68
India and Europe
TTMtír*no t*ie common sources of religion and humanity, he also felt that he •juto f r**"4 a way out of what he referred to as the "malaise européen."73
As noted above, the foundations for the modern study of India were not laid by Anquetil Duperron, but by the British Orientalists Jones, Wilkins, and Colebrooke. Back in England, however, a palpable reaction against what was seen as a too benevolent study of Hinduism occurred in the first decades of the nineteenth century.74 This did not come from the Christian missionaries alone, but also from such historians and politicians as James Mill and Th. Macaulay. Macaulay spoke of the "monstrous superstitions" and of the "false history" and "false religion" of the Hindu texts and asserted that all of the works that had ever been written in Sanskrit (and Arabic as well) were "less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgements used at preparatory schools in England." For the educational system in India, he set a goal of enlisting a class of English-educated Indians "who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern."75 He saw no reason to study Indian things as such or for
their own sake.
Both Indology as an academic discipline, as well as a more far-reaching enthusiasm for India, first developed on the Continent, in particular in Germany. This took place in close association with a movement which seems to be diametrically opposed to the Enlightenment —Romanticism.
5. India and the Romantic Critique
of the Present
i .                                 >
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r.~.^a,.\,r.   tv-'f-^1"    oj.   ->;..; .i!. -»-.■■..    -_j>--.   i^r-c>i   °e
1.    Several recent studies have emphasized the fact that the commonly-held ,: , ,.,'•. idea of an irreconcilable antagonism between the Enlightenment and the - J >-.,,; •., Romantic movement is in need of some modification; there are shadings^* ~ -;■ and transitions between the two.1 The same holds true with respect to the V   °''" . *; opinions of the time about the Orient in general and India in particular. As <-,-^,„ •'_.,. we have already seen, the Age of Enlightenment was characterized by a very distinct association between a general interest in non-European traditions and the motif of criticizing contemporary Christianity and Europe. One shape which the criticism of Christianity took was the attempt to trace it back to older, more original traditions, or the view that a more pristine religious consciousness could be found in Asia, and specifically in India.    .
Both this motivation towards self-criticism and the theme of origins were          J  '•
assimilated into the Romantic awareness of India and the Orient. To be sure, they here entered a new context of self-awareness, specifically, a more concrete and organic awareness of culture and history that was not deter- , mined by abstract categories of progress and degeneration. J.G. Herder (1744-1803) was particularly responsible for shaping this new relationship to history. Herder did not just pioneer the Romantic movement in general,         .
but also broke ground precisely in terms of its awareness of India.2 In his          , ■ . _
eyes, nations and their traditions were living wholes existing in organic ,. •>, cohesion and yet, simultaneously, individuals whose uniqueness should be recognized. He saw history as the natural history of "living human force," as a process in which one mankind presented itself in multiple forms and expressions while, at the same time, the very idea of humanity acted as a regulatory force.3 "Because one form of humanity and one region of the » u uv>,,',; earth were unable to contain it, it spread out in a thousand forms, it jour-                  ^
neyed —an eternal Proteus —through all of the areas of the earth and down through all the centuries . . . ."4 Metaphors of organic growth and develop-
69
70
India and Europe
ment are typical of Herder's thought. For example, the development of mankind "from the Orient to Rome" is likened to the trunk of a tree, out of which branches and shoots grow: "how shot the one, old, simple trunk of humanity into boughs and twigs."5 The Orient was the infant state, and thug innocent, pure, and with unexhausted potential. Hellenism was adolescence, Rome adulthood. The Orient represents Europe's own childhood. "All the peoples of Europe, where are they from? From Asia."6 In other words, we find here a new willingness to acknowledge the cultures of the Orient as autonomous structures in their own right. And yet they are also simultaneously viewed as the cultures of our own origins, the sources of our own historical being.
2.     Herder had a lasting fascination with Biblical antiquity, with the "Spirit of Ebraic Poesy": "Then come here, poets and artists! Here is the greatest ideal and paragon for your art . . . "7 Yet he soon became aware of India as well, through contact with such travelers' accounts as that of SonneTat^ through the works of Roger, Dow, and Holwell, and also through the original translations which became increasingly available after 1785, especially Wilkins' BhagavadgTtä and Hitopadesa and Jones' Šakuntalä.
