Dear all—

Thanks to those who have replied with fascinating information, both on- an off-list. To judge from my very unscientific sample so far, it seems that Orientalists by and large were more even-handed in their assessments of mantras that I had assumed they would be. One of the few negative statements I’ve found so far (thanks to John Nemec) is from Monier-Williams—see below.

 

Yours,

Finn

 

Monier-Williams on mantras in Durga puja, Brahmanism and Hinduism p198:

“To us it may seem extraordinary that intelligent persons can give credence to such absurdities, or lend themselves to the practice of superstitions so senseless; but we must bear in mind that with may Hindū thinkers the notion of the eternity of sound—as propounded in Patañjali’s Mahābhāshya (I.1.1) and in the Pūrva-mīmāṃsā of Jaimini—is by no means an irrational doctrine…”



 

From: Lindquist, Steven <slindqui@mail.smu.edu>
Date: Saturday, 16 August 2025 at 18:46
To: Finn Moore Gerety <finn.mooregerety@ames.ox.ac.uk>, indology@list.indology.info <indology@list.indology.info>
Subject: Re: Early Orientalist attitudes towards mantras

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

 

From: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces@list.indology.info> on behalf of Finn Moore Gerety via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info>
Sent: Saturday, August 16, 2025 8:33:38 AM
To: indology@list.indology.info <indology@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