This is firmly established given my analysis of Schlegel's broad approach to interepreting Indian sources. What requires further analysis, however, is the way in which certain principles concentrate in the translation itself: Schlegel's sense of his own power as translator, the focus on

the philological approach, the will to render every word in Latin, and the very interiority of the new object of study, language. These principles led to interesting fractures in the rendering of concepts in the original text. This dispersal in the target language was in many ways inevitable because of the different way terms are used in different contexts, but within the frame of Langlois' naive challenge, it also provided the ground for technical reflection on foundational terms in the text, leading to the consideration of a highly differentiated set of conceptions that were taken to represent Indian doctrine. These dynamics become evident in an examination of three vital terms in the GitC, namely dharma, yoga, and brahman.

Dharma is of course a broad cultural concept in the South Asian context, and it has different usages and meanings in an important text like the Gitd. How does Schlegel organize these usages and meanings in his target language? In the first instance, dharma is religio: 1) in 2.7, where dharmasammEdhacet@ ["mind confused over what is the Law"]" becomes "religione mentem attonitus," "mind stupefied withlin/by religio;" 2) in 2.40, where "svalpam apy asya dharmasya trdyate mahato bhaydt ["even very little of this Law saves from great peril"]" becomes %el tantilluin huius religionis liberal ab ingentiformidine," "even so little of this religio frees from vast fear;" 3) in 9.2 1, where "evam trayidharmam anuprapannd ["Thus following devoutly the Law of the Vedas"]" becomes "sic religionem librorum sacrorum sectantes," "thus following the religio of the sacred books;" and 4) in 18.66, where "sarvadharmdn parityajya ["Abandon all the Laws"]" becomes "cunctis religionibus dimissis," "with all the religios abandoned." We might first investigate Schlegel's claim that Latin, because of its inherent structure, does a better job at word-for-word translation with these simple examples in mind. In the last two excerpts (9.21 and 18.66), we can see the translator's point. While Latin does not precisely match the Sanskrit grammatically (Schlegel uses an ablative absolute, for example, to translate the gerund phrase in 18.66), word order is indeed preserved. This is particularly clear in 9.21, where only a heavily inflected language can manage the placement of the verbal form. But there are also limitations. Indeed, Latin cannot manage the compound in 2.7 and Schlegel reverts to a catch-all ablative to try to capture its sense. And in 2.40, word order is slightly changed and Schlegel inserts a pronoun, just the kind of thing Latin was supposed to be able to avoid. Indeed, Latin manages to accomodate Sanskrit in a number of ways, but the fit is hardly precise. The methodological fixation on Latin has seemingly asserted itself beyond the realities and practicalities of translation.

This concentration of agenda and practice, however, leads to some interesting results. Religio, for example, is the root of the English word "religion,"60 but Schlegel was more attuned to its classical context, and this is certainly the context to assume. The idea of worship and observance is present in the term, but religio also has the sense of "tradition-keeping," as found in Cicero, and b'scrupulousness," a kind of care which points back to the ancient Greek root (as in "neglect"). The merit of translating dhartna as religio may be the matching vagueness of these terms, but Schlegel has hit on something rather specific in 2.40 and 18.66, where asya dharmasya refers to the karmayoga teaching, and sarvadharmiin refers to all such dharmas to be abandoned before Krishna, whatever they may be. These uses of the term dharma do not refer to "religions," "rites," or "laws," though these concepts may be indirectly referenced. "Teaching" may be appropriate in the first case but seems too narrow for the second. Schlegel's religio, as "a form of tradition-keeping and scrupulousness,~~ may actually be quite to the point, capturing what karmayoga is as a dharma, and spreading wide enough to capture all of the possible attachments referred to in the grand pronouncement in 18.66. Religio is not the only way in which dharma is rendered in the text, however, and here we must pause over whether Schlegel is simply being sensitive to context, requiring a certain bending of the rules of consistency in the target languageY6'or whether other forces are at work.

60

See the analysis of etymology in King, Orientalism and Religion, 35-38. As Gipper has argued, Schlegel is presenting a "refractive translation." "Here a complex expression or concept in the source language is rendered, according to context, by various expressions in the target language, or split up into its semantic features. This procedure may give a closer correspondence to the specific passage of the text, but the unity of the source concept is liable to be destroyed." Helmut Gipper, "Understanding as a Process of Linguistic Approximation: The Discussion between August Wilhelm von Schlegel, S.A. Langlois, Wilhelm von Humboldt and G.W.F. Hegel on the Translation of the Bhagavadgita and the Concept of 'Yoga,"' in Studies in the History of Western Linguistics, edited by Theodora Bynon and F.R. Palmer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 119-120. Gipper's article is quite important for the later stages of my project, so I will be citing it often, but the author himself admits that "much still remains to be done" on his topic (123). One very helpful aspect of the article is the translation of some of August Wilhelm's comments on his Git5 translation from the Indische Bibliothek from 1826 (IB 2,254258). He registers frustration with dharma there: "Take, for example, the word dharma. It means in continuous progresssion: lex,jus, justitia, officium, religio, pietas, sanctitas; it also means mos, even a

For example, in 4.7-862dharma and adharma become pietas and impietas, which has the sense of "dutiful conduct."63 The reason for this choice is clear: religio does not have a clear antithesis, but pietas does (in impietas), and establishing such a relation seems important in rendering the Sanskrit. But this is not a consistent principle for Schlegel. In 1.40:~ dharma and closely related terms are variously represented ("Stirpiurn excidio delentur sacra getttilitia perennia; religione deleta per omnem stirpem gliscit impietas") and the same kind of admixture appears in the

translation of 9.2-3, where dharmya (the adjectival form) becomes pium and airaddadhEnZh piimsZ dharmasyEsya appears as "Quifide deficientur homines huic religioni habenda."

These instances do not exhaust the array of terms Schlegel deploys in order to translate dharma. On several occasions, he uses lex (e.g., 1 1.18 and 14.27, where Q s n a is protector and

founder of the endless dharmd). In addition, the rendering of two famous verses presents us with another option: 2.316' appears as "Proprii etiam oficii memorem non te contremiscere oportet: legitimo bellow melius qziidquam militi evenire nequit" and 3.3566becomes "Satius est suo

of cio, etsi deficientibus viribus, fungi, quam alienum officium accurate implere; in suo oficio --

---

-

mere institution of nature, for that relating to human reproduction, for example, is commonly called

mathua-dharma [sic} in the writings of the Buddhists, as in the admonition abstinete a rebus venereis. This many-sidedness can be grasped quite well, and justified from the Indian system. But is there any Latin word capable of climbing up and down the scale according to the requirements of the respective context?" Translation in Gipper, 119. 62 4.7-8: "yadi yadci hi dharmasya glcnir bhavati Bhirata/ abhyutthcinam adharmasya taditmiinam srjcimy aham//paritriyciya scidhUnciry vinisdya ca du&tim/dharmasaysfhcipanirthiya sambhavimi yuge yuge [For whenever the Law languishes, Bhirata, and lawlessness flourishes, I create myself. I take on existence from eon to eon, for the rescue of the good and the desctruction of the evil, in order to reestablish the Law]." 63 In Schlegel's rendering of 4.8, by the way, Latin comes as close as it possibly can to mastering a Sanskrit compound: dharmasamsthcipanirthiya becomes pietatis stabiliendae gratia. 1.40: "kulaksayepranaiyanti kuldharmq sanitanii(~/dharmenage kulam Msnam adharmo 'bhibhavaty uta [With the destruction of family the eternal family Laws are destroyed. When Law is

64

destroyed, lawlessness besets the entire family]."

"svadharmam api cciveksya nu vikampitum arhasi/dharmycid dhi yuddhcic chreyo 'nyat ksatriyasya nu vidyate [Look to your Law and do not waver, for there is nothing more salutary for a baron

65 2.3 1:

than a war that is lawful]." 3.35: "Sreyin svadharmo vigunah paradharmit svanuflhitat/svadharme nidhanam ireyah paradharmodayid api [It is more salutary to carry out your own Law poorly than another's Law well; it is better to die in your own Law than to prosper in another's]." 66

satins est, mortem oppetere: alieunum officium formidenem affert." Thus dharma also appears as officium, or an "obligatory duty," a "service" or "courtesy." It may be entirely appropriate that Schlegel shifts his usage in an attempt to capture the different senses of dharma. As Schlegel himself suggested, the demand that for each expression in the original one and the same word should be used everywhere may be valid for the translation of a geometry textbook. In the translation of philosophical texts it may only be made to the extent that they approach geometry textbooks in content and method. It will suit the works of Plato less than those of Aristotle. A poetic representation of the mind's innermost conceptions of itself and of the infinite and eternal, can by no means be treated like a collection of algebraic signs.67 Nevertheless, this context sensivity should probably be thought within certain limits, for Schlegel has conveyed dharma with a rather wide range of Latin terms. In order to clarify this range of usage, Schlegel might have included a note or inserted the original terms in brackets, as Gipper suggests.68But we might ask, why did the translator allow himself this kind of freedom in the first place? Out of sheer frustration? First, we can point to Schlegel's desire to translate every Sanskrit word into Latin, to offer an exhaustive translation. Thus he had to find some way to render terms, even when they gave him some trouble. Apparently, for example, "looking to your svadharma" cannot be "looking to your own religio," because that did not seem felicitous to Schlegel; hence a shift to officio was necessary, because it makes more sense to "look to your own office" as a warrior and act on it than it does to "look to your own form of scrupulousness and care" as a warrior. But second, in these sorts of examples we see the evidence of an aesthetic sense of translation, where adjustments on the original are necessary in order to bring certain concepts to light. It is impossible, Schlegel seems to be saying, that an author (or a culture) could mean to tie all of these different contexts into this one concept, dharma. As we saw in his preface to the Dante 67

Translation in Gipper, "Understanding as a Process," 119.

translations, Schlegel allows himself some freedom to embellish in order that the text's concepts become clear. In the process, "the unity of the source concept" is indeed "destroyed," as Gipper suggested that it might be. Nevertheless, Schlegel's fixation on translationally mastering the Indian text produces a dispersal of terms across the native concept, producing an opening for later confrontation and discussion. The clearest evidence for this phenomenon appears as Schlegel's response to yoga and related terms. Gipper's article on this question provides a useful starting point, for it shows that yoga is translated by about six different Latin words in Schlegel's text, including applicatio, destinatio, devotio, exercitatio, maiestas, and mysterium. The article also shows the range of concepts suggested by these Latin terms in German according to their definitions in the LatinGerman dictionary employed by Schlegel(113-114). This is not to mention the uses of a number of other terms that also stem from the root yuj and thereby claim some family resemblance with yoga. Here I will present a brief set of examples where this variety of usage once again represents a kind of artfulness, suggesting that Schlegel's fixation on a certain classical, linguistic ideology of representing the Indian text has overwhelmed the translation and dispersed its concepts across a wide spectrum. For the most part, terms related to yuj are translated according to Latin terms that come from the root devoveo ("to vow" or "to dedicate oneself unconditionally"), including devotus (the participle) and devotio (a noun formed from the verbal root). For example, in 2 . 5 0 ~Schlegel ~ is quite consistent: "Mente devotus in hoe aevo utraque dimittit, bene et malefacta. Quare devotion! te devove: devotio dexteritatem in operibus praebet." Here all of the forms of yuj are 68

"Understanding as a Process," 121. 2.50: "buddhiyuktojahztiha ubhe suktaduskpe/tasmCd yogEya yujyasva yogah karmasu kauialam [Armed with this singleness of purpose, a man relinquishes here both good and evil karman. Therefore yoke yourself to this application - this application is the capacity to act.]." Note that van Buitenen, who is 69

properly matched with forms of devovere, showing off Latin's ability to handle a variety of grammatical forms that stem from one root. One wonders why Schlegel did not employ the seemingly cognate Latin verb iungere, which seems to match the semantic content ofyuj quite precisely; nevertheless, the utilization of the Latin set of terms is reasonably effective: in this case, the line reads, "With mind dedicated in this life he rejects both good and bad deeds. For which reason dedicate yourself to dedication: dedication provides skillfulness in actions." But Schlegel does not always maintain the use of the devovere terms. For example, the verb accingere is used for yuj in 2.38 and in 6.29, and the relatively straightforward yogayuktlitmti becomes devotioni deditus. These may appear to be rather insignificant examples, considering that both words do a reasonable job of conveying the fundamental sense of dedication and engagement that goes with yoga. We begin to see Gipper's point about destroying the unity of the concept, however, when accingere also translates samlicaran in 3.26 and yajikjyiicaratah in 4.23. In addition, deditus is also used in 13.10 to translate bhakti, creating potential confusion between two vital concepts in the text. Perhaps the most significant variation of this kind is associated with the use of the root exercere, for example, in 6.10, where yogi ytuijita satatam litmlinam becomes devotus semper ipse se exerceat. This pattern is repeated after chapter 6 of the Gitci, when variations on the formula "yoking to yoga" are employed (the verb is consistently translated by exerceo and yoga is translated by devotio). Schlegel also wishes to distinguish karmayoga from yoga in general at a certain point by using the term exercatio (5.1-2). But once again, the Latin term appears in other places translating other concepts, like exercatio in 6.35, which is used to render abhycsa, thus confusing whatever contextual distinction Schlegel presumably wished to make.

fastidiously consistent when it comes to dharma (it is always translated "Law"), has introduced variety into the translation ofyuj-related terms.

Again, these are subtle shifts that may appear to be superficial. The Gitii uses such foundational terms in a variety of ways, in a variety of contexts. While Schlegel attempts to match this polyvalence, he also seems concerned to avoid the stylistic awkwardness of phrases like "yoked to yoga" or "joined with union," etc.; he varies his terms in order to produce a more felicitous translation. Both impulses (contextual and stylistic) cause potential confusion in the mixture of concepts in the original text. Schlegel's approach often seems to suggest that the original text really can 7 have wished to say something like "yoked to yoga" -and yet that is indeed what it says. Schlegel's interventions on behalf of his idea of the text are even clearer in other instances. When philosophical paths distinguishing knowledge and action or SZtmkhya and Yoga darianas are involved, yoga becomes destinatio, a somewhat obscure word in Latin which Schlegel probably took to mean "intention" or "determination": in 3.3, there are two teachings, "through the determination of the knowledge of reasoning ones and through the determination of the works of the dedicated ones [scientiae destinatione rationalium, et operum destinatione devotorum]." This way of putting the distinction between Sirpkhya and Yoga persists in 5.5, where the translation conveys the contrast and union of "dedication" and "reasoning," but no recourse to destinatio is needed here, probably because there is no confusing "yoga of yoga," as seems to be the case in 3.3. Once again, Schlegel has varied his terminology where the text fails to make semantic distinctions that he sees as stylistically and conceptually necessary.

In other contexts, particularly where it is associated with divine action, yoga is translated by mysterium and mysticus. Once again, it seems implausible to Schlegel that the same concept could be employed where the context was clearly practical and also in places where god's secret ways were discussed. Thus, in 7.25 "yogam@&am~ah [clouded by the illusion of my yoga]" becomes tnystica Magia involutus, as is the case in 10.18 and 11.47, where yoga is "the mystical"

(mysticam). In 9.5 yet another alternative is offered: "Behold my supernal yoga!" becomes ecce mysterizim meum augzistum (also the case in 11.8). Perhaps strangest of all is 10.7: "et* vibhtitim yogam ca mama yo vetti tattvatah/so 'vikampenayogena yujyate ndtra sayiayah [He

who truly knows this ubiquity and yoga of mine is himself yoked to unshakable yoga, no doubt of that]" is rendered "Qui hanc meam maiestatem acfacultatem mysticam novit penitus, is indefessa devotione sese devovet sine ullo dubio." Within the space of a line, Schlegel translates the same

term with two radically different Latin words or phrases, presenting a rather clear case where he found it quite necessary to improve upon the original. At the very least, the activity of the divine and the activity of the human cannot be the same: what god performs is a "mystical," "mysterious" practice; human beings "dedicate" themselves to disciplined but very concrete activities in the world. It is appropriate to end this discussion of Schlegel's translation practices around the term yoga with the question of divine action, because I wish to turn finally to Schlegel's renderings of brahman. At this point, we can comment that Schlegel struggled with yoga for a number of

reasons. For one thing, he perhaps lacked some of the philosophical context that would have helped him to be more precise. In addition, there are indeed a number of different contextual uses for the term, and this makes consistent translation quite difficult, as Schlegel himself suggested in his 1826 reflections: The word yoga is a true Proteus: its intellectual metamorphoses compel us to use cunning and force to tie it down and make it present itself to us and reveal its secrets. I have searched everywhere and left nothing untried. I even hit upon the idea of going back to its derivation and substituting conjugium, along with an adjective where it has a mystical sense. But this seemed to me very disconcerting and disturbing. I would be very grateful for suggestions of better expressions. I am not at all concerned about defending my translation, but rather bringing it nearer to perfection.70

70

Translated in Gipper, "Understanding as a Process," 119.

Despite the challenges faced by any translator when it comes to a difficult term like yoga, Schlegel's difficulties are both emblematic of and compounded by his own attitude towards the Indian source. The Git5 simply must become an exhaustively Latin, classical text, so Schlegel searches "everywhere" and leaves "nothing untried." The failure of the rigorous standard often leads to judgments according to stylistic taste, i.e., whether formulations in the original seem "disconcerting" or "disturbing." Experimentation and style, in the end, are put into play as features of translational "cunning" and "force" in order to extract and extort the meaning from concepts like yoga -but as we have seen, this is indeed like trying to hold down Proteus. Words have different meanings, especially in different contexts, but in Schlegel's translation, an uninformed reader is given no evidence at all that certain usages are tied to the same concept. It may be important, for example, that both devotion and action are yogas within the text, and that both humanity and divinity seem to perform yoga. Because Schlegel chose a specific approach to translation, however, these connections (whatever their interpretive worth) are lost. At the same time, however, others were opened by the diverse range of terms used to translate the foundational concept, inviting other avenues of interpretation. Turning finally to renderings of brahman, we find two distinctive ways in which Schlegel attempted to render this difficult term. First, brahman is unsurprisingly associated with divinity. Thus in 2.72 brahmisthitih ("stance in brahmany')becomes divina statio, in 5.21 brahmayogayuktZtmZ ("spirit yoked with the yoga of brahman") is divinae devotion! devotus, 6.38 brahma!zah pathi ("the path to brahman") appears as a tramite divino, and in 18.53 brahmabhziyciya kalpate ("he is able to become brahman") is rendered ad divinatn conditionem conformatur. This conflation of brahman and the divine is of course common and perhaps unavoidable in translating the term, and the use of the Latin adjective perhaps offers brahman more latitude, since it generally refers to a broad range of "divine matters" or "higher powers."

Yet the concept bears a certain heritage that runs afoul of the Sanskrit term and the way it is thought in the South Asian philosophical tradition. This is particularly evident in 18.53 where, like his brother, Schlegel resists the full import of the pronouncement: by following the yoga of the Gitc, one is in fact suited to become brahman; one is not simply "shaped to the divine condition." Friedrich Schlegel had certain philosophical reasons for keeping the divine and the human distinct; August Wilhelm has his own, which have more to do with the shape he envisions for the text. This becomes clear as we turn to the other rendering of brahinan.

In Schlegel's translation, brahman is predominantly numen, the Latin word for "divine power" or "majesty" later made famous in Otto's Idea of the Holy. The reasonably straightforward verse 4.24" is thus rendered as "Niimen est in oblatione, numen in oleo sacro, numen in igne, numine litatur: ad numen iturus est ille, qui numen operando meditatur." In such contexts, numen appears to be a helpful alternative to "God," for it suggests that "divine will" or "power" is quite active in the world and does not necessarily stand outside of it (Otto would eventually advocate the exact opposite reading of numen). Nevertheless, Schlegel's translation is once again afflicted by a simultaneous dispersal and intermingling of terms and concepts. For example, whenever Krsna speaks, the text introduces his words with &ibhagav6n uvdca. Schlegel's translation is ALMUM NUMEN loqitur, suggesting that Qsna and brahman are unproblematically the same. They may indeed be the same at the ultimate level, but the reader of Schlegel's text will take this as an easy move, when of course it is not within the native commentarial traditions that gather around the text. Another example of a strange admixture occurs at 5.24, where Qsna invokes the nature of brahmanirwina: "yo 'ntahsukho 'ntariirdmas tathdntarjyotir eva yah/sa yogi

' 4.24: "brahmirpaw brahma havir brahm5gnau brahmani hutam/ brahmaiva tena gantavyam brahmakarmasamcidhini [Brahman is the offering, brahman is the oblation that is poured into the brahman fire by brahman: he who thus contemplates the act as nothing but brahman must reach brahman]."

brahmanirv@am brahmabhzito 'dhigacchati [When he finds happiness within, joy within, light within, this man of yoga becomes brahman, attains to the beatitude that is brahman]." Once again Schlegel is presented with the problem of the brahmabhzito concept, and here it happens to stand right alongside brahmanirv6na. Clearly (for Schlegel) the phrases cannot be referring to the same thing: "Qui intus delectatur, intus gaudet, quiqueperinde intus illnminatur etiam, is devotus ad exstinctionem in numine, divinitatis particeps, pervenit." Thus "extinction" takes place in the numen, and the "partaking" (another weak translation of bhE) is of divinitas. Again, the original concept is dispersed across different terms, which has the effect of mixing other concepts, producing a rather confusing array of terms in the target language. Is brahman the same as "the Lord Krsna"? Should brahmanimiiga and brahmabhzita be carefully distinguished, and if they are, should brahma appear as "divinity"? This may appear to be a pedantic group of objections to rather insignificant details in the text. For, after all, are these concepts of the divine not ultimately the same in the GitZ and the Hindu tradition anyway, such that confusing the meaning and unity of the original concept is really quite irrelevant? As a counter-question, consider the following: where do we get the idea that the Hindu concept of divinity is both so confused and so self-same in the first place? I believe it is often subtly conveyed by translations, such as Schlegel's. Nevertheless, this kind of flat accusation is not the most productive way to understand what Schlegel did in translating brahman. Rather, it can be specified according to a specific framing of translational practices. Schlegel's desire to render brahman once again had a particular force which concentrated the fabrication of the classical in language and then dispersed it in terms like nutnen and divinitas. What resulted was indeed a diffuse sense of the original concept, but the connotations of it in Schlegel's hands are clear, as we see by recalling part of Schlegel's dedication in the preface:

Therefore first to you, most sanctified bard, hypophet of the divine will [Numinisquehypopheta}, whoever in the end you were said to be among mortals, author of this poem, from all of the oracular utterances of which the mind is snatched up to the eternal, divine [aeterna atque divina] height with an almost indescribable pleasure: to you first, I must say I worshipfully bid you safe and well, and I always revere your footprints. ( ~ x v i ) ' ~ Perhaps this is the best evidence of Schlegel's philosophical agenda embodied by his translation, as inextricably intertwined with a classical myth of philology and language, for the author of the text is depicted as a cross between a Homeric bard and an Orphic poet, and only in the voice of this kind of classical author, within this kind of classical aesthetic, are the divine and numinous secrets of the text opened up. In reflecting on his translation (as he did in 1824), Schlegel was daunted by what he had produced and perhaps anticipated the controversy that was to come. His confidence in Latin was seemingly scaled back, as he suggested that perhaps the text could be used as a textbook for young students of colonial administration and the law at Hayleybury College in Calcutta, for they had something of a classical education, and his text thus provided an entry into the Sanskrit language and Indian culture (see IB 2,9-10). Indeed, in the midst of later conversation about his Git6, Schlegel stepped back even further and no longer exuded any confidence at all. Schlegel defended himself in the face of his critics, citing his vast experience as a translator and suggesting "that translating is indeed a voluntary yet awkward servitude, an unrewarding skill, a thankless craft; thankless, not only because the best translation is never valued as highly as the original work, but also because the translator must increasingly feel the inevitable imperfection of his work as he gains in The skilled translator has usually thought of all of the objections he receives already and can

'

"Ergo te primum, votes sanctissime, Numinisque hyopheta, quisquis tandem inter mortales dictus tu fueris. carminis huius auctor, cuius oraculis mens ad excelsa quaeque, aeterna atque divina cum inenarrabili quadam delectatione rapitur: te primum, impam, verabundus salvere iubeo, et vestigia semper adoro."

generally say to his critics, "'I have selected from several shortcomings or weaknesses the one that seemed the most acceptable. If you can suggest something better...then state it. If not, you might as well have stayed at homey"(ibid.). Despite this apologetic, however, the GitZ translation is no longer a fully reconstituted text; instead The translation of a philosophical poem, a translation, moreover from Sanskrit into Latin, was a tentative experiment on my part. Although reduction into prose was necessary, I did not want to lose the form completely: I aimed to give readers at least an idea of the overwhelming majesty and grandeur of the original text. (119) Schlegel seems to be admitting that some aspects of the experiment failed. Technical apprehension of the GitZ's language, which was framed by a philological vision of classical, Latinate science and its ability to convey "majesty," became blurred and indistinct in the light of the text, and yet Schlegel persisted in his vision: his translations of Indian sources continued to appear in Latin, and he remained committed to it as the language of the human sciences up to the end of his life.74 Nevertheless, the translational by-products of Schlegel's scholarly myth were the sparks of a new discussion that took the GitG as its center. This discussion was firmly rooted in local debates and concerns. And yet the disruption of a smooth interpretive surface through a particular deployment of philology in Schlegel's translation introduced a new set of rules and standards for the reception of South Asian sources. While entirely encompassed by scholarly myth, Schlegel's philological approach demanded careful attention to conceptions of Indian doctrine, which indeed marked an advance in the scholarly understanding of South Asian sources. His dispersal of terms and concepts in the text posed Sphinx-like questions to the members of his community, producing productive tensions in the interpretation of South Asian textual otherness. Translation of and scholarship on South Asian sources could no longer be seamlessly woven with

73

Translated in Gipper, 118.

myths and left at that: sources were a matter of technical discussion and debate that inevitably touched the heart of the difference in textual encounter.

Conclusion: The Study of India and Public Misperceptions As a feature of my survey of Schlegel's development, I have already mentioned the controversial efforts undertaken by the Heidelberg Symbolists, efforts that Schlegel and Bopp resisted. In the mid-1820's, Schlegel curiously found himself positioned alongside the Symbolists, Romantic enthusiasts, and Catholic appropriators of India. This episode once again reinforces the importance of the way in which local debate and public myths play an important role in positioning the scholar and his or her representations of religion. Criticism (or rather, exposure) of Schlegel came from two sources. One was an article in a French journal, La Catholique, ouvrage piriodique public sous la direction de M. Ie Baron dlEckstein, which appeared in 1827. In it the anonymous author claimed that "M. A. G. de Schlegel is 6 inoitii c a t h ~ l i ~ u e In . " his ~ ~published response, Berichtung einiger Mifideutungen,

Schlegel first wonders what it might mean for someone to be "half Catholic" and then acknowledges that someone might confuse him for such because of his reverance for Catholic authors and his championing of the Middle Ages (often over and against the Reformation). But he also argues that taking him as Catholic, "total or half," is like taking the classicist as a worshiper of the Olympian gods because he celebrates the accomplishments of Greek artists (SW 8,226). Despite this response, if "Herr von Eckstein and his colleagues" want to persist in their

See Czalpa, "DieApologie des Lateinischen als Wissenschaftssprache." According to the publication, other "high protestant intelligences" who had recently turned to Catholicism include Friedrich Schlegel (of course), but also Schelling (?), Tieck, William Jones (?), and Lavater. In addition, "Goethes 'est decidefort tard enfaveur du pantheisme." But both Goethe and Schiller often display "conceptionscatholiques." In response to these judgments, Schlegel comments, 74

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"DasIrrige find Grundlose vieler von den obigen Angaben werden die Leser ohne mein Zuthun berichtigen." Quoted in SW 8,227.

belief, Schlegel indicates what his other half might be: he reports that an Italian critic attacked his claim that Voltaire admired the prophet Muhammad by suggesting that he (Schlegel) had a "predilection [Vorliebe] for the sect of the Muslims." However, as Schlegel comments wryly, "I have not yet received a letter of commendation from the Mufti of Constantinople" (SW 8,230). The point is of contemporary interest: to what extent is the scholar implicated in the object of his or her study? Can the study of religion be like Classics? Or does interest in the religious tradition of the other necessarily imply an agenda that lurks behind the surface? For some of the intellectuals in Schlegel's milieu, Schlegel's studies, and his study of India in particular, indeed implicated him in just such an agenda. Most of the Berichtung text is devoted to a response to Johann Heinrich VoB's AntiSymbolik, which was a polemic against the Heidelberg Symbolists and their enthusiastic decentering of the classical in favor of Asian foundations. Schlegel also disagreed with the Symbolists, if for different reasons. But VoB often grouped Schlegel with the likes of Creuzer and Gorres, and here Schlegel felt he had to make some things quite clear." VoB made a set of inflammatory claims (Schlegel reproduces the offending passages in his text). Once again, Schlegel is called a "mystical Pope-worshiper," and it is suggested that the Romantic program is deliberately and closely associated with Catholicism (SW 8,233), which is in turn connected with an undermining, even traitorous Francophilia. VoB is most disturbed by Schlegel's youthful support of "an invisible society of noble men," which he sees as a thinly veiled allusion to the

''As the two greatest translators of the era, VoB and Schlegel had locked horns before. All the way back in

1796 Schlegel had issued a detailed review of the translation of Homer by VoB in 1796. In the review, he criticized VoB particularly for his tendency to "deutschify" Homer instead of letting Homer "greekify" German. He also criticized the lack of poetic sense and arbitrariness of the word order in the translation. See S W 10, 115-181. In 1801, Schlegel mostly retracted his criticism in prefacing a new printing of his essay in a collection of his critical works (181-185), and again in 1828 he commented on his own essay, this time once more striking a more ambivalent pose. This could be a result of the controversy I am discussing, though Schlegel claims that personal conflicts have nothing to do with the progress of scholarship (185-193). For a treatment comparing translation practices employed by VoB and Schlegel, see

hierarchical Catholic society of the Middle Ages, where emperors and church were in institutional collusion. But VoB also criticizes the association between this Romantic-Catholic vision and the retrieval of the "barbaric Orient" (SW 8,232), or "Indomania" (263), which is taken as a new, more primordial precedent for the restoration of a priestly order. In response to these claims, Schlegel first announces his disdain: "An insurmountable disgust comes over me every time I take this book in my hand" (SW 8,231). Nevertheless, he is forced to leaf through the whole thing to address the mistakes and lies published about him therein. In response to the charge that he shares a Catholic agenda with the Heidelberg group, Schlegel argues that his youthful vision of the "invisible society," discussed in 1806, was actually a patriotic call in the face of French aggression (SW 8,242). His praise was of German authors, both Protestant and Catholic. As to his Catholic associations, Schlegel reports that he had only a friendly acquaintance with Creuzer (235), and in a rather poignant paragraph, he admits a deep connection with his brother but suggests that the two of them had grown quite apart (249-250). In the end, Schlegel wishes to suggest that he can hardly be called a Catholic given the evidence VoB has presented. This is, after all, a scholarly discussion, and Schlegel is not seduced into refuting VoB's claims by making a public confession of his true religious beliefs.