The most important of the original works and translations which, during Herder's lifetime, first appeared in English, French, or even Latin, were rapidly translated into German or treated in German by such writers as G. Forster, F. Majer, and J.F. Kleuker, who was especially productive in this area.8 Herder himself was personally involved in some of the works by these authors. He wrote the foreword to Majer's Kulturgeschichte der Völker (published in 1798) as well as the foreword to the second edition of Forster's secondary (German) translation of the Šakuntalä, which appeared in 1803, the year of Herder's death. In general, Herder was a careful observer of and active participant in the nascent discipline of modern Indology. His sympathy for the people of India became ever more apparent in his friendly and glorifying view of the "childlike Indians."9 "The Hindus are the gentlest branch of humanity. They do not with pleasure offend anything that lives; they honor that which gives lifeand nourish themselves with the most innocent of foods, milk, rice, the fruits of the trees/the healthy herbs which their motherland dispenses . . . Moderation and calm, a soft feeling and a silent depth of the soul characterize their work and their pleasure, their morals and mythology, their arts and even their endurance under the most extreme yoke of humanity."10
3.     With friendly empathy, Herder described the thoughts which he considered to be the core and basis of Hindu thought: the idea of one Being in and behind all that there is, and the idea of the unity of all things in the absolute, in God.
Vishnu is in you, in me, in all beings;
India and the Romantic Critique
71
It is foolish to ever feel offense.
See all souls in your own,
and banish the delusion of being different.11
The theme of "pantheism" which may be seen here in Herder's paraphrase of the Mohamudgara, a Vedäntic didactic poem, has long been one of the central themes in the discussion about India.12
Yet in spite of all the sympathy which greeted India, it was not glorified as a lost home or a place of refuge and retreat from the aberrations of modern Europe. Herder did not accept the degeneration theory of the Enlightenment without question, but he found much of what had been originally pure in India to have become sullied. He viewed some of the exemplary institutions and convictions of the Hindus in a manner that was both differentiating and ambivalent. For example, he considered the Brahmanic influence upon the people of India as having been essentially salutary. He found their concept of God "great and beautiful," their morals "pure and noble." But he also saw another result: "Manifold fraud and V superstition, which had already become unavoidable because astronomy
\   and chronology and the art of healing and religion, transmitted as they were .-•-» through an oral tradition, had turned into the secret science of one clan." As    , a result, the populace had been ripe for subjugation. The "distribution of the ways of life among hereditary clans" —i.e., the caste system —had excluded   "all   free   improvement   and   perfection   of   the   arts   almost completely."13 Herder also considered the Indian doctrine of metempsy- " chosis as having produced disastrous results: "Since it awakens a false sense of compassion for all living things; it simultaneously lessens the true sym-1"' pathy with the wretched members of our own race, for these unfortunates are held to be wrongdoers suffering under the burden of prior crimes or be- ' ing tried by the hand of fate, while their virtuousness will be rewarded in a '
' future state." The doctrine of metempsychosis is a "delusion transgressing humanity" ("Wahn, der über die Menschheit hinausreicht").14 It is incompatible with the idea of mankind, which Herder saw as the greatest regulative idea in the history of the world. The pre-eminence of Christianity over India and the Orient was due to the fact that it is the religion of "purest humanity."15 And while the Indian "infancy" of mankind may have been glorified and idealized in Herder's writings, he did not believe that it was desirable or possible to return to it. While mankind may have been born in
' Asia, it reached adulthoood only in the mediterranean world, in classical Greece.16
4. 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
72
India and Europe
India and the Romantic,Critique
73
as being the Hindu viewpoint, and to look critically at himself as a Christian and European through, so to speak, Indian eyes. What is more, he was especially willing to reflect on European and Christian assumptions and biases vis-ä-vis India. He saw little sense in the missionary activity in India. Shortly before his death, his Gespräche über die Bekehrung der Indier durch unsere europäischen Christen ("Conversations on the Conversion of the Indians by our European Christians")17 appeared in 1802. In this work, he presented an Indian complaining about the ignorance of the missionaries, their arrogance in wishing to show the Indians (whose own characteristic ways they did not recognize at all) the "path to salvation" using "alien formulas." The picture Herder painted of India was essentially positive and occasionally 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 the 116th Brief zur Beförderung der Humanität ("Letter for the Advancement of Humanity"), which appeared in Riga in 1797.as part of the tenth collection of such letters, Herder formulated a number of principles for a "natural history of mankind." These were also significant for his relationship with India. He stressed that the author of such a "natural history" was not permitted to have a "favorite tribe" or "chosen people" {"Lieblings-stamm," "Favoritenvolk"), or to presuppose a hierarchy of nations. Herder also demanded that each nation be considered in its own natural environment, in the context of its entire culture, and without any "arbitrary divisions" being made. By no means, moreover, could European culture serve as the general standard for comparison: "The genius of human natural history lies in and with each nation, as if it were the only one on earth."18 5. It is generally known that India became the focal point of an enthusiastic interest, occasionally bordering on fanaticism, within the German Romantic movement. Here, the motif of origins and unspoiled pristineness shared by the Enlightenment became effective in a different, more exalted way. The very idea of India assumed mythical proportions; the turn ••wurdi India became the quest for the true depths of our own being, a search for the original, infant state of the human race, for the lost paradise «•* ull religions and philosophies. "The 'eternal Orient' was waiting to be »dweovered within ourselves; «India was the 'cradle of humanity' and our atorntü home;"19 it was the "home and youth of the soui."20^It represented the »spirit of infancy" which Schelling evoked in his early programmatic wqfIé Über Mythen, historische Sagen und Philosopheme der ältesten Welt ("On Myths, Historical Legends and Philosophemes of the Most Ancient World," 1793). For something was missing from the European present—the
«S
rd


*r

'fO-
:,i-
•V MA
i sense of unity and wholeness — and this was mourned as the affliction of the time. There was hope that a return to the Indian sources would bring about a change for the better.
