Attuned to this new thought, Benjamin Franklin
maintained a friendship with Sir William Jones,
the English Orientalist, who introduced the study
of SANSKRIT to Western scholars. In the 1780s,
while occupying a judgeship in Bengal, Sir Wil-
liam established the Asiatic Society and translated
the Laws of Manu and Kalidasa’s Sakuntala.
Joseph Priestley, scientist, scholar, and founder
of English Unitarianism, traveled to America in
1794 and spent the last decade of his life there. His
works of philosophy, science, and theology reveal
a new understanding and respect for the Hindus,
a people of “superior wisdom and civilization.”
Praising the culture, control, and traditions of the
Hindus, Priestley stopped short of extolling their
religion, which he dismissed as “absurd notions”
and “complicated polytheism.” As a reader of the
translations of Sir William Jones, Priestley looked
back toward European thinking and scholar-
ship. As a resident in America, he exerted direct
influence on John Adams, who heard the elderly
Priestley lecture in Philadelphia in 1796. Adams,
in turn, referred Thomas Jefferson to Priestley’s
writings.
At the turn of the century, Hannah Adams’s
A View of Religion (1801) encouraged greater
acceptance of non-Christian faiths. In her study,
Adams devotes considerable attention to Hindu-
ism, describing the voluntary suffering to which
the Indian submits in order to fulfill religious
obligations and labeling Indian religion “the most
tolerant of all.” The open-mindedness of A View
of Religion reflects a new liberality willing to dis-
pute the supremacy of Christianity and to make
religious questions and religious toleration a stan-
dard, at least among the informed.
Spreading this new liberality of interpretation
was Unitarianism, with its emphasis on tolerance
and the centrality of monotheism. In India, Hin-
dus were responding to the impact of Christianity.
Among the reformist movements in India was
the BRAHMO SAMAJ, a movement based upon the
assumed monotheism of the UPANISHADS and the
abandonment of all image worship. The founder,
Hindu Rammohun ROY, found spiritual affinity
with Unitarianism and sought to apply Unitarian
standards to Hinduism and to focus the atten-
tion of Unitarians on India. By 1820, Roy had
published several Hindu texts in English and had
developed his ideas on Hindu reform in articles
and speeches, which were featured prominently
in Unitarian periodicals published in the United
States. Roy’s writings and talks explaining Asia
and Hinduism were the first expressions by a
Hindu in Unitarian terms to which Americans
had access. In the 1850s the Unitarian Charles
Dall and the Brahmo Samaj’s Keshub Chunder SEN
developed a friendship that initiated a relationship
between the two organizations that is still bearing
fruit.
Later in the 19th century, leaders of the tran-
scendentalist movement read newly translated
Hindu scriptures and incorporated their ideas in
an American philosophy. Emerson stressed eclec-
tic theology; Thoreau, the immersion in nature;
and Bronson Alcott, an interest in universal scrip-
tures. Influenced by Emerson, Walt Whitman
wrote poetry that expressed a remarkable similar-
ity to Asian thought. In his writing he admits he
had read “the ancient Hindoo poems,” and he
mentions BRAHMA and Hinduism in his “Song of
Myself.” While these figures created an intellec-
tual climate receptive to the ideas of Hinduism,
transcendentalism did not attempt to represent all
of Hindu teachings, but rather selected elements
consistent with their worldview.
Another American group, the Free Religious
Association, made up largely of Quakers, Uni-
tarians, and transcendentalists, turned to world
religions to support their rejection of a faith based
solely on the Bible. Their publications and meet-
ings featured the works of the Oriental scholar
Max Muller and championed the idea of a world
Bible. Through this organization, active from 1865
through the late 1880s, the American conscious-
ness was exposed to comparisons and contrasts of
Christianity and Hinduism. In its 17 years of pub-
lication, The Index, journal of the Free ReligiousUnited States 465 J