amit ray-orientalism and religion in the romantic era-rammohan ray's vedanta(s)

26
12 Orientalism and religion in the Romantic era Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s) Amit Ray In his 'Introduction' to The British Discovery of Hinduism, a collection of excerpts from some of the earliest British works dealing with Hinduism, P. J. Marshall points out that, with 'the possible exception of Jones' the early 'Orientalists' were not trying to understand what Hinduism meant to the people on the ground.' Their research was academic and textual. In focusing so specifically on written texts, these early scholars were contributing to and reinforcing a division which still remains in place today - between the 'popular' and the 'philosophical' in Hinduism. 2 Marshall goes on to add that these Orientalists 'created Hinduism in their own image'.3 I would like to modify Marshall's statement somewhat. While many British Orientalists investi- gating Hinduism were certainly judging Sanskrit texts from within a Biblical frame of reference, they struggled to reconcile the apparent contradictions wi thin Hinduism, as well as contradictions in relation to Christianity. Perhaps nowhere was this struggle more apparent than in efforts by Orientalists to show a precedent for monotheism in Hindu antiquity. Two of the fundamental criticisms against Hinduism arising out of Anglicist and Christian circles were the ubiquitous nature of idolatry and polytheism. However, by pointing out a textual basis for monotheism, Orientalists sought to disarm these critics. Obviously, for many Christians, the existence of multiple gods, as well as the idols that served to represent these gods, waS anathema. 4 The Orientalists, by providing a textual precedent for a monotheistic past, contributed to representations of a degraded present. And, by explicating a past which accommodated Christian notions of what was civilized and advanced, Orientalist work re-enforced the notion that Hinduism was amenable to Christian belief, not a heathen and void to be usurped by the wholesale Christianization of the sub-continent. The idea of mutual intelligibility proved to be an underlying drive behind the manner and style of the translations and interpretations that the Orientalists transmitted to Europe. Again, the struggle to pin down a textual basis for monotheism, and to valorize such a conception of God as the 'true' basis for Hinduism, was an attempt at providing an ideological conduit for converting Hindus to Christianity. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, John Shore (later Lord Teignmouth), the fourth Governor-General of Bengal would pronounce that the Vedanta was the true basis for Hinduism. 5 And in 1805, H. T. Colebrooke would publish some pointed commentary on the late Vedas, the Upanisads, those tracts that form the basis for the !! 'I'

Upload: ubudibud

Post on 28-Nov-2014

170 views

Category:

Documents


2 download

DESCRIPTION

This article examines Rammohan Ray's strategic deployment of Vedanta in translation to different audiences in India and Europe.

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

12 Orientalism and religion in the Romantic era Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

Amit Ray

In his 'Introduction' to The British Discovery of Hinduism, a collection of excerpts from some of the earliest British works dealing with Hinduism, P. J. Marshall points out that, with 'the possible exception of Jones' the early 'Orientalists' were not trying to understand what Hinduism meant to the people on the ground.' Their research was academic and textual. In focusing so specifically on written texts, these early scholars were contributing to and reinforcing a division which still remains in place today -between the 'popular' and the 'philosophical' in Hinduism. 2 Marshall goes on to add that these Orientalists 'created Hinduism in their own image'.3 I would like to modify Marshall's statement somewhat. While many British Orientalists investi-gating Hinduism were certainly judging Sanskrit texts from within a Biblical frame of reference, they struggled to reconcile the apparent contradictions wi thin Hinduism, as well as contradictions in relation to Christianity. Perhaps nowhere was this struggle more apparent than in efforts by Orientalists to show a precedent for monotheism in Hindu antiquity.

Two of the fundamental criticisms against Hinduism arising out of Anglicist and Christian circles were the ubiquitous nature of idolatry and polytheism. However, by pointing out a textual basis for monotheism, Orientalists sought to disarm these critics. Obviously, for many Christians, the existence of multiple gods, as well as the idols that served to represent these gods, waS anathema.4 The Orientalists, by providing a textual precedent for a monotheistic past, contributed to representations of a degraded present. And, by explicating a past which accommodated Christian notions of what was civilized and advanced, Orientalist work re-enforced the notion that Hinduism was amenable to Christian belief, not a heathen and void to be usurped by the wholesale Christianization of the sub-continent. The idea of mutual intelligibility proved to be an underlying drive behind the manner and style of the translations and interpretations that the Orientalists transmitted to Europe.

Again, the struggle to pin down a textual basis for monotheism, and to valorize such a conception of God as the 'true' basis for Hinduism, was an attempt at providing an ideological conduit for converting Hindus to Christianity. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, John Shore (later Lord Teignmouth), the fourth Governor-General of Bengal would pronounce that the Vedanta was the true basis for Hinduism.5 And in 1805, H. T. Colebrooke would publish some pointed commentary on the late Vedas, the Upanisads, those tracts that form the basis for the

!! 'I'

Page 2: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

260 Amit Ray

philosophical tradition called Vedanta. In this very influential tract, On the Vedas, Colebrooke would conclude that:

The real doctrine of the whole Indian scripture is the unity of the deity, in which the universe is comprehended: and the seeming polytheism which it exhibits offers the elements, and the stars, and planets, as gods ... But the worship of deified heroes is no part of that system; nor are the incarnations of deities suggested in any other portion of the text, which I have yet seen6

One of the west's most forceful and consistent criticisms of non-Islamic religion was the so-called worship of idols. This became a critique of the Indian present that was widely prevalent. Both European and Indian textualists, such as Colebrooke and RammohWl Ray, proffered Vedanta as the core of 'Hinduism'. Yet, since this position went beyond monotheism and into monism, such a view also carried within it the 'mystical' core that was increasingly being located as the source of Eastern thought-a stereorypical and essentialized version of the Orient.

The discussion that follows will briefly outline Vedanta and some movements that contributed ro Indian proto-Nationalist sentiment during the nineteenth century, concentrating on apptopriations of and assertions made via orientalist discourse by a central figure in Indian modernization, Raja Rammohan Ray. The development of British colonialism in Bengal during the late eighteenth century radically affected life in the region. Western institutions of learning and belief circulated rapidly throughout the new' colony, facilitated by the introduction of print technology. Born around 1773, Ray was part of that first generation of Bengalis born into such a transformed lifeworld. He would become one of the first Indians to assert elements of a specific 'Hindu' identity that was cognizant of, and responding to, European criticisms of India.

I begin with the basic premise that a version of'textualized' Hinduism was being brought into a comparatist framework dominated by European values of text - the 'invention of Hinduism' debate. 7 During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the body of textual commentary surrounding the late Vedas (Vedanta, or 'end of the Vedas') came to be seen as the philosophical core of Hinduism. Vedanta came to the fore, at least in part, as a result of the value being assigned to ideas revolving around text and print; ideas arising partially out of the European interest being paid to Indian textual antiquity, and partially through the new primacy of print technology. Also contributing to this rise were debates over 'backwards' indigenous cultural practices such as idolatry and polytheism. A transnational discussion in the 1820s, sparked by Unitarian criticisms of Trinitarian theology in Europe and the United States, certainly played a part as well. As I will show, the Unitarian/Trinitarian controversy created a conceptual space of critique within which Vedanta fit quite well: these various forces helped to shape a modern version of Vedanta, a travelling form of the philosophico-religious system that, for its proponents, represented a perfected and uncorrupted version of Hinduism. A modern form of Vedanta arose as such a textualized formation that often mirrored, and occasionally distorted, the contro-versies surrounding the role of religion in the post-Enlightenment European state.

Page 3: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s} 261

Vedanta is the name given to a very broad body of religious and philosophical discourse surrounding the late Vedas - the Upanisads. The oscillation between religion and philosophy in Western usages of Vedanta accounts for much of the nineteenth-century potency of deploying Vedanta within and outside of orientalist discourse. Vedanta could be applied to issues raised by theology, as well as to questions of ontology and epistemology. Though Vedantic scholarship existed in a host of different forms, the particular form relied upon by virtually all of its promi-nent nineteenth-century adherents (including Ray, Muller and Vivekananda) was Advaita (Non-dualist) Vedanta: This was, in essence, the argument for a conception of divinity as uniform. Codified during the ninth century AD by Shankaracharya (Shankara), this rigorous conception of the 'divine' remained highly influential in India - particularly in relation to the subcontinent's other major religious forma-tions, Buddhism, Sikhism and Islam. Shankaran Vedanta argued for a rigidly defined monism: a position which superseded any other version of theism in that it promoted the inherent unity of divinity, a unity which would thus be intrinsic to all facets of human materiality and consciousness. Thus Shankara developed the implication, found in the Upanisads, that all reality was a single principle, brahman.s As such, the practitioner's goal would be to transcend the limitations of identity rooted in the self (atman) and ro realize one's unity with brahman.