What exactly was the present to which the Romantics referred? It was the -y^,*--* culmination and termination of the Age of Enlightenment, of its faith in    "' " '•*-"/' reason and progress, and the secular world of the consequences of the Refor-    -^ mation and the French Revolution. It involved, moreover, a fall into a   ir«>—~»^>' s, quantifying, mechanical, merely rational way of viewing the universe. It was a time in which the sense of wonder and the awareness of the unity and wholeness of life had become lost. It was a present which called for transformation and regeneration; in the Romantic understanding, this meant a spiritual return to a superior past, to its own forgotten origins.
In the present context, our interest cannot lie with the diverse views of India which the leading authors of the Romantic movement conceived, the knowledge they obtained about India, or how each of them varied on or even criticized the motif of yearning for the origins. Many authors developed detailed opinions about Indian thought more or less independently of one another and contributed to the Romantic understanding of India, including Schelling, Novalis, Görres, Creuzer, Goethe, M. Claudius, and, more than any of the others, the Schlegel brothers.21 F. Majer (1771-1818) served as a kind of catalyst through the translations he made as well as his J_ own writings and his many personal acquaintanceships. He also helped in shaping Schopenhauer's interest in India.22 Like Creuzer, Görres, and many other mythologists, Majer was captivated by the idea of an "original '**'"•<■* \ monotheism" thought to be present in the most ancient Indian documents,     /- "-^o... and in this context he also referred to Anquetil's Oupnek'hat. It was his con-    ( r viction that the religious and philosophical situation in Europe could only ^ ~ «*«('•, be clarified and rectified through a return to the Indian origins, and that the             (
sources of the Western tradition found their integrating context and background in Indian thought: "It will no longer remain to be doubted that the priests of Egypt and the sages of Greece have drawn directly from the original well of India; that only Brahmanism can provide those fragments of their teaching which have come down to us with the clarity which they do not possess."23
6. And do you know the land where infant mankind lived its happy childhood years, where stood the pillars of fire in which the gods descended to their darlings and mingled in their spirited play? . . . Towards the Orient, to the banks of the Ganges and the Indus, it is there that our hearts feel being drawn by some hidden urge, —it is there that all the dark presentiments point which lie in the depths of our hearts, and it is there that we go when we follow the silent river which flows through time in legends and sacred songs to its source. In the Orient, the heavens poured forth into the Earth ... In the primitive cultures of this earth, the original force
\
74
India and Europe
must still appear undivided; in them, everything must be contained in the same homogeneity which would later become separated into the various camps . . . 24
With these words, and in a number of other equally impassioned variations on the same theme, J. Görres (1776-1848) depicted the Romantic myths of infancy and unity. The often overlooked Jacobine and Romantic, N. Müller (1770-1851), used similarly ecstatic phrases in his search for the "unity of primeval faith and knowledge" and the "innocent world of mankind" in India. Muller's desire was to evoke the "Spirit of Brahmanism" from the "buried ruins of temples ... in order to introduce a new, radiant life into the present with its awakening."25 Like Görres, Müller also referred to the Oupnek'hat of Anquetil Duperron. Üqu<A% In his Die Christenheit oder Europa ("Christendom or Europe," 1799), Novalis (1772-1801), the greatest of the early Romantics, primarily spoke i   of an idealized medieval world, of a time in which God, man, and the world 1  were united in harmony and mankind was filled with a "childlike trust." This was the standard against which he measured his criticism of the present. Because of Herder's influence, however, the Orient and especially an idealized India also became associated with the idea of an original state of harmony and a childlike, unbroken wholeness. Poesy-garbed India, where the people were still "dozing" and dreaming, appeared to be the antithesis of *fi£e,s' the cold, prosaic Europe of the Age of Enlightenment; it stood "in contrast to the cold, dead Spitsbergen of that sitting-room reason" (". . . dem '' (;v^vkalten, toten Spitzbergen jenes Stubenverstandes").26 The poesy sought in  i ■ v   v    India was at once religion. "Religion is the great Orient in us, which k  f i      seldom obscured."27 Still, for Novalis India never attained the central im-n.Jt*-y portance  that  would  have  led  him  to  strive after  a more detailed        ,/? knowledge.28 His friend Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829), however, did have  ^••--'K, ,   ,       such a relationship with India, at least for one very momentous decade of T^";  his life.
