SV: Sanskrit translations in Nazi hands

[Lars Martin Fosse]

Walker Trimble wrote:

> This might be the time to ask other Indologists and those interested in the
> history of Indology why so many thinkers who have attempted to find the
> hidden and missing links between cultures have also had fascist leanings.
> This seems to be the case from Max-Mueller (though his is rather weak)

How on earth could Max-Mueller have fascist leanings? He died before fascism
was invented?

> through Eliade, Dumezil, Jung, even the popular Joseph Campbell and on.
> Also, consider how many Modernest writers and poets who also espoused a
> kind of "Universal Consciousness" were fascists: T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, of
> course many of the Surrealists. . . Why?

Why did so many intellectuals espouse totalitarian ideologies at all, not
simply fascism, but also marxism-leninism, not to mention stalinism and maoism?
The question is interesting in itself, but it does not belong on Indology.

> Since so many of the great Indolgists in the last two centuries are and
> have been Westerners, studies in the attempts to coalesce the thought of
> East and West would have some hermeneutical value for the discipline.
> I am now reading a book which explores Dumezil's possible fascism, some may
> find it interesting:
>
> Eribon, Didier.  Faut-il Br^uler Dum'ezil?__Paris:      Flammarion, 1992.
>
> At 06:26 AM 12/24/98 PST, you wrote:
> ><<<
> > There was never a process of
> >cleaning in the Indology in after Nazis times and therefore it is one
> >reason for the unscholarity methode which is still dominating the
> >after-Nazi German Indology.

This is nonsense - excuse me. Are you implying that ALL German indologists
were/are Nazis????? Or that there is a marked difference in method between
German indologists and the rest of the caste? Whatever problems of method and
modernization are besetting Indology, the reason given above is hardly it.

> >  Hope some scholars take up the task of the study of how
> >  Sanskrit played in the Nazi hands. Was surprised to find
> >  that the grand historian of religion, Mircea Eliade had some
> >  Nazi connections.

You might probably like to read Sheldon Pollock's article on the subject of
German Indologists and Nazism. See:

Deep Orientalism? Notes on Sanskrit and Power Beyond the Raj. In: Orientalism
and the Postcolonial Predicament. Edited by Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van
der Veer.
University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 1993.

BTW, as you will see, he claims that the academic methods of these scholars
were impeccable, if I remember correctly.

Best regards,

Lars Martin Fosse

Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse
Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114,
0674 Oslo
Norway
Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19
Email: lmfosse at online.no