“Orientalism” has been a buzzword since Edward Said’s eponymous book of 1978. Critics have pointed out that Said’s “Orient” is focused on the Arab world and excludes most of what Westerners mean by the word. A more recent history of Orientalism, Robert Irwin’s For Lust of Knowing, criticizes Said’s narrow view of orientalists as “those who travelled, studied or wrote about the Arab world” (2006:294) but goes on to use the same “somewhat arbitrary delimitation of the subject matter” (p. 6), which leaves out India, China, Japan, Tibet, Central Asia, North Asia, and Southeast Asia—in other words, most of what we mean by Asia and more than half of humankind.
The term “Orientalism” also has many other connotations, for example, in the context of “oriental” fashions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries or the imitation of oriental styles in garden architecture and painting. The Orientalism whose birth process is examined in this book is modern Orientalism, that is, the secular, institutionalized study of the Orient by specialists capable of understanding oriental languages and handling primary-source material. Its genesis—and, more generally, the history of premodern Europe’s encounter with Asia—is still barely known. The present book does not claim to furnish a history of Orientalism as a whole. Its much more modest aim is to elucidate through relatively extensive case studies a crucial phase of the European encounter with Asia: the century of Enlightenment. The focus is on the European discovery of the regions east of Said’s and Irwin’s “Orient,” in particular on Europe’s discovery of non-Islamic Asian religions. The facets of Asian religions treated are, needless to say, determined by the interests of the protagonists of the included case studies. Unlike Immanuel Kant (App 2008a), they showed little interest in Tibetan religion; hence there is little discussion of it in this book.
Why the focus on religion? Because the role of colonialism (and generally of economic and political interests) in the birth of Orientalism dwindles to insignificance compared to the role of religion. Modern Orientalism is the successor of earlier forms of Orientalism involving the study of Asian languages and texts. Christian Europe had been wrestling with Islam for many centuries; from the sixteenth century many of its universities prided themselves on having an “orientalist” professor who specialized in Hebrew and other Bible-related languages such as Aramaic, Syriac, and sometimes even Arabic or Persian. Such premodern academic Orientalism was generally a handmaiden of Bible studies and theology—which explains its almost exclusive focus on regions, languages, and religions that play a role in the Old and New Testaments. Studies of Oriental texts and languages beyond the “biblical” region usually—though not exclusively—occurred in the context of Christian missions.
The eighteenth century brought a momentous change that opened the door to a new kind of Orientalism, less shackled by theology, Bible studies, the frontiers of the Middle East, and Europe’s time-honored Judeo-Christian worldview. This new or “modern” Orientalism was prepared by a growing interest in India as the cradle of civilization, an interest that was promoted by Voltaire (1694–1778) in his quest to denigrate the Bible and destabilize Christianity (see Chapter 1). After the appearance of a number of purportedly very ancient texts of Indian origin in the 1760s and 1770s (Chapters 6 and 7), the idea of Indian origins of civilization gained ground. The research by early British Sanskritists in Calcutta and their articles in the Asiatick Researches added oil to the fire, and in 1795 Europe’s first secular institution for the study of Oriental languages was established: the École Spéciale des Langues Orientales Vivantes in Paris. Its first director, Louis-Mathieu Langlès (1763–1824), was inspired both by Voltaire’s idea of Indian origins and the new approach of the British gentlemen scholars, and he regarded the Bible as an imitation of the far older Veda (see Chapter 8). With the support of Constantin-François Volney (1757–1820), the noted Orientalist and author of the law expropriating the French Catholic Church, the École Spéciale officially sought to divorce the study of Asia, its languages, and its textual heritage from the realm of theology and biblical studies. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, this school quickly became the Mecca of secular Orientalist philology, and further progress was made with such developments as the creation of the first European university chairs in Indology and Sinology (Paris, 1814). However, as the recent studies of Mangold (2004), Polaschegg (2005), and Rabault-Feuerhahn (2008) show for the case of Germany, the emancipation of Orientalism from theology and its establishment as a discipline in its own right required many decades. Indeed, the complicated relationship between “theology,” “religious studies,” and “Asian studies” in today’s academic environment would indicate that this emancipation process is far from finished.
