ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the intellectual models underpinning the German Romantics’ discourse on India. Primarily, it focuses on differences in motivation for studying the Indian heritage between British and German authors. The chapter underscores the importance of Indian materials for internal German religious-philosophical struggles. In describing the place occupied by India within the German cultural landscape, the chapter highlights two conflicting images of Indian religion in German thought – first, as a world of idolatry-based barbaric superstitions and, second, as an example of original monotheism. In examining the roots of this picture, the chapter emphasizes the influence of pre-British scholarship on India on German thought. In placing this influence within a larger historical context, it considers it as part of the European search for original monotheism outside the biblical tradition. Within this framework, the chapter examines the reasoning of European Christian missionaries (De Nobili) and Enlightenment thinkers (Voltaire) on Indian religious thought. In portraying the Enlightenment search for evidence of man’s original religion in India, the chapter highlights a European forgery, the Ezour Vedam, as a document reflecting this search. Further, within the pre-and early Romantic quest for an India-rooted original Revelation, the chapter stresses the significance of the Latin translation of the Persian version of the Upanishads, the Oupnekhat. In sum, the chapter outlines the model of India that the German Romantics had inherited from previous eras. As the earliest example of its Romantic implementation, it highlights the Novalis’ search for mediators between Man and Divinity.
