then European, eyes, they became the stimulus for generations of study of
Indian languages and thought and a resource for a number of philosophers
and writers. One cannot trace all these strands, but it may be worth noting
the study of Sanskrit and Sanskrit texts was partially influenced by the
European Enlightenment and the concomitant study of Christian scriptures.
For generations it was thought (with a very Protestant assumption) that
the quintessence of Indian religion lay in its texts. Accordingly, the first
rendering of a Sanskrit work in English was Charles Wilkins’ translation of
theBhagavadgı ̄ta ̄in 1785. William Jones(1746–94) followed with translations
of Ka ̄lı ̄d a ̄sa’s play S ́akuntala ̄and the Laws of Manu.
It is believed the study of Sanskrit was actually introduced into Europe by
Alexander Hamilton, an official in the East India Company detained in
Paris during the Napoleonic wars.^21 One of his students was van Schlegel,
who published in German, “On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians,”
a text which in turn helped fuel German romanticism and, at least indirectly,
the thinking of Schopenhauer, Kant, Schiller,Goethe, Herder, and
Schleiermacher. The race, one might say, was on.
Interestingly, the first novel in English about India was a relatively sensitive
one.Hartley House, Calcutta, published in 1789, was written by an anonymous
woman in the form of a series of letters back home.^22 The novel describes
the life of the powerful in Calcutta and proved to be relatively sympathetic
to Hinduism.
The explosion of Europeans’ interest in India in the nineteenth century
is too extensive to recount in this context: it proved to be a wide spectrum
in both discipline and attitude. Some of the early pioneers in Buddhist
studies, for example, included Barnouf,Lassen, the Rhys Davids,Stcherbasky,
andTrenchner, among others. Invariably these scholars read into Buddhism
and its notion of nirva ̄n.a their own prejudices and value systems.^23
Archaeologists included Cunningham(whose interpretations of the Ayodhya ̄
shrines are believed to have helped sour Hindu–Muslim relations) and,
somewhat later, the work of MarshallandWheelerin the Indus Valley.
French intellectuals who showed a fascination for India included Lamartine,
Hugo, and de Vigny. Writers on India include Hessewhose novel Siddha ̄ rtha
was a Westernized and romanticized story of Buddha. Leo Tolstoy
(1828–1910) was influenced by the doctrine of ahim.saand, in turn, influ-
enced Gandhi’s interpretation of the same. Romain Rolland(1866–1944)
romanticized India’s nineteenth-century reformers. E. M. Forster’sPassage
to Indiatook the British colonial system and its attitudes toward Indians to
task, while Rudyard Kipling’s novels, based on a boyhood spent as part of
the British Raj in India, glorified the very life Forster critiqued.
America’s fascination with India, while not as long as Europe’s, none-
theless goes back at least a couple of centuries to the time of the
India’s Global Reach 231