7.    F. Schlegeľs thought was initially at home in what could be called the V"'       outskirts of the Enlightenment. Yet his criticism of the European present '■*""   > became ever sharper and more decisive, while the Orient, and especially In-TíJv,ŕ'' cha, increasingly became a synonym for pristine religiousness and the lost :,»» «J-»- wholeness of human existence. In his eyes, the West had lost its sense of unity -o^Tp^oSjand harmony as well as its capacity for religion. "Man cannot sink any deeper; it is impossible. Man has indeed come very far in the art of arbitrary division or, what amounts to the same thing, in mechanism, and thus man himself has almost become a machine ... "29 In the same article in his i               journal, Schlegel then complained about an "abstract unfamiliarity with
one's own destiny," ("abstrakte Unbekanntschaft mit der eigenen Bestimmung"), a "non-feeling for everything gre*tf that has already existed on
India and the Romantic Critique
75
earth" ("Nichtgefühl für alles Grosse, was schon wirklich auf Erden war"). As a way out of this impoverishment, he recommended turning back to the Oriental, and especially the Indian sources, "from where every religion and mythology up till now has come," where the "possibility of enthusiasm" t could never be completely obliterated.30 As early as 1800, he wrote that "we í  must look for the pinnacle of Romanticism" ("das höchste Romantische") in the East, primarily in India.3""On September 15, 1803, he wrote to L. Tieck: |  "Here is the actual source of all languages, all the thoughts and poems of J the human spirit; everything, everything without exception comes from India."32 In his Vorlesungen über Universalgeschichte ("Lectures on Universal History," 1805/1806), he stated: ". . . the Persian and German languages and cultures, as well as the Greek and old Roman, may all be traced back to the Indian."33
Around the time he was writing these words, and in particular when he wrote the letter to Tieck, Schlegel was intensely busy studying Sanskrit and ancient Indian literature. Arriving in Paris in 1802, he first commenced learning Persian under A.L. de Chézy. Chance then provided him with the desired access to Sanskrit, for an expert in the language, A. Hamilton, had just returned from India.34 He was detained in Paris in 1803 and thus became available as a teacher for Schlegel, whose mythicizing enthusiasm was now leading to more exact and disciplined linguistic and philological work. Schlegel began to translate original works;35 he worked on a chrestomathy of Sanskrit and published his book Über die Sprache und Weisheit der In-dier ("On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians")36 in 1808, the same year he converted to Catholicism. This book is one of the key works of European Indology, "the first work in the German language in which the Indian language, literature, and history are presented upon the basis of a study of original sources."37 At the same time, this book also documents the end of his enthusiasm for India and of the period of his really original and intensive study of India. After it appeared, the author occasionally contemplated a new edition, although it was never completed. He no longer worked with original Indian sources, but was content with secondary literature. In his later works, we find only more or less casual remarks on India, which do not indicate much fascination or reflection. Thus, for example, his Vorlesungen zur Philosophie der Geschichte ("Lectures on the Philosophy of History," 1828) offers only relatively dry comments about the status of the Brahmins, metempsychosis, etc. as well as a sketchy survey (indebtedto Colebrooke) of the Indian philosophical systems.38 Meanwhile, Schlegel had relocated the "cradle of mankind" to biblical Mesopotamia.39 8. Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier is not just a testimony to Schlegeľs scholarship, it is primarily a philosophical statement. Schlegel saw no reason to doubt that there was a fundamental and profound affinity
India and Europe 76
hítween Indian studies and philosophy: "For investigating the Orient in* -aieral, and India in particular, a knowledge of philosophy is very essential fmjTcan therefore hardly be dispensed with."40