Such rigid monism explained human experiential knowledge as the individual's differentiation from the universe's essential 'oneness'. This monistic view of divinity transgressed the human-divine hierarchy developed within the Western monothe-istic tradition (stretching from and through Judaic, Christian and Islamic concep-tions of 'God'). Instead of viewing divinity from a theistic imagination, such monism argued for a mind/body unity that could only be developed under rigorous and austere methods, and which promised religious enlightenment. I suggest that it is Vedanta's mystico-religious tenets that inspired so many Western observers to presume a mystical faith system for the entire Orient.

Interests in text, language and the question of origins coalesced around Vedanta during the rise of British colonialism. The discourse of' civilization' in Europe played a particularly influential role in the revival of Vedanta by Indians seeking to represent themselves to the west. Antique systems of thought were extremely important to discourses of civilization, as their existence served to highlight the degradation or 'fallen' nature of the colonized, justifying the presence of the colonizer as saviour or redeemer. •

As part and parcel of modernizing Europe's colonial endeavours came an unprece-dented large-scale movement of people and goods across the globe. For the first time, then, geographical translocation allowed for evidence of antiquity to be imported to new sites. This information provided additional fuel for systematic empirical treat-ments of the question of human origins. Empiricist strategies of accumulating concrete 'proof' and scientific methods of assessing evidence were being brought to bear on the rapidly secularizing, industrializing and technologizing lifeworlds of the colonizing European powers. For Bengali proponents of Vedanta during the nineteenth century - which includes many if not most reform-oriented Brahmins -the Orientalists had established avenues of discursive exchange between past text and

Page 4: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

262 Amit Ray

present condition, allowing for the possibility of reworking both religious and social identity on a massive scale. The combination of textual past and print present was a brand new form of social power. In this space, Vedanta became a sphere of shared discourse between Orientalists and Bengali religious reformers.9

Non-Western antiquated texts brought along a new kind of threat to Christian orthodoxy. This fresh empirical evidence (particularly with literary texts) necessitated conjecture, exploration, elaboration and analysis. The entry of a new body of evidence into European intellectual circles forced empiricists to respond to their own late eighteenth and early nineteenth century debates about the origins, nature and roles of religion, especially in what would become the modern state. During the Enlightenment, anti-clerical thinkers like Voltaire posed the ancient civilizations of China and India as foils against Christian claims to creation and origin. However, at that time athe lack of any established, non-religious European presence in Asia made many of those sources suspect. Indeed some texts were completely fabricated specifically to enhance or discredit particular arguments occurring in Europe. The work of the British Orientalists offered the first systematic exploration and dissemi-nation of India's Sanskritic culture outside of Asia, bringing a new sense of accuracy and reliability with regard to discussions about non-'Western' antiquity.

Recent debates on the colonial roots of textual Hinduism reveal a particular set of concerns surrounding Vedanta. While it can be viewed as a colonially inflected construct, Vedanta must also be viewed as a 'textual' solution' to the European-conceived problematic of 'civilization.' The elevated, or 'modern' status of European civilization in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was predicated on literacy. Therefore, debates over the hierarchical and developmental nature of civilizations were deeply rooted in the concept of language. Indeed, the existence of writing and literacy were indices of a culture's relative evolution in relationship to an imagined European centre. Within such criteria for 'civilized' status, Vedanta was enlisted in the construction of Indian Modernity - both the Arya Samaj and Brahmo Samaj sought access to European notions of civilization through Vedanta. Vedanta could provide a space to show the Hindu's equality with the European/Christian, and even to show how the Hindu might be dominant: through a claim to the origins of religious thought the Easterner could pronounce the spiritual core of humanity as being of Asian provenance.

Vedanta enters into the purview of Orientalists and elite religious reformers, of those trying to negotiate a 'modern' Hinduism, both in response to and in accordance with some of the intellectual values of contemporary Europe. Vedanta satisfied European valuation on a number of fronts. It was based on textual commentary, philosophical idealism and a rigid monotheism. These were values that the elite indigenous modernizers in Bengal could enlist in the aid of social transformation. Rammohan Ray was one of the earliest figures to transgress a variety of orthodox Brahminical practices in Bengal. Vedanta was presented by Ray as a textual and traditional body of Hindu discourse, idealized through a lens of 'reason'.10 Ray relied heavily on Advaita Vedanta to defend indigenous 'civilization' against the attacks of Baptist missionaries. He achieved btoad transmission of these ideas through print technologies imported by Europeans to the subcontinent.

Page 5: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

'i

.';k,'

Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s) 263

Thus Vedanta serves as an interesting marker of the complex path of European 'literariness' (or, perhaps, literateness), and the civilizational sense of superiority anchored in this linguistic and textual lineage. European notions of 'civilization', indeed the notion of a coherent 'Europe', were premised on the belief that a nearly 3000-year-old genealogy, dating back to Ancient Greece, through Roman Christendom and into Modern Europe provided a continuous and stable connection to the past. This myth was supported through a comparative discourse of literary texts, primarily via the Romance languages and ancient Greek documents - both directly by European scholars as well as through a series of (largely silenced) Islamic mediations. In this reconstituted and modernizing Europe of the mid- to late eighteenth century, the empirical nature of European expansion and the circulation of new proof of non-Primitive pasts, all set the stage for a cultural disturbance within the family of languages. These languages had previously been accounted for within a specific geographical region, a genealogy contained within EuropeY Orientalist incursions into this genealogy oflanguages affected the very highest levels of European thought. Indo-European, the linguistic category invented as a consequence of the work of British Orientalists, thus became an area of tremendous cultural anxiety and contestation - later contributing to the sorts of racialized thinking (i.e. Aryan race theory) that would have devastating effects during the twentieth century.'>

Religious reformers in both Bengal and Great Britain utilized the discursive spaces created by Orientalism in Bengal. Vedanta, Unitarianism and a new scrutiny of the concept of monotheism coalesced into what would become a transnational debate over the unity of Divinity, an early attempt to account for and accommodate religious difference. By the latter half of the nineteenth century, India would become critical to such debates in the Anglo-American world and the message of spiritual unity would come to comprise a sizable portion of representations of India, by both Indians and non-Indians, in the West.

Ray's was one of the earliest and most authoritative of these voices. The term 'Raja' (or 'King') denotes royalty, an odd designation for one who has been widely charac-terized as the father of modern India and a chief catalyst in a movement that would later become very important to early Indian nationalism. In the Dictionary of Modern Indian History, Raja Rammohan Roy is frequently referred to simply as 'the Raja'Y The Mughal emperor, Akbar Shah II, conferred this title upon him so that he might go to England as an envoy to the court of St James and argue, in front of the king, that the stipend received by Emperor Akbar was inadequate. Thus, in an fnteresting series of semantic displacements, this dictionary entry explains that the 'Hindu' designation for 'king', conferred by an Islamic ruler, becomes the common title given to a figure deemed responsible for initiating modern Indian statehood. Such semantic slippages are particularly apt for distinguishing someone like Rammohan Ray because of the remarkable fissures of language and culture that he bridged in early-nineteenth-century Bengal (indeed, the change in the English transliteration between my former and latter spellings of Ray's name, the latter now considered the more 'correct' spelling, also reflects these cultural interactions).14

To my reading of this 'dictionary' entry on Ray's life, I add the following supplement: Ray was one of the first prominent South Asians to travel to England, and he did so

Page 6: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

264 Amit Ray

in breach of a Brahminical caste regulation against travelling overseas. 15 The British East India Company, which did not recognize the 'Raja's' newly conferred titled, allowed him to go to England none-the-Iess, where he arrived in 1830. He would never return to India, achieving a degree of celebrity and recognition in the West before dying in Bristol during the fall of 1833.

Ray was part of the first generation in Bengal to experience full-scale British rule from birth onwards. He was raised in a family of wealth and privilege, their ptoS-perity secured by property holdings. Though the details of his early life are in some dispute, it is clear from Ray's family name that his ancestors had status within the Mughal imperial bureaucracy.16 Ray learned Arabic and Persian from his father, 'as preparation for government service', and Sanskrit from his mother in order to serve his religious duties. Bruce Robertson, in his recent study of the Raja, suggests that Ray spend his lifetime traversing this cultural polarity established between mother and father - the two separate writing communities of a worldly Bengali Brahmin of the day. Thus Ray would become one of those who had, during the previous two centuries, developed a strategy of social accommodation to the Islamo-Persian influence of Mughal rule. There was precedent amongst certain Brahmins in Bengal who had made such accommodations for quite some time and, thus, these negotiations between religious and political power were not uncommon. l7 Ray's family name signifies his place within the custom of laukika, or worldly Brahmins in service to the Mughal emperor. Ray's family would have been stigmatized by many Orthodox Brahmins, for whom the priestly life of a vaidika was not to be abandoned. In many ways, the adult Ray's brand of 'equal-opportunity' criticism against religious orthodoxy, which was to become his modus operandi, was influenced by the pre-British cultural dynamics of Bengal.