It is easily forgotten that even in the 1820s Europeans believed with few exceptions that the world is only a few thousand years old, that all the world’s peoples can be traced back to Noah’s Ark, and that Christianity is the fulfillment and goal of all religion. Even well-informed people like the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) had no doubt about this, as his lectures on the philosophy of history and on oriental religions show (App 2008a). Fundamental views about where we come from, where we stand, and where we are headed played an extraordinary role in the discovery of other cultures and religions. The notion of a soul that, once created, goes on living forever, or of a future state in which acts committed during life will be rewarded or punished, were incomparably more important in the European discovery of Asian religions than were commercial greed and imperialist ambitions. The same is true for the conviction that there is a God who created the universe out of nothing, manages its smooth functioning, foresees everything, punishes man’s evil deeds by natural disasters such as floods, and sent his son to atone for man’s sins. Such notions form the ideological background of the European discovery of Asian religions, and the history of Orientalism is to a substantial degree also a history of the West’s gradual detachment from this traditional ideology.
It is a central thesis of this book that Europe’s discovery of Asian religions was deeply linked to the development of Orientalism and its gradual emancipation from biblical studies. The birth of modern Orientalism was not a Caesarean section performed by colonialist doctors at the beginning of the nineteenth century when Europe’s imperialist powers began to dominate large swaths of Asia. Rather, it was the result of a long process that around the turn of the eighteenth century produced a paradigm change. Our case studies show a centuries-long, gradual broadening of perspectives beyond the sphere circumscribed by Abrahamic religions and the Bible. As in all discoveries, the familiar determined to a large extent the appearance of the new. But Europe’s Bible-based worldview with its creation, paradise, fall, deluge, monotheist orthodoxy, and satanic idolatry—the mirror in which Asian religions appeared—was also gradually changing. Hence, our case studies reflect not only evolving images of Asia’s religious landscape but also a transformation of the worldview of the perceivers. In the course of the eighteenth century, Europe’s dominant ideological matrix experienced a deepening crisis, and its hitherto unassailable biblical foundations showed ever more threatening fissures. The loss of biblical authority, which was due to many factors, occurred at a time when Judaism and Christianity themselves began to be increasingly viewed as local phenomena on a dramatically expanded, worldwide canvas of religions and mythologies. At the end of the eighteenth century, Volney—the subject of our last case study—portrayed Christianity as a relatively insignificant and young local religion based on local varieties of solar myth, and Langlès officially promoted a new Orientalism liberated from the shackles of theology and biblical studies.
The study of the European discovery of Asia’s non-Abrahamic religions—especially religions with sacred scriptures that were possibly older than the Old Testament—thus not only is crucial for understanding the genesis of modern Orientalism but also opens a hitherto neglected perspective on the profound changes characterizing Europe’s age of Enlightenment and path to modernity. Though some of this book’s protagonists may on the surface appear to be little concerned with religion, a closer look soon reveals the religious coloring of their convictions and motivations. Each case study aims not only at elucidating the protagonist’s sources for and understanding of Asian religions but also the underlying motivations and approaches (such as, in the case of Voltaire and John Zephaniah Holwell, the promotion of deism and reform of Christianity).
The choice of protagonists crystallized over a dozen years of very enjoyable research. Though some of them are hardly household names, they all played significant roles in the genesis of modern Orientalism and deserve to be better known. The case studies do not follow a chronological sequence, but the synoptic list of major figures just before the notes ought to facilitate orientation. Each case study throws light on some facets of premodern views of Asian religions and thus forms a piece of a mosaic contributing to an overall picture unlike any the reader will hitherto have encountered. Other figures might have added detail and color, for example, Nicolas Fréret, Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, Johann Gottfried Herder, or Thomas Maurice, but a few have already been studied in detail (Rosane Rocher’s studies of Hamilton and Halhed). A chapter on William Jones is published elsewhere1 because of space limitations, and other figures (such as Paulinus a Sancto Bartholomaeo) await further research by indologists. Little effort was expended on disputing or discussing mistaken ideas, for example, the notion of the Egyptian origin of metempsychosis, the view that Buddhist sutras reproduce the words of the historical Buddha, or the legends that Vyasa wrote the Vedas and Moses the Pentateuch. I cheerfully and gratefully delegate this task to authors of textbooks and encyclopedias, while I enjoy tracing the adventures of wayward ideas, traditions made of whole cloth, apocryphal texts, invented saints, and other miracles of imagination.