The work has three parts: I. On Language (treating language families, etc.); D* ®n Philosophy (the types of systems in Indian thought—the doctrine of emanation, naturalism, dualism, pantheism); III. Historical Ideas da which the concept of a world literature based upon comparative studies is developed). In this work, Schlegel was still glorifying the religion and philosophy of the "most cultivated and wisest people of antiquity."41 Yet he no longer viewed the oldest religious and philosophical texts of the Indians as providing evidence of an undistorted pristineness, but instead considered them already to contain distortions and misinterpretations of the true pristine teachings. The original revelation could not be found in an unsullied state even in the thought and tradition of the Indians —an idea that was advanced at the beginning of the work as its very premise.42 Aad while th^dadiaamXOaterial held the continuing fascination of being old and  i qrjjiaai^it now appeared, as it were, to illustrate the origins of error, and to | prerfite'wii opportunity to observe how the processes of obscuration and djMpfcacNsffected the initially god-given clarity in even its oldest and most original phases. He still adhered to the priority of the Indian sources and to v '  "1 . ^ ~ the idea that,  in certain particular contexts, viz., in the domains of  'J'   **'&•'$,„ linguistics, mythology, and philosophy, the developments in the West had   '(!   -Jn^ depended upon these sources.43 Nevertheless, India was no longer depicted ^    ' ,1 r> as the country of origin or the home country. Certainly, it still exhibited   riVp->,y mUBSIöMä.traces of pristine truth and clarity; yet only Christianity couldi   />,v^ *tfAh tbr"rrit""t of the wholeS ("Zusammenhang des Ganzen"), .and the|             -
"SHHfc«*aparation    of   admixed    error"    ("sichere    Absonderung    des       ' ~ ' "iÝ hBgffllhrhŤ" Irrtums").44
9. India no longer appeared as the lost paradise of human totality, purity, and proximity to God, but merely offered "curious and unexpected sidelights about the ways of human thinking in the most ancient times," sidelights about "the rise of error" and "the first monstrosities" which followed the loss of the "simplicity of divine knowledge."45 In the second part of his work ("On Philosophy"), Schlegel attempted to make the Indian "system of ""•••psychosis and emanation" understandable in the light of his own concept of "original revelation" ("ursprüngliche Offenbarung," "Uroffen-barung"). In this doctrine, which, in his opinion, found its most exemplary ^BfttHling expression in the law book of Manu, he saw "high wisdom com-Piwadtd with an abundance of error." From this, he concluded: ". . . considered as natural development of reason, the Indian system of emanation is not at all explainable; seen as a revelation that was misunderstood, everything in it is entirely comprehensible."46
India and the Romantic Critique                             11
And it is precisely this most ancient error, which arose from the misuse of the divine
gift, from the obscuration and misinterpretation of divine wisdom which we find in  /
the Indian documents, and we shall find even more clear and instructive examples of        J A °'r
it the more we become acquainted with the most cultivated and wisest people of an- f ' v?/^ /"
tiquity. It is the first system to have occupied the place of truth; wild fabrications -          '   ''
and crude errors* yet everywhere still the traces of divine truth and the expression of La-uv'*<í frfrtf
that shock and sorrow which must have resulted from the first fall from God.47    r*<vf.4 £,-...
Schlegel emphasized that the doctrine of emanation is not to be confused „ with pantheism. He considered pantheism (which he discussed in the fifth __, chapter of the second book and found present especially in the Vedlnta and, in other ways, in Buddhism) to be the most recent and degenerate of all the teachings of India:
The most important epochs of Indian and Oriental philosophy and religion in general are the following: first, the system of emanation, which eventually degenerated into astrological superstition and fanatical materialism; the doctrine of the two principles, whose dualistic system eventually changed into pantheism. The human spirit has not sunk deeper in Oriental philosophy than into pantheism, which is just as pernicious for morals as materialism and, moreover, destroys the imagination as well.48
10.   For Schlegel, the core and basis of pantheism was an abstract, negative concept of the infinite devoid of content, a false concept which leads to indifference, leaves no room for living individuality and moral discernment, and which thus has a "destructive influence upon life." It is the polar opposite of the true concept of the divine omnipotence: ". . . here, we merely notice that the deep living feeling of infinity and the abundance of omnipotence must have already become very weakened and attenuated before it would dissolve itself in this shadow and false concept of the one and all, so difficult as it is to distinguish from nothing."49 Buddhism, as j^j/ understood by Schlegel, had as its "actual, most essential, and esoteric doc- .„ ,/ trine" the teaching "that everything is nothing." He thus viewed it as being       f naturally close to the Vedänta, indeed, as its very consequence.