During his lifetime, Rammohan Ray's linguistic faculties and comparatist bent would ingratiate him to, as well as alienate him from, a startling variety of commu-nities in Bengal and abroad18 A large audience in both India and Great Britain received Ray's English and Bengali writings. Often, these writings addressed the task of assessing and propagating India's textual antiquity, its Sanskritic tradition. As a Vedantin (scholar of the Vedas), Ray took it upon himself to edit and translate the Upanisads for an English reading public. In another work, Ray edited the Gospels. Both these acts were soundly condemned by Hindu and Christian religious ortho-doxies successively.

Interestingly enough, in an exclamatory call for stringent monotheism, a youthful Ray's first publication was in Persian, the language of India's previous Imperial rulers. The overlap in Ray's use of these languages, occurring as they were within Bengal at the end of the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth, demonstrates the political and social positions he occupied throughout his lifetime. In Persian, English and Bengali (and as an interpreter of Sanskrit) Ray alternately addressed the three principle language communities that were historically intersecting within Bengal, thus thoroughly circulating his voice within the discourses of power in Bengal and England. 19 The majority Bengali Hindu landholders in the region, of which Ray was a part, were busily reacting to the economic and political upheaval in the region. As the fortunes of the Mughal Empire withered away over the course of

Page 7: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s) 265

the eighteenth century, the mercantile wing of British overseas ventures would blossom into the full-fledged political and economic management of the Indian subcontinent.

Crucial to this rise of British power were the interactions occurring between the British East India administrators and their Indian informants. Ray's regular affilia-tions with the British did not occur until the turn of the century when he moved near Calcutta. His linguistic faculties made him a prime commodity within the adminis-trative circles of translation and linguistic work that were part and parcel of the East Indian Company's Bengali holdings. Around 1804, Ray became a diwan in the company - the highest post for a native at that time. Like many enterprising and affluent Bengali landholders of the day, Ray entered into contract with the Company through money-lending institutions in Calcutta. There, Bengalis provided loans to enterprising Company employees, and he himself speculated on Company paper operations.2o While Company reforms enacted around the year of Ray's birth were intended to curb such enterprising behaviour, corruption was not uncommon at the turn of the eighteenth century when Ray was moving actively in Company circles. 21

The Company man who hired Ray as a diwan, secretary to the Collector of Dacca-Jalalput, Thomas Woodforde, had earlier borrowed five thousand rupees from Ray. In Max Millier's biographical sketch of Ray, he points out that Woodforde allowed a special clause into Ray's contract that he should nOt be kept standing in the presence of his employer, illustrating the 'special' circumstance of the Raja. 22 Ray would eventually become Woodforde's munshi when Woodforde became Registrar of the Appellate Court of Murshidabad. It was here, in what had once been the seat of Mug hal Adminstration in Bengal, that Ray composed the Persian tract Toh/atu 'l-muwahiddin (Toh/at), or 'To the Believers in One God'. Written between 1803 and 1804, the Toh/at 'attacked religious leadership in general and Brahmins in particular'.>3

Thus, Ray's initial entry into public discourse via Persian, the language of the Mughal Court, displays the ease with which the young scholar perceived various religious and political perspectives. 24 Both the language in which the Toh/atu 'l-muwahiddin is composed, as well as its polemic emphasis, reflect the religious and theological wrangling occurring in Bengal at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Ray provides a powerful and sustained argument, via the stringent monotheism of Islam, for the essential monotheism of all religious beliefs. The piece is an examination of the concept of God in various religions. Ray's simple premise is this: a fundamental split exists amongst religions between natural state at.d human habit. Nature ptovides for one ttue god, habit stokes the existence of many. In the Toh/at, Ray makes a very enlightened appeal to reason, claiming that one must care-fully examine claims to the supernatural: all events have a cause, a reason, but indi-viduals and institutions take advantage of situations where such a reason is not explicit, claiming for themselves supernatural powers.

Ray delivers an impassioned entreaty, appealing to a turn away from 'special beliefs in the forms of pure truths resting on miracles or on the power of the tongue'." Indeed, such calls to reason might be viewed as being in line with general European Enlightenment criticisms of human religious behaviour. His attack, couched as it is in Islamic terms, is aimed at faith without reason. This is accomplished through a

Page 8: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

266 Amit Ray

careful dissection of how reliance upon magic and superstition (he lists taising the dead and ascending to heaven as examples) reflects the corruption of most varieties of religious behaviour. Again and again Ray rerurns to the idea of 'One Being' as a means for reconciling the diversity of human religion. He utilizes the reoccurring phrase, 'the truth and falsehoods of various religions', in an effort to traverse the boundaries of any single religious perspective. While Christianity and orientalism have established various means of setting up comparisons between an expanding field of religions and cultures in early colonial Bengal, Ray utilizes this situation to construct a measured criticism of all religions. His examination, composed in Persian and utilizing Islamic categories, is highly dismissive of supernatural, faith-based explanations as it seeks out a path among multiple religious traditions. No religion is spared ftom some measure of criticism. But his attack is clearly directed at Bengali Brahmins, ... hom Ray blamed for a corrupt social system. Generously supplemented with quotations from the Koran,26 Ray would extend his defence of monotheism to Sanskrit sources. Over the course of the next two decades, as Ray's prominence as a public figure increased, his stances on various political positions of the day (including sati, widow re-marriage and English-language education) would be constructed out of such a characteristically comparatist framework.

Jogendta Ghose's 'Introduction' to a 1901 compilation of Ray's English writing emphasizes the contextual nature of these ideas. Ghose quotes Count Goblet d'Alviella:

It has been said that Rammohun Roy delighted to pass for a believer in the Vedanta with the Hindus, for a Christian among the adherents of that creed, and for a disciple of the Koran with the champions of Islamicism. The truth is that his eclecticism equaled his sincerity.27

As I will document, Ray's eventual reliance upon Vedanta comes about as result of influences and pressure coming from all three of these religious traditions.

During the decade following his publication of the controversial Toh/at, Ray set about mastering the English language. He assumed a post as munshi (private secretary) with another Company official, John Digby. It was Digby who aided Ray in his study of the language. Robertson speculates that this must also have been the time when Ray privately studied the Brahmasutras with a pundit, thus securing a more thorough grounding in Brahminical literature. Niranjan Dhar goes further, stating that it was during Ray's stay in Rangpur, where he had already started to assemble people for 'meditation of one Supreme brahman', that he began translation work of the Upanisads. 28 Over the course of the next ten years, Ray continued his association with the East India Company through his employment under Digby, moving with Digby to Jessore (now in Bangladesh), Bhagalpur (modern Bihar) and, in 1809, to Rangpur. In Rangpur, Ray was near the border states of Bhutan and Cooch Behar and thus was privy to the frequent disputes that occurred on the fringes of British dominion.

In 1815, with his permanent move to Calcutta, Rammohan Ray established himself as an important voice in these debates. He immediately began mixing within the mOSt erudite circles of bhadra/ok learning,29 spending considerable time at the

Page 9: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s) 267

College of Fort William, the centre of Orientalist studies in Bengal. Later that year, Ray published his first essay on Vedanta, Vedantasard, or 'Abridgement of the Vedant' .30 Initially published in Bengali, Ray offered an English translation of Vedantasara the following year. The Bengali translations, according to Bruce Robertson, 'represent the first time, on record, of the sacred Upanisads being rendered by a Hindu into an Indian vernacular language for a non Sanskrit-reading public since the work of Dara Shikiih's Benares pandits'. The 1816 English-language translation of the Upanisads was the first English language treatment of the Vedas since Colebrooke's 1805 treatise. 31

In his introduction to the 1816 English language translation, Ray makes his primary aim explicit: 'In order, therefore, ro vindicate my own faith, and that of our ear!y forefathers, I have been endeavoring ... to convince my countrymen of the true meaning of our sacred books'.32 Making a claim for the Vedas as divine in origin, 'affirmed ro be coeval with creation', Ray goes on to take aim at Brahminical orthodoxy as he sees it. The Vedas have been 'concealed within the dark curtain of the Sanskrit language, and the Brahmins permitting themselves alone to interpret, or even touch any book of the kind, the Vedanta, although perpetually quoted, is little known to the public'.33 Ray's goal was to counter the priestly monopoly of text and remedy it with his translation into Hindi and Bengali. The beneficent result was to be distributed 'free of cost, among my own countrymen'.34