Almost all the figures studied in this book were very much interested in origins; this question was a central one for the eighteenth century and beyond, and it often arose when the traditional Bible-based answers were questioned and became suspect. Where do European languages and our alphabet come from? Was there ever a descendant of Noah called Tuisco who was the forefather of all Germans? Why do the German and Persian languages seem related? How did marine fossils and sharks’ teeth turn up on the peaks of the Alps? How did mountains form, and how long did this take? Why did giant “elephants” and tropical fauna end up frozen in Siberian ice? How much could the creation story of the Old Testament be trusted? Were Christianity and Judaism influenced by far older Egyptian, Persian, or Indian religions? If not the Bible, what are the world’s oldest books, and what do they contain? Are there alternative sources for the understanding of ultimate origins?
Since candidates in the competition for the world’s oldest book inevitably include religious scriptures, such texts form a second set of protagonists whose fate is traced in the chapters of this book. Most fundamental is, of course, the Bible, particularly its “books of Moses” (the Pentateuch), whose authority as well as its gradual loss determined so much of the outlook of Europeans on Asian religions. But hot candidates in the race for the world’s oldest book also come from the antediluvian world and possibly even Paradise (the book of Enoch), from China (the Yijing or Book of Changes), and from mother India (the Vedas, Voltaire’s Ezour-vedam, Holwell’s Shastah, and Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron’s Oupnek’hat). Buddhism also had a book in the race, even though it was only thought to be the oldest Buddhist text: the Forty-Two Sections Sutra. These competitors all play central roles in some of this book’s chapters as they were revealed, invented, discovered, studied, unmasked, admired, or despised. Modern Orientalism owes them a great debt that was hitherto rarely explored due to excessive valuation of genuineness, positivism, divine inspiration, and so forth. Yet their biographies can be as touching, funny, wonderful, and interesting as any saint’s, and I hope the joy of discovery infects some of my readers as they follow the intertwined fates of men, books, and ideas. The history of religions demonstrates with sufficient clarity that invented facts, dubious claims, and mistaken assumptions can occasionally work wonders. This book shows how much modern Orientalism, too, is indebted to them. More generally, they appear to be central factors in the history of humanity. Indeed, where would we be without them?
Readers used to the Eurocentric horizon of discussion as well as Orientalists will find that this book contains a substantial number of unknown or little known names and texts. It is the fate of pioneering studies to burden the reader with such “unknowns” and much detail that may at first sight seem peripheral and inconsequential. This was also the case, for example, with studies on the role of clandestine literature in the formation of the age of Enlightenment. However, such studies not only put the spotlight on many seminal texts and personages but demonstrated that they formed the pillars on which the Enlightenment was erected. Europe’s encounter with nonAbrahamic Asian religions is a far more complex affair whose roots reach back to antiquity; and if the huge crowds flocking to talks by the Dalai Lama in Western stadiums are a valid indicator, it is not only still alive but still young. Though it can without exaggeration be called the largest-scale religiocultural encounter in human history, it has so far received surprisingly little attention—which is why some of its major features are here described for the first time. That serious scientific study of this encounter has barely begun may be connected with this encounter’s intimidating cultural, religious, historical, and linguistic bandwidth. For example, one of the most influential texts both in East Asian Buddhism and in the religion’s Western reception was the Forty-Two Sections Sutra, a Chinese text whose history in the East and West is for the first time traced in this book.
