[INDOLOGY] Early Orientalist attitudes towards mantras

[Lindquist, Steven]

Robert Yelle has written on this, perhaps articles as well (but I'm away from my files so can't verify).  See his:

Explaining Mantras
Ritual, Rhetoric, and the Dream of a Natural Language in Hindu Tantra (Routledge, 2003)

Steven Lindquist

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From: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces at list.indology.info> on behalf of Finn Moore Gerety via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info>
Sent: Saturday, August 16, 2025 8:33:38 AM
To: indology at list.indology.info <indology at list.indology.info>
Subject: [INDOLOGY] Early Orientalist attitudes towards mantras


Dear colleagues—

I’m trying to substantiate my vague impression that some 19th-century Orientalists denigrated Sanskrit mantras as mumbo-jumbo and nonsense. I wonder if anyone on this list can point me to direct quotations or historiographic discussions of this.



To be clear, I’m interested in early Orientalist discourse on mantras in particular—not critiques of other Sanskrit genres such as Vedic prose (à la Max Müller’s notorious “twaddle” quotation).



Thanks in advance,

Finn


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