ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the modesty and missionary horror of ‘converted artefacts’ and what might be the ‘vibrancy of matter’ regarding the Hindu ‘idol’. Christopher Pinney proposes that things should be freed from incarceration of discourse. They should be viewed instead through the lens of the xeno-figure. The Act to Abolish Deodands of 1846 attempted to undo the medieval law which deemed evil objects to be sacred. Notions of ‘the worn’ undergird the ‘mimetic rivalry’ between the English East India Company and Evangelical Non-Conformist missionaries, their collecting practices and attitudes towards idolatry and iconoclasm. Hinduism is in many ways the life giving vibrant force of much of William Blake's subsequent artworks including the lost work ‘The Bramins’ whose subject appears to be derived from Charles Wilkins’ translation of the Bhagavad Gita and which featured a portrait of Wilkins. Established in 1795, the London Missionary Society established a museum almost as soon as it was granted Parliamentary permission to operate in India.
