Javed Majeed
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117865
- eISBN:
- 9780191671098
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117865.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Drawing on contemporary critical work on colonialism and the cross-cultural encounter, this book is a study of the emergence of utilitarianism as a new political language in Britain in the late-18th ...
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Drawing on contemporary critical work on colonialism and the cross-cultural encounter, this book is a study of the emergence of utilitarianism as a new political language in Britain in the late-18th and early-19th centuries. It focuses on the relationship between this language and the complexities of British Imperial experience in India at the time. Examining the work of James Mill and Sir William Jones, and also that of the poets Robert Southey and Thomas Moore, the book highlights the role played by aesthetic and linguistic attitudes in the formulation of British views on India, and reveals how closely these attitudes were linked to the definition of cultural identities. To this end, Mill's utilitarian study of India is shown to function both as an attack on the conservative orientalism of the period, and as part of a larger critique of British society itself. In so doing, the book demonstrates how complex British attitudes to India were in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and how this might be explained in the light of domestic and imperial contexts.Less
Drawing on contemporary critical work on colonialism and the cross-cultural encounter, this book is a study of the emergence of utilitarianism as a new political language in Britain in the late-18th and early-19th centuries. It focuses on the relationship between this language and the complexities of British Imperial experience in India at the time. Examining the work of James Mill and Sir William Jones, and also that of the poets Robert Southey and Thomas Moore, the book highlights the role played by aesthetic and linguistic attitudes in the formulation of British views on India, and reveals how closely these attitudes were linked to the definition of cultural identities. To this end, Mill's utilitarian study of India is shown to function both as an attack on the conservative orientalism of the period, and as part of a larger critique of British society itself. In so doing, the book demonstrates how complex British attitudes to India were in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and how this might be explained in the light of domestic and imperial contexts.
Javed Majeed
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117865
- eISBN:
- 9780191671098
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117865.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter defines and considers the four dominant themes to Sir William Jones's work: his study of Sanskrit and his formulation of the family of Indo-European languages; his project for a digest ...
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This chapter defines and considers the four dominant themes to Sir William Jones's work: his study of Sanskrit and his formulation of the family of Indo-European languages; his project for a digest of Indian law; its relation to discussions of land revenue systems; and his formulation of a methodology for the study of Indian history. Jones's legal work is examined in terms of the problems which it posed for Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, whilst his hymns to Hindu deities are examined in the context of his legal work and his attempt to define the cultural identity of a rejuvenated Hinduism. Rather than explaining the ambiguities in his position in terms of his supposed liberal imperialism, it seems more fruitful to see these ambiguities as stemming from a confusion about how to arrive at an understanding of cultures which would both respect their uniqueness, and compare and contrast them to other cultures in a neutral idiom.Less
This chapter defines and considers the four dominant themes to Sir William Jones's work: his study of Sanskrit and his formulation of the family of Indo-European languages; his project for a digest of Indian law; its relation to discussions of land revenue systems; and his formulation of a methodology for the study of Indian history. Jones's legal work is examined in terms of the problems which it posed for Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, whilst his hymns to Hindu deities are examined in the context of his legal work and his attempt to define the cultural identity of a rejuvenated Hinduism. Rather than explaining the ambiguities in his position in terms of his supposed liberal imperialism, it seems more fruitful to see these ambiguities as stemming from a confusion about how to arrive at an understanding of cultures which would both respect their uniqueness, and compare and contrast them to other cultures in a neutral idiom.
Michael J. Franklin
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199532001
- eISBN:
- 9780191730900
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199532001.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History, British and Irish Modern History
Sir William Jones (1746–94), poet, philologist, polymath, polyglot, and acknowledged legislator was the foremost Orientalist of his generation and one of the greatest intellectual navigators of all ...