In response to the myth of the Catholic study of India that is imputed to him, Schlegel does make a confession - one which drips with sarcasm: "I did everything for the purposes of the deliberate and secret alliance." Under the appearance of merely scholarly commerce with the literature and antiquities of this land I actually wished to promote the rule of priests in our Europe; through the presentation of mythology to set the stage for a mystical heresy; and what I reported of the brahmins, I wished to see brought to reality by means of the Jesuits. (259)

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Susan Bemofsky, "Writing the Foreign: Studies in German Romantic Translation," Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1998.

In another clever turn, Schlegel announces that the readers of Indische Bibliothek have apparently not taken him up on this agenda. Then he chides himself: if only he had chosen Tibetan Buddhism as his source for hierarchical renewal! That would have served his Papist interests much more effectively than the brahmins, whose community (Schlegel claims) is much less hierarchical, is hereditary, includes women, etc. (260-261). In his serious response to VoB, however, Schlegel brings out the heavy artillery. He responds to the imputation of a theological agenda with another kind of story that marks the full transformation of the Romantic myth of India into a scholarly myth. For India is indeed marked by its supposedly "barbarous" polytheism, but this arises from but one principle: out of the "highest animated intuition of nature." The magical force that exercised the natural powers over the sensuous mind obscured pure knowledge of the great and simple truths of religion, of which at least some of the most ancient races of man appeared to be in possession. However belief would have been compelled to its own creations through even this magical force of unconscious play of imagination: thus arose mythology, an enigmatic, insoluble web of daring, colossal, terrifying, and charming works, the many-colored garment of experience, of tradition, and of striking reflection. (264-265) While religions are "astounding" in their local and national differences, the investigation of the Indian tradition in comparison with others begins to reveal a set of deeper commonalities, pointing to a "common source" (265). Comparison of mythological concepts and texts is obviously important here, and thus the statement marks something of a rapprochement with the Symbolists (and Romantic myths of India), but so is the "affinity of languages," which guides the inquiry to its primordial origin. In this text, the technical apprehension of language, as a new object of study in the human sciences, covers India and enunciates it as a field of inquiry, and this is compelling enough to fend off all stories about philosophical or thelogical agendas, meeting the imputation about hidden esotericism with a clear and convincing public myth. This is surely the marker of a

discipline that has arrived. As Schlegel says in his conclusion, "Every scientific investigation must proceed unhindered on its course according to laws which are valid for its own domain. If one makes it dependent on a foreign authority, proscribing in advance what the results should be, then its whole essence is cancelled out, and it is actually annihilated" (281). In the end, however, even these laws and their domains have a story that must be told in order to justify their existence.

CHAPTER 6 - GERMAN ABSORPTION IN THE GEM: VON HUMBOLDT AND HEGEL

Introduction: Theoretical Interlude In her recent work, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak begins her analysis of the "(im)possible perspective...called the native informant" with treatments of Kant, Hegel, and Marx, because, as she writes, "to turn one's back on, say, this trio, when so much of one's critique is clearly if sometimes unwittingly copied from them, is to disavow agency, declare kingdom come by a denial of history."' Particularly interesting in the present context is Spivak's decision regarding Hegel: she opts to treat him alongside the Gild. What is strange about Spivak's account, however, is that it does not treat Hegel on the

Gitii, especially his lengthy lecture/article on the text from 1826, which is a main concern in this chapter; instead she remains aloof from this text that would seemingly be so probative (or worthy of probing), even though she is well aware of it. Spivak takes her Hegel from the Lectures on

Aesthetics (and from her own mind). She explains her decision in the following manner: Hegel's traffic with India is ably criticized by Michel H u h , Hegel el I 'orient: Suivi de la traduction annotde d'un essai de Hegel sur Ie Bhagavad-Gita (Paris: Vrin, 1979). Hulin includes Hegel's two reviews on the subject of the Gita and on its relationship to the philosophy of India. Any serious consideration of the specific topic of Hegel's orientalism would have to examine these essays in detail. My interest is in noticing how the well-known texts are woven with the axiomatics of imperialism, and therefore I keep to the IA [Lectures on Aesthetics]. (47-48) One is tempted to deconstruct the deconstruction. Spivak's text might be suggesting that "serious consideration of the specific topic of Hegel's orientalism" is not "woven with the axiomatics of

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Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 9.

imperialism;" thus is it not imperative to read Hegel's Git6 article. But that does not characterize the contrast presented here specifically enough. What steers Spivak away is her "interest," "interest in noticing...the well-known texts." Some questions are necessary: What does it mean for texts to be "well-known"? And why should we privilege them? Is the "being" of the "wellknown-ness" of texts perhaps related to the interpreter's "being well-known" by virtue of his or her power and authority? Such that the "well-known" interpreter is blinded to texts that are more incisive and wore insurgent (but also more difficult) as a site for interpretation? Spivak admits that her reading is "the kind of 'mistake' without which no practice can enable itself' (39), bespeaking a kind of radicalization of herrneneutical "prejudices." So be it. But there are hermeneutically productive "mistakes" and then there are just errors, and Spivak's choice is perhaps the latter. There is also much to commend Spivak's approach, however. In her reading, Spivak attempts to coordinate a logic that exists in both Hegel and the Git6, whereby history and political action are spiritualized and abstracted, subjecting action in time to an ideological law. This kind of reading presents an interesting challenge: On the track of the native informant, my interest drives me to deconstruct the opposition between Hegel and the Gita...It is my hope that to notice such a structural complicity of dominant texts from two different cultural inscriptions can be a gesture against some of the too-easy West-and-the-rest polarizations sometimes rampant in colonial and postcolonial discourse studies. To my mind, such a polarization is too much a legitimation-by-reversal of the colonial attitude itself. (39) My own formulation of Spivak's point, with specific regard to the topics taken up in this chapter, runs as follows: Figures like Wilhelm von Humboldt and Hegel represent the zenith of the Orientalism targeted by contemporary critics. On the one hand, von Humboldt represents the kind face of Orientalism: he was a technical scholar who approached the texts sympathetically, but inevitably contributed to "positive Orientalism," which remains a discourse of control. On

the other hand, Hegel was the arch-"negative Orientalist," whose configurations of India were pervasive and damaging. And yet, we should continue to re-read these texts, allowing Spivak's point to drive the general historical point home: it is foolish to ignore the genealogy of the languages we still speak. There is another point that has been lurking just below the surface in the present inquiry. What we see in a close examination of these texts is both the location of Orientalist conceptions in Western intellectual practices and the disruptive shifts already present there. A signficant aspect of reconstructing a theory of cross-cultural understanding has to do with articulating the non-selfsameness of the Western intellectual tradition, and as a result, we perceive the openness explored by Derrida: "What is proper to a culture is not to be identical with itself...there is no self-relation, no relation to oneself, no identification with oneself, without culture, but a culture of oneself as a culture of the other, a culture of the double genitive and of the difference to one~elf."~ Slavoj 2iiek shifts Derrida's insight into a cross-cultural frame: We effectively "understand" a foreign culture when we are able to identify with its point of failure: when we are able to discern not its hidden positive meaning, but rather its blind spot, the deadlock the proliferation of meaning endeavors to cover up. In other words, when we endeavor to understand the Other (another culture), we should not focus on its specificity (on the peculiarity of "their customs," etc.); we should rather endeavor to encircle that which eludes their grasp, the point at which the Other is in itself dislocated, not bound by its "specific context.". ..I understand the Other when I become aware of how the very problem that was bothering me (the nature of the Other's secret) is already bothering the Other itself.. .the paradox of the Universal is that its condition of impossibility is its condition of possibility: the dimension of the Universal emerges precisely and only insofar as the Other is not accessible to us in its specificity.. .3 Hegel's thought in particular was by its very nature always already non-identical to itself (and thus began to register the way Western thought in general was non-identical to itself); the

* Jacques Derrida, The Other Heading: Reflections on Today's Europe, translated by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael B. Naas (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, l992), 9-10.

universal of the concept's movement can be read as a universal that was ultimately impossible to specify. His attempts to particularize South Asian religion show differential moments that open a questioning of otherness, eliciting the same sort of secret rifts that were already "bothering" the text of the Other. That is to say, it is entirely possible for the Orientalist to ask the question that is right and faithful, even though that was the farthest thing from his intention and the intentionality of his discourse. Following Spivak, discerning these moments in the textual shifts and surpluses is just as disruptive to the Orientalist discourse of powerknowledge when one of its luminaries is found to be somehow right about or consonant with the Other, as it is to confront Orientalism head-on and deconstruct its faulty representations. In keeping with this purpose, this chapter will present the denouement of the story I have been telling by taking up the discussion of the GitZ that arose from August Wilhelm Schlegel's 1823 translation. I will argue that the disjunctions in Schlegel's translation (which was a function

of his particular form of methodological concentration in rendering the text) played an important role in prompting divergent responses. First, I will take up von Humboldt's reading, which takes its departure from the technical apprehension of language that had recently become active in the German reception of Indian texts. Von Humboldt's emphasis on the logos of linguistic science produced what we might see as positive results: he engaged in a technical analysis of the GitZ that was relatively free of value judgments and mythic representations. Next I will explore Hegel's response, which reinstated some old myths and conceptions. In both cases, I will attempt to focus the analysis around the key concepts and terms from the GitZ discussed in the previous chapter: dharma and the role of action, yoga and its polyvalences, and brahman as a religiophilosophical guidepost. Finally, I will treat the broader context of Hegel's India reception, suggesting that this reception has all of the marks of an already present exteriority - the self---

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~iavoj2i2ek !F.W.J. von Schelling, The Abyss of Freedom and Ages of the World (Ann Arbor: The

sameness of India within Hegel's system simply cannot be maintained, nor can the self-sameness of his Orientalist system.

Wilhelm von Humboldt's Gita It will be recalled that A.W. Schlegel reflected on the Protean character of his 1823 translation, particularly in connection to key terms like yoga: The word yoga is a true Proteus: its intellectual metamorphoses compel us to use cunning and force to tie it down and make it present itself to us and reveal its secrets. I have searched everywhere and left nothing untried. I even hit upon the idea of going back to its derivation and substituting conjugium, along with an adjective where it has a mystical sense. But this seemed to me very disconcerting and disturbing. I would be very grateful for suggestions of better expressions. I am not at all concerned about defending my translation, but rather bringing it nearer to perfection! Looking back on what he attempted to do, Schlegel candidly expresses three distinct moods that tend to overtake the careful student of this foreign text in the passage. First, there is sheer frustration and perplexity, which often seems to overtake Schlegel's translation in the variety of semantic choices that it presents in order to convey foundational concepts. Second, the disruptive nature of difference and complexity provokes a desire for control. It is tempting, according to Schlegel's account, to "tie down" and extort "secrets" from that which is foreign by "cunning and force." We could also imagine that this control might be achieved by retreating to familiar forms of categorization and interrogation. In many ways, this was Hegel's response. In addition, however, there is a mood of openness and experimentation that is present in Schlegel's self-evaluation. The translator calls out to his comrades to engage in further refinement of the terms, such that a better understanding is achieved. This call has a scientific, logos-driven character, where proper representation is not thought to be a question of reverting to

University of Michigan Press, 1997), 50-5 1. Translated in Gippe~,"Understanding as a Process of Linguistic Approximation," 119.

4

the tried and true but is rather a product of continuing progress in research. Wilhelm von Humboldt seemed to respond to this call. Here I will not wade into the vast body of work that von Humboldt left behind, but a brief examination of von Humboldt's response to the Gitii (and to Schlegel's translation of it) should give a good sense of some of his broader theoretical commitments. In von Humboldt's work we discern the way in which the German discourse on India came of age by the 182OYs,guided in particular by careful attention to language. By coalescing the university institution and the human sciences (and linguistics in particular) and by including the study of India in this broad vision, von Humboldt charted a distinctive course for the study of Indian religion in Europe. The content of this study is exemplified by his approach to the Gita: technical examination of texts, along with broader acquaintance with the Indian philosophical context, led to an increasingly differentiated set of conceptions that moved ever closer to an adequate understanding of Indian culture and religiosity. Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) was a Prussian aristocrat from Potsdam whose early studies were devoted to law at Gottingen. He also developed an interest in philology and literature, an interest that was promoted by his friendship with Schiller. At the latter's behest, von Humboldt moved to Jena in 1794 in order to assist with the publication of the important journal Horen. Von Humboldt remained in Jena until 1797, and during his residence there he came to know Goethe, Fichte, and the Schlegel brothers. After travels in France and Spain, von Humboldt was appointed Prussian ambassador to the Vatican, a position that he held until 1808. At that point he was called upon to undertake the founding of the university at Berlin, which was one of his most lasting monuments.

According to Ziolkowski, von Humboldt attempted to bring together "the Weimar conception of Bildung with the Jena spirit of the ~niversity."~In other words, von Humboldt was to insist on an institution that had a firm grounding in traditional forms of knowledge in service of human growth and progress, but the Romantics had impressed him with the need for wholeness and dialogue in the institution; it was designed to bring together the best minds from all realms of knowledge for knowledge's own sake, and it would promote this progress through an experimental, give-and-take method. According to von Humboldt, It is characteristic of universities that they deal with knowledge never as an accomplished body of facts (as do the schools) but as a problem to be solved; and it is this characteristic that determines the relationship between teachers and students, neither of whom is there for the sake of the other but rather both for the benefit of science... (292) By 1810, this scientific institution was up and running, and von Humboldt devoted considerable attention to it. But von Humboldt's political experience was too valuable to be left untapped during the age of Napoleon. He served as ambassador to the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1810 to 1813, participated in the negotiations that led to the Congress of Vienna, and finally served as ambassador to England from 18 17 to 18 18. In 1819, von Humboldt was able to enter a well-deserved retirement. One of von Humboldt's last administrative efforts was to promote the institutionalized investigation of India and Indian texts. Von Humboldt had a long acquaintance with A.W. Schlegel that went back to Jena. Over the years the two had remained in contact, pursuing their mutual interest in language together. After the original founding of the university at Berlin, the Prussian educational system continued to expand, and Bonn was its third institution, founded in 1818. As a well-known intellectual (and friend of von Humboldt's), Schlegel was an obvious candidate to bolster the reputation of the new university, and his personal situation left him open Theodore Ziolkowski, German Romanticism and Its Institutions (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

to new professional opportunities (his long-time companion, Madame de Stael, had just died). Schlegel's recent turn to Sanskrit coincided quite nicely with a chance for the university system to gather further prestige by founding the first German chair of Indology, which Schlegel assumed with the establishment of the Bonn institution in 1818. Von Humboldt had also befriended Franz Bopp and was instrumental in the founding of a later chair for him in Oriental literature at Berlin in 1821. The running theme in von Humboldt's intellectual life was language. When he had the rare opportunity to pursue his scientific concerns, von Humboldt devoted himself to a study of linguistics that extended well beyond the usual European or Classical realms. In early treatises von Humboldt wrote on Basque and Native American languages, and gradually expanded his repertoire to include knowledge of South American languages, Chinese, and the languages of the South Pacific. Interest in linguistic structures led to the landmark text, The Diversity of Human

Language-Structure and Its Influence on the Mental Development of

ank kind: a theoretical

introduction to a much longer work on Malayan-Polynesian. Particularly as a product of his association with Schlegel and Bopp, however, von Humboldt also pursued an active interest in Sanskrit, which peaked in his studies of the Bhagavad GitZ during the mid-1820's. Von Humboldt's interest was seemingly accelerated by a desire to defend the efforts of his friend Schlegel against the attack by Simon Alexandre Langlois, the French Sanskritist who had published a series of articles that vigorously criticized Schlegel's translation of the GitE in the

Journal Asiatique (1824). Langlois targeted the phenomenon that prompted the investigation in the previous chapter: Schlegel was unable to find single terms in Latin to render foundational concepts in the original text. Von Humboldt generally affirmed his friend's strategy in a letter to

him in 1825, which was eventually published as a public response to Langlois in the Indische Bibliothek (1826): When assessing any translation it must first be remembered that translating is in principle an impossible undertaking, since different languages do not constitute synonomies of identically structured concepts. A good translation can be expected only from one who has realized and assimilated this point. No translation can be more than an approximation, not only to the beauty, but also to the sense of the original.,,If, as is the case with many philosophical expressions in Sanskrit, words have meanings of such many-sidedness that they cannot be rendered by any one word in the language into which one is translating, then there is not choice but to represent each aspect of the meaning with one word and to use the appropriate one on each occasion.' As a general principle, von Humboldt argues, Langlois' judgment was entirely unfair because it simply failed to acknowledge the difficulties in bridging the asymmetrical structures and semantics of two different languages. This is not to say that the matter was closed. Langlois' review spurred von Humboldt to activity, first in the direct (and lengthy) response in the Indische Bibliothek, and then in a formal set of lectures to the Berlin Academy of Sciences (1825 and 1826). An examination of these texts follows, with particular emphasis on the lectures, in order to observe the advances in the understanding of concepts like dharma, yoga, and brahman that von Humboldt hoped to promote. While he believed that Langlois was generally unfair to Schlegel, von Humboldt took the Frenchman's positions as an occasion to extend upon and clarify Schlegel's translational choices, prompting a technical discussion about the meaning of the Gila's teachings. Let us begin with von Humboldt's commentary on the conceptualization of dharma in the Gitd. We will recall that Schlegel used a variety of Latin terms to convey the concept (religio, -

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Published most recently as Wilhelm von Humboldt, On Language: On the Diversity of Human Language Construction and its Influence on !ke Mental Development of the Human Species, edited y Michael Losonsky, translated by Peter Heath (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 7 Translated in Gipper, "Understanding as a Process," 1 12. See Wilhelm von Hurnboldt, "Ueber die Bhagavad-Gitk Mi! Beziig aufdie Beurtheilung der Schlegelschen Ausgabe im Pariser Asiatischen Journal," Gesa~nmelteSchriften, Volume V, edited by Albert Leitzmann (1906; reprint, Berlin: Walter de

gentilitia, pietas, lex, and ofticio), depending on the context for its use. Langlois attacked the Latin translation at the earliest opportunity when Schlegel employed sacra gentilitia and impietas in 1.40,' recommending "familial duty" as the proper rendering. Von Humboldt agrees that Schlegel's translation is limited but also cannot accept "familial duty" or simply "duty" (Pflicht) as the single term to render dharma. Rather, because "all political law in India was also religious," the proper rendering in this context might have been j w a in order to make the appropriate connection to "national constitution and caste distinction" (UBG, 160-161). But von Humboldt's general defense against the single-minded theory of translation regarding such foundation concepts stands. Langlois may wish to maintain devoir ("duty") in translating dharma, but eventually he will be forced to turn to droit ("right") in order to convey its meaning in context (UBG,168). The usage of dharma in the GitZ has both senses; it is that which demands a certain activity, and it is also the performance of the duty itself. This is clear in 2.40; where von Humboldt agrees with the introduction of the term religio to translate dharma as a kind of observance or action, if its traditional, " R ~ i s c h e "sense is recalled (ibid.). Thus, dharma sets the scene: von Humboldt is eager to reject Langlois' limited conception of translating such concepts because it is simply insensitive to context, both cultural and textual. But Schlegel's ambitious project did not contain all the answers either. This critical stance is evident in von Humboldt's examination of the yoga concept, which is extensive and sophisticated, representing an important intensification of logos around the Indian text. Von Humboldt made a lengthy statement on the matter to his friend Schlegel in Gruyter & Co., 1968)' 167-168. All future references to this essay will be cited as UBG with the page number. * 1.40: "kulak.yayeprapaSyantikuladharm$zsancitanii?z/dharmenage kulam Msnam adharmo'bhibhavaty uta [With the destruction of family the eternal family Laws are destroyed. When Law is destroyed, lawlessness besets the entire family]." 9 2.40: "nehcibhikramancis'o 'stipratyavciyo nu vidyate/svalpam apy asya dharmasya trayate mahato bhaycit [In this there is no forfeiture of effort, nor an obstacle to completion; even very little of this Law saves from great peril]."

response to Langlois' objections, but it contained much more than simple and specific rejoinders; von Humboldt took the opportunity to outline a theoretical perspective on the translation of the text and its terms. First, von Humboldt writes, It would have been impossible for you to find in any language a single translation suitable for every occurrence of a term which derives from the very depths of the characteristic mental disposition [Geisteseigenthiimlichkeit]of the originating nation. Consequently, you have had to choose several, and even though objections may be raised against some of these, though it might even be accepted that anybody who knows the Sanskrit word yoga only through translation can never grasp its true meaning, it would nevertheless be difficult to suggest better renderings, and impossible to eliminate every blemish.I0 Von Humboldt's defense of Schlegel's strategy has some important theoretical grounding. In agreement with precursors like Herder, von Humboldt assumes that nations are individual and distinct, and hence their languages express this particularity at the most intimate level." Yoga is simply a term that grows out of this depth and thus presents radical challenges to the translator. Von Humboldt continues his theoretical deliberations: For languages tend to use a word for a sense perception in order to express an intellectual meaning. This intellectual meaning is then philosophically treated, analysed and applied. Everything that accrues to the meaning is then applied to the word itself, but the connection with the original meaning of the word of course remains, since the applied and original meaning are always thought of together. Initially they were no more than compatible, but the original concept did not oblige the mind to adopt the applied one. (English, ibid.; UBG,169) While language always has a conceptual core for von ~ u m b o l d t , originary ~* formulations of experience provide the basis for more abstract deliberations. But the sensory representation is not

English translation from Gipper, "Understanding as a Process," 114; also see UBG,168-169. See von Humboldt, On Language, 41-42: "every nation, quite apart from its external situation, can and must be regarded as a human individuality, which pursues an inner spiritual path of its own." Also see 46: "The mental individuality of a people and the shape of its language are so intimately fused with one another, that if one were given, the other would have to be completely derivable from it. For intellectuality and language allow and further only forms that are mutually congenial to one another. Language is, as it were, the outer appearance of the spirit of a people; the language is their spirit and the spirit their language; we can never think of them sufficiently as identical." l2Gipper's translation of "sinnliche Anschauungy'("sense perception") is simply incorrect, because it suggests that von Humboldt posits an immediate, sensuous origin of language, following Herder. But a lo 'I

dispensed with; in fact, it holds onto a term tenaciously. Hence the challenge of translating yoga, which takes on technical philosophical meanings but maintains its root meaning from yuj, to "join" or "yoke." The translator faces a dilemma: The translator...merely has the choice between two methods, only one of which he can adopt successfully. He must either seek in his own language the one word which corresponds to the original concept, or else different words which render appropriately the different uses. If he does the former, he needs to add a commentary in order to be understood, for since the original concept with all its uses was not thought out in his language, it will not occur spontaneously to the reader. If, as a result, the translator is driven to the latter course, he will encounter two further disadvantages, to the detriment of philosophical exactness and depth. First, the common link between the various applied meanings and the one original concept will be lost; moreover, the nuance of each word that originates from the same source will be lost. If you translateyoga - entirely impeccably, I repeat - by exercatio, applicatio, destinatio, disciplina activa, devotio, mysterium,facnltas mystica, and the same concept in yukta by intentus, then given all these different expressions the reader will fail to perceive the original general concept of the word, without which individual uses, each with its own special connotation, cannot be fully understood...Furthermore, the reader will fail to understand the distinctive character of the facultas mystica currently under discussion, and will understand even less devotio in the sense corresponding to the Sanskrit expression. (English, ibid.; UBG, ibid.) Schlegel obviously chose the second option open to the translator and had to pay the necessary price. This strategy, which was the outgrowth of Schlegel's particular style and technique, was (as von Humboldt suggests) entirely responsible given the difficulties presented by the term. It was also productive; it called for further debate and discussion, and von Humboldt attempted to offer a response that promoted hermeneutical experimentation on the text. Towards this end, von Humboldt made an important move in order to get a better fix on yoga: he attempted to learn more about its traditional context. Learned communities in Europe had finally received more detailed information on the philosophical schools of India, thanks to

H.T. Colebrooke's essay "On the Philosophy of the Hindus" in the pages of the Transactions of

"sense intuition" is quite different, given its Kantian backdrop. Language is an expression of an intellectual structure that precedes sensuous articulation. See "On Language," 83-84.

the Royal Asiatic society." Colebrooke (1765-1837) was an eminent scholar of India and early on was thought to be the natural successor to William Jones; eventually he did become the President of the Asiatick Society of Bengal(1806) and later founded the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (1823).14 Colebrooke's most famous contribution, however, was probably the essays on the Hindu darianas, the first comprehensive presentation of South Asian philosophy by a European interpreter. At the time of von Humboldt's reflections on the GitZ, Colebrooke had only presented and published the first two parts of his lecture series, the first on "the theistical and atheistical Sdnc 'hyas [Siimkhya]" in 1823 and the second on "the dialectic

Nydya [Nyiiya]" and "the atomical Vdiskshica [Vaiiesika]" in 1824." Information on the Yoga school (the "theisticaly7branch of Siimkhya) was of particular interest to von Humboldt because of the controversy surrounding Schlegel's translation ofyoga. While tying the polyvalence of the term as it is employed in the Gitii inextricably to Colebrooke's survey of Pataiijali's philosophical system can be criticized, von Humboldt's argument was a plausible synthesis of information about philosophical context and technical analysis of the text itself.

An important passage appears early on in the response to Langlois, where von Humboldt makes a key distinction between the "Sdnkhya-Lehre" from the "Yoga-Lehre7':

In der ersteren ist das raissonirende undphilosophirende Nachdenken, in der andern dasjenige rege, welches, ohne Raisonnetnent, durch innere Vertiefungzu unmittelbarer Anschauung der Wahrheit,ja zur Vereinigung mit der Urwahrheit selbst gelangen will...Die Vertiefungsaminelt alle Krdfte auf Ein Ziel, das sie mit l 3 H.T. Colebrooke, "On the Philosophy of the Hindus," in Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Volumes 1 and 2 (London: Parbury, Allen, & Co., 1827 and 1829). l4 For a full account of Colebrooke's life and contributions, see Michael Franklin's introduction to Henry Thomas Colebrooke, Essays on the Religion and Philosophy of the Hindus, 1858 (Reprint; London and Tokyo: Ganesha Publishing and Edition Synapse, 2001), v-xxvi. l5 In all cases Colebrooke begins his essay with a fairly extensive summary of authors within each school, suggesting that he had access to a wide variety of primary sources and not just the heavily mediated teaching of a pundit. This illustrates quite dramatically how far British Orientalism had itself come since the early efforts of Holwell and Dow, discussed in Chapter 2. For his account of S W y a Colebrooke refers directly to the Simkhyakiriki by Iivaraksna and commentaries by Gaudapilda and Vilcaspatimiira, among others; his authority for the Yoga school seems to be the Yogasiitras themselves, though he does briefly mention several commentators.

Festigkeit verfolgt, sie bedarfnicht bloss der Denk- sondern auch der Willenskrafie. (UBG,163-164)

In contrast to the SZmkhya doctrine, which "is founded in the exercise of judgement,'y16the Yoga darkma aims for an "inner absorption" and "unification" with the most primordial truth, not only through rational thought but also through a concentration of "the powers of the will." While SZmkhya denies the possibility of proving the existence of God "as an infinite being," claiming instead that the "creator is finite and has arisen out of nature," "the Yoga doctrine not only places God at the apex of things in self-sufficient infinity, but it also positions the true means of achieving eternal bliss in the deepest, most withdrawn investigation of its essence.""