When everything else has first been obliterated and has disappeared before the merely abstract and negative concept of infinity, then it ultimately escapes itself and dissipates into nothingness, since it was empty and void of meaning in the first place . . . Once this great disclosure has been made, and this all-encompassing, all-destroying, and yet so easy science and reason-wisdom that all is one has been discovered, then no further search or research is necessary; all that which others know or believe in other ways is simply error, deception, and weak-mindedness, just as all change and all life is mere illusion.50
Schlegel considered pantheism "the system of pure reason" and, at the same time, the most profound and most extreme aberration and failure in the
78
India and Europe
history of human thought. Through it, thinking man comes to rely upon himself alone, closing himself to faith and revelation. "It appeals to man's self-conceit just as much as to his indolence." Here, Schlegel felt he had found the point of transition from Oriental to European philosophy, with its aberrations and its hybris.51
The critique of pantheism brings us to the philosophical (and religious) heart of the work. Moreover, it provides testimony of Schlegeľs own posi-
c~;  tion in the philosophical debate of the time, while simultaneously introduc-
v%;v   ing an important theme in Schlegeľs attempts to come to grips with his own
<i;v earlier thought. For not only had he himself flirted with a Romantically-
^   glorified conception of pantheism during his younger years; this concept _•   ■" was certainly one of the original motivations behind his interest in India. It
v »is symptomatic of Schlegeľs development that the motif of pantheism was J,,:-- now cast in a new light and became the keynote of his criticism of India, and
.<■" it reflects a deeper, not merely chronological, connection between this book and his conversion to Catholicism. It was this shift which was to lead some of his contemporaries, e.g., Schelling, to criticize the basic philosophical position of the work. %,}{• 11. Schelling provided a defense of pantheism in his Philosophische ^Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit ("Philosophical Investigations on the Essence of Human Freedom", 1809). Following Baader's lead, he accused Schlegel of advocating a subordinate "governess philosophy."52 Schelling's own philosophy has been characterized by Feuerbach as "an exotic growth" which, so to speak, transplanted "the old Oriental identity onto Germanic soil."53 During the earlier phases of his philosophical development, Schelling did indeed exhibit an intense yearning for the origins and for unity, which his opponents as well as his followers associated with India.54 Already the speculations on the mythical and traditional sources of human thought and existence, which he presented in his early work Über Mythen, historische Sagen und Philosopheme der ältesten Welt (1793), were obviously applicable to non-European, especially Oriental traditions. As a matter of fact, several "Schellingians" among the historians of philosophy, for instance Th. A. Rixner, C.J.H. Windisch-mann, and E. Roth, showed an often speculative openness towards India and the Orient.55 Yet in his earlier years, Schelling's own explicit interest in India was less developed, and his position vis-ä-vis the Indian "origins" more reserved than was the case with some of his contemporaries. His later, more explicit and detailed statements on India, specifically those in his Philosophie der Mythologie ("Philosophy of Mythology"), are often critical and anti-Romantic.
Hegel's essentially negative attitude towards F. Schlegel and Schlegeľs picture of India is well-known. To be sure, it is precisely Schlegeľs remarks
India and the Romantic Critique
.79
about pantheism, criticizing as they do an abstract infinite which coincides with nothingness and leads to indifference, that tell us to exert more caution and differentiate more carefully than Hegel himself or some more recent critics of Schlegel. The motif of the abstract "One," that empty substantiality which is not "mediated" and reconciled with the particularities of the world, played a key role in Hegel's own critique of India —even if an entirely different philosophy of history was involved.56 Schegel's repeated warnings against abstractly comparing Indian and European phenomena, without taking their particular concrete contexts and contents into consideration, are also occasionally reminiscent of Hegel.57 The decisive difference between the two lies in the fact that Hegel simply could not accept the ideas of an original revelation, a "primitive people," or a perfect and unified state of mankind standing at the dawn of history;58 he considered these views as representing a totally inverted and perverted sense of the true direction of history.