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Sir William Jones (1746–94), poet, philologist, polymath, polyglot, and acknowledged legislator was the foremost Orientalist of his generation and one of the greatest intellectual navigators of all time. He re–drew the map of European thought. ‘Orientalist’ Jones was an extraordinary man and an intensely colourful figure. At the age of twenty–six, Jones was elected to Dr Johnson’s Literary Club, on terms of intimacy with the metropolitan luminaries of the day. The names of his friends in Britain and India presents a roll–call of late eighteenth–century glitterati: Johnson, Hester Thrale, Elizabeth Craven, Boswell, Reynolds, Georgiana, duchess of Devonshire, Elizabeth Vesey, Elizabeth Montagu, Franklin, Price, Priestley, Burke, Hastings, Zoffany, Gibbon, Goldsmith, Percy, Sheridan, Fox, Pitt, Wilkes, Warton, Garrick, etc.. In Bengal his Sanskrit researches marked the beginning of Indo–European comparative grammar, and modern comparative–historical linguistics, of Indology, and the disciplines of comparative literature, philology, mythology, and law. He did more than any other writer to destroy Eurocentric prejudice, reshaping Western perceptions of India and the Orient. Jones’s remarkable career embodies a reverse transculturation in suggesting that enlightened tolerance was Asia’s gift to Europe. His commitment to the translation of culture, a multiculturalism fascinated as much by similitude as difference, profoundly influenced European and British Romanticism, offering the West disconcerting new relationships and disorienting orientations. Jones’s translation of Śakuntalā (1789) accomplished Oriental renaissance in the West and cultural revolution in India. William Jones is remembered with great affection throughout the subcontinent as a man who facilitated India’s cultural assimilation into the modern world, helping to build India’s future on the immensity, sophistication, and pluralism of its past.Less
Sir William Jones (1746–94), poet, philologist, polymath, polyglot, and acknowledged legislator was the foremost Orientalist of his generation and one of the greatest intellectual navigators of all time. He re–drew the map of European thought. ‘Orientalist’ Jones was an extraordinary man and an intensely colourful figure. At the age of twenty–six, Jones was elected to Dr Johnson’s Literary Club, on terms of intimacy with the metropolitan luminaries of the day. The names of his friends in Britain and India presents a roll–call of late eighteenth–century glitterati: Johnson, Hester Thrale, Elizabeth Craven, Boswell, Reynolds, Georgiana, duchess of Devonshire, Elizabeth Vesey, Elizabeth Montagu, Franklin, Price, Priestley, Burke, Hastings, Zoffany, Gibbon, Goldsmith, Percy, Sheridan, Fox, Pitt, Wilkes, Warton, Garrick, etc.. In Bengal his Sanskrit researches marked the beginning of Indo–European comparative grammar, and modern comparative–historical linguistics, of Indology, and the disciplines of comparative literature, philology, mythology, and law. He did more than any other writer to destroy Eurocentric prejudice, reshaping Western perceptions of India and the Orient. Jones’s remarkable career embodies a reverse transculturation in suggesting that enlightened tolerance was Asia’s gift to Europe. His commitment to the translation of culture, a multiculturalism fascinated as much by similitude as difference, profoundly influenced European and British Romanticism, offering the West disconcerting new relationships and disorienting orientations. Jones’s translation of Śakuntalā (1789) accomplished Oriental renaissance in the West and cultural revolution in India. William Jones is remembered with great affection throughout the subcontinent as a man who facilitated India’s cultural assimilation into the modern world, helping to build India’s future on the immensity, sophistication, and pluralism of its past.
Brian K. Pennington
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- July 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195166552
- eISBN:
- 9780199835690
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195166558.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Hinduism
Alongside the development of missionary discourses about Hinduism, Orientalists in the employ of the East India Company derived their own sets of idioms and tropes to represent Hindu traditions. ...
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Alongside the development of missionary discourses about Hinduism, Orientalists in the employ of the East India Company derived their own sets of idioms and tropes to represent Hindu traditions. Founded by Sir William Jones as an advertisement for the beauty and antiquity of Indian civilizations, and later headed by such eminent scholars as Henry Thomas Colebrooke and Horace Hayman Wilson, the Asiatic Society and its journal the Asiatic Researches displayed from their beginning a close alliance with the designs of the colonial state. As the evolving state discarded Orientalist policies that sought rapprochement with and accommodation of Indian traditions, the journal itself came to reflect a colder conquest of the minds and territories of Indian subjects. A conceptual systematization of Hinduism parallel to that seen among evangelical missionaries is evident in this journal, but what distinguishes the imagination of British Orientalism is an enchantment with the natural world of India, whose profuse and lush flora and fauna functioned as tropes for religion in India as well. An initial fascination with the apparently self-multiplying, polymorphic pantheon and mythology of Hindu India reflected a similar scientific wonder among the Society’s naturalists. Just as that wonder would give way to a quest for mastery, the officials of the colonial state who authored the articles for the Researches demonstrated their own growing sense of intellectual command and moral superiority over what they came increasingly to identify as Hinduism.Less
Alongside the development of missionary discourses about Hinduism, Orientalists in the employ of the East India Company derived their own sets of idioms and tropes to represent Hindu traditions. Founded by Sir William Jones as an advertisement for the beauty and antiquity of Indian civilizations, and later headed by such eminent scholars as Henry Thomas Colebrooke and Horace Hayman Wilson, the Asiatic Society and its journal the Asiatic Researches displayed from their beginning a close alliance with the designs of the colonial state. As the evolving state discarded Orientalist policies that sought rapprochement with and accommodation of Indian traditions, the journal itself came to reflect a colder conquest of the minds and territories of Indian subjects. A conceptual systematization of Hinduism parallel to that seen among evangelical missionaries is evident in this journal, but what distinguishes the imagination of British Orientalism is an enchantment with the natural world of India, whose profuse and lush flora and fauna functioned as tropes for religion in India as well. An initial fascination with the apparently self-multiplying, polymorphic pantheon and mythology of Hindu India reflected a similar scientific wonder among the Society’s naturalists. Just as that wonder would give way to a quest for mastery, the officials of the colonial state who authored the articles for the Researches demonstrated their own growing sense of intellectual command and moral superiority over what they came increasingly to identify as Hinduism.