This

"investigation" entails complete withdrawal from all objects, from bodily movements, and even from inner thoughts (UUN, 221). Thus, according to the "Yoga-Lehre," the concentration of both mind and will in deep inner absorption leads to a salvific moment in encountering the essence of the divine principle, namely liberation from the cycle of re-birth (UUN, 227-229).18 Armed with this understanding, von Humboldt turns to the question of properly defining, elucidating, and ultimately translating yoga. According to his narrow, singular approach to translation, Langlois had recommended the term devotion as the basis for conveying the sense of yoga in European languages, and as we have seen, Schlegel often used the root devovere in his 16

Cf. Colebrooke, "On the Philosophy of the Hindus," Transactions, Vol. 1,20. " Wilhelm von Humboldt, "Ueber die unter dem Namen Bhagavad- Giti bekannte Episode lies MahiBhirata [I and 111," Gesammelte Schriften, Volume V (1906; reprint, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1968), 220. All future references to this essay will be cited as UUN with the relevant page number. For discussions of this contrast (which Colebrooke and thus von Humboldt describe correctly), see Larson, ClassicalS@nkhya, 132-135, and Hiriyanna, Essentials of Indian Philosophy, 124-125. 18 Figueira is correct to note that this emphasis on the will is quite distinctive, especially in contrast to Hegel's reading ofyoga and the goals of the Yoga school, which is in total opposition to von Humboldt's interpretation. Emphasis on the will seems to be von Humboldt's innovation; while Colebrooke correctly describes the emphasis on "devotional exercise" and "subduing body and mind" in the YogasCtras, the Yogic teaching is generally characterized as a pursuit of "mental abstraction" that is "mystic and fanatical." Colebrooke, "On the Philosophy of the Hindus," Transactions, Vol. 1,38. For Figueira's full account of Colebrooke's impact on von Humboldt and Hegel's exchange on the GitZ, see The Exotic, 66-84. Figueira's account is essentially in concert with my own, though one of her premises, that this exchange

attempts to capture the concept. Von Humboldt understood this impulse but ultimately rejected it. The fundamental problem with the term was that it had Christian, theistic trappings; von Humboldt associated it with Weihung, or "consecration" within divinity. While the yogi "certainly devotes himself to divinity," "his concept embraces more, and the consecration can occur in so many different ways, that what is meant here is not specified enough through it" (UBG, 170). Devotion is both too narrow and too general a term to capture what yoga is about. The criticism extends to Schlegel's circumlocutions that surround devoveo and its various forms. In his Langlois response, Von Humboldt cites the translation of 10.7, already examined in the previous chapter. Schlegel translated the admittedly difficult formulation "so 'vikampena yogena yujyate n&a saqziayah [ H e i s himself yoked to unshakable yoga, no doubt of that]" "is indefessa devotione sese devovet sine ullo dubio." Von Humboldt suggests that Schlegel might as well have saved all of the verbiage in this line (and others like it) by translating these formulations as se devovere, "to devote oneself." But here is where the "main nuance" is lost in translating the term using devoveo: "in the exclusive direction of one's interior, one's self [Ich], one's soul, one should exert oneself towards the practice of that absorbed meditation [vertieften Nachdenkens]" encapsulated in the phrase from 6.19, yunjato yogam atmanah, "[he] yokes himself to the yoga of the self (UBG, 170). If devotio is put in place of yoga, "the original concept of conjunction disappears too completely" (UUN, 222). As a response, von Humboldt offers the German term Vertiefung and the verb vertiefen to solve the problem. Vertiefung suggests the "absorption" of attention or mind in deep engagement, and von Humboldt argues that it has several advantages in translating yoga and its related terms (UUN, 222). In the most basic sense, "as extortion and engagement," yoga "amounts to the concept of being destined for something, setting upon something, practicing represented the "initial reception of the Bhagavad GitZ (88);

is disputed by the analyses that I have

something," and "absorption" can capture this grounding concept. In addition, the mystic's sense of inner concentration or communion within divinity can also be characterized as a kind of "absorption." The essential mark of the yogi, however, is "Insichgekehrheit," the quality of a self-reflexive, inward turn, and Vertiefung (with its underlying sense of plunging into a depth) is the term that best conveys a retreat from shifting stimuli, an attempt at inner concentration, and thence a submergence in the deepest substance (whatever that may be). Von Humboldt derives this primary association from his understanding of the "Yoga-Lehre," which had its basis in ' ~ his careful reading of the text itself leads him beyond it. Colebrooke's a c ~ o u n t ,but Prompted by the technical debate about the translation of fundamental terms in the text, von Humboldt searched his own language in an effort to find an appropriate term for yoga, one that did not have misleading ethnocentric connotations. He attempted to read the concept according to the terms of the tradition, instead of subjecting it to an entirely foreign, peripheral framework. This was a novel and in some ways revolutionary shift within his interpretive community. It certainly raises questions about the interpretation of the Gifii, for it is not entirely clear that 'b&sna's teaching appears now without a doubt to agree with the system of Patafijali described by Colebrooke;" the distinctiveness of the doctrines in the text (which von Humboldt did affirm) is an important concern (UUN,191). Even this hermeneutical pathway, however, was presented as an open question: in his text von Humboldt affirms an experimental attitude on the

resented in the previous chapters. As Colebrooke indicates, Siiqkhya's dualism leads to consistent distinction between turning faculties outwards and directing them inwards, such that "Interior or spiritual knowledge discriminates soul from nature, and operates its deliverance from evil" and interior "dispassion" follows "a spiritual impulse, the conviction that nature is a dream, a mere juggle and illusion." "On the Philosophy of the Hindus," Transactions, Vol. 1,36. Von Humboldt seems to have integrated these principles with Colebrooke's description of yogic practice in framing his interpretation: "The promptest mode of attaining beatitude, through absorbed contemplation, is devotion to GOD; consisting in repeated muttering of his mystical name, the syllable om, at the same time meditating its signification. it is this which constitutes efficacious devotion, whereby the deity, propitiated, confers on the votary the boon that is sough; precluding all impediments; and effecting the attainment of an inward sentiment, that prepares the soul for liberation" (37).

tie between the Gita's teachings and the Yoga school, especially in the wake of a new article by Bumouf in the Journal Asiatique, which focused on the relation between S-ya

and the text

(UUN, 221). In the synthesis between contextual research and technical analysis, von Humboldt seemingly animated a productive unfolding of the hermeneutical circle in the interpretation of yogaVon Humboldt's reflections on brahman have the same quality. The German tradition had wrestled rather vigorously with the term, moving from a direct association between brahman and Gott, to a more complex but still problematic representation of brahman as "divine things" or L'nittnen.y9 Von Humboldt remained in this lineage but was well aware that brahman could not be directly associated with "God" without running into serious ambiguity. Instead, von Humboldt generally conveyed the sense of brahman with the term ~ o t t h e i t yor even "das gottliche Prinzip" (UBG, 185). In defining the difficult term in this way, von Humboldt made it quite clear that it was not to be thought of as a personal God; it was rather the essence of what God is, the nature of divinity. This distinction is examined in detail in the first Berlin lecture. First, von Humboldt clears away the old confusion between brahman ("the divine principle") and Brahmi (the god of brahmins and creation). More significantly, the complex relationship between Qsna (qua God) and brahman comes to the fore as a significant matter of philosophical concern. As von Humboldt suggests, "Krsna is the same as brahman ...is the highest brahman itself." "But certainly one may not invert the proposition, and herein lies the distinction. Brahman is the divine original power in general, reposing (so to speak) in its eternity; in God (here Kpna) the person is added" (UUN, 210); in short, "the distinction is between a universal divine substance, so Cf. von Humboldt's translation of 13.30: Wer, als in Einheit da stehend der Geschopfe getheiltes Seyn,/ Und verbreitet von da schauet, der erhebet zu Gottheit sich;" "yadci bhiitapythagbhham ekastham

to speak, and a personal divine being" (UUN, ibid.). This enhanced understanding directly impacts von Humboldt's reading of the union between the yogi and brahman, a concept that had consistently troubled his predecessors. For example, the phrase in 18.53, "brahmabhiiy6ya kalpate [he is able to become brahman}," had been rendered "ad divinam conditionem conformatur" by A.W. Schlegel ("he is shaped/conforrns to the divine condition"); also, in verse 54, which opens with the tatpunisa compound brahmabhiitah ("having become brahman"), Schlegel had offered numinis consors, "in common with the numen." Von Humboldt is much more comfortable in his representation of the doctrine, and in his own translation of the verse, he faces the doctrine head on: "zum Gottheit werden Kraft gewinntJgeworden Gottheit" (UUZ?, 210). Why is von Humboldt the first in his lineage to accept this teaching by offering a fairly

accurate translation?

In short, von Humboldt's agenda in reading the text was not as crowded by preconceived notions. At the most basic level, the positioning of pantheism (either eliciting or dispelling it) was not nearly as grave a concern by the time that von Humboldt encountered the text. In fact, reading Colebrooke on the Siimkhya and Yoga systems had assured him that something of a tense but compelling balance had been struck in the Git6 between a monistic principle (which suggested that is was possible to attain union with the all-pervasive "divine substance") and a dualistic principle (which insisted on the self-subsistence of "nature" and the activity of a "personal God" in it). As von Humboldt suggests in his reflections on chapter 11 of the Gitci, It is...worth noting that IQsna intentionally says that he has shown m u n a ...his highest form through the efficacy of his own being, that is, through magic power that the discourse will consequently concern itself with in order to transform the essence of God and man and to bring forth the impossible; owing to this magic God and man are said to be in a position where they absorb themselves in their interior [in ihr Innres vertiefen] by abstracting and clinging to a single point. From this one might conclude that the poet would know this apparition of Q s n a anupaiyati/ tufa eva ca vistiram brahma sampadyate tadi [When he perceives that the variety of beings have one center from which all expand, then he is at one with Brahman]." UUN,202.

is actually to be taken only as a semblance; thus his system, which is imbued with a true spiritualism, is not in need of this representation of multiple limbs, the sun's radiance, and so forth. Also, as we have seen, the divine essence is already presented by the poet as simply invisible and undivided into parts. (UUN,202) Ultimately inner absorption directs the yogic self to a non-differentiated "point" that is shared with godly manifestation and personhood (e.g., IQsna, even in his highest form). This point is the moment of "becoming" brahman, becoming "absorbed" in it, after the illusion of differentiation, including divine transcendence, is overcome. But the text does not teach blank pantheism, for it offers an opposing principle through the admixture of Simkhya teachings, which affirm distinctions in and layers of reality - even if the ultimate goal is to dismiss them.21 Von Humboldt seemingly recognized that the incorporation of the two teachings (Yogic and Siimkhyan) produced a tension in the text, and one might argue (as Figueira does) that he resolved them by reintroducing an earlier conception from Friedrich Schlegel to frame his reading, namely, that India's foundational religious doctrine emanati~nist.~~ Von Humboldt never makes this argument explicitly, however, and it seems just as reasonable to suppose instead that his sophisticated hermeneutical method simply led him to identify a crucial and abiding problem in the interpretation of the GTta. Having hypothesized that logos and myth are always in dialectic, that the story of the early German reception of Indian sources is not one of discipline simply taking over and expunging early mythic representations, the question arises: Where, then, is the myth in von Humboldt's account? First and foremost, the arrival of technical discipline was crowded by a broad set of myths which suggested that the study of Indian sources was both part of a broad cultural program (as a part of the German university system) and, more intimately, a kind of scholarly mission to

22

See King,Indian Philosophy, 171-176. The Exotic, 70.

unearth humanistic treasures. On the first point, while it had at last reached a basic level of technical proficiency, Indology was yet a function of a kind of broad progessivist vision that discerned the potential for Bildung in the encounter with difference. Von Humboldt insisted on an experimental, scientific attitude in this encounter, which was predominantly guided by attention to language. Unlike Bopp, however, von Humboldt cared about more than just the bare structure of language, though it was decisively important. The structure of language conveyed the inner spirit or mindset of a people, and that deep structure itself was of profound interest to von Humboldt. He seemingly wished to do more than simply mine the depths for its treasures, however. Von Humboldt is the only intellectual under consideration in this dissertation to read the karmayoga doctrine with a level of openness:3 and more than that: his personal communications suggest that he even read the doctrine empathetically, applying it to himself, as he wrote in 1827:

I will not pass judgment on the religion of the Bhagavadgit6. Rather I am fascinated and attracted by the notion that we can accomplish an action as though we weren't acting. No one can say that I wasn't totally present whenever I was supposed to act. Nevertheless, I can say that in all my public actions I have always been careful in the form of acting.24 We might suggest that von Humboldt was the first to see the potential connection between a Kantian, principle-based ethics and the Gita, but this claim would take much further e~amination.~' For present purposes, it is enough to note that von Humboldt's myth of scholarly mission included an empathetic sense which was quite novel within his intellectual community,

' For his detailed account of karmayoga, see UUN, 193-195. 24 Quoted in Marchignoli, "The BhagavadgitC as a Forgotten Source for European Aesthetics: The Notions of 'Symbol' and 'Philosophical Poem' in Herder and Humboldt," Frontiers of Transculturality in Contemporary Aesthetics, www.unibo.it.transculturalitv/tiles/36%2Oi11archienoli.PDF,433. 25 See UUN, 232: "Die Yoga-Lehre is sogar in ihrem innersten Wesen und mehr, als jede andre Philosophie, auf die Nothwendigkeit sittlicher Freiheit gegriindet, da die wesenverandernde Festigkeit und Beharrlichkeit des Willens, welche ihr letzes Ziel ist, nur aus absoluter Freiheit, die sich alien endlichen Regungen entgegensetzt, entspringen kant;."

and that sense extended to what was often the most challenging part of the GitZs teaching for European readers, namely its stance on morality and ethics. Marchignoli offers a further suggestion that isolates the most fundamental connection between von Humboldt's technical work and a specific conception of India and Indian sources. The text, according to von Humboldt, fit into a profound aesthetic genre, the "philosophical poem." Von Humboldt tended to aestheticize the work according to a concept of the imagination, which, in keeping with earlier Romantic conceptions, works through the finite and brings the subject in contact with the infinite. As von Humboldt wrote in the second Berlin lecture on the

Imagination, through its magic power ...is able to destroy finite nature in its essence while preserving it in its form so that, while living in the middle of the world of senses, it transforms every sensible motive into pure ideal intuition [rein idealische Anschauung], and this is perfectly analogous to the way in which, through the doctrine of detachment and meditative absorption [Entsagungs- und Vertiefungslehre], even the most animated action is transformed into nonaction.26 A kind of "pantheism of the imagination" still lingers in this reading of the Giti, but only as a dim conception,27decisively tempered by the doctrine of action, which maintains the status of the finite within the scope of the infinite. Yoga may be absorption in "the One," but concrete action still happens, and thus the finite world around us is maintained. This relationship between finite and infinite is analogous with the very production of the poem itself, "an effective creation," "manifold, form-rich, colorful," but stemming from and thus touching upon the "magical power of divinity" (UUN, 215). Like yoga itself (Vertiefung), the poet discerns the absolute truth in an Quoted in Marchignoli, "The BhagavadgitZ as a Forgotten Source," 435; cf. UUN, 335. As I suggested above, Von Humboldt obviously did not wish to pin down the Gitci according to the old pantheism conception. In his original letter to Schlegel responding to Langlois' criticism, von Humboldt characterized the philosophical system in the Giti as "pantheistic" and then "completely pantheistic." But in the published version of the text, von Humboldt strikes these modifiers. This is an excellent indicator of the power of this particular conception in his community of discourse. The philosophical system in the Gitci may be somehow linked to pantheism, but von Humboldt does not wish to invoke the concept because 26

27

activity that arises "out of the depth of the spirit" ("aus der Tiefe des Geistes") (UUN, 335) and presumably recommends a return there. Despite this nod to the Romantic stylization of the text, it is logos that dominated. Close analysis of context and language was predominant, such that, for example, von Humboldt added to his attempt to understand the nature ofyoga by distinguishing the various nominative cases yuj and its derivatives govern in the Gitti, and then comparing these syntactical forms with other texts in the Indian tradition (UBG, 176). This is surely the beginning of a highly sophisticated form of philological analysis. But von Humboldt also engaged the text empathetically, trying its doctrines on for size, seemingly in order to understand them. He responded to A.W. Schlegel's original call for assistance in improving his translation of Indian concepts and applied a scientific model of repeated experimentation and steady progress to the project. Therefore, in a basic sense, von Humboldt rigorously applied an Enlightenment model to Indian sources for the first time, some thirty years after their appearance in the German intellectual community. Of course, Enlightenment is not without its particular dialectic of myth and logos, which for some is simply a deployment of European discipline and power, but in von Humboldt's unfinished (unfinishable?) but highly engaged form of experimentation, a genuine understanding of difference surely shone through.

Hegel's Orientalist Divergence In the year before the publication Friedrich Schlegel's ~ b e die r Sprache und Weisheit der Indier, an even more famous work appeared on the scene: Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. This work was of course a monumental achievement that attempted to outline the movement of "mind" or "spirit" through its entire movement in determinate, worldly affairs. In a striking penultimate he knows that it will simply take over the rest of his account, no matter how complex it might be. See

moment, Hegel described the unfolding of the religious sense, from nature religion, to the religion of art, and finally to revealed religion. Within the discussion of nature religion, Hegel included a brief passage on the religion of "Plants and Animals," and it is reasonably clear that this was the religion of India. The original moment of religious consciousness for Hegel is a unified immediacy that inevitably breaks down at the very moment it takes shape; "it falls apart into the numberless multiplicity of weaker and stronger, richer and poorer ~ ~ i r i t s . Hegel ' ' ~ ~ continues: This pantheism which, to begin with, is the passive subsistence of these spiritual atoms develops into a hostile movement within itself. The innocence of the flower religion, which is merely the self-less idea of self, gives place to the earnestness of warring life, to the guilt of animal religions; the passivity and impotence of contemplative individuality pass into destructive being-for-self. (ibid.)

In this description, which could have very easily been derived from a reading of Herder, young man Hegel draws up a rather telling outline of Indian culture and religion. First, it is entirely governed by pantheism. Second, pantheism leads to a passive "flowerreligion" that is based on a "self-less idea of self," a kind of "absorption" in the innocent flowering of nature. But, third, multiplicity inevitably produces tension. The innocence of plant life gives rise to the struggle for survival among the beasts, and the sects and nations of devotees take their essence and identity from totemic animal gods, which fight for position, just as the "ape-bannered P5ndavay'arrayed themselves for battle in the Bhagavad GitZ (1.20). According to Hegel, this is a battle with no clear ethic, no clear morality. This brief description of Indian religion appeared in 1807, and yet it introduced many of the themes that persisted in Hegel's interpretation of India throughout his thinking career: pantheism, passivity, selflessness, and amorality. As the passage from August Wilhelm Schlegel --

UBG, 177.

suggested above, one response to complexity and difference is control and retreat, and by and large, Hegel chose this option with regard to India. Thus I will begin my treatment of Hegel's reception of the Gitd with a brief characterization of the Orientalist views that framed it. As a conclusion to the story I have been telling, it is important to give credence to the anti-Orientalist critique of Hegel, which, in the current context, suggests that even as scholarship on India advanced (say, in the work of Wilhelm von Humboldt), there was always the danger of ever more sophisticated brands of retrenchment. This warning becomes particularly vivid in the next section, where I will focus on Hegel's specific reading of the Git5 in light of his Orientalist views. And yet Hegel devoted a considerable amount of time to his lecture on the GitZ, which was an invited response to von Humboldt's work; one might even say the level of attention given to this lecture was disproportionate. What interest did Hegel have in devoting himself to this task? Certainly there were broad cultural and philosophical reasons, but also, in spite of himself, Hegel simply seemed to become more and more interested in Indian religion and philosophy. As more information became available, especially in Colebrooke's lectures, which revealed that India did possess developed strands of philosophical reflection, Hegel absorbed it, and the shifts in his system (particularly in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion) dispute any monolithic representation of Hegel as the "arch-Orientalist." Dynamism, difference, and otherness from (one)self are crucial aspects of Hegelian thought; these are also features of Hegel's reading of IndiamZ9

28

G.W.F.Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 420. 29 This argument is supported by Stuart Jay Harten's excellent work, "Raising the Veil of History: Orientalism, Classicism and the Birth of Western Civilization in Hegel's Berlin Lecture Courses of the 1820's" (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1994). See 7-13. Also see Halbfass, India and Europe, 84-99.

Hegel's efforts to place India within his thought began primarily after 1818, when he began teaching at the University of Berlin. After this point Hegel was to integrate ever more complex material on India in his lectures on the history of philosophy, philosophy of history, philosophy of religion, and aesthetics, lectures that he continually revised and re-presented up until his death in 1831. Hegel's sources for these inquiries were in many cases close at hand: Franz Bopp was a colleague at Berlin after 1821, and Hegel read the contributions by the Schlegel brothers and the Heidelberg Symbolists (Creuzer in particular). Hegel also consulted the contemporary French sources. Clearly the most significant sources for Hegel, however, were the work of the British Orientalists: articles published in the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, translations of Indian texts by Jones, Wilkins, and Colebrooke, and histories by Holwell and

ill.^' In Hegel's move towards complexity, two sources were particularly important. The

first was Colebrooke's essays, and the second was von Humboldt's Git6 lectures, which were treated above. Some of the most damning evidence of Hegel's participation in the Orientalist project is found in the pages of his lectures on the philosophy of history. These lectures were first offered in 1822-1823, and subsequently in 1824-1825, 1826-1827, 1828-1829, and finally in the winter of 1830-183 1. As with all of Hegel's unpublished lecture series, the fact that we are forced to rely on Hegel's sketches and student notes to reconstruct the presentation leads to "complex philological and editorial problems."31 For the sake of the current exposition, we need merely note that these lectures spanned an important period in Hegel's developing acquaintance with India, while holding in abeyance the assumption that the views expressed in these lectures are the culmination of Hegel's engagement with the topic. This case will be made by turning to the

30 Reinhard Leuze, Die

aufierchristlichen Religionen bei Hegel (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,

1975),77-104.

31

Halbfass, India and Europe, 86.

highly sophisticated edition of the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion recently published by Peter Hodgson.

In general, Hegel shares in a Romantic conception of beginnings in his history, for the sun of civilization rises in the East: "The History of the World travels from East to West, for Europe is absolutely the end of History, Asia the beginning.yy32But Hegel, unlike the Romantics, does not privilege this beginning. Hegel's history is political, so the movement of the spirit in history is manifested in political forms and reaches its full and unsentimental culmination in ~ u r o ~ In e the . ~ East, ~ only the One was and is free; for the Greeks and Romans, some were free; for the Germans, all are free. "The first political form therefore which we observe in History, is

Despotism, the second Democracy and Aristocracy, the third

ona arch^."^^

The basic

problematic in the development of spirit through this political history is the dialectic between substantial or objective freedom and subjective freedom. "Where there is merely substantial freedom, commands and laws are regarded as something fixed and abstract, to which the subject holds himself in absolute servitude ...the subjects are consequently like children, who obey their parents without will or insight of their own" (104). The crucial moment is the development of subjectivity, concrete human agency and freedom, which stands in opposition to the objective will. The sublation of this difference, the identity of depotism and the difference of democracy and aristocracy at a higher level of identity, constitutes absolute freedom.

G.W.F.Hegel, The Philosophy of History, translated by J . Sibree (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), 103. As is well known, this edition is severely limited because it presents these lectures as monolithic and

32

finished, but the Orientalist case against Hegel rarely goes into any depth on the development of Hegel's thought with regard to India, so it serves my aim in restating it. 33 Halbfass, 85: "What distinguishes his [Hegel's] approach above all from that of the Romantics is his commitment to the present, and his sense of an irreversible direction of history. He does not glorify origins and early stages. The spirit of world history progresses to greater richness and complexity. What has been in the beginning cannot be richer and more perfect. It may be true that India, as part of the Orient, is a land of 'sunrise,' or early origins and 'childhood.' But this does not justify nostalgia and contempt of the European present." 34 Hegel, Philosophy of History, 104.

Critics are thus correct to draw our attention to the question of human agency in Hegel's presentation of the Orient. The "unreflected consciousness" of the East is "substantial, objective, spiritual existence"; "In the political life of the East we find a realized rational freedom, developing itself without advancing to subjective freedom. It is the childhood of history" (105). Why is this freedom at all, let alone "realized rational freedom7'? Spirit is exercising its tendency toward freedom in "the One," the despotic principle, which in the base generality of command manifests a step in the rational unfolding of history. But because subjective consciousness is held in check, no progress is made and history moves on ...to Central Asia, Greece, Rome, and ~errnan~.~' In his examination of the Orientalist logic in Hegel's account, Ronald Inden highlights the particular way in which caste is presented as the most important factor in inhibiting the selfrealization of subjectivity in India, In China, where "History begins," the unity of the substantive rule of despotism is immediate and absolute (1 12-1 13). In India, this unity unravels in the naturalized constitution of caste. Spirit advances from the absolute unity of the state in China and manifests itself in absolute difference in India, the particular determinations of which are socially systematic only under the unity of nature, to which these differences ultimately refer.36 "Instead of stimulating the activity of a soul as their centre of union, and spontaneously realizing that soul - as is the case in organic life - they petrify and become rigid, and by their stereotyped character

condemn the Indian people to the most degrading spiritual serfdom. The distinctions in question are the ~ a s t e s . "In~ every ~ rational polity such objective structures are necessary if individuals

' Put briefly, Hegel continues his developmental metaphor. Subjectivityarises in Greece and the

individual rules; this is the "adolescence" of history. In Rome the individual is a part of the universal and the national; this is "manhood." In Germany, history has reached the maturity and wisdom of "old age," for subjectivity is not assimilated within abstract universality, but is itselfthe principle of the state (106110). 36

37

See Imagining India, 71. Hegel, Philosophy of History, 144.

are to arrive at subjective freedom, but in India these distinctions are naturalized and hereditary, inherently restricting the potential for this freedom. "All the concrete vitality that makes its appearance sinks back into death. A chain binds down the life that was just upon the point of breaking forth" ( 1 4 5 ) . ~ ~ The extension of "natural destiny" across the objective sphere and into subjectivity has a fundamental implication: the impossibility of a rational polity, the state. The state presupposes the manifestation of Spirit in some form of freedom, in abstract free will and subjective freedom, but neither is present in India.39 The only binding power is dispersed in "theocratic aristocracy," the rule of the brahmins, where religious consciousness only contributes to chaos in its construal of "the purely abstract unity of God" and "the purely sensual Powers of Nature": "The connection of the two is only a constant change - a restless hurrying from one extreme to the other - a wild chaos of fruitless variation, which must appear as madness to a duly regulated, intelligent consciousness" (1 13). Religion and also morality founder, for both "have as their indispensable condition and basis the freedom of the Will" (161);'

a freedom that is absent in

Indian society. Another key area that Inden brings to our attention is Hegel's mythic conception of the "Indian mind." India is a land of imagination, a region of fantasy and sensuousness, a dreamland, but it is also a locus of plenitude and riches, a passive land of desire, awaiting the action of (European) history. We have already discerned the basis for the latter association; the lack of freedom and rational statecraft in India produces "only a dumb, deedless expansion; thus it presents no political action," and thus it is natural that "Northern India has been a centre of 38

Inden comments that caste "has become, in Hegel's pages, the necessary and distinctive nucleus of India, logically integral to the whole of Indian civilization. It has, so far as human agency is concerned, become the substantializing agent of India history, from the time of its appearance down to the present." Imagining India, 7 1. 39 Hegel, Philosophy of History, 160-1.

emigration, productive of merely physical diffusion," for "India as a Land of Desire forms an essential element in General History" (142). The lack of political organization, in combination with India's fantastic riches and treasures, warrants actively principled European subjugation as a 'necessary fate" (ibid.). While in many places Hegel seems directly inspired by Herder's views from some thirty years before, on this last point Hegel's concept of history takes over and offers an explicit rationale for direct colonial engagement, which Herder had vigorously criticized. The former association, India as a land of imagination and dreaming, is somewhat more complicated. In general philosophical terms, the objectivity of understanding (as represented by the purely objective power of the despotic Chinese state) is completely inwardized in India (an "idealism of existence"), but not as thought, rather as imagination, or mind without distinct concepts (139). It is claimed that India is in a dream-like state, where all things are indeterminately viewed as the manifestation of one abstract principle: "Things are as much stripped of rationality, of finite consistent stability of cause and effect, as man is of the steadfastness of free individuality, of personality, and freedom" (141). The result is a tortured state of affairs, where the only stability for consciousness resides in the naturalized base of caste and the diffuse practices of Hindu religiosity. Reality cannot be seen in its rationality, or even its conventionality, and practice cannot organize itself into morality, or even into organization itself!

In sum: Annihiliation - the abandonment of all reason, morality and subjectivity -- can only come to a positive feeling and consciousness of itself, by extravagating in a boundlessly wild imagination; in which, like a desolate spirit, it finds no rest, no settled composure, though it can content itself in no other way; as a man who is

40

See 158-9: "Deceit and cunning are the fundamental characteristics of the Hindoo."