12. In the closing chapter, "On Oriental and Indian Studies in general, and on their Value and Purpose," Schlegel took what may be called historical and philosophical stock, delineating what he saw as a possible practical application of his book on India. He attempted to place Indian and Oriental thought in general into one basic historical and systematic context together with European thought and thus to sketch ovit the possible repercussions which the study of India and a synoptic view of culture could have upon the thinking of his European present. As noted above,59 Schlegel had previously characterized pantheism, which he saw as both the "system of pure reason" and the low point of Indian thought, as the "transition from Oriental to European philosophy." Although he insisted that the complete truth was to be found only in the Christian revelation and not in any of the documents of ancient India, within the domain of philosophy, he nevertheless adhered to his view that the wisdom developed in India was superior to that of European philosophy, and remained a source of spiritual force and orientation untouched by the hybris of critical and autonomous reason. In his eyes, European philosophy depended on the impulses, admittedly often indirect and obscured, which it periodically received from Eastern thought, on an "alien ferment" which was passed on to it from time to time. "Without the continually renewed stimulus of this enlivening principle, the European spirit would probably never have raised itself so high, or it would have fallen back earlier." Moreover, that most sublime philosophy of Europe, the idealism of reason, "as advanced by the Greek thinkers, would, when held against the wealth of power and light in the Oriental idealism of religion, probably appear only as some weak Promethean spark would appear before the full heavenly glow of the sun, as something merely stolen and continually threatening to expire; yet the less there was of substance, the
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more elaborate became the form."60 Of course, Schlegel considered the «merely empirical way of thinking" which dominated his time to be even „»ore deficient, for it was characterized by its "limitation of experience to the domain of the merely useful." This led to the destruction of the "higher snirit"—a situation which, however, provided a reason to "search for a way back to the older and better philosophy" precisely because of its utter desolation.61
13. Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier has often been described as a pioneering work of Indology that indicated the path of the future. Yet is was also a restorative philosophical work firmly committed to the past. Because of this, it is not surprising that Schlegeľs work was enlisted by partisans of the political restoration and ultramontanism and generally associated with a specifically Catholic interest in India, in particular in France.62 In this context, we may mention the name of Baron F. von Eckstein (1790-1861), who served as historiographer of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was an avid amateur Indologist.63 Using a critical, even polemical tone, Hegel laid stress upon the associations between Schlegel and the French advocates of a "primitive Catholicism," naming Lamennais, Abel Rémusat, and Saint Martin as well as von Eckstein.64 The doctrine of a decline in the divine light that had originally been given to the Indians and other Oriental peoples, by the way, concurs in a natural way with basic assumptions of many missionaries and Christian authors in the preceding centuries.
We do not need to concern ourselves with the question as to how far Schlegeľs conversion to Catholicism represented a break in his development or may have been a logical fulfillment of earlier motives,65 or whether his book is a document of "disillusionment" or a recantation of his earlier enthusiasm.66 Apart from this, it does remain to be noted that Schlegeľs book on India ultimately achieved a certain kind of academic neutrality above and beyond the fundamental philosophical and religious conflicts of its tune,67 and that it opened up new methodological perspectives as well as the prospect for a new context of research. Schlegel evokes the ideal of the Renaissance scholar who combined solid linguistic knowledge with Philosophical training in his studies of classical antiquity; he hopes that it will inspire a methodical and yet not exclusively philological treatment of the Indian material.68 His book closes with a summons that remains impressive even today, a plea for synoptic, contextual understanding, and for a cross-fertilization of the results obtained from the study of different literatures and cultures: "... just as in the history of nations, the Asians and the Europeans form just one large family and Asia and Europe constitute an inseparable whole, so should we exert ourselves even more to view the literature of all educated peoples as a continuous development and one
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single, intimately connected structure and framework, as one large whole. Then, many of those one-sided and limited views would disappear of their own accord, much would become understandable in this context, and everything would appear new in this light" (" . . . so wie nun in der Völkergeschichte die Asiaten und Europäer nur eine grosse Familie, Asien und Europa ein untrennbares Ganzes bilden, so sollte man sich immer mehr bemühen, auch die Literatur aller gebildeten Völker als eine fortgehende Entwicklung und ein einziges innig verbundenes Gebäude und Gebilde, als ein grosses Ganzes zu betrachten, wo denn manche einseitige und beschränkte Ansicht von selbst verschwinden, vieles im Zusammenhange erst verständlich, alles aber in diesem Lichte neu erscheinen würde.").69 14. While Friedrich Schlegeľs brother August Wilhelm (1767-1845) was equally important for the West's awareness and knowledge of India, he was more straightforward and less ambivalent in his attitudes. He also began by criticizing his own European present, i.e., Western culture around the Age of the Enlightenment. His lectures Über Literatur, Kunst und Geist des Zeitalters ("On the Literature, Art and Spirit of the [Current] Era") are most exemplary in this regard.70 In them, he deplored the utilitarian thinking, the pragmatism, and the spirit of modern Europe, directed as it was entirely around economics and the "promotion of the civic good." Faced with this situation, it was his hope that an impetus towards re-orientation might be gained through the Indian sources.71 India and the Orient, the realm of the lost unity and totality, as the starting point of a possible regeneration, as the field in which the search for the original revelation was to be conducted—these were ideas and motifs which affected August Wilhelm as well, although they touched him more gently, more steadily, less exaltedly, and more continuously than they did his brother Friedrich.72
August Wilhelm Schlegel eventually became a professional Indologist. He was the first occupant of a German chair for Indology (Bonn, 1818).73 He edited Indian texts according to the principles of classical philology and tried to make them available in translations that were understandable. He was succeeded by Chr. Lassen, who presented a comprehensive, scholarly assessment of the classical and modern knowledge of India in his Indische' Altertumskunde. The speculations about India and the "Indomania" had finally been transformed into institutionalized Indology.