Ray was attempting ro utilize the technology of print to break the 'sacred' order of text held by Brahmin orthodoxy. This was in addition to placing Indian theology and 'tradition' in line with western notions of civilization. While there is no ques-tion that Ray felt a proper British influence would have a positive influence on Bengal, his approach cannot be seen simply as a concession to European influence. The long-standing tradition of Vedanta, though certainly not the dominant variety of Brahminical scriptural interpretation in Bengal, provided an indigenous solution to the recently heightened argument against idolatry and polytheism proffered by East India Company servants and missionaries alike. 36

During the next three years, Ray regular! y published translated extracts and commentaries from the Upanisads in Bengali, Hindustani and English, all of which were based on Shankara's expositions. This was part of a continuing attempt to place Shankara's interpretation of the Vedas into the centre of Hindu belief and practice. However, Ray differed from Shankara in that he promoted an egalitarian V..aanta, a Vedanta that was not to be restricted only to the spiritual goals of Brahmins but, instead, extended to worldly practice for all Hindus. Re-interpreting Shankara to suit current social issues, Ray argued that anyone, not just Brahmins, was 'qualified for theological studies and theognostic attainments', and later argued that non-Brahmins (Bengali Sudras, or lower castes) 'were eligible for Brahma knowledge' Y He also argued that scripture did not support the practice of sati, one so shocking to European mores. Ray sought an indigenous basis for responding to European criticisms of Bengali social life. In response to social issues such as the treatment of women, of lower castes, and of foreigners, he preached an egalitarianized brand of Vedanta. Ray's Vedanta maintained the core philosophical principles of Shankaran Advaita Vedanta but ignored the dictates of caste-based 'qualification' for Vedic

I

I

I,

I

! I ,

II,

Page 10: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

268 Amit Ray

study (adhikara).38 The person who engaged in worldly activities, who did not belong to the priestly class that dispensed spiritual and religious knowledge, was not precluded from such knowledge. Wilhelm Halbfass notes, 'Again and again, Rammohan emphasizes that being a householder, having worldly, temporal goals is not incompatible with knowing the supreme Brahmin'.39 In doing this, Ray was also trying to 'marshal the considerable force of European public opinion behind his campaign'.40

The sizeable print culture emerging in Bengal and urban regions of India insured that Ray's views circulated widely. The printed word was primarily an urban phenomenon, occurring via the dissemination of print - journals, periodicals and newspapers. Ray's utilization of the English language made him directly accessible ro the language communities of Europe, though he and his associates were also writing in the vernfcular Bengali and Hindustani.

In 1817, Ray was involved in a spirited exchange with one Mr Sankara Sastri, who published a letter in the Madras Courier attacking him. The letter took issue wi th the titles being applied to Ray by the Calcutta Gazette - 'reformer' and 'discoverer' - and accused Ray of misappropriating Shankara. Ray believed Sastri to be a pseudonym for an Englishman and replied with the polemic, A Defence of Hindu Theism. In all of his works on Vedanta, Ray single-mindedly sought to dethrone the power of Brahminical priests and orthodoxy by showing that their uses of ritual and ceremony were counter to the tenets of the sacred texts themselves. He reiterates in the Defence a point that he has already made in the Abridgement of the Vedanta. Ray explains that with his English translation of the UPanisads and expositions on the Vedanta, he expected

to prove to my European friends, that the superstitious practices which deform the Hindoo religion, have nothing to do with the pure spirit in its dictates ... by explaining to my countrymen the real spirit of the Hindoo scriptures which is but the declaration of the unity of God, tend in degree to correct the erroneous conceptions which have prevailed with regard to the doctrines they inculcate.41

Such heightened polemic characterized much of Ray's work during the period, further highlighting the controversial nature of his positions.

In 1820, Ray's writings initiated the infamous Precepts controversy, a matter that drew press coverage throughout Asia, Europe and the Americas. As he had done earlier with the Upanisads, Ray took it upon himself to edit and abridge the text of the Gospels. For his edited translations of the Upanisads, Ray received harsh censure from Brahmins and Vedantins alike; for his editing of the Gospels he inflamed Missionary passions. His stated purpose in producing an edition of the Gospels was to focus upon the ethical teachings of Christ. Published at his own expense at the Calcutta Baptist Mission Press, Precepts of Jesus, The Guide to Peace and Happiness invited controversy that would make Ray known throughout Europe. The fact that Ray had access to the Press demonstrates that he had, for the most part, affable ties with the Baptists. Since Ray was promoting monotheism to the Bengali elite, 'some missionaries viewed Rammohan as nothing less than an instrument of Divine

Page 11: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

Rammohan Ray's Vedama(s) 269

Providence'.42 The Precepts controversy contributed ro a severing of ties between Ray and most prominent missionaries.

The Baptist response to Ray's edition of the Gospels evidenced, once again, Ray's unwillingness to conform ro the expectations of his missionary benefactors and allies. Marshman responded quickly to Ray, attacking him for undermining the integrity of the Gospels. The main criticism leveled was that the Gospels were to be read as a whole and that any piecemeal version undermined the divine nature of the works. This was the same charge made against Ray by many Vedantins in response to his Abridgement of the Vedanta - not surprising considering that those who viewed sacred text to be of divine origin would tend to view scripture as an inviolable whole. In addition, for Ray ro emphasize Christ's teachings without recognizing his divine status was a repetition of the old Arian heresy, which made Christ out to be mortal. Ray would issue subsequent Appeals to the Christian Pub/ie, in which he defended his approach in a systematic fashion. This exchange drew enough attention in Europe that Marshman had his A Defence of the Deity and Atonement of Jesus Christ in Reply to Rammohun Roy published in London in 1823. The Precepts incident, along with other controversial applications of Vedanta and Islam, show Ray raking advantage of comparatist interactions - interactions ushered in by the late eighteenth century collab-orations amongst British Orientalists and various literary communities in Bengal (as well as other regions in Sourh Asia). During the final ten years of his life, accounts of the Precepts controversy appeared in most prominent European periodicals - including some of Ray's defences against Marshman and the Serampore critics.

In the period following the Precepts incident, Ray increased his contacts with adherents of British Unitarian liberal theology. The Unitarians were amongst the most reform-oriented Christian groups in England, agitating for the abolition of slavery and greater rights for women. Eventually, through such contacts, various segments of society in Bengal and England (with extensions into the United States) became linked by their core doctrinal belief in a universal theology.43 Due to the work of the early Orientalists, and the publication of Asiatic Researches, the ancient roOts of Brahminical religion were viewed as being monotheistically oriented.44 Not unlike the use of Asian culture during the Enlightenment, such knowledge of ancient culture allowed Europeans and Americans who were against the doctrine of the Trinity to rely on Indian antiquity to address contemporary cultural issues in Europe.

Not long after his battles with the Baptists over his editing of the Go,pels, Ray, along with Dwarkanath Tagore (grandfather of Rabindranath) and William Adam established a meeting ground for promoting Unitarian religious belief, Christian and Hindu. In early 1823, the Calcutta Unitarian Committee was established, becoming an important space of dialogue between Unitarians and Vedanta-oriented Hindus. During the following years, as the Unitarian Committee gradually morphed into the Brahmo Samaj, the shared underlying motivation between these two bodies -Brahmo Hindus and Unitarian Christians - was a view of universal theology common to all 'civilized' peoples.

While impressed by the achievements of Christendom, Ray felt that the attacks on Hindu and Indian tradition were fundamentally unsound, particularly in light of Trinitarian consubstantiality. Even prior to his formal affiliation with the Unitarians,

Page 12: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

270 Amit Ray

he regularly questioned those mIssIOnaries who attacked the polytheism of the Hindus and yet embraced Christ as an embodiment of the divine: the Son of God. In the 1821 'Preface to the Second Edition' of The Brahmunical Magazine, a publication Ray started in order to address missionary criticism of the Vedas, he attacked the apparent hypocrisy in the Trinitarianism of missionaries: 'Yet if while he declares God is not man, he again professes to believe in a God-Man or Man-God, under whatever sophistry the idea may be sheltered, ... can such a person have a just claim to enjoy respect in the intellectual world? And does he expose himself to censure, should he, at the same time, ascribe unreasonableness to others?'45

Ray was arguing for the universality of the divine, drawing attention to the multiple varieties of human belief to posit a single divine force. David Kopf claims that Ray gained his Unitarianism from early century Unitarian writings. Lynn Zastoupil a@ldresses these Unitarian ties also. Like Kopf he argues that Ray derived much from Unitarianism's radical history. This is a very credible observation. But both minimize the impact of Shankaran Vedanta on Ray's thought46 Robertson's study makes a very specific attempt to remedy this oversight with an excellent chapter on Ray's use of Vedanta, as well as on the credibility of his claims as a Vedantin. Robertson validates Ray's Sanskritic claims but points out his specific defi-ciencies as well - those schools with which he showed little or no familiarity. His conclusion is that Ray was firmly grounded in the non-dualistic tradition ofVedantic interpretation established by Shankara47 However, Ray's deployment of Vedanta could vary depending on which language community he was addressing. Wilhelm Halbfass describes Ray's polyvalent use of Vedanta: 'the "Veds" which were thus presented to two different audiences, serve as vehicles for receptivity and reform as well as self-assertion in the face of the West' .48