Javed Majeed
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117865
- eISBN:
- 9780191671098
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117865.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Robert Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer (1801) and The Curse of Kehama (1810) reflect a revival of interest in the history, literature, and antiquities of non-European cultures. His notes to both ...
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Robert Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer (1801) and The Curse of Kehama (1810) reflect a revival of interest in the history, literature, and antiquities of non-European cultures. His notes to both epics show the extent of his reading in Sir William Jones's works. The concern to tap new sources of creativity made available by the oriental renaissance is evident in the preoccupation with the plumbing and probing of depths in Southey's epics. Here, Southey was experimenting with a new form of poetry, whose alien subject matter had to be domesticated, and whose readership was uncertain. His conservative views constituted a defence of the system of beliefs and established institutions from three challenges in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, namely the demands for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Act, the repeal of legislation against Roman Catholics, and parliamentary reform.Less
Robert Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer (1801) and The Curse of Kehama (1810) reflect a revival of interest in the history, literature, and antiquities of non-European cultures. His notes to both epics show the extent of his reading in Sir William Jones's works. The concern to tap new sources of creativity made available by the oriental renaissance is evident in the preoccupation with the plumbing and probing of depths in Southey's epics. Here, Southey was experimenting with a new form of poetry, whose alien subject matter had to be domesticated, and whose readership was uncertain. His conservative views constituted a defence of the system of beliefs and established institutions from three challenges in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, namely the demands for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Act, the repeal of legislation against Roman Catholics, and parliamentary reform.
Javed Majeed
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117865
- eISBN:
- 9780191671098
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117865.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This book explores the emergence of utilitarianism as a political language in Britain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, focusing upon James Mill's The History of British India (1817). It ...
More
This book explores the emergence of utilitarianism as a political language in Britain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, focusing upon James Mill's The History of British India (1817). It describes the relationship between the emergence of this language, as defined by Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, and the complexities of British imperialism in India at the time. Edward Said has argued that the Orient was the creation of a whole apparatus of intellectual practices which were a part of such ventures. In the oriental works of Robert Southey and Thomas Moore studied here, it is clear that the Orient was a creation which played a vital role in constituting their differing religious, political, and aesthetic positions. Furthermore, the intimate and complex relationship between popular and scholarly orientalism in their works can also be interpreted in the light of Said's conception of the orientalist venture. Much of Mill's History of British India was an attack upon Sir William Jones and the body of ideas which Mill believed he had defined.Less
This book explores the emergence of utilitarianism as a political language in Britain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, focusing upon James Mill's The History of British India (1817). It describes the relationship between the emergence of this language, as defined by Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, and the complexities of British imperialism in India at the time. Edward Said has argued that the Orient was the creation of a whole apparatus of intellectual practices which were a part of such ventures. In the oriental works of Robert Southey and Thomas Moore studied here, it is clear that the Orient was a creation which played a vital role in constituting their differing religious, political, and aesthetic positions. Furthermore, the intimate and complex relationship between popular and scholarly orientalism in their works can also be interpreted in the light of Said's conception of the orientalist venture. Much of Mill's History of British India was an attack upon Sir William Jones and the body of ideas which Mill believed he had defined.
Padma Rangarajan
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823263615
- eISBN:
- 9780823266456
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823263615.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter considers the changing dynamics of nineteenth-century orientalist scholarship through the work of two of its most famous scholars: William Jones and Max Müller. Using Jones’s Hindoo ...
