ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the Jesuit study of Hinduism, to illustrate the possibilities and problems inscribed in the Christian study of Hinduism from the beginning until now. It illustrates how Christians from the West have studied, learned from, and used to their own purposes the Hindu traditions. This Jesuit learning was and is a grand intellectual endeavor, reaching at least from the time of Roberto de Nobili in the 17th century to 18th-century proto-Indologists, to the extraordinary work of the 20th-century Calcutta Jesuits. This Jesuit project was given a substantial coherence by the identity, beliefs, and policies of the Jesuit intellectual and spiritual path, particularly its confidence in the universality of reason and the productivity of reasoning across religious boundaries. This Jesuit tradition affords insight into the vitality but also the fragility of the Christian study of Hinduism still more broadly: intellectual vigor and impressive curiosity; missionary fervor; focused yet selective learning; insufficient mutuality; and reliance on expertise and elite conversations.