Not just books but also ideas have fates that sometimes deserve to be traced. One of the dominant ideas of eighteenth-century views of Asian religions—the idea that Brahmanism and Buddhism are two sects of one religion—was to a substantial extent based on notes from a casual conversation with a Jesuit in China. These notes were used, heavily edited and without attribution, in Charles Le Gobien’s book about the Chinese emperor’s tolerance edict. Religious tolerance happened to be a theme of extreme interest to Pierre Bayle whose Protestant father had died in a French prison after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Thus, an idea uttered by an obscure missionary in the Chinese boondocks found its way into Bayle’s dictionary and reached an enormous public all over Europe. Not only that, it appeared to confirm the opinion of Athanasius Kircher; Johann Jacob Brucker used it in his pioneering history of philosophy; Denis Diderot put it into the limelight in a seminal article of the Encyclopédie; Anquetil-Duperron wanted to go to China because of it; Joseph de Guignes was led astray by it; and Herder built his view of Asian religions on it. Some of the ideas and sources whose roots are for the first time probed in this book were thus very influential despite their humble origins as unpublished notes. That such manuscripts could, under the right circumstances, be powerful forces even before publication is also shown by Voltaire’s Ezour-vedam (see Chapters 1 and 7), which was best known and most influential before its 1778 appearance in print. Holwell’s Shastah of 1767, too, attracted attention as a partial translation of a supposedly extremely ancient but lost manuscript (see Chapter 6).
There is much material in this book that was translated from a variety of languages into English for the first time.2 Unless another translator is indicated, all quotations from sources with non-English titles were translated into English by me. The inclusion of texts in original languages would have added too much bulk, which is why only a few crucial passages or terms (usually in square brackets) are provided. I trust that Google Books (books.google.com), archive.org, and similar initiatives, which have made a brilliant start particularly with old books, already (or will in the near future) allow access to many primary sources that I was still obliged laboriously to locate, photograph, and even type out at numerous libraries and archives in Asia, Europe, and the United States, whose personnel I wish to thank on this occasion for their kind help. Equal thanks go to the many people involved in the scanning and free Internet publishing of old books.
The spelling of historical texts is often different from that in their modern cousins. A modern reader might be shocked to see words like “le Cahos ou le Vuide” instead of “le chaos ou le vide,” as well as “wrong” or missing accents (“matiere,” “premiére,” etc.) or “superfluous” letters (“bee” instead of “be”). The reader can rest assured that every effort was made to reproduce original spellings accurately and that a sea of sics is therefore unnecessary. Those who suspect insufficient knowledge on my part of spellings, modern and historical, of various languages are welcome to check them against the originals. Inline references consisting only of page numbers always refer to the last given full reference. Unless otherwise noted all illustrations are by the author or reproduce materials from his private library.
Many institutions, colleagues, and friends were of direct and indirect help in the genesis of this book. In its initial stages, I was working at Hanazono University in Kyoto under Prof. Seizan Yanagida, to whom this book is dedicated, and toward the end, I received the financial support of the Swiss National Research Fund (grant No. 101511-116443). Through the years, I benefited from the aid of my parents, my ever generous brother Pius, Akifumi Takagi, the family of Dr. Kazuko Arai in Tokyo, Haruko Torii, and Rev. Taizan Egami in Kyoto. I also wish to thank my son Alexander Huwyler and many friends, including Prof. Steven Antinoff, Prof. Antonino Forte, Prof. Hubert Durt, Prof. Silvio Vita, Naomi Maeda, Prof. Lee Roser, Mark Thomas, John Gorman, Patricia Lutkins, Dr. Joseph Osterwalder, André Wicky, Satoshi Sakai, Yves Ramseier, Dr. René Bischofberger, Drs. Valerio and Adriana Pozza, Ursula Ilg, Kunio and Yoko Murakoshi, Stefanie Osterwalder, Dr. Pius Bischof, James V. Stokes, Dr. Christine Mollier, Dr. Nathalie Monnet, and Dr. Hubert Delahaye. I am also obliged to the editor of the series, Prof. Victor Mair, and the readers of the University of Pennsylvania Press as well as to Prof. Jonathan Silk for their suggestions and corrections. My deepest gratitude is due to my wife, Dr. Monica Esposito, who continuously encouraged and stimulated my research and helped to improve this book through countless suggestions and discussions.