41

See 166: "in the Indian world there is, so to speak, no object that can be regarded as real, and firmly

defined - none that was not at its first apprehension perverted by the imagination to the very opposite of what it presents to an intelligent consciousness...Diversity is the fundamental characteristic. Religion, War, Handicraft, Trade, yes, even the most trivial occupations are parcelled out with rigid separation constituting as they do the import of the one will which they involve...With this is bound up a monstrous, irrational imagination, which attaches the moral value and character of men to an infinity of outward actions as empty in point of intellect as of feeling."

quite reduced in body and spirit finds his existence altogether stupid and intolerable, and is driven to the creation of a dream-world and a delirious bliss in Opium. (167)

An important connection should be made here: Hegel's rationalism led him to transform the positive Romantic myths and conceptions of Indian culture into a strikingly negative portrait. He accepted the content of these myths and conceptions, but cast them in a negative philosophical and historical light. But Hegel's critique went one step further. Hegel's Indian spirit directly corresponded to the spirit of Romanticism &//'(especially

if we recall the account of the

"unhappy consciousness" from the Phenomenology of Spirit), thereby positioning both India and contemporary Romanticism as retrograde.42 Based on these considerations, it is quite easy to argue that Hegel's representation of Indian culture in these lectures is prototypically Orientalist, and the various angles of his account leads to the construction of a rather disturbing frame. India has given itself over into social passivity, a rigid, naturalized social structure, a blank religious universality, and dispersed, sensuous imagination. While his predecessors had rarely been comfortable with the supposed lack of Sittlichkeit in India, they had appreciated India according to mythic representations of its Edenic innocence. This sometimes had included a positive estimation of India's version of

Harten goes even further, suggesting that "Hegel's visceral reaction to India" arose because he saw a version of himself in it. "I argue that Hegel's dismantling of the naive Romantic construction of India respresents a crucial moment in the consolidation of a new discourse on India under the rubric of Oriental despotism. As a Protestant, Hegel also distrusted India because he associated it - rightly or wrongly - with F. Schlegel's conversion to Catholicism after the publication of Ueber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (1818). While other scholars have reached similar conclusions, my more original hypothesis suggests that Hindu civilization represents distorted or caricatured elements of Hegel's own dialectic, as filtered through the lens of Romanticism. Indian civilization embodies the dangers of his system once the speculative chain of concepts are loosened and are transferred to the socio-politicaland mytho-poetic realms." "Raising the Veil of History," 50-5 1. We might also suggest that the flowery stylization of India presented in Romantic circles, which simulataneously idealized it and (perhaps more seriously) supplanted the Classical as the positive source for European culture, also confirmed Hegel's sense that Schlegelian irony had taken over. All became style and "semblance," and no actual "content" was to be thought through in its determinacy. See G.W.F. Hegel, Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics, trans. by Bernard Bosanquet (London: Penguin Books, 1993), 69-74. For an account of the seriousness with which Hegel took the Classical, see Harten, 59-62. 42

pantheism and its emphasis on the imagination. Hegel accepted Romantic myth, conceptions, and styles, but changed their valence within his historical system, seemingly in a very public attempt to criticize Romantic versions of historical and cultural renewal. The "childhood" of humankind, while necessary, was no longer accorded an authoritative status, and criticism of it was driven by Hegel's version of logos. In order to weave complexity into the above "enunciations" (to recall Foucault's term), I now move to Hegel's reception of the Gitti. Many of Hegel's "Orientalist" views come to fore in his engaged reading of the text, and thus, given the history I have charted to this point, Hegel's vision takes a hermeneutical step back. Yet there is something more to Hegel's engagement with the text than the impulse to stereotype, denigrate, and condemn. In short, Hegel's interest is occasionally in surplus of his Orientalism - and in surplus of his own philosophical system.

Hegel's GitZ As Herbert Herring points out, Hegel's 1827 review ofvon Humboldt's Gitii lectures was a bit excessive. As part of his effort to shore up aspects of his lectures and the Encylopedia, investigating this quintessentially Indian text certainly served his greater philosophical aims. But the review itself stretched out to two installments in the Jahrbiicherfilr wissenscha~licheKritik, well exceeding the length of von Humboldt's original analysis.43 Clearly more was at stake than simply gathering information and offering a response as a professional courtesy. At a very basic level, Hegel was given the opportunity to make a very public statement about the nature of Indian culture and religion by commenting on the text, and he certainly hoped to recalibrate the

43

Herbert Herring, "Introduction" to On the Episode of the Mahibhirata known by the name BhagavadGiti, edited and translated by Herbert Herring (New Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 1995), xv-xvi. All future references to this work will be cited as UEM with relevant page numbers.

prejudicial structure that grounded the reception of Indian sources in German intellectual circ~es."~ Hegel begins his review by recognizing the age-old acquaintance with the fame of Indian wisdom in Europe but suggests that this wisdom had remained obscure until recent times. Even so, the study of Indian sources was plagued by two essential problems. On the one hand, the enthusiam with which some Europeans greeted the "treasures" of India led them to excesses, particularly in dealings with the pandits, who at times led eager Europeans astray (UEM, 3). On the other, one finds many "German publications" that purport to represent India "in general" but are ultimately revealed to offer but "particular presentations" (UEM, 9). As a remedy, Hegel agrees with von Humboldt's approach: to gain knowledge of the original language and then to investigate single sources. The Bhagavad Gitii is an excellent choice because in it we find a "determinate representation of the most general and highest of Indian religion;" it is "freer from the wild, enormous fantasy which dominates in Indian poetry"

(UEM, ibid.). But there is still much to "endure and polish" in the work. Hegel cites the forward to Wilkins' translation of the Git2 written by Warren Hastings, who suggests that in order to do it justice, every translation must shut out Western cultural presumptions, but also that the reader must excuse the "obscurity,absurdity, barbarian customs and a depraved morality" (UEM, 1 1 ) . Only with such a caution does Hastings dare recommend the text. But, according to Hegel, von Humboldt has lifted the burden through his collection of the main thoughts in an order that is not found in the original text; such an effort "spared us the labour of. ..abstractions" and "also spares

44

For an account of Hegel's reading that supplements my own, see Figueira, The Exotic, 72-80. Figueira emphasizes Hegel's dismissal of Indian culture through his reading of the GTtZ, reinforcing the suggestion that herrneneutical optimism is often misplaced when it comes to a proper understanding of German Orientalism. I agree with this caveat, but Figueiraysreading does not take proper account of recent advances in Hegel scholarship, which suggest that Hegel's representations of India were not as fixed as previously assumed.

us especially from the exhaustions caused by the tedious repetition of Indian poetry" (UEM, ibid.)?' In analyzing the content of Hegel's commentary, we can again refer to the key concepts

that clarified the nature of A.W. Schlegel's translation and von Humboldt's response to it: dhartna (in connection with ethical action), yoga (and the nature of religious practice), and brahman (and concepts of divinity). Hegel did not know Sanskrit, so his account is essentially

limited in terms of precise defininitions and translations of concepts, but he does attempt to compare and contrast the translations that were available to him (Wilkins, Schlegel, and von Humboldt's excerpts) in order to support his interpretation. Hegel's reading of foundational concepts therefore is a direct product of the textual practices that I have discussed to this point, but the logos of textual analysis is essentially displaced by Hegel's own philosophical framework. One of Hegel's most consistent concerns is the conceptualization of dharma and action in the text. Early on, for example, Hegel turns to Schlegel's translation of 1.40 ("religione deleta per otnnetn stirpetn gliscit impietas [When the Law is destroyed, lawlessness besets the entire

familyI7'). This verse is placed in the context of Arjuna's entire complaint, where his worry is focused on the ancestral rites, which involve the offering of rice-balls and water. Hence the concept of duty or dharrna according to Hegel: "religion [religio] means the offering of cakes and water-libation, and dereliction of ditty [itnpietas]means partly the omission of such ceremonies, partly marriage into lower castes, - a meaning for which we have neither religious nor moral respect" (UEM, 21). The very dilemma that begins the Gita, in Hegel's view, is hardly moral; it is guided by superstition and caste. Indeed, caste is the driving factor behind "duty" in the text. In essence, Hegel claims, the basis for Aquna's dilemma (and caste in general) is a sense of familial ties. "Animals too" have

' While he had indeed rationalized the text, von Humboldt affirms the non-systematic ordering of thought

this sense, so its moral content must be clarified; for the European, familial ties become properly sittlich when they assume as their basis a feeling of love (UEM, 19). But this does not seem to be Aquna's concern; he is is not concerned with the death of a relative per se, but rather with the consequence that family duty would break down if he undertook the war. The consequence would be the spread of godlessness through the whole society, the corruption of women, and the mixing of castes, which is the worst possible result (UEM, 55). According to Hegel, Aquna's concern is thus hardly subjective or inward, and neither is the sense of a warrior's duty, as expressed in Schlegel's 2.3 1: "Proprii etiam officii memorem non te contemiscere oportet: legitimo bello melius quidquam militi evenire nequit [Look to your Law and do not waver, for there is nothing more salutary for a baron than a war that is lawful]." Hegel argues that officio (dharma) is not to be seen in the European context of soldierly duty, which is in some sense chosen and thus subjective. The duty of the batriya is a natural compunction, a "Naturbestimmung," not a proper "duty" or "moral obligation" ("Pflicht" and "sittliche Bestimmung") (UEM, 25). It is not based on "inborn" talents that are directed in a certain way, but on a singular and fully determined societal role that is a "natural duty" (UEM, 49) and on a set of arbitrary and superstitious rules with no moral foundation (UEM, 89). While he does not have access to the original text, Hegel offers a consistent criticism of Schlegel's translational choices based on this conceptual framing of dhartna. Religio, impietas, and of d o all place the Indian concept of duty in immediate proximity to "European representation;" "they deprive the contents of its [sic] coloration, tempt us too readily to misunderstand the peculiar meaning and to take the passages for something better than what they actually express" (UEM, ibid.). From a very early point, something quite interesting is occurs in Hegel's treatise. He is wary of Schlegel's translation, likely speaking out of his general rejection

in the Git6 in accordance with his concept of its organic, poetic quality. See UUN,324-327.

of Romanticism and its specific nostalgia for India, mostly because it elevates concepts that are actually not so noble. Therefore, while his analysis is surely in the service of a negative judgment, Hegel is critical of assimilation of Indian concepts and defensive of Indian distinctiveness. This is in keeping with Hegel's method: while he certainly wished to place India within his own logical scheme, the challenge was to determine the specific concept of each culture, and this necessarily entailed defending its difference. Similiar dynamics inhere in Hegel's reading of yoga. Following von Humboldt and Colebrooke, Hegel reads the concept (as it appears in the Gitli) primarily as the product of the Yoga dariana. This "doctrine," Hegel claims, is not quite a "doctrine" (Lehre) in the sense of a "developed system" or "science;" it is, instead, an "esoteric" teaching, which admits of "doctrinalization'~only to the extent that it needs to spur "edification" in instructing its students. As a result, "it can, by its very nature, not be objective for it has no developed contents that are grounded on proofs" (UEM, 33). To his credit, Hegel follows von Humboldt's lead and delves further into the "Yoga-Lehre" in order to discern its distinctiveness and thereby to contextualize the teaching in the Git6, but the result is essentially the same: "We may...legitimately consider what is called Yoga the focus of Indian religion and philosophy" (UEM, 39). Hegel again engages the terminological discussion where it left off in the discussion between Schlegel, Langlois, and von Humboldt. Hegel enters, agreeing with von Humboldt and rejecting Langlois' criticisms: It is certainly contrary to the nature of the matter to demand that a term of the language of a particular people, which has a temperment and culture contrary to ours, if such a term does not directly refer to sensuous objects such as sun, ocean, tree, rose, etc. but to something in its spiritual meaning be rendered with a term of our language which is perfectly adequate to that term. A word of our language gives us our distinct concept of such a thing and hence not that of the other people which not only has a different language but also another way of looking at things. (UEM, 41) The theoretical basis for this judgment, however, is slightly different:

As it is spirit that all peoples have in common, and if the cultivation of it is taken for granted, the difference can only mean the relation of a meaning to the generic notion [Gattung] and to its modifications, the species [Arten]. In a language there are for many characteristics, certainly not for all, specific terms yet not for the general subject comprehending them, or otherwise for this [general subject] so that the term is either restricted to the generic notion or else is familiar for the meaning of a particular species...What we find in dictionaries as different meanings of a word are mostly characteristics of the same underlying thing. (UEM, ibid.) Hegel's attempt at elucidation is characteristically difficult, but in essence the interior of language gives us the answer to the problem of differences between languages. In Hegel's highly intellectualized account, there is a "generic" or "general" level of commonality in the concepts of a language to which various "species" adhere. But different languages locate their terminologies at different levels: while "general" concepts may essentially agree, one language may actually name the "general," and another may simply have a number of characteristic attributions for it. The problem of the translator is to somehow produce parities across these lines, and often (to take the most obvious example) one language may have a name for a general concept, and while the other culture has thought it, its language only has names for attributes. In that case, direct translation becomes very difficult, if not impossible.6 Langlois' judgment is therefore unfair, but many of Schlegel's attempts also fail, especially devotio, which does not "express the general characteristic as such and only in a modification" (UEM, 43). But von Humboldt's suggestion, Vertiefung, also does not adequately convey the meaning of the concept. Basing his judgment on Wilkins' description (yoga "is generally used as a theological term to express the application of the mind in spiritual things, and the performance of religions ceremonies"),Hegel essentially argues that German does not in fact have a term to cover this mode of reference to a general concept:

Our language is hardly in possession of a word which corresponds to such a characteristic because the matter is not part of our culture and religion. The 46

See Figueira, The Exotic, 79-80.

suitable term contemplative meditiation [Vertiefung] does therefore also not reach that far; Yoga in that specific characteristic is neither meditation about a thing at all, like meditating about the consideration of a painting or a scientific object, nor is it self-reflective introspection, i.e. into one's individual spirit, into sentiments or wishes of the same etc. Yoga is rather a meditation without any contents, the abandoning of all attention towards external things, of the activities of the senses, it is the silence of all inclinations and passions as also the absence of all images, imaginations and concrete thoughts. In so far as this elevation is only regarded as a momentuous [momentary] condition, we would call it devotion [Andacht]; yet our devotion has its origin in an individual spirit and is directed towards a meaningful God, is meaningful prayer, a fulfilled incitation of the religious soul. Hence one could call Yoga only an abstract devotion [abstrakte Andacht] because it ascends towards the complete emptiness [Inhaltslosigkeit] of subject and object and thus towards unconsciousness. (UEM, 43-45) The vital interpretive point here is that yoga has no object; it is "without any contents," and thus it is impossible to call it "absorption," because there is simply nothing the yogi absorbs himself in. While they are useful, British descriptions remain "very vague" because they suggest that there may be an object for yoga, namely God or other "special topics.'*'

In fact, in a rather brazen

critique, Hegel accuses Colebrooke of distorting his account of the Yoga school in order to cover over the underlying truth behind it (and behind all of Indian religious thought): it advocates absorption into abstract emptiness, "without.. .mediation, vehemently and at once" (UEM, 37).48 It becomes apparent that Hegel relied entirely on a very strong reading of the Yoga school for his interpretation of the term as it appears in the Gitci; "application of the mind in spiritual things" may resonate with the SZimkhya teaching, but it does not capture the core of the concept (UEM,

Based on this understanding, Hegel stridently criticizes foundational yogic practice. The "contentlessness" of "abstract absorption" makes the penitential aspect of the yogi's practice

47

See Colebrooke, "On the Philosophy of the Hindus," Transactions, Vol. 1,36-37. "Colebrooke may have good reasons for not going into details as to the special topics of Patafijali's doctrine, whereas of the other doctrines he offers very extensive and distinct excerpts," but the reason cannot be a modesty about presenting "wild and superstitious things," given what has already been presented (UEM, 35-37). 48

seem particularly absurd. At least, Hegel suggests, the Christian penitent acts inwardly on images and feelings that are designed to lead to Christ-like "perfection." To this extent, such practices can be properly termed "mysticism" because "true insights" might be revealed about the way the tremendously "rich thing" at the center (God) is related to the human soul (UEM, 65). In the Indian context, however, the yogi pursues a "stupid obedience to actions and outward deeds" in the service of an "empty Oneness" by means of "enforced withdrawal and the endurance of the monotony of a deed- and thoughtless state" (UEM, 59). Because of its lack of content, its "stupefaction," and its "emptiness," yogic practice cannot even be called "mysticism," for in the abstract void there are no insights to be gained. For Hegel, arguably the ultimate champion of the power of thinking in the modem, Western context, "thoughtlessness" is perhaps the most disturbing implication ofyoga; he disdainfully quotes translations of 6.25,49which suggest that the highest goal is absence of thought. In fixating on this idea, Hegel speaks out of his own philosophical framework, which transforms his reading of the Yoga school and constitutes it as the whole of Indian doctrine. Hegel's interpretation ofyoga is intimately connected with his interpretation of brahman. In the Giti review, Hegel unsurprisingly offers a vigorous critique of the concept. According to his philosophical framework, the foundation of Hindu religious thought breaks down at the conceptual level. Brahman cannot be thought as an active, spiritual principle of the divine because it has but one determinate characteristic: "Oneness," which in Hegel's thought is essentially saying that Brahman is simply indeterminate "Being" (UEM, 59). In thinking the foundation of religious and cultural life this way, Hinduism allows its "God" to abdicate its

6.25: "ianaih ianair uparamed buddhyi dhrtigfitayi/itmasamstham manah btvi na kimcid api cintayet [he should little by little cease, while he holds his spirit with fortitude, merges his mind in the self,

49

and thinks nothing at all]."

responsibility to engage the world in a spiritual, dynamic, determinate manner. The world of religion and culture is in the end left to the dictates of wild, unfettered nature. Hegel in fact wonders whether brahman is actually "thought" at all, and this discussion centers on the consistently troubling notion of "becoming brahman," which, as Hegel correctly notes, is associated with the highest yogic goal, liberation from re-birth. In the parlance of his age, union with brahman has all the marks of "an intuition intuiting nothing, knowing of nothing," which "is to be called absolute immediacy [Unmittelbarkeit] of knowing. For where there is knowledge of something, of some content, there is at once and already mediation" (UEM, 105). Yet one could imagine that even in "nothingness" the yogi thinks something, namely the "thought" of nothingness or the universality of thinking it as somehow concrete (UEM, 109). But the crucial factor in reading the Hindu teaching is the urge towards union, "becoming brahman," where the very "thought" is the same as brahman. The distinction between subject and object is designed to break down, and while the "thought" of brahman steps forth from sensuous representations of divinity, it also leaves the world of nature and materiality behind, essentially as a dead, static structure. In Hegel's terminology, brahman "is unity as abstract universality only, as indeterminate substance" (UEM, 113), "pure Being" (UEM, 1 17). This intensely Hegelian reading leads directly back to the debate about translational strategies. Once again, Herder affirms a fundamental cultural difference, especially in the case of attempting to convey brahman by means of terms related to Western divinity (Gott, Gottheit, etc.) (UEM, 121). To this extent, the strangeness of classical terms like numen may serve their purpose. At the core of the translational distinction, however, is the conceptual distinction between "monotheism" and "pantheism;" for Hegel, the Indian belief adheres to the latter. The Indian tradition, in a sense, recognizes "one God" from which all things come, but [tlhis monotheism is in an equally essential way pantheism; for if the One is also defined as substance or as the abstraction from the universal it is because of this

abstraction immediateness and therefore, however, as the Being of beings immanent and identical with them, creature as not being distinguished from creator; but for that reason this immanent Being is not the concrete and empirical things and their finitude but rather the being of their existence only, the undefined identity. (UEM, 123) Thus, once again, the pantheism conception is directly affixed to the core of Indian teaching, and Hegel addresses himself directly to predecessors (and contemporaries) in his intellectual community who would interpret this doctrine in a positive light. An imaginative, vitalist pantheism of nature, which espouses the doctrine in order to affirm the sensuous and the concrete, is inherently self-defeating, because the philosophical basis for it precisely absorbs the determinacy of all things, including thoughts and feelings. The Indian tradition realizes this, but in failing to properly distinguish the divine principle as a distinguishable, active "One," it gives itself over to wild vacillations between abstraction and materiality (UEM, 129). The entire religio-philosophical tradition is characterized by a breakdown that is only resolved in other civilizational contexts. Like von Humboldt, Hegel also shows interest in the karmayoga doctrine, which he essentially interprets as the "moral obligation to do the good for the sake of the good only and duty only for duty's sake" (UEM, 15). It thus shows the marks of a truly moral doctrine (UEM, 51). In contrast to von Humboldt, however, Hegel is not favorably disposed to the idea in the

end, first and foremost because he finds it essentially incoherent. How indeed is one meant to renounce the fruits or consequences of actions? In essence a moral duty has the sense of leading to something (UEM, ibid.); "For to act means nothing else than achieving some purpose; one acts to achieve something, some result" (UEM, 47). Hegel charges Qsna with disingenuousness, for all actions have some sense of result, success, or failure (including, one might suggest, the act of disciplining one's actions). But worse, the doctrine supports moral heedlessness: "The more

senselessly and stupidly an action is performed, the greater the involved indifference towards success" (UEM, ibid.). The doctrine advocates discipline and sacrifice, which is surely the mark of a morally based principle of duty, especially after Kant. But indifference is the natural result of both yogic absoroption on the one side, and a lack of a freely determined moral telos on the other. Caste places an intractible barrier before progress in India and leads rather naturally to its low station in the scale of civilizations: "Meaning and value of Indian religiosity and the doctrine of duty related to it, can...only be understood from the caste law, -this institution that has made and still makes morality and real cultivated civilization forever impossible among the Indians" (UEM, 5 1). In contrast with von Humboldt's sympathetic reading, the Hegelian interpretation of the

Gild is striking because of its negative tone. Hegel's criticisms are often couched in highly derogatory characterizations that often appear superfluous. The treatment of the text itself trades on some rather standard conceptions about India, including the amorality of the GTtci's teaching on action, the static nature of the caste system, and the foundational premise of pantheism. Hegel does attempt to learn more about the philosophical context but seems ready to accept the Yogic determination of it because this depiction squares with his previous understanding. As Figueira suggests in light of Hegel's lack of technical facility, "The herrneneutical process breaks down, the reader's prejudices are never called into question, and the text functions as a mold into which.. .prejudices are poured."50 The treatment of the text, however, is highly engaged, and though it trades on some old ideas about India, we might suggest that it raises some highly pertinent issues in an original way, if only because they are presented in a Hegelian way. In addition, Hegel's approach often demanded of his intellectual community a greater degree of rigor in delineating how Indian

The Exotic, 79-80.

religion and culture were distinct, even if this demand was a function of negatively positioning his subject matter. Nevertheless, in carrying out his analysis, Hegel often seemed to go beyond what was necessary to prove his points, including many examples of Indian doctrines from outside of the text that were gleaned from other, mostly British sources. Did Hegel maintain a hidden attraction for India that he attempted to disavow through his sometimes harsh recriminations? There is a famous passage from the history lectures that may at first appear to be out of character for Hegel, a rather unseemly section likening the appearance of India to the "beauty of a peculiar kind in women," in which their countenance presents a transparency of skin, a light and lovely roseate hue, which is unlike the complexion of mere health and vital vigor - a more refined bloom, breathed, as it were, by the soul within - and in which the features, the light of the eye, the position of the mouth, appear soft, yielding, and relaxed..A similar tone of beauty is seen also in women during the magical somnambulic sleep, connecting them with a world of superterrestrial beauty... Such a beauty we find also in its lovliest form in the Indian World; a beauty of ennervation in which all that is rough, rigid, and contradictory is dissolved, and we have only the soul in a state of emotion - a soul, however, in which the death of free self-reliant Spirit is perceptible.5' I will not subject the passage to psychoanalytical inquiry but will merely suggest that unless Hegel is attempting a parody of his Romantic cohorts, there is some earnestness in this depiction (and Hegel was virtually always earnest). It is excessive, almost entirely unnecessary to and beyond the limits of philosophical systematics. And to a certain extent, this characterization also applies to Herder's Git6 essay. There is much in the essay that complies with Hegel's conception

51

Hegel, Philosophy of History, 140. As Alan Olson has pointed out in personal communication, Hegel had a healthy appreciation for the art of Correggio, and one could easily suggest that his description of India (qua sensuous woman) was inspired by a work such as Jupiter and lo. In India, however, there is no mere "semblance of the sensuous" such that "the sensuous is spiritualized," as would likely be the case in Hegel's interpretation of a painting by Correggio; instead, India seemingly "produces no more than a shadow-world of shapes, sounds, and imaginable ideas," eliciting only "desire." G.W.F.Hegel, Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics, trans. by Bernard Bosanquet (London: Penguin Books, 1993), 41,4344.

of Indian religion in general, but the review goes beyond what is necessary to support it. In his effort to make a public statement, Hegel very well might have overstepped his own boundaries.

Pantheist Differentials in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion Hegel's conceptions of India, and Indian religion in particular, can be seen as patently Orientalist.

In general, Indian religion remains in the "childhood" of human civilizati~n.~~ No mature concept inheres within South Asian religion; what was there was a promise of what was to come, and now that it is realized elsewhere what is there has surely been left behind - orphaned by the relentless movement of spirit. This orphaning of South Asian religion adds fuel to the anti-Orientalist critique, which would suggest that the immature concept inheres, in fact, within Hegel's thought. As we have seen, Hegel inherited and contributed to the construction of Orientalist discourse by retreating to a set of limited and idiosyncractic conceptions of India and Indian religion that were coordinated by a new form of philosophical logos and broad narratives of historical development. These conceptions became monolithic in the service of the Western consolidation of identity and empire: India is the site of wild, barbarous imagination; a dull and empty religious consciousness; a rigid, ahistorical social structure; and the absolute absence of self-conscious subjectivity (and thus freedom). With specific regard to South Asian religion, Hegel's architectonic arrogance led him to posit his own expertise on the subject, utilizing a meager set of imperialist sources and traveller's accounts to characterize the whole of what we now know as a rich and varied philosophical and religious tradition - this in service of a singular, Eurocentric desire to dominate, restructure, and have authority over the other i n t e l l e ~ t u a l l ~According .~~ to

' Philosophy of History,105. ' Said, Orientalism, 3.

the anti-Orientalist critique, when it came to South Asian religion, Hegel actually had no concept at all. These judgments and arguments are, to a great extent, true and irrefutable. In his famous Lectures of the Philosophy of Religion, Hegel is quite plain: "All moments of spirituality are present [in Hinduism], but they do not constitute spirit."54 Our philosopher of the absolute fits quite readily into the Orientalist profile, but one of the pathways that leads "beyond Orientalism" may in fact lie in going "back into Orientalism" in an interventionist manner. In this final episode in the story I have been telling, I wish to target Hegel the "arch-Orientalist" and one of his most monumental texts, in order to illustrate the strange effect Indian difference had on a thinker whose system is often taken to represent the apex of European ascendency and triumphalism. Here the system displays ruptures and differentials, and I take this to be a fundamental challenge not only to the sytem itself, but also to the anti-Orientalist characterization of it. Hegel delivered his pioneering lectures on the philosophy of religion on four different occasions at the University of Berlin: first in 1821 and subsequently in 1824, 1827, and 1831. Again we are confronted with the complexity of a set of unpublished expositions that were

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Volume II: Determinate Religion, edited by Peter C. Hodgson, translated by R.F. Brown, P.C. Hodgson, and J.M.Stewart with the assistance of H.S. Harris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 731. Hegel had concisely articulated the meaning of the concept with regard to its relation with the determinate religions in the original manuscript of the lectures: "First the concept of religion [has been considered], and an account [has been] given of its moments as developed, [though still only] in a preliminary way, for it is really in the consummate religion that the concept of religion is objective and thereby also assumes its developed [form]. In the religions that have not yet [developed] to that point, those that are still fmite, the moments occur only in preliminary form. <"Consummate religion" means that the substance of religion [is its] concept, what it truly is -- the true religion. "True" [means that] it corresponds to its concept, i.e., not [just] for us, but here within self-consciousness -- it corresponds to self-consciousness.~...Religion has to pass through these determinacies in order to attain from them the nature of its conept or to objectify its concept in the form of representation. For these detenninacies are the moments, the becoming of the concept, and their resolution and the return [to itself] are what constitute the concept itself. Those who [are] already familiar with the nature of the concept will understand this more precisely; those who are not will see in it an example of the absolute, immanent method of science, and will gather from it the nature of the process, the movement of the concept. It belongs to the nature of the concept, its vitality and becoming, in fact its spirituality, that it does not exist at the beginning, full-grown on its own account; [it

constantly subject to revision and were gathered from the notes of auditors. The efforts of Peter Hodgson and his team of translators, however, has made discerning the development of Hegel's thinking on Indian religion possible, and in this development the genuine challenge of difference is evident.

In the earliest version of the Lectures (1821; this version is reconstructed from the original manuscript), Hegel presented a rather spare version of the first stage of religious development, namely "Immediate Religion." In this section he considered Oriental religions together, instead of breaking them out, as he would do in the later lectures. In this earliest stage, Hegel organizes the determinate religions under the general tripartite framework that was articulated conceptually in the Wissenschaft tier Logik: being, essence, and concept. "Immediate Religion," including South Asian religion, was seen to offer a determination of "abstract being." It is "Religion in the determinateness of immediacy," "religion that merely maintains itself in its substantiality" (LPR, 95)." As we have seen, this judgment essentially maintains itself in the Gitd review.

But in the lectures, Hegel extends upon the judgment. Being is the "first, pure category of thought," thought first in the West by Parrnenides: "'This' and 'that' are all just one, [there is] only one 'being'" (LPR, 100). Here finite particularity does not ultimately stand up to the "positive, the ground, the autonomous in all existence...being" (LPR, 101). And this thought, for Hegel, is purely exemplified by the yogic practitioner: With this wholly abstract purity of continuity, that is, indeterminateness and vacuity of conception, it is indifferent whether this abstract is called space, pure is] not immediate. Truth is not [there] for consciousness at the beginning" (93-94). All future references to this work will be cited as LPR plus the relevant page number. Cf. G.W.F. Hegel, The Science of Logic, translated by A.V. Miller (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, Inc., 1993), 109. "From becoming there issues determinate being, which is the simples oneness of being and nothing. Because of this oneness it has the form of immediacy. Its mediation, becoming, lies behind it; it has sublated itself and determinate being appears, therefore, as a first, as a starting-point for the ensuing development."

