Hindu elan missionnaire

[Loriliai Biernacki]

One point to keep in mind regarding Hindu missionaries is that it depends
greatly upon how you define Hinduism.  Certainly brahminical smarta
practitioners were not missionaries, (although the apocryphal story of
Kumaarila's virulent attitudes towards Buddhists and Jains makes one think
twice)  but the Bhakti movements were quite missionary oriented in their
attempts to gains converts, cf. Shaivism in south India throughout the
middle ages. And even if we define missionary to mean only "other
countries outside India" --which is something of an anachronism and
doesn'tmake too much sense in the context of India -- we still have to grapple
with how a non-missionary religion made its way to Cambodia, for instance.

all the best,


Loriliai Biernacki
University of Pennsylvania