Some of the leading figures of the time, most conspicuously W. von Humboldt, played an active, personally committed role in this transformation. Humboldt himself studied Sanskrit and published important articles on the BhagavadgJtä, to which Hegel responded in his even more important review articles.74
F. Max Müller was the son of the poet who wrote the poems for Schubert's Winterreise and Schöne Müllerin, and one of the classic figures
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of nineteenth-century  Indology.   When  he  was   older,   long  after  his
naturalization in England, Müller still spoke of the stimulus which the
Romantic movement had provided for his Indological career. Referring to
the opening up of Sanskrit and the culture of India, he said: "It has added a
new period to our historical consciousness, and revived the recollections of
our childhood, which seemed to have vanished forever . . . We all come
from the East —all that we value most has come to us from the East, and in
going to the East . . . everybody ought to feel that he is going to his 'old
home,' full of memories, if only he can read them."75
15.    Müller saw an analogy between the Europeans who rediscovered the
documents of the Indian past and the hypothetical situation of Americans
who had been unaware of the origins of their language and literature in
England, and who then suddenly rediscovered these English origins and
were led to completely new dimensions of historical self-understanding.76
The formula of the Indian childhood of our own being and consciousness
appears repeatedly throughout Müller's work; the author asserts that for the
"true anthropologist" who is concerned with gaining an adequate historical
self-awareness of mankind, nothing is as important as that oldest record of
Indian thought, the Rgveda.11 Nevertheless, Müller, like his friend and
patron Chr. C.J. Freiherr von Bunsen, remained committed to a Christian
standpoint,   although   he   did   become   more   receptive   towards   the
Vedänta — to the idea of a "Christian Vedänta" —in his later years.78
The motif of origins so emphasized by Max Müller may also be found among some of the other leading Indologists of the nineteenth century, although usually in less exuberant form. Even Müller's Parisian teacher E. Burnouf, a highly dedicated philologist, exhitibed its influence, for he considered his Indological work as simultaneously being a pursuit of the history of the origins of the human spirit.79 More generally, the continuing fascination with the "origins" is indicated, at least implicitly, by the central role of Rgveda studies in nineteenth-century Indology. To be sure, Indological research developed its own tradition of correcting and neutralizing the cultural and ideological presumptions and prejudices to which it owed its impetus, if not its very existence; the criticism of its own motivations and points of departure became a kind of motivation in itself as the scholarly exploration of the textual sources advanced.
Romantic ideas and aspirations concerning India survived in various transformations, primarily in non-academic movements. The nostalgic fascination with the Indian "origins," the association of India with a critique of quantifying and calculating thought, and the reaction against pragmatism, rationalism and materialism were more than an ephemeral phenomenon. Here it is sufficient to recall New England Transcendentalism,   especially   R.W.   Emerson   and   H.D.   Thoreau,80   as   well   as
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Theosophy, Anthroposophy and various cults and movements in the twentieth century. In addition, we may refer to the type of "traditionalism" and "cultural criticism" which we find exemplified in the writings of R. Guénon (1886-1951) and his associates.81
16. 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 methodical accumulation of ''objective" knowledge about India. The dialectic irony in this development
is obvious.
As we have seen, the Romantic interest in India was inseparable from a radical critique of the European present. The preoccupation with the merely useful, the calculable, rational, precisely determinable, the loss of faith, enthusiasm, and the sense of unity and wholeness, were seen as symptomatic deficiencies of this present. As a remedy for such spiritual impoverishment, Friedrich Schlegel proposed a return to the sources of Indian wisdom. Yet in order to bring about such a return, he felt that linguistic studies alone would not suffice; they had to be supplemented by "research," by the historical and philological methods of his time. The types and methods of Indological research which Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel eventually applied proved to be aspects and symptoms of precisely that present, which the yearning for India had initially sought to overcome. There is.no way which leads out of the present: what had appeared as a promise of retreat and return, as a possible escape from the present, itself became the object and goal of a program of historical and critical research that was committed to the spirit of that present and oriented around classical philology and the ideal of "objectivity." Instead of the desired ascent from the cold and prosaic world of "numbers and figures" (Novalis) to the world of "fairy tales and poems," a process of "objective" research, of scientific and very prosaic exploration of such "fairy tales and poems" was inaugurated.
In the following chapters, we will not trace the course of Indological research any further, nor describe the motivations and presumptions of leading Indologists. Instead, our primary concern will be with the ways in which the newly discovered materials affected the European understanding of philosophy and the history of philosophy. For Indology was in its formative stage at the same time in which the history and historiography of philosophy were, so to speak, changing and acquiring new forms, in particular in the work of Hegel. He and his antipode Schopenhauer provided two exemplary and influential models for approaching Indian thought, and for including it in the horizon of Western philosophical and historical self-understanding.
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