''

intuiting?or pure thinking; it is altogether the same as what the Indian calls Brahma? when for years on end?physically motionless and equally unmoved in sensation?conception9fantasyydesire and so on? looking only at the tip of his nose?he says inwardly only Om?OtnyOm?or else nothing at all. This dull?empty consciousness~understood as consciousness~is - beingss6 Hegel repeats the refrain from this passage throughout the 1820's (the yogi staring at his nose is a constant leitmotio. On the one side?Oriental religion cannot sustain the necessary move from "pure being" to "deteminateness" charted in the first section of the Logic. But this is not to say that the move does not occur. According to this early version of the lectures?"Concrete self-consciousness does not rest content with abstract being but rather takes being in its concrete determination, in its truth...The determinateness that being has, the reality within which it appears for self-consciousness~is immediate being just as it isyfinite nature. Nature exists?is intuited?represented, as God" (LPR? 104). In Oriental religion? the singular and finite is imbued with the universal and becomes the powerfbl object of devotion - but always with reference to a pantheistic ground: "God is all things? [hen kaipanJ9'( P R Y99)." Once the conceptual necessity to concretize infiniteyundifferentiated being is set in motion, the world becomes arbitrarily lit up with power?but in each case the finite and particular is inevitably overrun and exploded by its universal ground: "what is immediately prominent here is ...Precisely the incongruence between all such immediately natural objects and the universal that is represented and intended'? (LPR?105).~'

Hegel, The Science of Logic, 97. of the significance of this motto: it was of course the rallying cry of those who rushed to the defense of Lessing (and Spinoza) in the wake of the Pantheismusstreit. But it should also be recalled that in his youth Hegel was among those defenders; hen kaipan was also the motto of Hegel's Tubingen circle, which included Holderlin and Schelling. See LPR, 109: "The Oriental?Hindu images of imaginative power are precisely those that elevate the most common thing to the highest and then reduce it to the point where its direct significance disappears. It is given an infinite meaning, under which it succumbs and dissolves. Every configuration and natural human form [is] puffed up into something infinite: kingsyanthropogeneses, incarnations -- incarnations for ordinary?human fmite being and acting. Human being [is elevated to the point where] all gods and power, even those that appear to be autonomous on their own account7again serve it and are made subject to it." " Hodgson makes note

The particularly egregious moment of this incongruency appears when the idea of divinity as undifferentiated ground appears immediately in the concreteness of an immediate subjectivity (that isywhen animals or human beings become its camers). In Hinduism?divinity is seen immediately in the form of an elephant (Ganeia), a monkey (Hanuman)?or the cowyand also appears in "Hindu kings and Brahmans simply amplified into God" (LPR? 107). "The reason why this apparent advance is a degradation?a further finitization of the absolute essence?is that?while indeed it is an advance to a determination of subjectivityyto singularity? the singularity is merely an immediate or spiritless oney'(LPR?107-108). That isythe for-itself (actual?finite existence) of subjectivity is taken as in-itself (potential?universal essence) and the entire dialectic of spiritual subjectivity breaks down. Hegelysjudgment is particularly harsh: For [this is] precisely not just a naive or superficially innocent consciousness but rather a consciousness that7in its claim to be absolute elevation?a claim that is inherent in its intuition?remains turned against this elevationyi.e.? remains in its immediacy. This is where the deepest humiliation of spirit essentially lies. This is the most abandoned of religions. (LPR? 108) Hence South Asian religion is orphaned by the progress of spirit. Hegel's sternly negative interpretation of this b6multiplicityof powers7'in Hinduism (to anticipate later formulations) leaves the practitioner (in hisher cult^^^') with two rather unfortunate options. On one hand?there is the dead end of what can be described as "id01atry.~' The adherent remains devoted in worship to the immediate subjectivity of finite forms; in practice the finite objects of everyday life take on a grand significance. "Pious Orientals regard their bodies?their finite concerns and the business involvedynot as their own but as a service directed toward an other; they have to exercise propriety and circumspection that this service is carried out properly and in accordance with the will of the Lord - a universal will'' (LPRy 115). These practical activities become habitual?'6asort of naturalyinstinctual activity?viewed in general as [conforming to] subordinate purposesy[subsisting on] their own account?divorced from a higher

purpose" (LPR, 117). This is one option. But because the finite is not conceptually able to hold the universal, the dialectic ultimately breaks

and the highest expression of South Asian

religiosity becomes the yogi. The finite, because it always breaks down in the face of the indeterminate ground, is illusory and evil; it must be renounced and "infinite self-toment and austerities" engaged in (LPR, 120). Moral evil just is; it is not a question of the will. "Thus it does not lie within ...[the] will [of the finite] to change, to be otherwise, to mend its ways, forsaking the old. [It is] without inward totality, such as could comprehend itself as fi-eedom, give itself imwardly to concrete infinitude. Rather [it is] perplexed and unable to help itself' (LPR, ibid.). Beyond good and evil, the yogi disappears into LLabsolute abstraction ...only as the negative of the finite" (LPR, ibid.). Hegel's own austerity in this account begs for correction and, indeed, reproach. It is not my aim to counter particular characterizations; this account fi-om 1821 is so spare and schematic that such matching is perhaps barely worth our time (as the critic of Orientalism might suggest). At this point, we should simply note two distinctive features of Hegel's beginnings on this topic: 1) In 1821 Hegel makes a clear but rather imprecise connection between pantheism and Hindu spirituality, but the conceptual solidity of the oneness of all things does not seemingly hold because of both the multiplicity and particularity of the forms that are expected to manifest the power of the indeterminate, divine ground. This proliferation of power is particularly LLhumiliating"when it is manifested in the finite immediacy of living human beings and animals. 2) Here Hegel is particularly concerned with the moral valence that is associated with the

-

-

See 123: "Nature religion, [which] worships the absolute in an immediate object of nature, passes, in the boundless, out of this immediate identity between immediate being and essence. In the boundless all natural being disappears; puffed up to the boundless, its shape bursts. At the same time this shape is not its immanent character but its natural shape, used externally and inappropriately for this purpose. No matter how negatively the natural is posited in it, it is still positive in its finite being vis-his the negative. Or just as everything melts away out of sight in the boundless, so the boundless is devoid of strength - the conhadiction of power and powerlessness." 59

quintessential model of South Asian religion, the yogi. The yogi dissolves into the indeterminate ground because no concrete form is able to hold the absolute idea of his religion; the concrete is thus conceived to be irrevocably evil and the practitioner has no fieedom of choice in his moral or religious activities. In 1824?Hegel greatly expanded his section on the immediate nature religions as he consumed more information on the religions under consideration, making architectonic distinctions between "The Religion of Magic" (which included Chinese religion and Buddhism)? "The Religion of Phantasy'' (Hinduism)?"The Religion of the Good or of Light" (Zoroastriani~m)~ and the moment of transition to the spiritual (Egyptian religion). This more extensive systematic articulation is evidence of further study, which in itself can be seen as a broadening of Hegel's hermeneutical circle in relation to South Asian religion. We will continue to see potent Orientalist formulations in this account (we need look no further than the famous characterization of Hinduism as the religion of Phantasie)?but? as I have suggested, these formulations should be read alongside the shifts and expansions of Hegel's concept of South Asian religion. The broadening of Hegel's hermeneutical circle did not necessarily entail a more precise understanding of the various religious expressions under consideration. In the case of his interpretation of Hinduism?Hegel drew almost completely on various British sources. As Leuze has suggested, this choice was guided by Hegel's bias against the Romantics who had celebrated India as the source of the highest ~ o r n a n t i z i e r u nand ~ ~the ~ ~danger of indeterminacy and pantheism, the twin philosophical trends in Europe that Hegel found most abhorrent?lurk in the background of his 1824 account. What is interesting, however, is that Hinduism and the other 60

As Lewe suggests, "Wenn man die Quellen, die Hegel als Grundlagefir seine Beurteilung indiens dienen, erblickt, so zeigt sich, daJ er fast ausschlielich Berichte von Englandern herazieht, wahrend er das,

nature religions are thought to be quite distinct from pantheismymarking a definite shifi fiom the earlier lectures.

In 1824, Hegel had not shifted entirely away from the tipartite conceptual scheme offered in 1821;the immediate religions still have a great deal to do with the thought of purey indeterminate being. But Hegelysemphasis is now quite different. The general description of this moment defines it explicitly as "the natural unity of the spiritual and the natural" (LPR, 234); the thought of being is at this point left aside. InsteadyHegel emphasizes the innocent truth of humanity in immediate spiritual connection with nature, which, while residing at "the lowest levelythe most imperfect and thus the firstyy* "is not only the first but the truest" (LPRy238) Neverthelessythis truth is only nascent truthyanticipating the necessary later movements of the concept whichythrough reflectionyproduce a necessary rupture in immediate unityydistinguishing human from natureyinfinite from finite. Interestingly enough Hegel moves rather quickly from a discussion of the paradise of humanity in its stage of natural immediacy to an embedded critique of the Kantian legacy (i.eeYreflection): [But] what is in and for itself is the infiniteywhile in the reflective consciousness we have before us a state of finitude. Reflection quite rightly distinguishes the two, but the shortcoming of representation is that it adheres in principle to an abstract attitude, yet insists that what is in and for itself should also appear and be present in the world of external contingency. Reason allows chance and arbitrariness their proper sphere but knows that in this - superficially, to outward appearance, highly confused - world, truth is still present. (LPR, 248) This sort of conhsion (between the abstract ideal and the actual, present fact) produces a future or past orientation in thinkingybecause ideality or perfection can only be seen dimly in the present; without speculative philosophyywhere the ideal becomes concretized, philosophy inevitably turns nostalgic or teleological, in Hegel's reading.

was die deutsche Romantik iiber Indien zu sagen w@e, wit M$'trauen betrachet.*' Die auJerchristlichen Religionen bei Hegel, 79.

What does this have to do with South Asian religion? Hegel's discussion of the unresolved polarities of Kantianism leads him to a critique of cross-cultural interpretations that unduly privilege the nostalgic past of Hinduism (implicitly, Romanticism). "Among the Hindus a wisdom and knowledge has been found which is so great that it is not consistent with their present educational and cultural level. This and many other similar circumstances have been seen as traces of a better past." And now Hegel appears in his most "Orientalist" guise: "However, this wisdom of the Hindus.. .has grown steadily smaller the more we have become acquainted with it; it is still diminishing as each day passes, and the facets of which cognizance...can be attributed to other sources or else are of no account in themselves" (LPR,249). Hegel's strident anti-Romanticism leads him to an important critique of the glorified representation of India within Romanticism, but also to a negative and pejorative overcompensation. Has his hermeneutical circle widened, or is it tighter than ever? As I have suggested, it has shifted significantly in that immediate, nature religions are no longer tied to pantheism. In a preliminary consideration of "The Metaphysical Concept of God" that arises from this moment of religious consciousness, Hegel locates much more of the unfolding of being's concept in the thought of natural religion. As thought, immediacy indicates LL[simple] being," but If we have this concrete spirit as our object, but only generally, and the natural state [as] the mode of its reality, and if we divest both of them of their concrete content and keep only the abstract determination, then what we have is an abstract determination of God and the finite. These two sides now stand over against each other as infinite and finite, the one as existence [Dasein], the other as being [Sein], the one as substantial and the other as accidental, as universal and as singular. Admittedly these determinations are in some measure distinct: for example, the singular is much more concrete than the accidental; the universal is, or is supposed to be, much more concrete than substance. However, we can here take them undeveloped, and it makes no difference in that case which form we take in order to consider them more closely; what is essential in these determinations or categories is their relationship to one another when they [are] submerged in religion. (LPR, 253-254)

When this phenomenon occurs in nature religion, when the concept pushes forth towards the transition or interchange between finite and infinite, "the unity of both is maintained and the finite is preserved in the infinite.. .The consciousness in finite existence [Existenz] itself here becomes the infinite" (LPR, 254). At first, the finite stands up to the infinite, is "preserved" as a "mode of God's being" (LPR, 255). This manner of immediacy is inherent to nature religions. Beyond this, Hegel again invokes Kant's representationalism as a counterposed moment: inevitably, the nature of the finite is to seek its positive ground and "the finite disappears in the infinite, and we then have only the infinite; but the finite does not have being, its being is mere show; so we have the infinite before us in merely abstract form within its own sphere, and its determination consists in sublating its own abstractness" (LPR, 258). The ideal infinitude stretches "over there," beyond finitude, beyond a certain limit, immediate (but indeterminate) to thought, because genuine determination (in the Kantian, reflective teaching) comes from understanding, not from pure reason. Remarkably enough, Hegel suggests that the concreteness which is still implied in nature religion places it "at a higher level than this view" (LPR, 259). Hegel supplements this argument with a brief but important discussion of the difference between nature religion and pantheism:

...in this form of thought we have spoken of the finite generally. When we speak in this way, we take the finite as universal: the finite is everything finite. Speaking in this universal way, we say that nature religion is just this, to have the infinite before one in a finite-as-such; and if by this finitude we understand everything finite, then we should have what is called pantheism. (LPR, 259) Hegel again invokes Parmenides to exemplify the pantheistic view: '"Being is all; only being is'" (LPR, 260). But according to Hegel's 1824 perspective, nature religion does not fit the diagnosis: "Where we have spoken of the finite in thought forms, this is not to be taken in the universal sense in regard to nature religion; it is not to be taken reflectively but only as referring to an

unmediatedly singular existence; and to this extent nature religion is by no means pantheistic"

(LPR, 262). We should pause over this curious 1824 moment in order to register certain shifts in the text. An obvious point is that Hegel no longer discerns a close tie between pantheism and nature religions. It should be noted that the reason for this shift was quite particular to the internal debates of German philosophy and had a specific rhetorical function. Hegel seems to be exploring the way in which the Kantian legacy had a set of negative philosophical implications, one of which is pantheism. The indeterminacy of the pantheistic view became stigmatic after the Streit of the 1790's, and Hegel seems to be imputing pantheism to his post-Kantian cohorts. In order to drive his point home, he suggests that even nature religion is at a "higher level." This point is perhaps merely rhetorical, with no genuine relation to the particularity of Hinduism. But without a doubt, Hegel's position in fact shifted from that spelled out in the 1821 manuscript. In addition, Hegel's concern with a bothersome other within his own tradition (who really

is a pantheist?) opened up certain indeterminacies that prove to be quite revealing. Is nature religion (and thus Hinduism) the "first but the truest"? If so, how can it be at a "higher level" than certain brands of reflective pantheism? That would certainly place the latter (a category that includes such venerable Westerners as Parmenides and Hegel's post-Kantian peers) at a lower level, but the lowest level is supposedly occupied by the thought of immediate religion. What opens up in this structural confusion is, rather surprisingly, a characterization of immediate religion that in a basic sense begins to articulate one of the deadlocks in South Asian religion itself.

In the 1824 lecture, Hegel wishes to differentiate nature religion from pantheism by suggesting that the thought of the infinite in the finite in nature religion is not considered in a universal, essential sense in a religion like Hinduism. There is no reflection to make the

distinction between the indeterminate infinite in the finite and the abstract universality of the finite thought evenly and as a whole or one. What Hegel seems to be suggesting is that in nature religion one particular, singular existence is taken immediately as the infinite, with little thought of the whole, or even the rest. And this, I would suggest, is not a terribly bad way of beginning to question devotional traditions in South Asian religion, where the singular god is privileged over all else, even if there is a broader cognizance of a multitude of other gods and perhaps even of a greater philosophico-religious principle at work (brahman). The question of how the singular, personal divine object of bhakti relates to these broader notions is a vexed, deadlocked question in South Asian religious and philosophical texts, and here Hegel seems to have put his finger on it. Taken on its own terms, this insight, if we can call it that, was generated from a rhetorical concern internal to German philosophical debates; the text wishes to invoke the Indian other in order to make a damning argument against post-Kantian philosophy. But precisely at this point, where internal concern perhaps invited yet another facile represenation, we find a shift; a prior estimation of Indian religion is suspended and, at the moment of this differential, another question or concept is produced. This is surely not a question of dialogue, where views are exchanged, or the give-and-take of hermeneutical progress; in fact, what is significant here is the way a gesture of understanding is produced solely from interiority and indirect communication - a dialogue, perhaps, with the otherness or disruption within (indeterminate pantheism in Western thought) that opens a gap for understanding the other without (Hinduism is not pantheism; it is something else). By 1827, Hegel had carefully studied the Gitii, and we should recall Hegel's review at this point. Given the analysis of the text presented in the previous section, it seems that the 1824 lecture might have been an interesting departure for Hegel, perhaps fuelled by a sheer lack of

information. Having engaged in careful study, familiar associations return, and in particular the association between India and pantheism. In Hegel's 1827 lecture, determinate religion subdivides into three moments: 1) immediate or nature religions (religions of the Orient), 2) elevation of the spiritual above the natural (Jewish and Greek religions), and 3) religion of expediency or purposiveness (Roman religion) (LPR, 5 19-520). As nature religions, the religions of the Orient are foundational but undeveloped and immediate but self-involved; while nature religion does not simply mean reverence of natural objects (LPR, 53 I), "spirit still is in unity with nature. In being this way, spirit is not yet free, is not yet actual as spirit.,.Religion begins in the situation where the human being as singular counts as the highest or absolute power; one takes oneself to be an absolute power and is so regarded by others" (LPR, 5 19). Chinese religion thus represents the "magical" overcoming of nature and bare separation of subjectivity from the objective and Buddhism effects an absolute inwardness of this subjectivity, a "being within self." Indian religion (Hinduism) plays a complex transitional role in the exhibition of the Oriental nature religions in 1827; it is a religion of inwardness and externality, concreteness disintegrated into many powers standing in artificial connection with an abstract unity or substance. These determinations are imaginative, sensuous, and natural forms that dominate in Hinduism, but they are ultimately subsumed again within the self-contained unity or substance (LPR, 532-534). Our attention turns first to Hegel's section on "The Multiplicity of Powers." Here Hinduism is identified in its determination as "unbridled polytheism" and "wild particularity," where the deities have not yet acceded to the "beauty of figure" (where such particularity is taken up within spirit), nor have the particularities been posited as objects by the understanding, such that system, totality, or rationality can hold sway. In short, Hinduism is encountered as a religion of Phantasie (LPR, 584), of the "creative imagination." The trimfirti, for example, which gives

the initial appearance of the Hegelian concept itself in its triune structure, ultimately fails to exhibit the rational movement of the concept in its determinations, resulting only in the indifferent becoming of sivals destruction. The "trinity" is plunged back into the bare unity of substance, brahman (LPR,592). The trimUrti, like other determinations of the Hindu religion, is still grounded in its natural representation and remains unguided by a systematic concept, in the end only reaffirming the initial abstract ~ n i t y . ~ ' Hegel1s discussion turns to worship, the " C u l t ~ sor , ~the ~ relationship between the individual devotee to the concept of hisher religion. The dual principle of Hindu worship presented here is not unexpected, given the structure articulated above: abstract unity and negation of self and consciousness on the one hand, and abstract isolation of sensuality and excess (immersion in the natural) on the other. The higher forms of unity with brahman are achieved by emptying, renunciation, and self-concentration (yoga; pure "being within self1)

(LPR,595), and yet, as is best shown in the case of the brahminical caste, natural determinations are set at odds with the "immortality and freedom" associated with yogic practice. Brahmins, in Hegel's view, maintain the status of the yogi from birth (LPR,599), taking the identity of a god present in the world to the members of the other castes. But this is of course a naturalized status; its duties (like those of all people in all castes) are grounded in the arbitrary and non-spiritually mediated distinctions of birth and heredity. Yogic practice, as the other pole of Hindu worship, is no more effective in fostering subjective freedom, which is characterized by "being at home with onself in one's willing, knowing, and acting"; yoga instead calls for "being dead to the world," a As Harten suggests, this reading is representative of a new formulation of pantheism, which again contains an allusion to the contingencies of post-Kantian philosophy: "Hegel suggested that the pan in pantheism was the ground of all being. The pan was a reference to the One that was the prototype of the All.. .In this new definition of pantheism, Hegel's emphasis was on the pure and supreme Being (Sein) contained within determinate being (Dasein). The supreme being was the universal essence or prototype of all the attributes found in empirical existence.. .In this sense of "Pantheism," Hege was harkening back to the Kantian definition of the Ideal as a concept of singular Being who would be the source for all possible judgments and predications found in determinate being." "Raising the Veil of History," 135-136. 61

negation of self and a "stupefaction" of consciousness (LPR,596). In the distinction between yogic practice and brahminical worship, the Indian cultus is disrupted by the extremes and tensions already present in its conceptual structure. Thus, in the "Universal Pantheism" of Hinduism, there is no concrete, determinate subjectivity; everything (and nothing) is God, and on this basis Hegel lays out the only possible paths for Hindu worship: The only way a person can attain to unity with...substance is to deprive himself also of subjectivity and activity, to completely denaturalize or dematerialize himself. Whence the extreme asceticism of Hinduism on the part of those who set out to obtain unity with that absolute. On the other hand, the realm of nature itself remains chaotic, wild and disorderly, held in thrall by the passions. Whence the multi-limbed, protean depictions of the divinity "made bizarre, confused and ridiculous" in Hinduism, and the voluptuousness of image-worship on the part of those who remain in the world.62 This polarity is quite familiar from Hegel's reflections on the Git6. Looking back from 183 1, the year of the last presentation of the Lectures, it should be noted that in neither of the versions presented after 1824 does Hinduism carry the title "the religion of Phantasie." As an indication of the shift away from this approach to Hinduism, Hegel changed the 1824 section title ("die Religion der Phantasie") to "die indische Religion" in 1827 and 183 1 . As Hodgson suggests, This may be because he now [I8271 views Hinduism as having two primary characteristics: the unity of substance and the multiplicity of powers - and it is only with reference to the latter that Hindu phantasy comes into play. In 183 1 primary emphasis is placed on the first characteristic since Hinduism is defined as "the religion of abstract unity"; thus 1827 plays a transitional role between 1824 and 183 1 . (LPR, 579) This movement in Hegel's thinking towards a description of Hinduism that favors abstract unity runs contrary to the usual depiction of Hegel's distinctively orientalist attribution of the "phantastic" to Hindu religion. This movement is the result of Hegel's further acquaintance with

62

Inden, Imagining India, 95.

the texts of India, and his reappraisal of their potentially philosophical content, as the Git6 review begins to show. The conceptual movement particular to Hinduism (as is clearly in evidence in the 1831 lecture) is the movement from self-contained, abstract, universal unity (brahman) to manifold, "phantastic" externality, and back to the initial unity. This movement displays the logic of the dialectical concept, but the universal fails to inwardize its determinations and thus fails to become In other words, this constant return to the concrete, remaining at the level of s~bstantiality.~~ universal essence is the most fundamental aspect of Hindu religion, preventing the mediation of universal and particular necessary for truth to show itself in religion. "The Indian mind has thus found its way to the One and the Universal...But it has not found its way back to the concrete particularity of the w o r ~ d . " ~ In this schematic rendering of Hegel's views on Hinduism, I hope to have charted the shifts that underlie the development of his perspective. Here the pantheism conception hovers above Hegel's account, drifting towards India and then away, indicating a certain amount of indecision about its application. At the beginning, in the 1821 lecture, the association between foundational Indian belief and pantheism was quite clear, but as Hegel learned more from his sources this assimilation was far from simple. What is most striking is a gradual acceptance of a

See LPR,580-581, where Hegel presents his final judgment from the 1831 lectures: "This multiplicity or wild dispersal of powers is [finally] taken back again into the initial unity. In terms of the idea, this retrieval, this concentration of thought, would consummate the moment of spirituality if the initial, universal mode of thinking were to make itself inwardly accessible to differentiation and were known inwardly as the act of retrieval. On the foundation of abstract thought, however, the retrieval itself remains devoid of spirit. Nothing is lacking here as far as the moments of the idea of spirit are concerned; the idea of rationality is present in this advance. But these moments do not constitute spirit; the unfolding is not so consummated as to yield spirit, because the determinations remain merely universal. There is merely a perpetual return to that universality which is self-active but which is held fast in the abstraction of selfdetermining. Thus we have the abstract One and the wildness of unrestrained phantasy, which is, of course, known to remain identical with the first [principle] but which does not expand into the concrete unity of the spiritual. The unity of the intelligible realm achieves its specific permananence; but this last does not become absolutely free, for it remains confined within the universal substance." Halbfass, India and Europe, 89 63

more philosophically, conceptually attuned standpoint behind Indian religion, wherein "pantheism of the imagination" seems to fade, until the final account, which emphasizes an entirely philosophical characterization ("the religion of abstract universality"). At the most basic level, these shifts may simply represent a vindication of the hermeneutical model in the apprehension of the Orientalist past, as Wilhelm Halbfass' measured observation about Hegel's understanding of the South Asian tradition suggests: "While it is true that Hegel did not do justice to Indian philosophy [nor India in general], he certainly did not treat what he knew about it as mere 'informationy or 'opinions.' He dealt with it in a subordinating and, at times, pejorative manner, but he did not forget that 'it has an impact upon the highest It is clear that Hegel was prejudiced by his own cultural and notions of our under~tandin~.'"~~ philosophical aims; he never released them. But the question posed by Gadamer is of course, when are such prejudices ever completely released? The act of interpretation is characterized by putting such prejudices in play and remaining open to their revision, a process on the way to a fusion of horizons. While Hegel often limited himself severely, the vast prejudice that was his philosophical system was subject to change in the face of cultural difference. Hegel's text constructs no Orientalist monolith, but is a work in continually deferring progress. In short, the grand systematician changed his mind.

Conclusion In her refutation of Gadamer's hermeneutical optimism, Figueira argues that in Hegel's work on

India, [tlhe hermeneutical process does not run full cycle; it stalls at intervals for a variety of reasons. The reader may refuse to engage in the play or in alternative forms of inquiry. Delectation with some dominant fiction or master narrative

' India and Europe, 98.

may ultimately be more gratifying than mere understanding. The ensuing privileging of the self beyond the quotidian may simply be too s e d ~ c t i v e . ~ ~

In contrast to von Humboldt, it appears that Figueira is entirely correct - and Gadamer and Halbfass are wrong. Von Humboldt's approach was unique: spurred by A.W. Schlegel's philologically inspired efforts, and bolstered by a method that insisted on close analysis of context and language, von Humboldt allowed logos to influence conceptions, and not the other way around. He also introduced a striking feature to the method: empathy. Broad narratives of India were dispelled, and only a general scholarly myth remained. In short, von Humboldt's approach seems to match quite precisely with that Gadamer had in mind when he suggested that hermeneutical progress could lead to a "fusion of horizons." Hegel, on the other hand, often let a rigid, prefabricated prejudicial structure interfere with his engagement with Indian sources. There are a great number of reasons for this, which I have discussed above. But Figueira's own structure gets in the way of seeing another side to Hegel's representations. Hegel may not have been the model student of India, but his attempt to formulate the true concept of Hinduism was not monolithic. In fact, the back-and-forth of his deployment of the pantheism conception indicates that Hegel did allow the other to affect his thought, requiring adjustment and change. In addition, Hegel's very earnestness and intensity in focusing inward, on his own system and on his own intellectual milieu occasionally led him to formulate, in profound terms, the problems that bedeviled him, and in strange moments of crosscultural dynamism and reflection, he asked the right questions about what bothered India as well,

66

The Exotic, 88.

CHAPTER 7 - CONCLUSION

Reflections and Prospects From the contemporary perspective, it is easy to suggest that the story I have told in this project is arcane and obviated. The study of Indian religious and philosophical texts has advanced far beyond the preconceptions and frameworks that dominated in the early German reception of the Gitii, and this text, which was once a stranger, has become a close ally and friend, well accommodated in a developing global consciousness. It is tempting to forget the guesses, misunderstandings, and errors of the past, for they no longer seem relevant to a contemporary vision that allows the Gitti to stand side-by-side with foundational texts from the Western canon and continues to elucidate the native context of the Gitti through rigorous philological and historical study of Indian sources. For the study of religion and comparative religious thought (recalling Strenski's exhortation), it is perhaps time to stop the whining and move on. Despite such calls, the story of the Gita's appearance in Germany finds itself in the midst of a thriving industry. The temptation to "move on" has met with a countervailing impulse: the Orientalist past, which is one aspect of a broader history of encounter between the cultures and religions of the East and those of the West, does continue to give pause, suggesting that careful intellectual history remains important in discerning persistent prejudices and distortions in comparative analysis. The framing of the past, however, is not just about deriving pragmatic lessons for the present. As the response to Said's work has shown, destabilization of the history of European intellectual encounter with India challenges a sense of mission and identity within Western academic disciplines, often calling for a heightened genealogical sensitivity to their development and culmination.

