The question of Christian influence on the nineteenth century reformist thought has been raised but there are some misconceptions about it.
There was not much of Christian influence on the reformist movement since about 1850. In Bengal the Brahmo religous leader Keshub Chandra Sen sang to the glory of the Christ but he was forsaken by mainstream Brahmos. Keshab Candra was pragmatic. He wanted to remove possible obstacles to his own missionary work. But Debendranath Tagore was against him. The main reformer of Bengal, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, was an atheist. The Brahmo priest Shivnath Shastri has narrated how Vidyasagar ridiculed a Christian missionary who had come to covert him. The revolutionary Brahmabandhab Upadhyay was Christian but he called himself 'Hindu Catholic'. The reformist Arya Samajis of North India were strongly anti-Christian. There was Western influence on the Prarthana Samaj of Western India but one cannot discern specific Christian influence.
Among those who had really taken moral inspirational ideas from Christianity one can count Mahatma Gandhi of the twentieth century but not the leaders of the nineteenth century enlightenment movement. Gandhiji was probably influenced by the ideas of Leo Tolstoy and some American thinkers. But Gandhiji himself and his followers consider themselves religious minded Hindus
The
missionaries were successful mainly in Central India and fringe areas of the
South. The intellectual movement, on the other hand, started with religion but,
with the exception of the Arya Samajis, it progressively spoke for and leaned
towards the secular way of life and thought. Religious activities thrived among
Hindu Missionaries - the Arya Samajis, the Ramkrishna Mission, the Bharat
Sevasram Sangha etc. They took the idea of organized missionary activity from the Christian organizations but competed with it in theology.
Best
DB
This is very fascinating. But may I play the advocate of the devil and suggest that Madhva who lived in the 12-13th century CE (AD) could have been influenced by both Islam and Nestorian christianity, or perhaps knew about them and reacted in the way some nineteenth century Hindu apologists reacted? Besides, without more details as to how and what exactly Madhva wrote, I cannot form a definite opinion. I also do not believe ancient Indians did not have any notion of factual history. I do believe that the texts that are called itihasa may never have been meant to provide factual history, quite like the Thorah and the prophetic books in the Tanakh were not meant to provide accurate literal history. Even many of the New Testamental miracles and stories are now regarded as not historical accounts but as enacted parables (signs in the language of the gospel of John).
In this context I would argue for more, serious and politically unbiased religious studies in Hinduism (backed up by philological indology), Hindu theology and Hindu exegesis of texts. I do not think, Hindus are well served when the sacred Sanskrit narratives are flattened down to some sort of early twentieth century Hindu Pentecostal literalism.
Victor van Bijlert
Dr. Victor A. van Bijlert
Associate professor Religious Studies
Department of Philosophy of Religion and Comparative Study of Religions
Faculty of Theology, VU University
De Boelelaan 1105, NL-1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
+31613184203
From: Howard Resnick [hr@ivs.edu]
Sent: Sunday, July 13, 2014 5:43 PM
To: Bijlert, V.A. van
Cc: Indology List
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Interview with the new ICHR Chairman
I agree with you on the source of 19th and 20th century influences on Hindu propagandists and their theories of shastric historicity. Prior to this, faithful Vaishnavas, for example, did not have “scientific” historiography on their radar as they do in modern times. Thus the notion that itihasa is indeed history developed in other ways in pre-modern times.
I will cite merely one example, Madhva’s Mahabharata-tatparya-nirnaya (13c), in which he states (2.3-4) that the Mahabharata text available to him is rife with corruption — interpolations, extrapolations, and transpositions of text. Yet he accepts the basic Mahabharata story as real history, in all its supernatural abundance.
Best,Howard
On Jul 13, 2014, at 11:22 AM, Bijlert, V.A. van <v.a.van.bijlert@vu.nl> wrote:
Do you know of any other source in the nineteenth and early twentieth century that Hindu propagandists could have used? Is there any early pre-modern or even pre-islamic discussion in Indian thought about the Mahabharata and Ramayana as accurate depictions of historical facts?
Dr. Victor A. van BijlertAssociate professor Religious StudiesDepartment of Philosophy of Religion and Comparative Study of ReligionsFaculty of Theology, VU UniversityDe Boelelaan 1105, NL-1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands+31613184203
From: Howard Resnick [hr@ivs.edu]
Sent: Sunday, July 13, 2014 1:49 PM
To: Bijlert, V.A. van
Cc: Indology List
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Interview with the new ICHR Chairman
Can we really attribute to modern Christian influence the Hindu belief in Mahabharata and Ramayana as sacred history, apart from the many other meanings of the texts?
On Jul 13, 2014, at 7:43 AM, Bijlert, V.A. van <v.a.van.bijlert@vu.nl> wrote:
_______________________________________________It seems to me there is a task for hermeneutics rather than pure philological indology. We are dealing with rather simplistic views of what the Mahabharata and Ramayana (and other puranas as well?) represent. The idea that these texts are historical seems to derive from the rather fundamentalist evangelical christian view of the Bible as containing undiluted historical truth. Hindus since the nineteenth century were confronted with this view propounded by missionaries and as a reaction claimed that their own Sanskrit texts were also historical. In christian hermeneutics and Biblical philology as indeed in theology such simplistic historical views have long been discarded. But apparently not so among some Hindus with regard to epics and the puranas.Victor van Bijlert
Dr. Victor A. van BijlertAssociate professor Religious StudiesDepartment of Philosophy of Religion and Comparative Study of ReligionsFaculty of Theology, VU UniversityDe Boelelaan 1105, NL-1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands+31613184203
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