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This chapter considers the changing dynamics of nineteenth-century orientalist scholarship through the work of two of its most famous scholars: William Jones and Max Müller. Using Jones’s Hindoo Hymns for insight into the author’s translative and aesthetic politics, the chapter then considers Jones’s legacy in the work of his most famous successor, Max Müller. The chapter then turn to Müller’s largely forgotten influence on Victorian culture before examining his attempts to revive an earlier zeal for orientalist scholarship in an era of imperial fatigue and racial suspicion. The chapter then turns briefly to The Rubáiyát and The Light of Asia as fitting poetic epilogues for the history of nineteenth-century British orientalism.Less
This chapter considers the changing dynamics of nineteenth-century orientalist scholarship through the work of two of its most famous scholars: William Jones and Max Müller. Using Jones’s Hindoo Hymns for insight into the author’s translative and aesthetic politics, the chapter then considers Jones’s legacy in the work of his most famous successor, Max Müller. The chapter then turn to Müller’s largely forgotten influence on Victorian culture before examining his attempts to revive an earlier zeal for orientalist scholarship in an era of imperial fatigue and racial suspicion. The chapter then turns briefly to The Rubáiyát and The Light of Asia as fitting poetic epilogues for the history of nineteenth-century British orientalism.
Thomas R. Trautmann
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520205468
- eISBN:
- 9780520917927
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520205468.003.0002
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
This chapter provides a historical background of the Indo-European concept, which was named by Arthur Young and was first proposed by Sir William Jones, the founder and first president of the Asiatic ...
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This chapter provides a historical background of the Indo-European concept, which was named by Arthur Young and was first proposed by Sir William Jones, the founder and first president of the Asiatic Society. Before the middle of the nineteenth century, the Indo-European concept was foreign to Britons, identified mainly with German scholars. The chapter discusses the authority-claim of orientalism, India's place in Jones's ethnological project, and the possibility that India was the source of knowledge of ancient wisdom.Less
This chapter provides a historical background of the Indo-European concept, which was named by Arthur Young and was first proposed by Sir William Jones, the founder and first president of the Asiatic Society. Before the middle of the nineteenth century, the Indo-European concept was foreign to Britons, identified mainly with German scholars. The chapter discusses the authority-claim of orientalism, India's place in Jones's ethnological project, and the possibility that India was the source of knowledge of ancient wisdom.
Thomas R. Trautmann
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520205468
- eISBN:
- 9780520917927
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520205468.003.0004
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
This chapter focuses on the emergence of British Indophobia or British lack of enthusiasm for India. It explains that the Indophobia that became the norm in the early nineteenth century was ...
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This chapter focuses on the emergence of British Indophobia or British lack of enthusiasm for India. It explains that the Indophobia that became the norm in the early nineteenth century was deliberately constructed by Evangelicalism and Utilitarianism, and that its chief architects were Charles Grant and James Mill. The texts that launched Indophobia were Mills's History of British India and Grant's “Observations on the state of society among the Asiatic subjects of Great Britain, particularly with respect to morals; and the means of improving it.” The chapter also discusses John Shore's biography of Sir William Jones, who nurtured Indomania in the eighteenth century.Less
This chapter focuses on the emergence of British Indophobia or British lack of enthusiasm for India. It explains that the Indophobia that became the norm in the early nineteenth century was deliberately constructed by Evangelicalism and Utilitarianism, and that its chief architects were Charles Grant and James Mill. The texts that launched Indophobia were Mills's History of British India and Grant's “Observations on the state of society among the Asiatic subjects of Great Britain, particularly with respect to morals; and the means of improving it.” The chapter also discusses John Shore's biography of Sir William Jones, who nurtured Indomania in the eighteenth century.
Javed Majeed
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117865
- eISBN:
- 9780191671098
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117865.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This book has argued that the emergence of utilitarianism and the conservative ideology which it attacked in the early 19th century was closely involved with the British imperial experience in India. ...
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This book has argued that the emergence of utilitarianism and the conservative ideology which it attacked in the early 19th century was closely involved with the British imperial experience in India. It has thrown some light on the problem of what constituted consistency between one's political views in Britain and one's political views in British India. It is this, and the whole character of the body of ideas of which it was a part, which distinguishes the liberal imperialism of James Mill from that of such figures as Sir William Jones. Furthermore, an important part of Mill's critique of the revitalized conservatism of his time was an attack on the relationship between notions of the imagination and the creation of an Orient in the work of Jones and his colleagues. This dimension of Mill's The History of British India has been somewhat neglected. In its analysis of texts which can be seen to form part of an orientalism, this book has tended to disagree with some aspects of Edward Said's thesis.Less
This book has argued that the emergence of utilitarianism and the conservative ideology which it attacked in the early 19th century was closely involved with the British imperial experience in India. It has thrown some light on the problem of what constituted consistency between one's political views in Britain and one's political views in British India. It is this, and the whole character of the body of ideas of which it was a part, which distinguishes the liberal imperialism of James Mill from that of such figures as Sir William Jones. Furthermore, an important part of Mill's critique of the revitalized conservatism of his time was an attack on the relationship between notions of the imagination and the creation of an Orient in the work of Jones and his colleagues. This dimension of Mill's The History of British India has been somewhat neglected. In its analysis of texts which can be seen to form part of an orientalism, this book has tended to disagree with some aspects of Edward Said's thesis.