A number of scholars in Indology, religious studies, and comparative religious thought (e.g., King, Pollack, Inden, and Halbfass) have pursued this effort with important results, and I have attempted to add to their genealogy in this dissertation project.' Out of an intersection between the theoretical perspectives presented by Foucault and Gadamer, I have proposed that a genealogy of Western intellectual encounter with India should press beyond statements and enunciations - into the full complexity of textual production and practice. According to Gadamer, effective engagement with the past requires dogged attention to texts and a persistent openness to adjustment through expansion of our contextual frames of reference. In my general application of Gadamer's views, I have acted on a fundamental imperative: to understand the way in which the Git6 was received by German intellectuals, their texts on India must be reread carefully, and the full context of the encounter must be acknowledged. To flesh out an intellectual's context is a daunting task, but progress on this front always proceeds in step-wise

'

The sense of genealogy advocated in the work of both Nietzsche and Foucault has inspired my own methodology in this project. In his text "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life," Nietzsche offers an early articulation of the genealogical approach, which champions a history in service of the present. This kind of "critical history" makes distinctions between history which is worthy of remembrance and that which should be forgotten, but it also warns against shying away from a past that is not consonant with the standards and values of the present: "For since we are the outcome of earlier generations, we are also the outcome of their aberrations, passions and errors, and indeed of their crimes; it is not possible wholly to free ourselves from this chain. If we condemn these aberrations and regard ourselves as free of them, this does not alter the fact that we originate in them. The best we can do is to confront our inherited and hereditary nature with our knowledge of it, and through a new, stem discipline combat our inborn heritage and implant in ourselves a new habit, a new instinct, a second nature, so that our first nature withers away." Friedrich Nietzsche, "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life," in Untimely Meditations, translated by R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 76. Many of Nietzsche's later genealogies act on this impulse; he examines the history of a concept or a value in order to discern continuities and discontinuities with its present manifestations and to strengthen a contemporary, oppositional perspective. Foucault's reading of Nietzsche suggests that genealogy has only to do with ruptures and discontinuities; in addition, Foucault argues that Nietzsche banishes any sensibilities about the origins of concepts and values. See "Nietzche, Genealogy, History," translated by Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon, in The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 76-81. This reading can be questioned, and my own sense of genealogy (following Nietzsche) suggests that a sense of origin and a balance of continuity and discontinuity characterize effective history. Nevertheless, in his strong interpretation of Nietzsche, Foucault recommends that we pay close attention to "entangled and confused parchments" and "documents that have been scratched over and recopied many times" (76) in order "to identify the accidents, the minute deviations - or conversely, the

fashion, and I hope to have contributed some new interpretive openings in my readings of selected texts above. This general reading of Gadamerian methodology resonates with aspects of Foucault's program, which insists that there are multiple layers in the production of knowledge, requiring vigorous engagement with textual sources. In my application of Foucault, the statements that have been made about India situated themselves on the surface of intellectual production, and a multiplicity of technical moves established their plausibility and authority. I have attempted to begin a discussion of these textual practices in my reading, with an emphasis on some of the specific modalities by which the Git5 was reconstituted in the German context, including excerpting and translation. This analysis can and should be carried into the far reaches of Orientalist encounter, into the moments of British contact with the pandits and into the network of decision-making that ultimately produced Indology as an institutionally sanctioned discipline in the German university. These vistas remain open; the present work has merely attempted to clear the view, inviting prolonged attention. At the most fundamental level, I hope to have shown that genealogical analysis of the encounter between Europe and India requires going beyond a cataloguing of enunciations and representations: we wish to know why such statements were made and how they became authoritative in the first place, and this requires attention to specific enactments of textual practice. Through the analysis presented above, I have illustrated that the application of these broad methodological assumptions offers a better historical picture of the early German reception of Indian culture and religion. This concluding chapter will therefore turn first to a recapitulation of the specific historical results that have arisen from the project. In the Gadamerian spirit,

complete reversals - the errors, the false appraisals, and the faulty calculations that gave birth to those things that continue to exist and have value for us" (8 1).

however, I will also turn to results for the present, the insights that have arisen out of sustained dialogue with past encounter. Engaging this strand of the exchange between India and Europe prompts reflection on a set of issues that continues to press contemporary efforts in the study of religion: the role of texts in the study of religion and the study of comparative religious thought, the ethical status of the German past with regard to both the "Aryan myth" and imperialism, and the definition and influence of Romanticism in the contemporary study of religion. In discussing these issues, my aim is not to establish absolute or definitive conclusions; it is rather to pose questions that contribute to contemporary discussions, leading to continued dialogue and engagement.

Progress in Historical Framing As I suggested in the introductory chapter, this dissertation has its basis in a relatively simple story of textual reception. In the wake of Edward Said's critique of Orientalism, however, contemporary debates have complicated the narrative, requiring a heightened level of attention to the theory and ethics of representation. Said's historical account suggested that many of the triedand-true conceptions of the non-European other had a questionable provenance, requiring a substantial re-evaluation of terms across the span of Western academic disciplines. The appearance of the GitZ in Germany, which might have once been an interesting but relatively straightforward tale of a strange text making its way in a strange land, now is framed by imposing theoretical structures: it arrived squarely within a period that is of decisive importance for postFoucaultian, post-Saidian critics of Orientalism and European modernity. This theoretical and ethical weight may indeed be too much for a simple history of reception to bear. The political and ethical stakes are high in the pages of Orientalism, for example, but careful herrneneutical engagement with the past suffered because of the selectivity

of Said's historical account, which quite often was content to cut across surfaces, rather than pursuing certain areas of study in any depth. As a number of scholars have noted, the treatment of German Orientalism and the German representation of India was a case in point. Even the most sophisticated work on German Orientalism, however, continues to bear Said's influence: it focuses on the representations of the non-European other and the idkes m p e s in the history of European academic disciplines, selecting negative or pejorative statements about the Orientalist as the primary object of study. My own theoretical assumptions about what makes effective intellectual history have led to the proposal that there is much more at work beneath the surface of these "Orientalizing" statements, giving force to the question that has guided this study: "How was the Bhagavad GitZ constituted as an object of European knowledge?" Addressing this question has required a negotiation of a set of theoretical claims that are common in recent scholarship on the Orientalist past. First, as Dorothy Figueira has argued, the approach to intellectual history inspired by Foucault emphasizes the impersonal and anonymous activity of an Orientalist discourse that is endlessly (and perhaps fatalistically) tied up with systems of domination and power. This approach seems unfit for German context under study, in which the author's capacity for innovation was much wider than Foucault's framework allows. In addition, the German distance from direct deployment of colonial power questions the tight power-knowledge connection presupposed in many anti-Orientalist critiques. On the other hand, intellectuals of the period in question were ineluctably joined together through personal communication and public debate. Thus I have interpreted the production of knowledge about India among these figures as a collective project taken up by a localized intellectual community.

In emphasizing the locality of the Orientalist past, we correct one of the most significant distortions in post-Saidian accounts, the idea that Orientalism was an overpowering, monolithic force that simply took over any effort to understand the other. While the community I have

discussed was crucial for the founding of European ways of knowing Indian culture, texts, and religion and therefore may well have contributed to forms of intellectual imperialism in Europe, it was composed of individual actors whose concerns were the product of local dialogue and debate. Knowledge was not the product of some kind of machine; it was human, all too human, and placing it in its full context enhances our understanding of the moments where knowledge and power intersected in the history of the European encounter with India - and also where they did not. Focusing on actors within an intellectual community leads into a differentiated negotiation of another significant debate in the history of the study of Indian culture and religion. Recent critiques of Orientalism have suggested that the construction of knowledge about the nonEuropean other is always in some sense political. But in what sense, and to what extent? I have argued that the political content of intellectual representations and practice varies in accordance with the aims of the individual author within his or her context, and while politics and power inevitably have a role in an intellectual's work, this role is highly differentiated. It must be possible to distinguish between a scholar who is dimly ideological, trading only on broad, standard constructions of institutional and disciplinary power to articulate his or her authority, and an intellectual who is overtly power-driven, leading to distortions in his or her account of another culture. Without this level of differentiation, power and politics are everywhere and thus nowhere, and critical reflection on the past (and on the present) loses its value. A sensitive theoretical instrument is necessary in order to negotiate these claims. In the

broadest sense, I have argued that we can frame the activity of an intellectual within his or her community by identifying scholarly myth and logos. In the story I have told, these two features of the German interpretation of Indian culture and religion have consistently intertwined. Intellectual or scholarly myths, on the one hand, tend to have a broad, public appeal, leading quite

naturally to the overt contestation or support of political agendas. Perhaps the most enduring intellectual myth of India was the narrative that located India as the primordial source of all human civilization and culture. This myth employed tropes and structures borrowed from the Judaeo-Christian image of an Edenic paradise and often expressed a utopian, exoticist urge for that which was culturally and temporally distant. It also incorporated the notion of the fall from innocence and purity. In most early accounts, India's period of innocence and insight, which was vaguely associated with the Vedic period, was thought to have degenerated into idolatry and corruption. This myth had a great deal of explanatory power for early European interpreters, but its application was often also polemical. Voltaire, for example, used it to criticize the Catholic establishment as part of his Enlightenment critique. Herder followed Voltaire but put the myth to work within his own effort to foster German national identity and cultural renewal. While his narrative of Indian history of religions and culture was more differentiated than that of his predecessors, Friedrich Schlegel also relied on this broad vision of Indian primordiality, with an emphasis on apologetic for a primal Christian revelation and on the subsequent fallenness of humanity. Even Hegel seemed to borrow from this myth in the construction of his historical account, though his own theoretical and polemical aims led him to frame the childhood of humanity in decisively negative terms. When it first appeared in Germany, the Bhagavad Git; was caught up in this compelling narrative. In general, it led Herder to view the text as an antique, aesthetic object, the product of a more innocent but insightful stage of human development. It fit quite naturally into the framework of folk literature, which called upon modem European cultures to discern their own roots in the service of a new sense of identity. Friedrich Schlegel's differentiation of the myth led him to place the Git; with greater historical precision, but the narrative interposed itself: the Git6 was, as it were, a post-lapsarian text in India, and it bore the traces of a decline in religious

consciousness. In both of these cases, it is clear that the myth of Indian paradise and fall led to distortions in the early reception of the text, but this narrative also provided some experimental openings in interpretation that later proved productive, in conjunction with heightened methodological sophistication. This kind of sophistication is represented by logos, the traditional partner to myth in scholarly endeavor. I have argued that logos is often in tension with myth and at times is overwhelmed by it, but some sense of method is always present in intellectual activity, even if in a crude or minimal form. Logos generally relies on broad public narratives to bolster its authority, but it also has its own non-ideological power that disrupts distorted representations and herrneneutical frameworks, fostering progress in understanding. During the period in question, the myth of India was consistently paired with experiments in method that were designed to establish the facts of Indian culture, texts, and religion more accurately. At times, this collusion was too tight for logos to make any sort of progress, and lack of source material was an added impediment. In Herder's broad examination of Indian culture, for instance, experimentation with an empirical study of physical geography, an early form of cultural anthropology, was quite clearly guided by the myth of Indian paradise, leading to highly selective results. A limited body of source materials supported Herder's hypotheses, and as a result, logos was placed in the service of a broad cultural myth of the Edenic India. The tension between myth and logos persisted even in the area of textual hermeneutics, which was often assumed to be a German specialty. Herder's method led him to posit the specificity of the products of another culture and to engage them in dialogical fashion, but it also suggested that analysis and translation of the text should be driven by an intuition of its "spirit" or "genius." This act was itself a kind of art that drew upon the creativity of the interpreter. The freedom of the critic and the translator opened Herder's textual logos to the influence of powerful

myths about the innocent charm of the source material, pushing the very distinctiveness of the text aside in favor of more familiar models of constituting a it. Hence Herder's Gitii, while subjected to interesting forms of interpretive and translational activity, is hardly recognizable as an Indian source. To this extent, engagement with the text failed in the face of dominant narratives of Indian culture, which were countered by a logos that gave the text over to subjectivity, rather than contextualization and dialogue. Nevertheless, Herder contributed mightily to the development of a logos-driven approach to Indian textual sources through his reflections on language. The important prize essay on language (1772) was an important step in the development of an analysis of language based on scientific principles. Following this initiative and drawing upon the pioneering work of William Jones, Friedrich Schlegel emphasized a new brand of comparativism in his analysis of India and Indian texts. Traces of the old myth of Indian primordiality persisted, leading Schlegel to suppose that Sanskrit itself pointed transparently to the first language of humankind. In addition, Schlegel's vision of textual logos was like Herder's in that it granted wide freedoms to the philologist and translator. Comparative analysis of language, however, suggested that the linguistic productions of India had a dignity on par with that of Classical sources, paving the way for careful textual analysis. In the work of August Wilhelm Schlegel, Franz Bopp, and Wilhelm von Humboldt, this logos-driven approach to Indian sources like the GitZ reached fruition. In each case, the truth of the Indian textual source was thought to lie primarily in its language. Careful philological analysis and exhaustive attention to the original in translation guided the scholar's approach, and philosophical or religious concerns were actively bracketed. In the case of von Humboldt, I have argued that these forms of textual logos were supplemented by broader contextual research and even an empathetic sense. Above all, attention to language as the primary object of study led to

technical discussions among the members of the German intellectual community. While this discussion may have had a naive premise (Langlois' challenge), the kind of technical dialogue and debate that followed A.W. Schlegel's translation of the Git6 marked the coalescence of a community of interpreters that privileged logos over myth. This turn to the technical study of texts like the Git6, however, did not simply suspend the role of myths in the early German interpretation of Indian culture and religion. In the work of

A. W. Schlegel, it is evident that a new scholarly myth took shape around the development of Indology as an academic discipline. This myth privileged the purely textual approach of German intellectuals and portrayed a nationalist scene of competition over the humanistic resources unearthed in the sub-continent. In addition, Schlegel's construction of philological methods was driven by a vision of a new kind of Classicism: as the high Latin sensibility of the Middle Ages had been fuelled by the retrieval of Greek sources; so too would the modem German university system derive its inspiration from new textual treasures, especially those imported from India. Analysis of Indian sources would rely heavily on the philological methods that had been perfected in the European encounter with ancient Greek and Latin sources. As his brother and Franz Bopp had shown, the language in which these sources were at least as elegant and ancient as Greek or Latin, if not more so; Sanskrit texts deserved the same level of philological rigor as was commonly applied to Classical sources. Discerning the continuing interplay between myth and logos goes a long way towards specifying the way in which the Git6 was constituted as an object of knowledge in the German intellectual community. This process can be defined even further by targeting the social nature of knowledge production. In the midst of the dialectic between myth and logos, the German intellectual community generated interpretive facts about India through an articulation and application of its own very particular concerns. As Ludwik Fleck has suggested, the development

of a fact is a collective process that builds on a specific set of in-group practices and patterns of thought. To this extent, when it came to constituting facts about the the Git6, a limited set of sources and broad cultural myths initially provided "proto-ideas" or vague, experimental notions, which launched the inquiry in specific directions. From this point, through an intersection with forms of logos, the community developed conceptions of the Indian text (propositions about what the text said) and regular styles of discourse about it (norms for how one should talk about the text). At times we can discern the full articulation of an explanatory structure that offered an exhaustive and complete vision of the textual facts. This process often led to interpretive success: a vague suspicion became firmed up through the integration of new data and the application of a stronger emphasis on logos. In contrast, the reliance upon some conceptions, styles, and structures also had the tendency to impede progress, especially when tried-and-true lines of interpretation devolved into sloganeering and cliche. In sum, Fleck's framework offers a nuanced perspective on the activities of scholars in this community, even at the more technical layers of textual practice. Close attention to the framing of Indian sources among German intellectuals reveals an interesting contrast in styles as Romantic enthusiasm gave way to philological analysis. In his pioneering reflections, Herder initiated a style of speaking about India and Indian sources that promoted enthusiasm for their profound antiquity and aesthetic charm. The flowery style with which Herder wrote about Indian culture had its counterpart in textual practice: the GitZ was translated in accordance with a stylized sensibility about what a wise, ancient text should look like. Hence the text was edited so as to appear epigrammatic, and the German rendering transformed Wilkins' blank English prose into poetry with clear markers of antique expression. Herder's stylized enthusiasm was carried forth by the Schlegel brothers in their early reflections,

and A.W. Schlegel's high Latin Classicism continued to extol the ancient wisdom texts of India a style of speaking about the Gild that certainly persists to this day. The flowery enthusiasm of early Romantic overtures towards India, however, was ultimately paired with a more sober form of analysis. It is interesting to note the movement, for example, from Ludoviko's rapturous praise of Indian culture in F. Schlegel's early dialogue on

r Sprache und Weisheit der Indier. In order to poetry to the rather academic reflections in ~ b e die match the erudition of his British counterparts, we might assume, Schlegel did not write a dialogue, a poem, or even a flowery essay; instead, h e r die Sprache was a treatise reporting on findings and developing theories. It articulated the branches of a new field of study and thus set the agenda for academic engagement with India's language, history, philosophy, and religion. The distillation of the new academic style for speaking about India is perhaps best represented by the work of Franz Bopp, who aimed to be purely technical in his writing about Indian sources. As Fleck argues, the styles that are acceptable for presenting one's findings are often as important as the substance of the findings themselves. Nevertheless, the conceptions that frame the construction of fact within an intellectual community have an independent status. Indeed, while styles shifted and changed in the early German reception of Indian sources, a standard set of conceptions consistently anchored them. In Herder's work, stylized myths of India gave rise to hypothetical theories about the essence of India. For one thing, it was an aesthetic, sensuous land of imagination, but in addition, caste and transmigration were also facts of Indian culture and religion. Many of Herder's successors would take these conceptions as the starting point for inquiry, bolstering the authority of these notions as essential to the Indian spirit. Perhaps most importantly, Herder extracted another important conception from his sources in order to speak to the very present concerns of his intellectual community, namely pantheism. After this innovation, which can be traced quite specifically to Herder, pantheism would be associated quite

consistently with foundational Indian doctrine, especially in the work of early German Romanticism. Even in later, more differentiated accounts (such as that presented by Friedrich Schlegel), pantheism became a necessary touchstone in the reading of Indian religious and philosophical doctrines, and while Hegel's account shifted during the course of the 182OYs, pantheism constantly hovered over his reading of Indian religion. As Fleck's analysis suggests, all three of these dominant conceptions (caste, transmigration, and pantheism) developed in an effort to ground knowledge about India, and they played a vital role in mediating Indian sources in the technical detail of textual practice. Nevertheless, the repeated assertion of such essences (especially in the absence of further contextual research) tended to transform them into mere slogans, leading to a stultifying closure of herrneneutical engagement. In light of these observations, it has been important to evaluate structures of interpretation proposed by major figures such as F. Schlegel, von Humboldt, and Hegel, especially with reference to the optimistic Gadamerian reading of progress in cross-cultural understanding. I have argued that Gadamer's dialogical model is fundamentally quite appropriate in examining the encounter (both past and present) between Indian text and Western reader. It is hard to deny that prejudicial structures were subject to advance and adjustment in the German interpretation of India. F. Schlegel drew upon the prejudices he had inherited from his intellectual community but dramatically expanded his hermeneutical horizon through study of the Indian tradition (its language in particular). The result was a variegated account of Indian history, religion, and philosophy, opening the possibility that India was a highly differentiated object of study. Von Humboldt's work was a particularly striking example of the hermeneutical circle in action: his focus on language (spurred by A.W. Schlegel's translation of the Giti) and his accumulation of knowledge about the Indian religious and philosophical context (derived primarily from Colebrooke's pioneering essays) led to a startling proliferation of interpretive possibilities. Even

Hegel, whose vision of India and Indian texts was often quite retrograde, adjusted his conceptions in light of further contextual evidence; like the very content and performance of his foundational thought, Hegel's engagement with Indian religion was dynamic. Nevertheless, there are also tragic elements to the story I have told, and the Gadamerian account does not offer an adequate explanation as to why progress in understanding is often impeded. It should be noted that Gadamer's account of Romantic hermeneutics (as represented

by Schleiermacher) does add an important insight: my analysis has shown that the failure to anchor an effective logos of textual engagement often derived from a subjective model of interpretation, i.e., understanding a writer better than he understands himself through creative reconstitution of the text. This ethos was certainly consistent among the figures I have examined, and it often led to serious problems in the translation and interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita. But I have also shown that the individual predilection of authors was not the

most consistent problem in the framing of Indian sources; rather, the constant urge to return to a set of myths and conceptions of India that circulated in the community led to steps back, even as progress seemed a real possibility. Why did F. Schlegel revert to sloganeering about Indian pantheism in debates with his philosophical peers just after he had differentiated forms of Indian religious and philosophical doctrine? Why did the formidable von Humboldt continue to position Indian sources as imaginative, aesthetic objects? Why was Hegel so vituperative in his recasting of old myths and conceptions of India, even as he made made experimental progress in his own understanding of it? Context gives the answer to questions like these, and I have attempted to reconstruct it in the foregoing analysis, but a general response can also be presented: in their construction of knowledge, the interior life of intellectual communities can be idionsyncratic and quixotic. Part

of this has to do with the strong will and privileged subjectivity of the Western reader, but no intellectual is an island: a community of discourse and, indeed, an entire tradition offers a specific vocabulary of thought and interpretation, and the encounter with the foreign text often points out these limitations. When faced with strange new data, even the most sophisticated intellectual community has the propensity to accommodate it according to familiar frames of understanding. These prejudices can be productive - or they can lead to error and folly. A general principle can be adduced: an intellectual community that is fixated on its own terms, debates, and authority tends to take the foreign text as a mere pretense, leading to faulty interpretation; moments of progress, in conrast, derive from openness, method, and dialogue. On the surface, this principle is entirely serviceable in reading past and present crosscultural understanding, but it skirts the deeper question: what is the basis of an intellectual community's narrowness or openness in the first place? The anti-Orientalist critique names power and domination as the conditions for the possibility of modem European cross-cultural interpretation; these conditions simultaneously enabled interpretation and also subjected it to narrow, discriminatory laws. To a certain extent this critique is valid, for the foreign text certainly has a tendency to put an intellectual community on the defensive, pushing it back into tried-and-true modes of interpretation. I have also argued, however, that this very fixation on a supposedly stable interpretive stance can lead to a self-estrangement, which may very well constitute the transcendental condition for cross-cultural openness. Hegel's reading of India, for example, at first appears defensive and retrograde. But in his very fixation on that which consistently bothered his own tradition (e.g., pantheism), Hegel recognized that it was at odds with itself; an other at its very interior had constantly challenged it. It was, in a sense, open in and of itself, leading to a level of receptivity to the other culture, namely India. See Gadamer, Truth and Method, 191-197

These dynamics are particularly evident in the carrying out of the specific textual practices that reconstituted the Bhagavad Gild in the German context. In answering the framing question, "How was the GitZ constituted as an object of European knowledge?", we should certainly take note of the way in which textual practices like excerpting and translation served to present a framework of reception as finished and closed. As Gadamer suggests, all translation may be interpretation, but Herder and F. Schlegel in particular presented their versions of the Gitci as a finished, fixed object of knowledge, leading uninformed members of their readership to accept certain structures of interpreting the text because these structures were embedded in the reconstituted text itse~f.~ Even in later translations and commentaries, which were considerably more nuanced, the effect for some readers would certainly have been the reinforcement of certain customary modes of interpreting the text. For the purpose of general summary, we can say that the German intellectual community contributed to the positioning of the Git6 as an object of European knowledge in several highly influential ways: 1) It asserted that the Gitci was an aesthetic, imaginative object that expressed ancient wisdom. 2) Its philosophical wisdom was consistently tied to vitalism and pantheism. 3) Its examination of moral agency, which was founded on the Indian belief in caste and transmigration, was limited. 4) It constructed the Gitii as an emblem of the German method of studying India: through texts alone. We may very well ask whether any of these principles are helpful or interesting in our reading of the GM. Historically speaking, it is hard to deny that these broad tendencies in the reading of the text supported a rather jaundiced interpretation of Indian culture. As Inden suggests: these principles were part of a European discourse that was dominant throughout the

See Niranjana, Siting Translation, 3: "In creating coherent and transparent texts and subjects, translation participates - across a range of discourses - in thefixng of colonized cultures, making them seem static and unchanging rather than historicallyconstructed. Translation functions as a transparent presentation of something that already exists, although the "original" is actually brought into being through translation." 4 See Imagining India, 93-130.

nineteenth and twentieth centuries: India was a land of imagination (as opposed to reason), its essential and originary religion was "an illusionary pantheism" that was associated with Advaita Vedanta, and there was thought to be no proper history in India because a concept of moral agency and responsibility was lacking. This discourse puts the text (and Indian culture in general) in an interpretive straitjacket. It is plausible to read the Git6 as an aesthetic product of the human imagination, for it is, after all, an excerpt from an epic literary masterpiece. Nevertheless, this essentialization of the text is inappropriate, especially in light of the sophisticated philosophical tradition of commentary that surrounds it. (This tradition was only dimly recognized among the scholars I have investigated.) In addition, pantheism, which we might more properly associate with the monism of the Upanisads, hardly exhausts the philosophical content of the text, which registers the conflicts between several competing perspectives. Further, criticisms of the lack of moral content of the Gitd hardly seem productive, or even accurate, especially given more recent interpretations of the text that focus on the committed action of the karmayogin. Despite these limitations, there is more to the story of the German reception of the text, even as a simple matter of historical accuracy. The herrneneutical closures of a systematic discourse were accompanied by decisive and disruptive moments of openness. For example, A.W. Schlegel may have acted out of self-fixated vision of constructing an ancient, authoritative classic in translating the Gitci, a text that would ground the national and institutional standing of the discipline that he wished to found. But his own overblown sense of himself as a translator (which was buoyed by the conventions of his community) led to fascinating results: the will to translate everything, every term and concept, led to deformations in the target language - an estrangrnent in the already strange Latin. This rupture produced a moment of openness and curiosity, out of which scholars began to debate and pursue a range of interpretive possibilities.

We might trace the potency of Schlegelystranslation to a conscious methodological commitment: he argued that the foreignness of a text should often be allowed to deform and denature the target language, thereby registering the distance between the original and the translation. In all cases where translation of Indian sources was in play, the authoritative, finished surface of the reconstituted text attempted to cover over the problematic difference of the original text, but often without success. The devil, as it were, is in the details. On one hand, close examination of textual practices helps us to discern the techniques by which German readers constructed a definitive framework for interpreting the Bhagavad GitZ and for constituting it as an object of European knowledge. On the other hand, this examination also illustrates that the very attempt to present an authoritative German GitZ was disrupted by difference from the outset at the most intimate levels of linguistic contact. The most profound way in which the GitZ became an object of European knowledge was by refusing full objectification, thereby pushing its readers to realize their own sense of self-estrangement and leaving them open to new interpretive possibilities.5 From a historical perspective, this moment of cross-cultural encounter adds to a refined picture of the European intellectual encounter with India. It particularly points out the limitations in the post-Saidian, anti-Orientalist depiction of this encounter, which suggests that it was relentlessly constrained by a narrow, monolithic discourse of power. This view dims our critical perspective on the past and is frankly inaccurate. To this extent, as a matter of heightened historical consciousness, my account hopefully serves the present by adding to our understanding of a founding moment in the study of religion and comparative religious thought. In the next section, I will continue to make this turn to the present by discussing contemporary issues that are engaged by the story I have told.