With regard to the debate over monotheism, Ray's choices when translating the Upanisads contributed to a significant degree of slippage when it came to his depic-tion of Vedantic conceptions of the divine. In his English translations, Ray was consistently evoking the linguistic (and Christian) notion of 'person'. As pointed out earlier, the notion of deity systematized by Shankara was monistic. But in Ray's English-language texts, the God he depicts is a 'personal God'. Thus, as Halbfass cogently summarizes it:

Even in those places where the Sanskrit text of the works translated and para-phrased by Rammohun uses the term brahman in the neuter case, he consistently uses the masculine form ('he') in his English works, in effect replacing the monistic principle of reality with the God of monotheism.49

Interestingly, in Ray's Bengali language translations this was not an issue as there is no distinction between the neuter and the masculine in Bengali. Such translational variations show Ray gauging the reception of various language communities to his ideas. 50 He would have been aware of the increased European receptivity to his trans-lations if Shankaran monism were couched in the language of person. The gendering of brahman could serve as a useful rhetorical device, suggesting a personal god when the actual prose and commentary stayed within the basic tenets of Shankaran

I I ( I t !

I

Page 13: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

I I "

I

I F

I

Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s) 271

monism. By utilizing the masculine instead of a non-gender-specific term, Ray made the text amenable to a reader seeking a personal god rather than the more abstract, deistic notion provided by a long line of Advaita adherents.

Ray's textual interventions were arising out of an extremely dynamic milieu. In terms of his place within the literati of Calcutta, Ray shared much with the early British Orientalists. He had read their work and was aware of the European and Christian traditions in which they were grounded. He was familiar with orientalist assessments of various aspects of Indian antiquity, including Colebrooke's 1805 trea-tise, and it would be reasonable ro identify him as the first Indian scholar to be widely acknowledged beyond Asia during his own lifetime.51 In addition, Ray's Company and Baptist ties provided him with disparate and often opposed commu-nities within the various European camps. Ray's eventual affiliation with the Unitarians provided a forum from which he could espouse the idea of an ancient textual monotheism to declare a reformist, modernized Hindu identity. Halbfass writes that because of the work of Ray, and later the Brahmo Samaj movement he founded, 'the framework and potential for the encounter and reconciliation of the traditions (Western and Christian) is now sought within the Hindu tradition; recep-tivity and openness themselves appear as constituents of the Hindu identity and as principles of self-assertion'.52

Perhaps not enough emphasis has been placed on Ray's tole in the revival of Advaita Vedanta. Robertson's study has a detailed chapter on the matter, pointing out how Ray establishes a precedent, via Vedanta, for Indian self-assertion in the face of the superior organization and technology of the European colonizers. Advaita fits into a reading of human religious phenomena as arising out of a universal theology. The discussions of various theologians and scholars in the wake of European colonial expansion and the greater awareness of various non-European cultures helped to initiate what we might today call a 'sociological' perspective on the function of reli-gious belief in societies. This can be seen as an inevitable outcome of the 'scientifi-cizing' tendencies catalyzed by industrialization and modernity - the fairly recent historical movement towards 'rationality' and away from 'metaphysics'. I am certainly not trying to say that Ray represents an initial moment or movement. What I am pointing out is that Christianity was being reconceived throughout Europe due to some powerful nineteenth-century 're-districting' forces - particularly the increasing moves away from religion and towards secularism as the European nation-states began to industrialize. The re-invigorated debates over Trinitaria::ism being fought out in both the United States and England constituted but one small segment of this growing fissure between church and state. In debates such as these, the East entered into metropolitan conversations, forging spaces for germination and growth in the newly industrializing colonial powers.

In early colonial India, Anglicization provided a utilitarian tool for Ray to speak with institutions of power in the language of power. In the Orientalist-Anglicist controversy, Ray did not clearly align himself to either position. Ray's reliance on indigenous print culture showed how important it was for him to interact with various literate communities in Bengal and throughout India. The British hold on India would not unite that sort of concerted response until the modest demands of

Page 14: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

I

II i l

i I I

272 Amit Ray

partial sovereignty petitioned for by the early Indian National Congress near the end of the century. But the Brahmo Samaj did begin to make distinct nationalist over-tures to the British ruling authorities around the middle of the century.

The initial terms of the Anglicist-Orientalist controversy were organized around the issue of how best to rule Bengal - to 'Orientalize' certain British East India Company employees or to 'Anglicize' indigenous literati. I do not believe the native 'Hindu' elites were against the idea of becoming educated in English. They saw it as an avenue to European power, a means of Western Enlightenment. The effort to de-sanctify Brahmins as a divinely sanctioned social class who would administer ritual and who held sacred purity was supplemented by Ray's development of an egalitarian version of Advaita, accessible to anyone who sought out such knowledge.

My larger aim is to suggest that India, during the nineteenth century, became central to westeln liberal theology. Efforts to sociologize religion - to study religion as relativistic, comparative and contextual - occurred in no small part due to the 'discovery of Hinduism'. Religion came to be seen by various liberals and intellectuals as a human (as opposed to divine) phenomenon. In light of this recognition, India came to represent spirituality for a Western imagination that saw its own lifeworlds being evacuated of the once-dominant metaphysics of Christian theology and cosmology.

Notes

1 P. J. Marshall, 'Introduction', in P. J. Marshall (ed.) The British Discovery of Hinduism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970, p. 43.

2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 M. J. Franklin points OUt the differences amongst the early Orientalists regarding the issue

of divinity and Indian antiquity. In contrasting Halhed and Jones, Franklin notes, '[wlhereas Halhed, looking back to a pristine, monotheistic, and classical Hinduism, had subscribed to the contemporary prejudice against popular Hinduism, Jones appreciated that this theory of historical deterioration was somewhat simplistic', in M. J. Franklin, 'Cultural Possession, Imperial Control and Comparative Religion: The Calcutta Perspectives of Sir William Jones and Nathaniel Brassey Halhed', The Yearbook of English Studies, vol. 32, 2002, p. 9.

5 N. Dhar, Vedanta and the Bengal Renaissance, Calcutta: Minerva, 1977, p. 27. 6 H. T. Colebrooke, T. E. Caleb rooke, and E. B. Cowell, Miscellaneous Essays, London:

Triibner, 1873, p. 100. 7 Recently, scholars have questioned the cohesiveness of 'Hinduism' as a religious body,

suggesting that this categorization and grouping occurs as a result of European ideas and expectations as to what 'religion' was supposed to be_ Both Ronald Inden and Richard King address this topic. Chapter 5 of King's Orientalism and Religion, 'The Modern Myth of Hinduism' is a particularly useful overview, linking the rise of Hinduism to the nineteenth-century advent of comparative religious studies. See R_ Inden, Imagining India, Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1990 and R. King, Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and 'the Mystic East', New York: Routledge, 1999.

8 The transcendental concept of 'brahman' is not to be confused with the social group of the same name_ To differentiate between the two, I will indicate the latter without italics and with the spelling 'Brahmin'.

9 The entrenchment of colonialism - the show of European dominance on a worldwide scale - depended heavily upon isolating and defining local conditions_ Within the larger project of gathering knowledge, of codifying, accumulating, addressing and debating the

Page 15: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s) 273

varieties of lives 'on the ground', the orientalists sought an immediate and linguistic solution to the question of cultural precedent - thus the reliance upon key texts such as The Laws of Manu and the Upanisads. With time. a more present-oriented view of indige-nous culture would emerge. The process of 'cataloging' culture encouraged the advent -of what we now call ethnography and anthropology. See C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780-1870, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, N. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001 and D. Ludden, 'Orientalist Empiricism: Transformations of Colonial Knowledge' in C. Breckinridge and P. van der Veer (eds) Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993.

10 It can certainly be argued, as some scholars have, that Ray's 'reason' is constructed more through the Persian and Islamic traditions than that of the Enlightenment. See note 26.

11 Martjn Bernal's controversial work, Black Athena, locates this construction, in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Western Europe, as a Greco-Latinate-Christian secularizing humanism, M. Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987. William Jones is the perfect example of someone shaped by this amorphous and contradictory formation. He was rooted, simulta-neously, in deep religiosity, deep empiricism and deep skepticism - simultaneously seeking empirical textual sources on the nature of the 'Divine,' yet always careful to pull his insights back into the safe harbor of a particular brand of Christian faith in the Bible. Macaulay illustrates the kinds of anxiety displaced onto this 'constructed' genealogy of Western civilization in his now infamous Minute on Indian Education.

