to Christianity as the Hebrew Bible or Greek mythology had – fulfilled,
that is, by Christian teachings. The title of one of J. N. Farquhar’s books,
The Crown of Hinduism, reflects this attitude, inasmuch as Farquhar saw
Christianity as the fulfillment of Hinduism. R. Panikkar’s The Unknown Christ
of Hinduismconveys a similar theme: there are thought to be intimations of
Christianity even where not consciously seen by non-Christian adherents.^12
Another term for this viewpoint may be “religionism,” which, however
unintended, might be seen as the sibling of racism and sexism. Religionism
is the propensity to understand and evaluate another’s religion in terms
derived from one’s own religion. Almost invariably in these kinds of
comparisons, the “other’s” religion is viewed less favorably than one’s own.
The story is probably apocryphal, but a quote ascribed to Marco Polo aptly
summarizes the spirit of those who see in Asian religions the “noble savage”:
“If Buddha had only been baptized a Christian he would have been a great
saint before God.”
Interpretation by imposition
This lens consists in the tendency to see the history, culture, and religious
life of India in terms of preconceived theories and assumptions. Any number
of scholars in seeking to interpret Indian peoples have employed a variety of
theoretical models, not all of which have been faithful to the data, and
virtually none tell the whole story. Early scholars like Oldenberg, for
example, following E. B. Tylor and the general assumptions of the late
1800s, assumed cultural evolution was a fact of life. Hence, for Oldenberg,
the Vedas were a “primitive” form of religion which evolved and culminated
in the flowering of Buddhism.^13 Similarly, Indian rituals have been variously
interpreted by theories extant at the time of the interpretation: as a form of
cosmogony or re-creation of the world (Eliade^14 ), as the following of lin-
guistic structures (Staal^15 ) or “archetypal” rules (Humphrey and Laidlaw^16 ),
the exchange of honors (Appadurai, et al.^17 ); and many others. At the same
time, some social scientists have tended to read into Indian social and
religious life patterns sometimes derived from Western sources. Max Weber,
for example, after exploring the connections between Protestantism and
capitalism, concluded that there was no similar apparatus which made
capitalism plausible in India – hardly an accurate perception.^18 Peter
Berger concluded (without doing primary research in Indian sources) that
the notions of karmaanddharmafound in Indian religion were forms
of religious masochism!^19 Some interpreters of Indian religion like Weber
(and Albert Schweitzer in his Indian Thought and Its Development) claimed
that the basic Indian worldview was life and world negating, hence, “other-
worldly,” which only in modern time (thanks presumably to Western
On Wearing Good Lenses 7