* For a contemporary reflection on this dynamic, see Richard King, Indian Philosophy, 236-238. King draws heavily on Asad; see Tala1 Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in

The Gita's Early Reception and Contemporary Concerns As I have suggested, the pragmatic impulse to derive lessons from the past does not exhaust the value of historical inquiry into the foundations of an academic discipline. In the contemporary study of religion, and in the more sophisticated brands of comparative philosophy of religion that have benefited from it, this pragmatic value does have its place. Religious studies is a relatively new discipline, and continuing scrutiny of the genealogy of its concepts can yield specific methodological insights and correctives. Beyond mere pragmatism, however, engagement with historical forms of cultural comparison produces frameworks for interrogation, recalling and reasserting fundamental theoretical issues and providing basic forms of orientation for the discipline. The story of the German GTtC presents us with three issues in particular: 1) the role of the text in the study of religion and comparative religious thought, 2) the ethical status of the German heritage in the study of India, and 3) the status of Romanticism in the study of religion and as a broad inheritance in the Western cultural context. As the work of a number of scholars shows, the critique of Orientalism can be interestingly specified when it comes to the study of religion. One of the many legacies of nineteenth century scholarship is a decidedly philological, textual approach. My analysis has explored some of the founding moments of this bias. A.W. Schlegel, for example, was explicit: German study of India was in fact superior to that performed by the British, precisely because it was purely textual. At the founding moment of the Western academic study of Indian religion, intellectuals were well aware of other avenues of approach (e.g., traveller's accounts or direct observation); the move towards textual study was in fact a reasoned choice, which elicits a

Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993)' 171- 199,

persistent question: what should the role of the text be in cross-cultural inquiry and in the study of religion? A classic formulation of the critique of textual bias appears in Lawrence E. Sullivan's

essay, '"Seeking an End to the Primary Text' or 'Putting an End to the Text as ~rimary.'"~ Sullivan argues that religious studies is the particular location in the university for questioning our culture's emphasis on texts; the study of religion should strive to "discover the limits of the text as the prime vehicle of intelligibility," for "the religious conditions of humanity lie largely beyond the sacrality of scripture" (44-45). Focusing on text as a fundamental metaphor and transmitter of religious meaning emphasizes its constructedness (meaning is often "given" in religious contexts) and occludes materiality and perfonnativity in religion (46-47). According to Sullivan, emphasis on the text also denies the importance of oral cultures and their obviously rich religious sensibilities. Richard King's critique of textual bias, which draws heavily on Goody and Ong, extends Sullivan's contentions, specifically invoking the role of Orientalism in the genealogy of religious studies. While texts often retain traces of a performative, embodied orality, they ultimately convey a "sense of closure," "the sense that the content of the text was final and complete."' A written text tends to decontextualize the force of debates and practices that produced it. The isolation of texts, especially when mass-reproduced in the wake of the printing revolution in early modem Europe, contributes directly to the notion of decontextualized, textualized "world religions," where printed texts are taken as essential markers of communities and traditions that are intensely differentiated (66). According to King, this approach "tends to promote a simplistic, essentialist and overly homogenous account of human religiosity" (68). Responsibility for it can In Beyond the Classics? Essays in Religious Studies and Liberal Education, edited by Frank E. Reynolds and Sheryl L. Bulkhalter (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990).

be traced to the biases of modem Western culture, the proliferation of print on one hand and the prevalence of Protestant biblicism on the other. As King's critique suggests, the emphasis on the text is linked to another theoretical commitment that privileges an idealist or philosophical approach to religion and culture. Textual bias goes hand in hand with the determination of beliefs and doctrines that are taken to represent the essence of a tradition, denying the importance of material culture and practice and privileging the position of religious elites. These criticisms are widespread in contemporary religious studies. Vasudha Narayanan, for one, has argued for the importance of "anthropological stuff," like the role of food in the rituals of the Hindu tradition, over and against the usual determination of Hinduism as a textual, doctrinal religion. As she suggests, "Hindus do not usually walk around worrying about their karma or working toward tnoksha (liberation), nor are most folk familiar with anything more than the name Vedinta among the various schools of philosophy."8 Thus Naryanan calls for an approach that attends to both the "high" tradition of Veda and dariana and the more popular manifestations of Hindu religiosity (goddess worship, dance, etc.). These present concerns about textualist, intellectualist determinations of Indian religion deeply implicate the period I have examined. The genealogy of these biases can be traced at least in part to German innovations in the study of India. But careful engagement with this past adds nuance to the contemporary discussion. We might focus, first, on a rather standard typing of the traditional Western bias in favor of texts: that it was the function of Protestantism. To a certain extent, this typing is correct, as my analysis has shown. But the story is not simple; it is not enough to say, for example, that the printing press, broad literacy, and Protestant biblicism drove the textualism of the early founding of Indology in the German setting - or the early history of the

'Orientalism and Religion, 65.

study of religion. The intellectuals I have discussed privileged Indian texts (over, say, going to India) for a diverse but discursively coherent set of reasons. After the model of both scriptural and classical sources, texts had the power to assert the authority of cross-cultural and temporal distance. Indian difference, which was embodied in its texts, served important theoretical aims: Herder, for example, had very clear reasons for employing texts that exemplified cultural distinctiveness, and Friedrich Schlegel relied on the ability of the text to convey the thoughts of a distant, idyllic age in order to foster a notion of cultural renewal. In addition, it often seemed that only sophisticated textual expression could bring philosophical lessons home, particularly in connection with concerns about pantheism. Only Indian texts like the Giti could bear all of the layers of philosophical development described by Friedrich Schlegel; speaking with the brahmin on the ground would not have done the job, at least in his mind. As the German discourse on Indian religion developed, later figures thematized the primacy of the text more specifically, but once again, the story is complicated. Protestants (if figures like Franz Bopp, A.W. Schlegel, and Wilhelm von Humboldt can be called such) did privilege philology over what they saw as Catholic enthusiasm. Especially in the work of A.W. Schlegel, this religious distinction also had nationalist overtones; the philological sobriety of German approaches was pitted against the Catholic enthusiasms of French writers. These factors were certainly important in the development of textualist Indology. But I would argue that "Protestant bias" was only an indirect background factor in the privileging of the Indian text as a bearer of cultural knowledge among these later thinkers. The appearance of the language as the primary object of study directed attention to texts as the richest site for inquiry within the developing framework of the human sciences. A.W. Schlegel attached himself to a neo-Classical

Vasudha Narayanan, b'DiglossicHinduism: Liberation and Lentils," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 68, No. 4 (December 2000): 761.

vision of these sciences that led him to greet Indian textual sources with Latinate philology, suggesting that the text remained the prime object of European knowledge. This was part of an environment that Franz Bopp's work fostered. Fundamental structures in language were fixed in texts and were open to historical, development schemes and typologies, and thus textuality provided the aperture for linguistic science. All of these factors were at work not only in privileging the texts of India, but also in specifically constituting them as objects of knowledge. Representations of and statements about India give us part of the view on the early German reception of its sources, but the other part of the story is the modes and practices associated with this reception. As I have shown, excerpting and anthologization played a crucial role in the reception of the Gitii, particularly in the work of Herder and F. Schlegel. But the activity that has been under consistent scrutiny here is translation. The Romantic concept of translation once again enhanced the importance of the text in German intellectual circles. Among the figures I have investigated, translation was most often much more than a handmaiden to other modes of understanding: translation was the essential

mode and metaphor of understanding, renewal, and progress (in short, Bildung). Thus the translation of a text like the Gitii was in itself a virtually sacred act, or at least one that expressed the core vision of this intellectual community. While the primal Lutheran scene of biblical translation was perhaps in the background, we have seen that translation among the Romantics was theorized on highly distinctive non-religious grounds. These observations assist in the genealogy of the traditional textual bias in the study of religion by suggesting that a diverse set of influences supplemented it in the German context. More importantly, the analysis I have presented brings a deeper level of theoretical questioning to bear: does a privileging of textuality necessarily exclude attention to materiality and practice? In attending to the texts of German intellectuals, I have argued for a methodology that takes careful

account of the various layers of intellectual effort that undergird statements and representations, revealing that textual reception is a complex matter of technique, practice, and convention. It even has a material element, especially if we were to consider the means by which Indian texts were acquired, transported, archived, and reproduced by European institutions. This manner of attending to our own tradition has a reflexive element, for the same principles surely hold true in the contemporary analysis of the text of the other. Affixing religion to written texts alone is a mistake, but textuality can only remain at the center of the study of religion and comparative religious thought. For many religious groups and traditions, texts are indeed central, and often these texts are written, for good or ill, in elite languages. These facts should not be denied in order to suit a contemporary, scholarly imperative. It should also be said that scholars of religion, no matter how attuned to performativity, materiality, or orality they may be, inevitably textualize their subject. Does this make every effort in the study of religion ethnocentric just because it is textual? The purpose of reflection on textuality in the study of religion is not simply to reject it; the question is not whether texts are important, but how they are to be understood. In crosscultural inquiry, texts should be placed in the broader context of religious meaning within a community, and the full scope of textual practices needs to be investigated. Sullivan and King remind us that sitting down and reading to oneself is a rather idiosyncratic practice; in religious communities, the written word often has material, ritual, and performative aspects. Texts bear the imprint of these concerns, for example, in dialogues and commentaries. And yet even solitary reading and study are in factpractices that involve the materiality of the text and its production; in addition, even the silent reader is part of a community of discussion and understanding, sometimes imagined, but most often quite real. I would contend that openness to the materiality, practice, and communalism of Western intellectual pursuits makes us more sensitive to the

richness of textual phenomena in other cultural contexts. The real imperialism would be to deny this kind of complexity by simply ruling texts out of court in the study of religion. Critique of an idealist, intellectual approach to religion is often aligned with the attack on the centrality of texts. I believe that I have effectively dislocated this connection in the previous comments. But the critique of idealist, intellectualist approaches to religion remains a challenge for the study of comparative religious thought and philosophy of religion; it might be argued that the study of Indian philosophy, for example, is in particularly tenuous position. On the one hand, it is subject to the critique of the religionist, who claims that it is text-based and intellectualist, thereby denying the richness of materiality and practice within Indian religious traditions. On the other hand, philosophers have been loath to accept that proper philosophical inquiry has taken place "west of the ~ u e z . "Many ~ eloquent defenses have been presented on both fronts in the work of Ninian Smart, Wilhelm Halbfass, and Fred Dallmayr, among others. In general, the question of philosophical and intellectualist approaches to religion is analogous to the problem of textual bias: there is no question that intellectual and philosophical traditions are of decisive importance in the Indian context, but the question is how these traditions should be read: surely they should be read carefully and with full understanding of communities of discussion, debate, and practice. Once again, I believe that the history of the German encounter with Indian sources adds nuance and insight to this discussion. On the most general level, I have illustrated that cognizance of the philosophical trends that overarched the reception of Indian sources is of utmost importance in a genealogy of crosscultural inquiry. In short, the philosophical (in the standard understanding of what is canonical within modem, Western philosophy) permeates the study of religion, or, to put it another way, my

9

For an account of the traditional Western denial of philosophy's existence in India, see King, Indian

Philosophy, 24-36.

analysis has shown that philosophy constituted theory in the earliest days of modem, crosscultural inquiry. Hence, in its contemporary application, philosophy of religion can expand on its traditional role as a sub-discipline that utilizes philosophical tools to clarify religious problems. Philosophy of religion can be rethought as an inquiry that is part and parcel with the examination of history, theory, and method in the study of religion - in other words, its necessarily intellectualized content. In this understanding, philosophy of religion does not simply sit on the border between the study of religion and philosophy. Instead, every religion department needs a philosopher of religion, who may be readily identified with the "theory person," and every religionist must in some sense be a philosopher of religion if his or her work is to have any kind of theoretical coherence. More specifically, the early German encounter with Indian sources presents contemporary philosophy of religion with an interesting and perhaps useful precedent. While Hegel was certainly one of the European thinkers who cast Indian philosophy under suspicion, he and his predecessors also provided an interesting model for the the study of comparative religious thought. While often prone to broad survey, the German intellectual community I have studied often engaged in direct confrontation with an Indian source, namely the Gila, and subjected it to interpretation through textual practice and extensive discussion. The text was reconstituted through anthologization and translation and read through frameworks of interpretation established by the community. Engagement with the text, in turn, yielded insight on pressing philosophical issues in the German context. Based on these suppositions, we might experiment with an interesting hypothesis: the GitZ was the object of a German form of commentarial philosophy. To what extent does this hypothesis hold true? In a 1991 article, Barry Smith offered a set of conditions that generally obtain in a commentarial context:

1) The text [the object of interpretation] must enjoy a certain density or inaccessibility or seeming incompleteness or foreignness, so that it is not readily understandable to all. 2) The language of the text must serve in this culture as the object of a special intrinsic fascination. 3) The exact words of the author must be of importance as such (it must for some reason be seen as worthwhile to grapple with the difficulties posed by these very words). 4) The text must enjoy a certain cultural or national or religious significance in its own right. (This is sometimes at one remove, where a minor text inherits significance from its author, or is granted retrospectively a special historical significance, for example because its language is no longer known, or is known only partially.) 5) The text is possessed of a certain universal or encyclopedic character. 6 ) Tradition or authority are treated in the given culture as a principal court of appeal in the evaluation of scientific or other sorts of assertion^.'^

With regard to the early German reception of the Gitii, I have described a plurality of approaches to the text. In general, however, we can utilize Smith's framework to make the following observations: For the most part, the intellectual community in question complied with conditions

1 and 2, for the Gitii was clearly foreign and largely inaccessible, and its language had an "instrinsic fascination" for most of its early German readers. With regard to conditions 3-6, we begin to mark the contrast between German forms of commentary and those that surrounded the text in its own tradition. The exact words of the Gitii were important to varying degrees among the figures I have discussed; von Humboldt devoted the most exhaustive attention to the understanding of specific terms, and yet he ordered the interpretation of the text according to his own scheme, even while he defended the ordering of the original text. None of the interpreters in the German context allowed the text to stand in its original form, applying glosses and interpretations following its order, which would have been in keeping with the form of traditional commentary in India.

lo Barry Smith, "Textual Deference," American Philosophical Quarterly 28, no. 1 (1991): 1-13. Cited from the web at ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/texdef.html.

The central issue is of course the status and authority of the text in the two cultures. In Indian philosophical circles, it was generally accepted that it had the status of scripture, requiring intensive attention to each and every word in the order that it was presented in the original. With regard to conditions 4 through 6, the German intellectual community obviously accorded a kind of cultural authority to the text, often recognizing it as the source of an ancient, primordial wisdom. But they did not take it as scripture, and this marks an important difference. The distinction between German forms of commentary and the traditional forms that prevailed in Indian philosophical circles is quite important from a historical perspective, because it assists us in recognizing the specificity of the European constitution the GitG as an object of knowledge: the Orientalist's role in the representation of other religious traditions during the nineteenth century is properly diagnosed. Given what we now know about the complexity of practices that surround a text like the Gitd in Hindu philosophy (let alone in performance, devotion, and ritual), the dominance of the Orientalist monolith crumbles in the face of its very marginality. In comparison with the mainstream of South Asian commentary on the Gitd, the German community in question was radically heterodox in its textual practice." In examining this tradition, the following image has guided me: in unearthing the German texts that adhere to the Git5, it is as if we have stumbled across a community of readers and practitioners in some far-

'

In re-thinking Orientalism this way, I have been guided by Deleuze and Guattari7sconcept of a "minor literature," as exemplified by Kafka, which is characterized by "the deterritorializationof language, the connection of the individual to a political immediacy, and the collective assemblage of enunciation." It may seem counter-intuitive to see figures like Herder, Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel, Wilhelm von Humboldt, or G.W.F.Hegel as in any sense minor, but it is my contention that with regard to interpretation of South Asian texts this is exactly what they are. Translational renderings and interpretive strategies are off the mark when seen in comparison with orthodox readings of the Giti, but these approaches feed back on the original, deterritorializing the sense of the original Sanskrit's sacrality. Translation and commentary on South Asian sources is rarely about individual, spiritual enrichment for these figures (in contrast to the dominant contemporary paradigm of appropriation); it is part of a mission that is often either implicitly or explicitly "political." And especially as a discipline accrues around these sources, a sense of collective effort begins to appear which supersedes a sense of individual artistry. See

flung school of textual learning that has been cut off from the central strands of interpretation in the Indian heartland. When it comes to cornmentarial practice, these readers were not arbiters of power, but instead they were at the farthest margins of a highly complex body of pre-existent work.12 Nevertheless, many of the standard marks of commentarial philosophy were present. Many of the figures I have examined were themselves at the cusp of philosophy and other disciplines, and it is of interest that their early efforts in comparative philosophy came about as a product of reading a text closely and reconstituting it through glosses and translations. This historical moment suggests that close attention to and enactment of commentary may prove useful in rethinking the contemporary identity of philosophy of religion and comparative religious thought, which stand at the crossroads of religious studies and philosophy. Smith continues to assist with this kind of reflection. to his article, he engages in a survey of commentarial philosophical traditions (including non-Western approaches). It is common knowledge that commentary played a major role in classical and medieval philosophy, where religious texts held a self-evident authority and invited commentarial practice. But Smith also argues that modem philosophy too has its commentarial tendencies: the works of Kant,

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, translated by Dana Polan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 16-19. The impulse for this reimagination of Orientalism comes from a recent work by Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). While European concepts (say, the various products of the European Enlightenment) are originally quite "local," they have inevitably gained a universal scope and situatedness. "The project of provincializing Europe therefore cannot be a project of cultural relativism. It cannot originate from the stance that the reason~science/universalsthat help define Europe as the modem are simply 'culture-specific' and therefore only belong to the European cultures. For the point is not that Enlightenment rationalism is always unreasonable in itself, but rather a matter of documenting how - through what historical process its 'reason,' which was not always self-evident to everyone, has been made to look obvious far beyond the ground where it originated" (43). I would only intervene on this observation to suggest that European ascendency was a dislocated project even on the "ground" of its origin, and making this case might add something valuable to a proper contextualization of the seemingly indissoluble tie between the WestIEurope and the modem.

Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein (among others) have been subjected to careful analysis bordering on what we might call Scholastic commentary. The argument becomes more specific as the article turns to divisions on the question of commentary in Western philosophical traditions. Because of differing styles of university education and the employment of texts therein, Continental philosophy generally provided a context where the conditions for commentary persist, even in the modem era. Kant and Heidegger, for example, almost exclusively gave lectures that were commentaries on the works of others, and Derrida, for his own cultural and theoretical reasons, is always in dialogue with the text of another. In the Anglo-American university context, however, a more "democratic" sensibility prevailed where schoolboys worked out problems in small tutorials (instead of sitting in lecture halls), where philosophers spoke to each other as collaborators engaged in a joint project, where even the classic philosophical texts were not taken as absolutely authoritative, at least not on a line by line basis. A more empirical, scientific perspective also prevailed, which militated against the commentarial model. As Smith admits, these historical descriptions are lightly drawn and exceptions can easily be produced. What, for example, does one do with Husserl, who is Continental and yet avowedly anti-commentarial, or Wittgenstein, whose aphoristic style seems designed to promote a commentarial tradition? Nevertheless, Smith draws our attention to a crucial point that arises out of a reflection on the commentarial model as a mode of philosophizing: commentary insists on full and comprehensive attention to what has been written. The anti-commentarial model tends to

produce problems out of texts, free of context, and this has immediate implications. Such problems are generally either more complex in their original interpretive location than they are made out to be or they can be clarified (or even dispelled) if a thoroughgoing investigation of context is applied. An infusion of the commentarial model in philosophy offers an option

whereby complexity is recognized when it should be and a reminder that sometimes problems are created when they should not be.I3 It has not been my purpose in this dissertation to suggest that the early German encounter with the GTta provides a basis for a revival of commentarial philosophy. However, the manner in which the reception of the text occurred was unique. Close examination of this historical moment suggests that the philosopher of religion is in a good position to rethink the history, theory, and method of the study of religion. In light of the encounter between European thinkers and Indian forms of inquiry, the comparative study of religious thought can also promote a heightened understanding of the role of textuality and textual practices in Western philosophy, particularly if attention is trained on the role of commentary. On this front, the past does not offer us pragmatic lessons or a concrete program; instead, it renews questioning on a fundamental level, reminding us of options that were perhaps forgotten and insisting that certain problems must be addressed by each and every age. This historical imperative continues to bear fruit in our reflection on the ethical status of the German contribution to the frameworks of cross-cultural encounter. In criticizing this genealogy, contemporary scholars have pointed in particular to two deeply troubling issues: first, the connection between the German intellectual reception of India and the rise of the "Aryan myth," which culminated in the ideology of National Socialism, and second, the German contribution to European imperialism. In the contemporary discussion of these issues, there is often a hidden supposition that a failure to purge contemporary Western disciplines of its German l 3 In this vein, John Clayton has shown that Anselm's b60ntological proof for the existence of God" has been so relentlessly mined as a specific "problem" in philosophy that its context within the Proslogion as a whole has been entirely forgotten. It is rarely the case that authors have designed such "proofs" to advance propositionally towards an unassailable conclusion (i.e., after the model of an Anglo-American "argument"); rather, such problems have a broader context within which their actual "reasons" (as aims) can be discerned. See "The Otherness of Anselm," in The Otherness of God, edited by On-in F. Sununerell

Orientalist past implicates present efforts in these evils. Given the analysis I have presented, I would contend that the only way to be true to the ethically disturbing content of intellectual structures is to place its development in precise historical context. To begin our reflection on these questions, we might recall Gita Mehta's wondrous compendium of the foibles of the encounter between India and the West, Karma Cola. In this work, Mehta reports on her encounter with "a Swiss banker turned sadhu," who offers insider knowledge about Western visitors to the sub-continent. He finds the Germans particularly problematic, "They are frightening." "Why frightening?" asked, interested. "They seem to be a serious lot, and anyway they know more about Hinduism than all the rest of you put together." The man from Switzerland laughed. "Know more, hah! But you are right. They have a long tradition with India. Max Mueller [sic] and Hitler. Sanskrit and the Swastika. I only say thank the heavens our knowledge is not so deep as theirs." "What specifically do you find frightening about the Germans in India?" The Swiss sadhu shook his head in despair. "What India does to them, what they come here to find. They are not fools like the French, they don't live in slums like the British. No. The Germans go to the mountains, the Himalayas, The Abode of Snow." "And do you know what they do there? All alone, eighteen thousand feet in the air, next to a frozen glacier, with their books? They try to be Supermen." The man from Switzerland was getting agitated. Old enmities were taking hold of his imagination. "It is an extraordinary thing about the Germans. They are like vampires. Waiting, waiting for the twilight of the gods. You know sitting alone in the Himalayas a man can believe the gods are dying. And the Germans wait. To take the place of the Even with his "enmities" brimming over, Mehta's informant offers us an incisive indictment of the German engagement with India. On the one hand, there is the tradition of scholarship, a layer of which I have treated in this dissertation: this legacy is clouded by its disturbing link with (Charlottesville and London: University Press ofvirgina, 1998) and "Ramanuja, Hume and 'Comparative Philosophy': Remarks on the Sribhasya and the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion," forthcoming.

racism and National Socialism ("thank the heavens our knowledge is no so deep as theirs"). This "deep" knowledge is Sheldon Pollack's "deep" Orientalism, which ultimately produces the Aryan hyphothesis in its virulent, destructive form. On the other hand, there is the portrait of the solitary, disaffected ~bermenschwho scales icy mountains, reads philosophy, and waits to take the place of the gods. This steely Germanic figure is perhaps best represented in popular culture by Brad Pitt's Heinrich Harrer in Seven Years in Tibet. Within contemporary scholarship, this reading of the German intellectual encounter with India is consonant with that performed by Dorothy Figueira: India was a site for the projection of cultural attitude and fantasy, bringing to light a particularly German form individualism, pessimism, and nihilism. During a recent stay in Austria, I noted that the Dalai Lama's visit to Graz (October 2002) brought nervousness about these cultural connections to the surface. A book by Victor and Victoria Trimondi (Hitler. Buddha. Krishna. Eine unheilige Allianz vom Dritten Reich bis heute) was published in anticipation of the visit, provoking discussion about continuing Germanic attraction to things Indian. The book examines the role of Buddhist and Hindu texts in the construction of Nazi ideology and warns contemporary Europe about the "naive import" of "the East." According to the Trimondis, texts like the Bhagavad Git&and the Kalachakra-Tantra came out of a context of war, hierarchy, and injustice, and thus it is no wonder that the Nazis were attracted to them. In the end, the authors wonder whether these texts were simply misinterpreted by the fascists, or whether the texts are in fact incompatible "with a liberal and humanistic society." In general, their argument supports the latter interpretation. In my opinion, this seems to be a case of blaming the victim: fascist ideology positioned the texts as essentially war-oriented and hierarchical, and the Trimondis seem to accept this reading as essential to them by invoking their pre-modem, pre-egalitarian origins. But texts have

'

Gita Mehta, Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East (New York: Vintage International, 1994), 74.

biographies that take them well beyond their origins. Sometimes they are indeed used for terrible purposes, but texts like the GitC are also compatible, through another line of interpretation, with both peace and egalitarianism (as Gandhi illustrated). In fact, certain interpretations of the GitC's ethos render it quite compatible with liberalism and humanism. The diversity of possible interpretations, however, is not enough to deflect the very serious ethical implications of India scholarship in the German context. The "Aryan myth" is a particular object of concern because it does have direct connections with one of the most deplorable episodes in human history, and the figures I have investigated are genealogically implicated in it. I have illustrated that there are aspects of the earliest reception of Indian sources that are quite problematic, especially given the legacy standing imposingly between the present and the period during which this reception occurred. Herder's vision of culture, for example, involved a proto-racist essentialization of nationhood in the concept of the Volk, which needed to be preserved in its purity if a culture was to maintain itself. The narrative of India as primordial paradise played an important role in this theory, for it was the matrix of primitive myth and imagination and provided the some of the fuel for German cultural renewal. Friedrich Schlegel also affirmed this vision in his early thought, explicitly suggesting that the primordial realm was a potent source for German cultural strength. In addition, he made a fateful distinction in his technical analysis between Indic language, which he thought was foundational and pure in its structure, and the Semitic, which represented a degenerated branch of linguistic history. In addition, A.W. Schlegel explicitly connected the retrieval of Indian "treasures" with nationalist concerns. While he hoped to offer them to all of Europe, Schlegel always thought that the study of Indian sources was best left to the real experts, the Germans. Finally, we might recall that German interpreters never let ethics trouble them in the reading of Indian texts, even when it might have been a clear and present concern. Indian texts were interpreted as amoral, nihilistic,

mystical, fatalist, and pantheistic. While these representations had their variations, it could be argued that the German intellectuals in question devised a scheme that essentially positioned India as a nihilistic realm of powerful mythology and arbitrary, superhuman acts, preparing it as a source for racist and genocidal ideologies. As I have argued in the Chapter 4, however, this topic deserves an unswerving historical rigor that does not repeat one of the grounding myths of the German discourse on India, namely the desire to project an origin and then take it as a resolution to contemporary difficulties. The origin of the "Aryan myth," of the co-implication of Indian symbolism and sources and National Socialist dogma, cannot be traced to a singluar historical site. Figures like Herder and the Schlegels contributed to a developing scholarly discourse on India that ultimately served a harmful purpose, but at each intersection with such a discourse, these individual scholars made interpretive choices that fed it and subtly affected its direction. As the nineteenth century unfolded, many choices were made about earlier scholarship that essentially ignored the fact that most of the figures I have examined would never have assented to a theory like the "Aryan myth" and its application to German cultural and political policies. For Herder (to elicit but one example), India and Germany, indeed, the past and the present were simply different, and never could they meet in a bizaare amalgamation of the Aryans of India and the German nation. In the case of each of the figures I have examined, many such points of resistance had to be interpretively smoothed down in order for them to be appropriated in the development of a virulent form of Aryan racism. I would assert that reviving these moments of resistance within the development of the myth itself through careful intellectual history is a potent form of confronting a difficult and disturbing past. The same principle applies to the connection between German intellectualism and European domination and imperialism. According to the anti-Orientalist critique, forms of

German intellectual discipline ultimately supported a sense of European ascendency and power. Even though Germans were not colonizers of India, their work supported the intellectual authority of Europe over the Eastern other and indirectly supported the deployment of political power in India. In response, I will again invoke Herder as an interesting counter-example. Two of his late texts in particular assist us in formulating the following question: What should we think about this anti-Orientalist thesis, if the Orientalists themselves were opposed to colonialism? Quite often the figures I have discussed do seem to colonize India intellectually, particularly through their metaphors and tropes. But how are we to weigh these kinds of enunciations and representations against those that take a vigorous stance against real deployment of political power? The issue comes to the fore in two of Herder's works in the 1802 collection Adrastea. The first, "Gesprache fiber die Bekehrung der Indier durch unsre Europaischen Christen," presents a fascinating and challenging scenario: it is Herder's last staging of a discussion with the Indian other, now on the question of European missionary activity.'' Here the persona of the non-European, the "Asiatic," opens the discussion with trenchant questions for the "European." Now that Europe has "subjugated, robbed, plundered, and murdered" the people of India, the interlocutor inquires, does it also want to convert them? "If someone came to your land and elucidated your holy of holies, laws, religion, wisdom, state organization, etc. in an arrogant manner, with the most vulgar person in mind as an audience, how would you greet him?" The European answers: "The case is different. We have power, ships, wealth, cannons, culture." But doesn't India have "culture," morals, education, poetry, and philosophy? "They don't lead to our heavenly realm" (SW23,498), the European replies. There is, after all, "only one God," and

15

In ensuing parts of the collection, Herder would also meditate on the Jesuit missionary effort in China, and he presents another dialogue -between the ancient Gaelic bard, Ossian, and St. Patrick.

Indian religion has countless divinities and is thus hopelessly misguided. The Asiatic offers a potent response: the European god is so bereft of symbolic representations by scholastic abstraction that it can hardly be accessed. Western religion is desiccated; it could learn something from the proliferation of forms in the Indian context. The Asiatic in Herder's dialogue questions the very foundations of European arrogance. The character insists on the integrity of Indian culture and diagnoses the close connection between "cultural superiority," mission, and power (ships, wealth, and cannons), especially as it was forged by the ~ r i t i s h . 'Herder's ~ judgment on missionary activity is equally harsh in another constructed dialogue from Adrastea. Its interlocutors ("Theodoric," "Dietrich," and "Winnifred") decide to address the following question: "Why did the founder of Christianity send his messengers among the nations? To destroy, or to teach?" Winnifred replies, "While they taught, they destroyed. Images of god, seats of sacrifice, practices, temples" (SW 24,45). As a part of this critique, the dialogue takes a striking turn. The most potent challenge to missionary activity and the cultural superiority associated with imperialism derives from a foundational principle: a culture, its mind-set, its language, and its religion are all organically coherent and distinct. With what nation does Christianity properly associate itself, organically? Perhaps the nations of the West, but certainly not those where missionaries ply their trade. It is natural that missionary activity experiences resistance, because it runs afoul of fundamental and intractable differences between cultures. To support the point, Herder has his Winnifred articulate the way religion is tied intimately with a cultural setting, and she presents, suprisingly enough, an approximate

Nachdichtung on chapters 10 and 11 of the Bhagavad Gitii as an example: Ich bin der Schopfung Geist, ihr Anfang, Mittel und Ende l6 For British reaction to some of Herder's criticisms, see John Boening, "Herder and the White Man's Burden: the Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit and the Shaping of British Colonial Policy," in Johann Gottfried Herder: Language, History, and the Enlightenment, edited by Wulf Koepke (Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1990), 236-245.

Aller Natttren das Edelste stets, in alien Geschlechtern.

...

Unter den RoJen das ROB, das aus den Wellen des Milchmeers Sprang, undder Elephant, aus eben den Wellen gebohren...

...

Unter den Reinigen bin ich der Wind, und unter den Helden Ram, wie unter den Waffen der Schlacht der Blitz und der Dormer. Unter den Wifienschaftendie Kunst den Geist zu beherrschen, In verganglichen Dingen ihr Anfang, Mittel und Ende.

...

Arjun sah die hohe Gestalt in himmlischer Zierde...

...