12 Sheldon Pollock's 'Deep Orientalism?'examines the connections between Indology and National Socialism. Pollock offers up this startling and provocative proposition: 'in the case of German Indology we might conceive of {the vector of European colonial power] as potentially directed inward - towards the colonization and domination of Europe itself.' S. Pollock, 'Deep Orientalism? Notes on Sanskrit and Power Beyond the Raj', in C. Breckinridge and P. van der Veer (eds) Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993, p. 77.

13 P. Mehra, A Dictionary of Modern Indian History, 1707-1947, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987 p. 734.

14 Dermot Killingley, in the opening of his 1990 Teape Lectures, also remarks on the roman-ization of Ray's name in the nineteenth century. This instability and contestation continue through to the present day as evinced in recent critical work, see Robertson and Zastoupil. Killingley's collected and expanded version of the Teape Lectures addresses the multiva-lent qualities of Ray's writings and influence. See D. Killingley, Rammohun Roy in Hindu and Christian Tradition, Newcastle upon Tyne: Grevatt and Grevatt, 1993, p. 1. Killingley offers up a comprehensive, detailed and subtle comparative study of Ray and his multiple (and multiplicitous) engagements. As he puts it, '[t]o follow the sources used by Rammohun himself, and what has been written on him by his contemporaries and 4"ter, requires a knowledge of English, French, Sanskrit, Bengali, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian' (p. xii). In assessing these . works , he provides a useful methodology for gauging the issue of Ray's authorship (p. 13). This question of authorship was of regular concern throughout the early history of all emergent print cultures and is itself a continuing prob-lematic for several fields of srudy, particularly in light of the emergent digital phase of human media history.

15 A staid xenophobic feature of Brahminical orthodoxy during the period - in order to remain uncontaminated by foreigners, Brahmins were not allowed to cross the open ocean.

16 B. Robertson, Raja Rammohan Ray: The Father of Modern India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 11. Robertson's excellent srudy begins with a discussion of Ray's biographies and other miscellaneous documents that give evidence of his life and work. During his lifetime, Ray made occasional mention of personal history in his writings (particularly in his schooling as a vedantin, as orthodox Brahmins were attacking his

Page 16: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

274 Amit Ray

scholarly credentials). In addition, there exists a controversial autobiographical letter published posthumously in the English Athenaeum. See pp. 1-9.

17 Concessions of this sort, to competing structures of power, were an extremely common feature in Bengali life during Mughal rule. The behavioural mores of those in power all too often ttanslated to the 'ground' - consider the upper caste Bengali ghenna (disgust) for pork, almost certainly adopted in deference to Islamic customs and tastes.

18 My thanks ro Dipesh Chalcrabarty for suggesting the term 'comparatist' in reference co Rammohan Ray. The term came up in a brief conversation we had and his suggestion began to resonate in my thinking.

19 Ray's influence was felt throughout India. He also published tracts in Hindustani that circulated via the developing vernacular print discourse, as well as the various English-language newspapers and journals circulating within and around British centers of power (in and outside India). The hiscory of print in Bengal is a fascinating study UntO itself and Ray plays a large role in its development. See A. H. Mustafa Kamal, The Bengali Press and Literary Writing, Dacca: University Press, 1977, S. Chakraborti, The Bengali Press: A Study in the of Public Opinion, Calcutta: Firma KLM Private, 1976 and M. K. Chanda, History of the English Press in Bengal:1780-1857, Calcutta: KP Bagchi, 1987.

20 Robertson, Ray, p. 19. 21 Indeed, the controversial land reform of 1793, The Permanent Settlement Act, instituted

by Lord Cornwallis (and the subject of Ranajit Guha's famous 1963 study, A Rule of Property for Bengal), was likely adding to speculation and corruption rather than alleviating them. The new system was modeled after English property laws. Under the Mughal zamindari system, the zamindar not only collected taxes on the land but also functioned as the magistrate for the area. With this new system, revenue collection was often auctioned off to the highest bidder. Often the person buying the rights to the land had little knowl-edge of local conditions. Speculative practices under such conditions became even more prevalent as absentee landlordism became widespread.

22 F. M. Miiller, Rammohan to Ramakrishna, Calcutta: Susil Gupta, 1952, p. 17. 23 Robertson, Ray, p. 20. 24 Persian, as the old language of privilege in Mughal India, was rapidly being displaced by

the English medium. This was, in many ways, an event engineered by British Orientalists, administrators and evangelists. The Orientalists were providing a view of Hinduism that privileged the later texts and commentaries of the Vedic tradition; the written records and commentary based upon the manuscript records were maintained by. and primarily circulated within, the Bcahrninical caste. The combination of prine technology, British incursions into Vedic texts, and the growth of vernacular all catalyzed the nascent Hindu/English collaborative efforts. With the changing face of British control in India, these efforts would eventually turn antagonistic.

25 R. Roy and J. C. Ghose, The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy, New Delhi: Cosmo, 1901, p. 956.

26 A number of Ray scholars have argued that his rationalism is rooted in Islam, utilizing his arguments in the Tohfat to evince their claims. Abid U. Ghazi argues that Ray's writing displays characteristic Islamic training. See A. U. Ghazi, 'Raja Rammohun Roy's Response to Muslim India', Studies in Islam, vol. 2, 1976, pp. 1-38. Ghazi writes:

He uses Persian couplets, Qur'anic verses and Arabic and Persian idioms to embellish his expression. Such would be acquired over years of study training and acquaintance with all aspects of Muslim culture ... he uses the entire armory of Islamic logic to support his ideas, which themselves are ultimately turned against the tenet of all established religions, especially Islam'.

(quoted in Robertson, Ray 26-7)

Sumit Sarkar, in A Critique of Colonial India:

laments the diminished attention paid to Ray's Islamic background by most scholars of the Bengali nineteenth-century intelligentsia. He points out that 'the uniqueness of

Page 17: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

f

!

Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s) 275

Rammohun's rationalism cannot be taken as finally settled till much more is known than at present about the intellectual history of eighteenth-century India and particularly perhaps its Islamic components. .

(See S. Sarkar, Calcutta: Papyrus, 1985, p. 5)

27 Roy and Ghose, English Works, 1901, p. xxiii. This quote evinces a trait that, over the nineteenth century, has increasingly come to be associated with India and Hinduism; namely, the syncretic quality of Indian tradition. Ninety six earlier, H. T. Colebrooke's characterization of the Vedas emphasizes a similar point. In the monograph, On the Vedas, Colebrooke points out that even 'the writings of the heretical sects exhibit quotations from the Vedas, see Colebrooke, Colebrooke, Cowell, EJJays, p. 91. This observation is made in a discussion on the intertextual nature of Vedic scripture and Indian scientific develop-ments, particularly astronomy and medicine. The simple gist of the passage is that Vedic scriptural authority permeates India's multiple religious communities. Yet, he argues, scripture is attuned to the historical and scientific developments of the present, even if such developments are at odds with scripture's motives. Towards the latter period of Great Britain's colonial involvement in India, Nehru and Gandhi, as two chief architects of Indian nationalism, will both echo the cultural syncreticism of Indian religious tradition and authority.

28 N. Dhar, Vedanta, p. 38. 29 The term 'bhadralok' refers to the upper-middle-class Bengali elites who emerged under

British colonialism. 30 The full title of the text leaves no doubt as to its argumentative aims: 'Translation of an

Abridgement of The Vedant, or The Resolution of All the Veds, the Most Celebrated and Revered Work of Brahmanical Theology; Establishing the Unity of the Supreme Being; and that He Alone is the Object of Propitiation and Worship.'

31 The circulation of the UPanisads in European languages is a relatively recent occurrence. The first appearance in Europe of a portion of the U panisads appears to be the work of A. H. Anquetil-Duperron. He published four UPanisads in France in 1787. But Anquetil-Duperron relied on a Persian translation, the 1657 Sirr-i Akbar (,The Great Secret') commissioned by Data Shikuh, great-grandson of Emperor Akbar and son of Shah J ahan. In 1801 and 1802, Duperron published the influential Oupnek'hat, which included the entire fifty-one Upanisads of the Sirr-i Akbar. This became a primary source on India for rhe German Romantic philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, amongst others. Yet, most scholars of Sanskrit consider the translation deeply flawed. Robertson declares that this 'first collection of the Upanisads available in Europe was an imprecise Latin translation of an imprecise Persian version of the fifry-one Sanskrit texts', p. 60. Wilhelm Halbfass, in India and Europe: An EJJay in Understanding, points out that Nathaniel Brassey Halhed also translated Sirr-i Akbar in 1787 but the manuscript remained unpublished, p. 87. Jones's Isa-Upanisad was the first direct translation of an Upanisad into a Western language. It did not appear in print until the posthumous 1799 edirion of his works. Colebr'l'ke's 1805 translation and treatise. On the Vedas, was a source of long-standing authority in Europe on the Vedanta. Ray's translation, a decade later, was also regularly cited. Indeed, he was, for years, the only Indian whose work was referred to in Europe. Robertson points out that although 'the Calcutta pandit establishment shunned him, the eminent British Indologists H. H. Wilson and H. T. Colebrooke quoted him on the subject of advaita vedanta, the only living vedancin whose authority they acknowledged', p. 23. In 1840, H. H. Wilson, who had at that point become Boden Professor of Sanskrit, delivered two important lectures on Hinduism at Oxford that relied heavily on the works of Colebrooke and Ray.