Alexander Riddiford
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199699735
- eISBN:
- 9780191745447
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199699735.003.0006
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The Hekṭor-badh is an abridged version, composed in six paricched or ‘chapters’ of Bengali prose, of Homer’s Iliad 1–12. The Hekṭor-badh is a fascinating work from the point of view of its reception ...
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The Hekṭor-badh is an abridged version, composed in six paricched or ‘chapters’ of Bengali prose, of Homer’s Iliad 1–12. The Hekṭor-badh is a fascinating work from the point of view of its reception of Homer’s Iliad. As the work’s very name implies (‘The Slaying of Hector’ rather than ‘The Iliad’), the Hekṭor-badh is a very loose and transformative version of the Homeric original. Above all, the Hekṭor-badh figures a kind of implicit commentary on Homer’s Iliad, a translation strewn with implied glosses on the work translated. This Bengali ‘commentary’ is above all a comparative Indo-European one: throughout the Hekṭor-badh Homeric gods, customs and religious practices, rather than being translated or transliterated in a straightforward manner, are frequently glossed with Hindu ‘equivalents’. The nexus of Indo-European comparisons underpinning Madhusudan’s Hekṭor-badh seems to be inspired above all by the scholarship of the early British Orientalist Sir William Jones.Less
The Hekṭor-badh is an abridged version, composed in six paricched or ‘chapters’ of Bengali prose, of Homer’s Iliad 1–12. The Hekṭor-badh is a fascinating work from the point of view of its reception of Homer’s Iliad. As the work’s very name implies (‘The Slaying of Hector’ rather than ‘The Iliad’), the Hekṭor-badh is a very loose and transformative version of the Homeric original. Above all, the Hekṭor-badh figures a kind of implicit commentary on Homer’s Iliad, a translation strewn with implied glosses on the work translated. This Bengali ‘commentary’ is above all a comparative Indo-European one: throughout the Hekṭor-badh Homeric gods, customs and religious practices, rather than being translated or transliterated in a straightforward manner, are frequently glossed with Hindu ‘equivalents’. The nexus of Indo-European comparisons underpinning Madhusudan’s Hekṭor-badh seems to be inspired above all by the scholarship of the early British Orientalist Sir William Jones.
Mark Sedgwick
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199977642
- eISBN:
- 9780190622701
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199977642.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Islam
This chapter looks at how the Renaissance and Enlightenment theologies examined in the previous chapter came to be applied to Sufism, resulting in an understanding of Sufism as perennial, esoteric, ...
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This chapter looks at how the Renaissance and Enlightenment theologies examined in the previous chapter came to be applied to Sufism, resulting in an understanding of Sufism as perennial, esoteric, Deistic, universalism that replaced the earlier (and more accurate) understanding of Sufism as mystical theology. It shows how Pierre Bayle’s understanding of Spinozism accidentally created a category into which Sufism was then fitted. It further shows how this understanding was developed in British India by Sir William Jones. The Dabistan, an unusual Persian text, played a significant role in this development. The Jones version of Sufism was then further developed by another British colonial scholar, James Graham, whose portrayal of Sufism would prove permanently influential, even though other Orientalist scholars quickly pointed out its deficiencies.Less
This chapter looks at how the Renaissance and Enlightenment theologies examined in the previous chapter came to be applied to Sufism, resulting in an understanding of Sufism as perennial, esoteric, Deistic, universalism that replaced the earlier (and more accurate) understanding of Sufism as mystical theology. It shows how Pierre Bayle’s understanding of Spinozism accidentally created a category into which Sufism was then fitted. It further shows how this understanding was developed in British India by Sir William Jones. The Dabistan, an unusual Persian text, played a significant role in this development. The Jones version of Sufism was then further developed by another British colonial scholar, James Graham, whose portrayal of Sufism would prove permanently influential, even though other Orientalist scholars quickly pointed out its deficiencies.