Stand der Unendliche da; die Gestalt des obersten Gottes Hielt die Welten in sich, geschieden in all Veriindrung. Uebertaitbt von den Wundern,das Haar vor Schreken erhoben, Sank der Anschauende nieder, und betete staunend den Gott an: "Ewger, ich seh ' in Dir die Geister alle versammelt, Alle Gestalten der Wesen. Ich sehe den schaffenden Bramah, Thronend auf dem Lotos in Dir! Ischaue Dich selbst an, Deine zahllose Waffen und Formen undAugen und Glieder, Und doch seh ' ich in Dir nicht Anfang, Mittel und Ende.Geist der Dinge, du Form des Alls! (SW 24,51-52) Dietrich responds to this torrent with the most obvious European conception when faced with such sentiments: "it is the clearest Pantheism." But Winnifred is insistent. In her interpretive "dream," she points to the distinctive Thiergestalten in the passage: the elephant, which is taken to represent the "universe at rest," and the steed (RoJ), which is the "universe in motion." These representations, and all of the accompanying expressions from this passage, locate it as nationally and organically Indian. How is European Christianity supposed to achieve a fusion with this world, Herder asks? In response, Dietrich is at a loss: "I tremble, like Aguna" (SW24,53). As always seems to be the case with Herder's thinking, however, there is yet another side. Despite his many protests, the "Asiatic" counsels the "European" in the earlier dialogue: the brahmins actually have doctrines that are not so distant from Christian precepts, and this must be understood by those who would propagate the virtues of Christianity. In addition, one cannot simply impose Hebrew or Christian stories on India. The message must be clothed in native

forms, according to local modes of story telling, so that the message might come across (SW 23, 50 1). If political power and missionary zeal were combined with wisdom (i.e., a concept of humanity and its progress), the European could do a great deal of good by forbidding the sati of Indian widows, for example, and ending the hierarchical theocracy of the brahmin and the oppression of the raja (SW23,503). There is a rationale behind missionary activity, and there are methods by which missionaries could effectively convey the Christian, European message, according to Herder, but arrogance, vulgarity, and disrespect will not do the job.''

In Herder's mind, it may well been the case that the hierarchical religion of the brahmins transformed paradise into an opiate. Flowers still surround every Hindu, from the gods themselves who blossom everywhere to the offerings that adorn every temple and shrine (SW23, 497), but the fragrance clouds the judgment and enables subservience. But can the European look down on this land and force it to change? The "Asiatic" interlocutor speaks for India: If I want to know whether a fig tastes good, must I first taste it? I know it already from the appearance. So, if we associate with you, we know already how it goes with your religion. The people go happily to a fresh, water-abounding pool covered over by broad tamarind-leaves and bathe themselves therein. If your religion is good, in the same way people will come to you, without you seeking them out. (SW 23,504) Herder was not ready to abandon his own synthesis of Christianity, intellectualism, history, and Bildung. He thought that introducing Christianity and Western ideals to India was a worthwhile enterprise, that missionary activity could actually do some good for the denizens of the sub-continent. But does this necessarily entail support for colonial domination? Missionaries were bound to run into impediments because of the distance between cultures; the only solution, seemingly, was to respect the culture of the other and to attract the interest of Indians by -

-

-

-

See also SW24,360: "How far the spirit of the Europeans strides forwards! How far back remains its conduct! An evil genius has compelled them, while they bring other peoples to ruin, to ready themselves for ruin; does a good genius stand behind the other one, who invisibly transforms this poison into medicine? No doubt; only meanwhile generations go to ground" (SW 24,360-361).

becoming a model of enlightened Christianity. But this model had been sullied: contact between Europe and India had become infected by the rampant deployment of economic and political power, which provided the leverage for open prosyletizing and coerced conversion. The British were failing in representing Europe in India precisely because they had allowed colonial domination ("power, ships, wealth, and cannons") to rule over inter-cultural contact. It could be argued that Herder envisioned something much more subtle and insidious than colonialism in his texts, namely a kind of slow, hegemonic cajoling. This charge may itself be a rationalization, however, masking the difficult challenge that Herder presents to standard forms of anti-Orientalist critique. In his writings on India, Herder argued for a specific and incisive splicing of power and knowledge and therefore questioned the subservience of cross-cultural encounter to colonial domination. Herder derived his criticisms from one of his foundational principles of historical description, which also took on ethical content: cultures were essentially different, and they developed, degenerated, and changes of their own accord, like an organism. The imposition of foreign political rule violated this principle, which was wrong in and of itself, but Herder's theory also suggested that, as a practical matter, colonialism was doomed to fail. According to Isaiah Berlin, "Herder is as certain as Karl Marx that those who oppress and exploit others and force their own institutions on others are acting as their own grave-diggers -that one day their victims will rise against them and use their catchwords, their methods and ideals to crush them."" The essential difference of a culture always provides a point of resistance that will inevitably blossom in overthrow of foreign domination. According to the anti-Orientalist critique, Herder provides his most fateful contribution to the maintenance of European domination in his conception of the Volk. As an essentializing notion, this concept of a people fixed and determined identity and provided the basis for

derogatory representations that rationalized European dominion. In the Urtext of this brand of critique, Said associates Herder with Orientalism's "proclivity to divide, subdivide, and redivide its subject matter without ever changing its mind about the Orient as being always the same, unchanging, uniform, and radically peculiar object."19 Said may be quite correct in his characterization, and Herder's theory may have been put to use in an anonymous discourse of European domination. But Herder's writings themselves resist this appropriation. In fact, Herder employs essentializing difference to defend Indian culture against British domination; a version of this very same theory surely provided part of the rationale for national resistance in colonial contexts, for good or ill. Herder provides an interesting and challenging example for contemporary critical perspectives. We accept that his theories may have contributed to a harmful discourse, but we must weigh these genealogical contributions against his own anti-imperialist position. How do we solve this difficult equation? Historical method provides a possibility, for contemporary concerns can smooth over points of resistance just as readily as the discourses they criticize. What is more productive for present inquiry: to fit Herder and his colleagues into a powerful contemporary framework, even if it means suppressing the complexity of their perspectives, or to engage the Orientalist past in all its disruptive ambiguity? Effective history, or careful, committed hermeneutical engagement with the past, recommends the latter approach. We turn, finally, to the question of Romanticism in the study of Indian religion and as a broad cultural phenomenon associated with the turn to the East. Recent discussions in the study of religion have often focused on the status of the study itself. In the midst of these contemporary debates, theorists in the field have posed an important question: does scholarly work about

l9

Berlin, Three Critics of the Enlightenment, 185. Said, Orientalism, 98.

"religion" as an object of academic inquiry reify religion as a thing in itself? Some have wondered whether the academic pursuit of religion masks or promotes theology, obscuring the social and cultural manifestation of religion, which is taken to be the proper object of the academic study of religion. This challenge is significant for the continuing development of the field, and thus a careful historical examination of its terms, with particular attention to the framework that dichotomizes scientific study and theological inquiry, can only enhance contemporary discussions. Historians of the study of religion have begun to undertake this effort, often showing that contemporary debates are part of a complex story about modem, Western intellectual concerns that have an early provenance - well before the study of religion was institutionalized during the last century. One of the key terms in this debate, however, remains relatively underexamined, namely "Romanticism," as in "Romantic influences in the study of religion."20 Particularly those concerned with purifying the scholarly object "religion" of its theological trappings have drawn attention to the Romantic ancestries of the field, pressing students of religion to be wary of a significant set of biases: ethnocentrism, individualism, intellectualism, essentialism, evolutionism, and obscurantism. Such critique, which heaps so much on the Romantic, often draws on a dominant historical framework ("the discourse of secularization") that matches the Romantic with hidden theological apologetic. During the nineteenth century, it can be argued, Romanticism countered Enlightenment science with a surreptitious revival of Christian concerns

' For a recent discussion on Romantic influence in the history of the study of religion (specifically with regard to conceptualization of myth), see Robert Ellwood, "Is Mythology Obsolete?," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 69, no. 4 (September 2001): 673-686 and the response by Robert Segal, "Myth and Politics: A Response to Robert Ellwood," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 70, no. 3 (September 2002): 611-620.

under the guise of scholarly, humanistic inquiry:'

and the study of religion has inherited this

impulse. This argument has expansive explanatory power. It is indeed the case that the advent of certain Romantic forms corresponded with the appearance of the post-Enlightenment human sciences in Europe and also with the undertaking of an unprecedented comparativism. Despite the power of this framework, however, it often covers over the subtleties and differentiations within those traditions considered to be "Romantic." The regular occurrence of the concept within present debates in the study of religion calls for a more careful study of Romanticism in the history of the comparative study of cultures. In this project, I have attempted to add to this blossoming study by discussing a specific strand of Romantic inquiry into the nature of another culture, its religion, and its texts. I hope that this inquiry will serve in future efforts to differentiate Romantic influences in the field because of its focus on the German context: this may well serve later efforts to compare and contrast European Romanticisms and their genealogical influences. It is easy to collapse the boundaries between different forms of Romanticism; it is also easy, apparently, to collapse the Romanticism of the past and the ethos of the present. I have shown that German Romantic conceptions framed the reception of Indian texts, religion, and mythology, but Romanticism itselfwas a kind of myth that reached out to a broader cultural base in the face of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment rationalism. According to some, this spirit persists today, particularly in the study of religion, but also in a broader, cultural sense. As Arvidsson suggests,

'

See William D. Hart, Edward Said and the Religious Effects of Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 63. Hart quotes M.H. Abrams to characterize this perspective: "Romantic writers...undertook to save the overview of human history and destiny, the existential paradigms, and the cardinal values of their religious heritage, by reconstituting them in a way that would make them intellectually acceptable, as well as emotionally pertinent, for the time being."

According to the romantic thinkers the computing instrumental mind, serving the philosophers of the Enlightenment, the scientists, and the politicians drains life of its 'meaning,' 'greatness,' or 'spirituality.' The dictatorship of reason is only to be dissolved by myths able to stir the imagination and reveal ancient wisdom. An authentic life is only possible when myth can prevail against logos. Myth, however, was for the first time thought of as a life-affirming genre in the romantic vogue in fashion around the beginning of the nineteenth-century and contradicted the everyday sense of the word (which it retains despite protests from today's spiritual camps) as a false story.22 What is most notable about Arvidsson's statement is the ease with which the Romantic is mapped onto "today": who are these "spiritual camps" that he implicates? Is the fit that is suggested here anywhere near precise? In short, when it comes to Romanticism, Arvidsson cannot seem to decide whether he is talking about the present or the past. The terms used (life drained "meaning" or "spirituality" or myth as a "life-affirming genre") are purely anachronistic. For the moment it is worth allowing this author his point, however, to the extent that it is useful. It is somehow easy to mix past and present when discussing Romanticism because, perhaps, some of its guiding notions do mingle with present attitudes in the study of religion, and in the culture at large, particularly when it comes to India. Arvidsson's anachronisms applied to historical Romanticism point us to the present, for there remains a split between a meticulous philological approach to India and a strong undercurrent that very well may be the cultural fuel for rigor itself. This undercurrent often manifests itself as an enthusiastic, anti-rationalist stance. While this enthusiasm is generally promoted by culture at large, the split does reach and challenge academics, if nowhere else than in the classroom. Like the figures presented above, contemporary scholars of Indian religion (and of religion in general, I think) face this problem: To what extent is this broader enthusiasm to be acknowledged? And deeper: To what extent

22 Stefan Arvidsson,

"Aryan Mythology as Science and Ideology," Journal of the American Academy of

Religion 67, no. 2 (June 1999): 329.

does the discipline necessarily trade on this broader enthusiasm? As Lacoue-Labarth and Nancy have suggested, "Averitable romantic unconscious is discemable today, in most of the central motifs of our 'modernity.'"23 Given the study I have presented, we might suggest that the construction of Indian religion is a crucial aspect of this "unconscious" that constantly threatens the waking life of technical, logos-driven scholarship and cross-cultural understanding. The times are entirely different, but we might turn back to some of the fundamental myths and conceptions that surrounded the reception of the GitZ in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century to see how much things have changed. I would venture, first, that the broad appeal to a pantheistic, all-in-one doctrine has not waned. In fact, enthusiasm for the spiritual often articulates itself in just these terms, but with no Pantheismusstreit in sight. In its presumed articulation of such a doctrine, buttressed by support from within the modem Hindu tradition, the Gitci has become a "classic of spirituality," just as it was another kind of "classic" for A.W.

Schlegel. It could be said that contemporary, spiritual "all-in-one" belief maps very broad cultural dynamics, but it also emphasizes a "one" with very specific content: the individual. One of the major flaws in the German Romantic reading of Indian sources was its consistent emphasis on the individual, poetic (re)production of the text, which removed it from the traditional, communal context that had originally imbued it with power through reverence and interpretation. The Romantic reader was essentially homologous with this poetic creator, gathering in experience, searching for expression, gathering the energy for renewal. This reader of "classics" (then Classical, now "spiritual") was (is) a searcher, casting his or her gaze about the boundaryless world, looking for the answer through deep, engaged dialogue and experience, but constantly, it seems, moving on to something else.

*

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism, translated by Philip Bamard and Cheryl Lester (Albany: State University of New

Among the intellectuals I have examined, the one who seems to speak most directly to us today on this theme is perhaps surprising: it is Wilhelm von Humboldt, the scientific, technical reader - also, the former administrator and professional diplomat, who was perhaps looking for a way to understand his life of relentless activity. It was in the nature of all of the figures I have investigated to search the world beyond Europe and beneath the traditional classics, but von Humboldt was the one who actually tried karmayoga on for size. Though it seemingly required no major shift in worldview or livliehood, the doctrine fit. As a modem individual engaged in prodigious efforts, both intellectual and institutional, von Humboldt allowed himself to choose and be bolstered by an ancient Hindu doctrine, namely the renunciation of the fruits of his actions. Where does such a revolutionary move come from? Millions in the West search in classrooms, seminars, bookstores, and retreats. The pantheistic, non-moral GitZ contributes to the search by teaching its karmayoga, thus providing peace in an accelerated world. What age was von Humboldt, the consummate professional, ushering in? Slavoj Zi2ek's answer is the following: The ultimate postrnodem irony is.. .the strange exchange between Europe and Asia: at the very moment when, at the level of the 'economic infrastructure,' 'Europeany technology and capitalism are triumphing world-wide, at the level of 'ideological superstructure,' the Judeo-Christian legacy is threatened in the European space itself by the onslaught of the New Age 'Asiatic' thought, which, in its different guises.. .is establishing itself as the hegemonic ideology of global capitalism. Therein resides the highest speculative identity of the opposites in today's global civilization: although 'Western Buddhism' [or Hindu yoga] presents itself as the remedy against the stressful tension of the capitalist dynamics, allowing us to uncouple and retain inner peace and Gelassenheit, it actually functions as its perfect ideology supplement.. .If Max Weber were alive today, he would definitely write a second, supplementary volume to his Protestant Ethic, entitled The Taoist Ethic and the Spirit of Global capitalism?*

York Press, l988), 15. 24 Slavoj Zizek, On Belief (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 12-13.

Perhaps such forces do ultimately supplement the reading of "Eastern Religions," and even specific texts like the Git6, which are certainly caught up in a massive industry of publishing and readerly consumption. And the Romantic self consumes in an effort to find stability in what is certainly a wide, wild world.25 These are, admittedly, somewhat rapturous speculations about broad cultural dynamics. I will allow myself but one more, now in an effort to restore the dignity of early German Romanticism and its contributions. Contemporary dreams of a concept of global citizenship and universalist sensibilities in the West commonly take their impulse from Enlightenment ideals embodied, for example, in Kant's thought. But the emphasis on locality, ethnicity, and nativism that was asserted in some forms of German Romanticism, is also apparent in contemporary perspectives. In its more sophisticated forms, German Romanticism went one step further by pairing the particular with the universal in a complex dialectic. Concern for and and openness to the self-subsistent other had to be allowed to confront broad systems and universal forces, or else, it was thought, life would slip into empty abstraction. I hesitate to derive specific lessons from the tradition, but in our wide, wild world, this one is not a bad.

What We Never Had As I hope to have demonstrated, the history of India's reception among German intellectuals continues to question us today. In its attempt to grapple with the difference of Indian religion, its culture, and its texts, German Romanticism had elements that translate into the modem idiom, and I would like to make this point in one last way. Foucault suggested that the freedom of Enlightenment seems to be accompanied by increasing discipline at a "micro-technical" level, at

25

Colin Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1987).

the level of academic and institutional discipline. The reception of the Giki in the early German context displays a fundamental dynamic that also surrounds the general encounter between East and West in the contemporary setting: the West searches for peace of mind in the East and freedom from the stresses of a "disciplined" society (the same one "we" want "them" to have?). We are ambivalent, perhaps, because many searchers still want India to be something of our imaginative refuge. This sentiment recalls one of the most persistent myths during the period I have examined: India as the imaginative location of paradise. Particularly in the writings of Herder and F. Schlegel, we have seen this myth put to work in the service of a contemporary desire for renewal or guidance, and so many readers of Indian literature purchased from Amazon and Barnes and Noble, so many of the students crowding into classes on Eastern religion, also have this nostalgic desire. In this connection, I am compelled by Ziiek's rereading of the Romantic: Romanticism in its opposition to Classicism can be best grasped through the different logic of memory: in Classicism, memory recalls past happiness (the innocence of youth, etc.), while the Romantic memory recalls not a direct past happiness but a past period in which future happiness still seemed possible, a time when hopes were not yet frustrated...The loss deplored in Classicism is the loss of what the subject never had, while the Romantic loss is the loss of what one never had ...That is to say: what the subject does not have is not simply absent, but is an absence which positively determines his life..."26 The broad cultural search for nostalgic renewal in India (a search which has often extended into the work of the intellectual) has Classicist trappings but a Romantic reality, as it is presented in its radical sense by Ziiek. One wants Indian religion in a particular way, as if it were something one once had, which one can retrieve. But lingering over even one single text (like the Bhagavad GitZ) can disrupt this model. This refuge was not at all what one once had, and thus the loss itself lost. -

26

Slavoj Ziiek, The Plague of Fantasies (London and New York: Verso, 1997), 194-195.

In the thinkers I have examined, this moment of complexity - of perplexity - was the real moment of renewal. In the shifting moments of representation, and translation, where interpretive frameworks of retrieval lost themselves in the text, the jarring sense of difference arrived. Even today, we still attempt to frame the Eastern text according to the dictates of our henneneutical, mythic, even technical presumptions in all earnestness, supposing that this will return to us something that the West has lost -perhaps peace. But in the very earnestness of the attempt, the complexity of the text teaches that what we lost was never there in the first place. Nevertheless, through briefly illuminated apertures, on the periphery of some simple story, understanding itself sometimes makes an appearance.

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BRADLEY L. HERLING 130 Brainerd Rd. # 17 Allston, MA 02 134 PH: 617-566-2325lEMAIL: [email protected]

EDUCATION: Weslevan University, Middletown, CT Bachelor of Arts, May 1992 Major: Religious Studies 1994 - present Boston University, Boston, MA Doctor of Philosophy, expected January 2004 Specialization: Philosophy of Religion Dissertation Area: The introduction of South Asian religious and philosophical texts to the German intellectual scene at the beginning of the nineteenth century, with an emphasis on the reception to the Bhagavadgita. Prospectus approved 510 1. Oral Defense passed 4/03. Research Languages: Latin, French, German, Sanskrit

Instructor, Boston University, Boston, MA

Spring 1999 - Present

Courses Taught: Spring 2003 Religions of the World: Western Division of Religious and Theological Studies - Religions of the World: Western (RN 104) offers students an introduction to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The course focuses on major themes in these traditions and emphasizes concepts of pilgrimage and the presence of these traditions in America. Pilgrimage and Quest I1 Spring 2001, Spring 2002 College of Arts and Sciences - Pilgrimage and Quest I1 (WR150) is a capstone researchlwriting seminar for freshman in the CAS Writing Program. The course draws upon social scientific and historical texts (Malcolm X and Black Elk,texts on Huichol and Vaishnava pilgrimage) to provide a foundation for the instruction of research skills.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE (cont.): Fall 2000, Fall 2001 Pilgrimage and Quest College and Arts and Sciences - Pilgrimage and Quest (WR 100) is an introductory freshman writing seminar in the CAS Writing Program. The course draws upon journey and pilgrimage literature (e.g., Dante, Bunyan, Calvino, Agnon, Conrad, Woolf) as the source for student writing and emphasizes skills necessary to produce effective college-level essays. Judaism Summer I1 2001 Division of Religious and Theological Studies - Judaism (RN 216) is an introductory survey designed to acquaint (and re-acquaint) students with history, belief, and practice of the Jewish religious tradition. The course places special emphasis on the various functions of text within the tradition (scriptural, performative, interpretive).

Summer 11 2000, Summer 12001 Religions of the World: Eastern Division of Religious and Theological Studies - Religions of the World: Eastern (RN 103) offers students an introduction to the major religious traditions of India, China, and Japan. The course emphasizes close reading of primary texts and reflection on the challenges of cross-cultural understanding and encounter. Sacred Journeys: A Thematic Introduction to the Study of Religion Spring 1999 College of Arts and Sciences - Sacred Journeys (RN 102) is a course originally developed by Professor David Eckel. The course utilizes the themes of religious journey and pilgrimage to introduce Eastern, Western, and indigenous religious traditions. Instructor, Emerson College, Boston, MA

Spring 1999 - Present

Courses Taught: Ethics: Socio-Political Perspective Spring 2000, Summer 12000, Summer 12003 Division of Continuing Education - Ethics in Socio-Political Perspective (PH 110) presents a consideration of contemporary ethical issues in cross-cultural perspective (e.g., Western debates on the environment read alongside Taoist conceptions, discussions of just war theory read alongside the Bhagavadgita, etc.). Contemporary Ethics Summer I 200 1, Summer 1 2002, Summer 12003 Division of Continuing Education - Contemporary Ethics (PH 200) introduces the major strands of ethical thought within the Western philosophical tradition (religious foundations, virtue-based ethics, liberal thought, utilitarianism, deontological ethics, and modem/post-modern skepticism) and considers contemporary ethical debates (e.g., the environment, death penalty, free speech). Test case examples are provided by contemporary film.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE fcont.): Fall 2001, Spring 2002, Spring 2003 Religion in Eastern Culture Division of Continuing Education - Religion in Eastern Culture (PH 1 12) is essentially the same course as "Religions of the World: Eastern," described above. Fall 1999, Fall 2000 Introduction to Western Philosophy Division of Continuing Education - Introduction to Western Philosophy (PH 104) presents a thematic survey of major figures in the Western philosophical tradition from the Pre-Socratics to contemporary thought. The course emphasizes close reading of philosophical texts and arguments and draws upon film to provide a common narrative for class discussion. Spring 1999 Religion in Western Culture Department of Arts and Humanities - Religion in Western Culture is essentially the same course as "Religions of the World: Western," described above. Teaching Seminar Coordinator, Boston University, Boston, MA Fall 1999-Spring 200 1 Division of Religious and Theological Studies - Assisted Prof. David Eckel in coordinating the DRTS Teaching Seminar (sponsored by the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion). Helped design content for biweekly discussions among graduate Teaching Fellows on pedagogical issues in religion courses. Assisted in the production of a casebook on the teaching of religion in the university. Teaching Fellow/Assistant, Boston University, Boston, MA Courses: Spring 2001 Spring 1998 Spring 1997 Fall 1996 Spring 1996 Fall 1995

Reasons and Gods (Grad Seminar) The Holocaust The New Testament and Christian Origins Religions of the World: Eastern Sacred Journeys Religion and Culture

Lecturer, University of Massachusetts, Boston, Boston, MA

Prof. John Clayton Prof. Hillel Levine Prof. P. Fredriksen Prof. David Eckel Prof. David Eckel Prof. Alan Olson Spring 1998

Course Taught: Introduction to Religion Religious Studies Program - Introduction to Religion (C122) emphasizes an investigation of five world religious traditions in important moments of encounter (e.g., Judaism and Christian origins, Islamic perspective on Christian sources, Theravadan Buddhism and the influence of the West).

TEACHING EXPERIENCE (cont.): Teachin? Assistant Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT

Spring 1990, Spring 1992

Courses: Spring 1992 Spring 1990

An Introduction to Religion An Introduction to Religion

Profs. Zwelling and Cameron Profs. Crites and Long

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE: Research Assistant, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA Summer 1999 Center for the Study of World Religion - Performed research tasks related to the development of content for a World Religions Museum in Taiwan on a team led by Professor Lawrence Sullivan. Tasks included image and textual research on material for potential exhibits. Research Assistant- Boston University, Boston, MA Fall 1998 - Spring 1999 Division of Religious and Theological Studies - Assisted the department chairman in a review of the Philosophy of Religion sub-program. Interviewed faculty members, reviewed exam list, and worked toward the production of a B.U. Philosophy of Religion resource list and webpage.

ADMINISTRATIVE EXPERIENCE: Awards Proeram Assistant, Boston University, Boston, MA Spring 2000 - present Division of Religious and Theological Studies - Assisted the American Academy of Religion Awards for Excellence Coordinator (Prof. John Clayton). Attended to logistical matters, contacted publishers and jury members, assembled texts for consideration.

-

Writin? Works Coordinator, Boston University, Boston, MA Fall 1999 Spring 2000 School of Theology - Served as a writing tutor and coordinated the writing assistance program for theology school students. Focused on assistance with both advanced issues (such as style and argumentation) and technical questions (especially pertaining to writing in English as a second language).

Administrative Assistant, American Academy of Religion, Atlanta, GA 1992-1994 Learned Society and Professional Organization - Helped plan and co-ordinate AAWSBL Annual Meeting (7,000 attendees), wrote for and helped edit various AAR publications (Religious Studies News, AARSBL Annual Meeting Abstracts, Annual Meeting Program Book), and represented organization.

GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS: 1997,2002 Junior Visiting Fellowship Institute for the Human Sciences, Vienna Awarded to "promising young scholars in the humanities and social sciences" to engage in research and discussion "that crosses borders and disciplines." Pursued dissertation research and writing.

'994- 1995 Presidential University Graduate Fellowship, Boston University Awarded to incoming graduate students "who have displayed exceptional academic merit." Fellowship included tuition remission and stipend for a year of graduate study at Boston University. PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES: Papers Presented: "Towards the Spiritual Renewal of Europe: Friedrich Schlegel's Early Thought on India," presented at the Junior Fellows Conference, Institute for the Human Sciences, Vienna, Austria, December 2002. "The 'Indian Sphinx': Conceiving South Asian Religion in A.W. von Schlegel's Indische Bibliothek," presented in the History, Method, and Theory in the Study of Religion Consultation at the National Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Toronto, Canada, November, 2002. "The Contours of the German Response to the Bhagavadgild, 1790-1830: Disciplinary and Political Consequences," presented at the weekly Fellows Seminar, Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna, Austria, September 2002. "The Death Scenario and Run Lola Run," presented at the Boston Theological Institute's First Annual Boston Faith and Film Festival (Scholar's Symposium), Episcopal Divinity SchoolIBrattle Theater, Boston, MA, February 200 1. "Shifts and Surpluses in Hegel's Concept of South Asian Religion," presented at the Sixth Annual Intersections Graduate Student Conference ("Exchanges between German and Religious Studies: Considering a Diversity of Beliefs"), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, March 2000. "Is There a Deus Absconditus in Kant and Kierkegaard?", presented in the Philosophy of Religion Section at the National Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Boston, MA, November 1999. Panelist, "Writing the History of Religions: Difficulties and How We Overcame Them," in the History of the Study of Religion Group at the National Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Boston, MA, November 1999. "Questioning Youth out of Hegel," presented at the Junior Fellows Conference, Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna, Austria, December 1997. "Hybrid? Migrant? Marginal? The Situation of the Post-colonial Intellectual," presented at the weekly evening seminar, Center for Theoretical Studies, Prague, Czech Republic, December 1997.

Papers Presented (continued): "Gifted Amateur Enthusiasts and Colonial Encounter: The Case of Korosi Csoma Sandor in Tibet," presented at the weekly Fellows Seminar, Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna, Austria, November 1997. "Framing Hermeneutics," presented at the Regional Meeting of the New EnglandMaritime American Academy of Religion, Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, MA, March 1996. "Meeting at Marburg: The HeideggerJTillich Relationship," presented at the Annual Graduate Student Philosophy Conference, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, March 1995. "Demda's Relevance to Theology: Unburdening, Return, and the Other," presented at the 1994 Annual Meeting, Southeast Region of the American Academy of Religion, Atlanta, GA, April 1994. Publications: "Towards the Spiritual Renewal of Europe: Friedrich Schlegel's Early Thought on India," in Locations of the Political, edited by Shawn Gonnan, proceedings of the IWM Junior Visiting Fellows Conference, Vol. 13. "The Death Scenario and Run, Lola, Run," Past Papers (2001 Boston Faith and Film Festival - "Death and Re-birth"), at www.bostonfaithandfilm.org. Co-editor and contributor, A Season of Teaching: A Casebookfor College and University Instructors of Religion, Boston University Division of Religious and Theological Studies, 200 1. "Questioning Youth out of Hegel," in Ideas in Transit, edited by John Glenn I11 and Andrea Peto, proceedings of the IWM Junior Visiting Fellows Conference, Vol. 5. Positions Held: Boston University Division of Religious and Theological Studies Student Committee Chairman, 1995-1997. American Academy of Religion National Student Liasion, 1996-1998. Affiliations: American Academy of Religion American Philosophical Association