32 Roy and Ghose, English Works, p. 3. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid, p. 4. 35 It must be kept in mind that, during this period of early colonial rule, the British were

very careful to maintain a certain degree of indigenous cultural autonomy. The work of the early British Orientalists was a concession to a system of rule in accordance with the

I'

Page 18: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

276 Amit Ray

standards of indigenous practice. Ray's own financial interests were deeply tied to British activities and his increased property holdings between 1799 and 1810 supports this notion. The British were 'in favour of the growth of a new class of zamindars in the country that would safeguard its interests ... Rammohan thus came to be bound with British Imperialism', in N. Dhar, Vedanta, p. 45. In essence, the British were reshaping the older structures of land ownership (the Mughal zamindari system), in order to consolidate an indigenous body sympathetic to Company power. Ranajit Guba's seminal 1963 study, A Rule of Property for Bengal, tracks the development of the Permanent Settlement of 1793 in order to show how the anti-feudal sentiments expressed in that act instead became crucial to the development of a neo-feudal organization of property in colonial Bengal. See R. Guha, A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of Permanent Settlement, Paris: Mouton, 1963.

36 In her article 'Weaving Knowledge', Rosane Rocher points out that the British interest in Vedanta catalyzed Advaita and other Vedantic schools of interpretation in Bengal. See R. Rocher, 'Weaving Knowledge: Sir William Jones and Indian Pandits', in G. Cannon and K. Brine (eds) Objects of Enquiry: The Life, Contributions, and Influences of Sir WilliamJones (1746-1";94), New York: NYU Press, 1995, pp. 51-79.

37 Robertson, Ray, p. 63. 38 Halbfass writes, 'Rammohun had tried to produce religious and soteriological egalitari-

anism. Now he sought sanction for it in the authoritative texts of Hinduism ... especially in Sankara's writings. In doing so he was forced to deal very selectively with these texts; the very explicit and emphatic passages in Sankara's commentary on the Brahmasutras which support the restrictions of the adhikara were passed over in silence', p. 206.

39 W. Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding, Albany: SUNY Press, 1988, p. 209. 'The idea of 'absolute' truth can thus be made available to everybody, and that 'mass education' and social progress can bridge the gap between the different levels of understanding and qualification, is one of Rammohan's most radical deviations from tradi-tional Hindu thought, and more especially, from Sankara's Advaita Vedanta' (212). In his book on the Brahmo Samaj, David Kopf argues that Ray's reformist positions were a conse-quence of European influence, a reliance on preexistent Western modes of thought. Certainly such influence was present. The concepts of reason and egalitarianism, concepts which Ray champions, can be linked to the European Enlightenment. See D. Kopf, The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Indian Mind, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. However Robertson, Halbfass, Dhar, Subsobhan Sarker and others believe that the assessment of Ray's thought as derivative of European conceptual models is incorrect. I concur with the opinion pur forth by such scholars and others that Ray's unique position between and amongst cultures became the constitutive force behind Ray's thought: 'The hermeneutic situation which is expressed in Rammohan Ray's 'multilingualism', his cross-cultural horizon of self-understanding and appeal, his position between receptivity and self-assertion, 'Westernization' and 'Hindu revivalism', forms the background and basic conditions of Hindu thinking and self-understanding', Halbfass, India, p. 217.

40 Robertson, Ray, p. 87. 41 Roy and Ghose, English Works, p. 90. Author's emphases. 42 Halbfass, India, p. 209. 43 David Kopf, in his study of the Brahmo Samaj, forwards the notion that this movement is

unidirectional, coming out of early Unitarian writings and into Ray's. However, he does not document this claim convincingly. The overlap between those early Unitarian writings and Ray's own is less than a decade. Advaita Vedanta provides an indigenous theology that parallels the Unitarian idea of universal monotheism. Indeed, both of Kopfs longer studies relating to Bengal assume that modernization is the exclusive domain of the West. While universal theology may have arisen in the context of a Christian theological debate arising in Europe, Vedanta provides an indigenous Indian textual solution to the dictates of that European conflict. As such, the 'discovery' of Vedanta becomes a subject for various reform-minded Christians who view its antiquity as evidence for an 'original' theism. Joseph Priestley, the British. scientist who revolutionized the study of chemistry and who

Page 19: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s) 277

later became a key Unitarian theologian, referred to the Vedanta in such a manner in his 1799 A Comparison of the Institutions of Moses. His assessment of Vedanta relied heavily on the work of the early British Orientalists, including Jones," Wilkins and Halhed.

44 Charles Wilkins writes in his 1784 'Translator's Preface' to The Bhagvat-Geeta:

The most learned Brahmans of the present times are Unitarians according to the doctrines of Kreeshna; but, at the same time that they believe in but one God, an universal spirit, they so far comply with the prejudices of the vulgar, as outwardly to perform all the ceremonies inculcated by the Veds, such as sacrifices. absolutions, etc. They do this probably for the support of their own consequence, which could only arise from the great ignorance of the people ... this ignorance, and these ceremonies, are as much the bread of the Brahmans, as the superstition of the vulgar is the support of the priesthood in many other countries.

See C. Wilkins, The Bhagvat-Geeta, or, Dialogues of Kreeshna and Arjoon; in Eighteen Lectures; with Notes. Translated from the Original, in the Sanskreet, Chicago: Religio-philosophical publishing house, 1871, p. 194.

45 Roy and Ghose, English Works, p. 148. 46 L. Zastoupil, 'Defining Christians, Making Britons: Rammohun Roy and the Unitarians',

Victorian Studies, vol. 44, 2002, 215-43. In doing so, both Kopf and Zastoupil risk mini-mizing the complexities of colonial exchange. As noted earlier, Kopfs work has consis-tently supported a developmental model of modernity, where ideas flow from the centre to the periphery. This is a major methodological issue not just in the historiography of South Asia, but historiography in general. And, of course, such a model has been deeply prob-lematized in recent years. Zastoupil's recent work on Ray, while wonderfully detailed in providing the context for Unitarian theology, and Ray's engagement with it, also ends up being in this mould. While he articulates the case for a non-binaristic approach to the study of colonial history, his emphasis on Ray's 'derivative' discourse seems to reify rather than complicate the categories of so-called 'colonizer' and 'colonized'. I address this problem in greater depth by positioning Zastoupil's approach to Ray's influences vis-a.-vis Killingley's in my book-length study of South Asian Orientalism. See A. Ray, Negotiating the Modern: Orienta/ism and (Indianess' in the Anglophone World, New York: Routledge, forthcoming.

47 Robertson, Ray, pp. 15-18, 146-7. 48 Halbfass, India, p. 214. 49 Ibid, p. 208. 50 Certain issues that would have been less amenable to a European audience are given lesser

treatment in the English language translations as opposed to his Bengali writings. Particular distinctions such as those dealing with om, metempsychosis and reincarnation are not avoided in the English translations though they are 'less conspicuous here than in the corresponding portions of the original texts or the Bengali versions', Ibi", p. 208. In addition, the English language texts often deliberately frame themes in language that is reminiscent of the Bible's.

51 Whether or not Ray is the first Indian Orientalist can certainly be debated. There are several other Indian names that come to mind as far as the collaboration between European and Indian scholars is concerned. However, none was as involved or as regularly prolific as Ray in the print discourses of the day. The debates between pandit Mrutnajay Vidyalanker and Ray (during the period between 1815 and 1819) vividly illustrate the battles amongst vedantins as to the correct precedents to follow when ·it came to religious authority. Vidyalanker was the chief pandit under William Carey at Fort William. His reputation as a vedantin of the highest order is reiterated in virtually every account of the period. Yet he has definitely been given a second-order status in many histories since his English language writings were not very extensive. See Rocher. ·Weaving'.

52 Halbfass, India, p. 215.

Page 20: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

Romantic Representations of British India

The years 1780-1850 witnessed the synchronous growth of imperialism, Romanticism and Orientalism in Britain, together with the emergence of ideas of nationhood in both colony and metropolis. Romantic Representations of British India charts the complex cultural engagement of Britain with the subcontinent, offering illuminating answers to the interconnected questions of how Britain changed India and how India changed Britain. This collection of essays by a variety of leading scholars effectively maps out a relatively new field of interdisciplinary study, providing some fascinating insights into one of the most remarkable eras of imperial expansion.

Although Occidental representations preponderate here as at the time, the discourses of subordinated elites, both Muslim and Hindu, also receive counterpointed cultural readings, in which even subaltern voices, normally silenced by official historiography, are occasionally heard. The book shows how Western notions of cultural hegemony were substantially bolstered by imperial rhetoric but profoundly challenged by intercultural translation or mutual misrepresentation. Cultural readings of texts from metropolitan and colonial cultures reveal intellectual encounters marked by a mutual exchange of knowledge and a mutual adaptation of self-perception.

The European Romantic imagination was saturated with Orientalism, and the writers represented here reflect a persistent ambivalence concerning the East, complicated in Britain by colonial anxiety and imperial guilt. This volume focuses upon the collision (and collusion) of fictionality and historicity as India continued to problematize Romanticism's preoccupations with the building and overthrow of empires. • These essays build upon and intensify the renewed interest in Orientallsm, colonial and post-colonial discourse which has involved critical reassessment of Romantic representations of 'British' India. The contributors to this book offer discriminating and nuanced readings of Romantic Orientalism and its role in the hegemonic constructions of race, gender and empire.

Michael J. Franklin teaches in the English department of University of Wales, Swansea.

Page 21: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

Romantic Representations of British India

Edited by Michael J. Franklin

LONDON AND NEW YORK

Page 22: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

Contents

List of figures Notes on contributors Acknowledgements

1 General introduction and [meta]historical background [re]presenting 'The palanquins of state; or, broken leaves in a Mughal garden' MICHAEL J. FRANKLIN

2 British-Indian connections c.1780 to c.1830: the empire of the officials P. J. MARSHALL

3 Torrents, flames and the education of desire: battling Hindu superstition on the London stage DANIEL O'QUINN

4 Between mimesis and alterity: art gift and diplomacy in colonial India NATASHA EATON

5 Poetic flowers/Indian bowers TIM FULFORD

6 'Where ... success [is] certain'?: Southey the literary East Indiaman LYNDA PRATT

7 Radically feminizing India: Phebe Gibbes's Hartly House, Calcutta (1789) and Sydney Owenson's The Missionary: An Indian Tale (1811) MICHAEL J. FRANKLIN

IX

X

Xlll

1

45

65

84

113

131

154

Page 23: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

Vll1 Contents

8 The strains of empire: Shelley and the music of India 180 TILAR J. MAZZEO

9 From 'very acute and plausible' to 'curiously misinterpreted': Sir William Jones's 'On the Musical Modes of the Hindus' (1792) and its reception in later musical treatises 197 BENNETT ZON

10 'Travelling the other way': The Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan (1810) and Romantic Orientalism 220 NIGEL LEASK •

11 Conquest narratives: Romanticism, Orientalism and intertextuality in the Indian writings of Sir Walter Scott and Robert Orme 238 DOUGLAS M. PEERS

12 Orientalism and religion in the Romantic era: Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s) 259 AMIT RAY

Index 278

Page 24: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

I!

I' ,

Contributors

Eaton is Lecturer in the History of Art at University College, London. She is currently completing a book concerned with visual exchanges between eighteenth-century Britain and South Asia. Her publications include articles in Eighteenth-Century Studies, The Journal 0/ Material Culture, Comparative Studies in Society and History and in William Hodges: The Art 0/ Exploration, ed. Geoff Quilley and John Bonehill (Yale University Press, 2004).

Michael J. Franklin teaches in the English Department of University of Wales, Swansea. Since editing Sir William Jones: Selected Poetical and Prose Works (1995), and writing the critical biography, Sir WilliamJones (1995), he has been investi-gating colonial representations of India and their various interfaces with Romanticism. He has edited Representing India: Indian Culture and Imperial Control in Eighteenth-Century British Orientalist Discourse (Routledge, 2000) and The European Discovery 0/ India: Key Indological Sources 0/ Romanticism (Ganesha, 2001), and has written a series of articles on key members of the Hastings circle, the current focus of his research.

Tim Fulford is a Professor in the Department of English at Nottingham Trent University. He is a Romanticist with interests in many aspects of the period's cul-ture: science, landscape, life-in-London, Native Americans. He has written several books, the most recent being a study of Romantic Indians (Oxford University Press, 2006). He is currently working on editions of the correspondence of Robert Bloomfield and of Robert Southey.

Nigel Leask is Regius Professor of English Language and Literature at Glasgow University. He has published widely in the areas of Romantic literature, Orientalism and travel writing. His books include British Romantic Writers and the East: Anxieties o/Empire (Cambridge University Press, 1992) and Curiosity and the Aesthetics o/Travel Writing 1770-1840: From an Antique Land (Oxford University Press, 2002). He is currently working on a study of Robert Burns and British Romanticism. He has taught at the universities of Cambridge, Bologna and the UNAM (Mexico City) and lectured widely in Britain, France, Italy, India, the United States and Mexico.

P. J. Marshall is Emeritus Professor of History at King's College, London. He became Rhodes Professor of Imperial Hisrory at King's College, in 1981, and from

Page 25: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

Contributors Xl

1997 to 2001 he was President of the Royal Historical Society. In the four decades between his first book, The Impeachment of Warren Hastings (1965) and his latest The Making and Unmaking of Empires: Britain, India, and America c.1750-1783 (Oxford University Press, 2005) he has produced a series of monographs, editions and articles on Britain's eigbteenth-century empire, including: East Indian Fortunes: the British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 1976), Bengal: the British Bridgehead: Eastern India 1740-1828 (Clarendon Press, 1987), three volumes of The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke (Clarendon Press, 1981, 1991,2000). He edited The Oxford History of the British Empire: vol. II: The Eighteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 1998) and The Eighteenth Century in Indian History: Evolution or Revolution? (Oxford University Press, 2003).

Tilar J. Mazzeo is an Assistant Professor of English at Colby College and the author of Plagiarism and Literary Property in the Romantic Period (University of Pennsylvania, 2006) and numerous articles on intellectual property in the Romantic period. She has written extensively on the subject of Romantic travel writing and colonialism, in its transatlantic, Middle Eastern and Indian political contexts, and has recently edited Mary Shelley's critical work on Italian literature, Lives of the Most Eminent . .. Literary Men of Italy (Pickering and Charto, 2004).

Daniel O'Quinn is an Associate Professor in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph. He is the author of Staging Governance: Theatrical Imperialism in London, 1770-1800 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). He is currently dividing his time between co-editing the Cambridge Companion to British Theatre 1730-1830 with Jane Moody, and writing a study of Romantic masculinity and racial performance entitled Other Things. He is also editing The Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan for Broadview Press. His articles on the intersection of sexuality, race and British culture have appeared in numerous journals including TheatreJournal, Romantic Praxis, ELH, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Studies in Romanticism, European Romantic Review and October.

Douglas M. Peers is currently a member of the History Department and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Calgary. He is the author of Between Mars and Mammon: Colonial Armies and the Garrison State in Early-Nineteenth Century India (1995), co-editor (with David Finkelstein) of Negotiating India in the Nineteenth Century Media (2000), co-editor (with Martin Mjpir and Lynn Zastoupil) ofJ.S. Mill's Encounter with India (1999) as well as numerous articles and book chapters on the military in India and their impact on the political, cultural and social history of the British Raj. Together with Nandini Gooptu he is editing India and the British Empire for publication in the companion series to The Oxford History of the British Empire.

Lynda Prat is Reader in Romanticism, Director of the Centre for Regional Cultures, at the University of Nottingham. She was general editor of Robert Southey: Poetical Works, 1793-1810 (Pickering and Chatro, 2004), for which she also edited three volumes. She has published widely on the Southey circle and her edited collection Robert Southey and the Contexts of English Romanticism will appear in 2006. She is

Page 26: Amit Ray-Orientalism and Religion in the Romantic Era-Rammohan Ray's Vedanta(s)

I

I

Ii II: I' ,

I

I',I,!, " J I

ii,l i

'I il ','I Ii

I'

Xl1 Contributors

currently working on a monograph on 'Romanticism and the Provinces' and is co-general editor (with Tim Fulford) of forthcoming editions of the collected letters of Southey and of Robert Bloomfield.

Arnit Ray is an Assistant Professor of English at Rochester Institute of Technology in Western New York. This article is derived from a chapter of his forthcoming book, Negotiating the Modern: Oriental ism and 'Indianness' in the Anglophone World (Routledge, 2007).

Bennett Zon is Reader in Music, and direcror of the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Music, at Durham University. He is General Editor of Nineteenth-Century Music Review and the Ashgate book series 'Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain'. His books include The English Plainchant Revival (Oxford University Press, 1999), ¥usic and Metaphor in Nineteenth-Century British Musicology (Ashgate, 2000) and the forthcoming Representing Non-Western Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain.