Religious Dynamics under the Impact of Imperialism and Colonialism 9004325115, 9789004325111

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Religious Dynamics under the Impact of Imperialism and Colonialism

Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

Numen Book Series Studies in the History of Religions

Series Editors Steven Engler (Mount Royal University, Calgary, Canada) Richard King (University of Kent, UK) Kocku von Stuckrad (University of Groningen, The Netherlands) Gerard Wiegers (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

VOLUME 154

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/nus Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

Religious Dynamics under the Impact of Imperialism and Colonialism A Sourcebook Edited by

Björn Bentlage Marion Eggert Hans Martin Krämer and Stefan Reichmuth

LEIDEN | BOSTON Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

Cover illustration: On the cover the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, 1893. Original image published in John Harry Barrows (ed.), The World’s Parliament of Religions: an illustrated and popular story of the World’s First Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago in connection with the Columbian exposition of 1893 (Chicago, 1893), p. 5.; scan provided by the Princeton Theological Seminary Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bentlage, Björn, 1979–, editor. Title: Religious dynamics under the impact of imperialism and colonialism : a  sourcebook / edited by Bjorn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Kramer,  and Stefan Reichmuth. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2016. | Series: Numen book series :  studies in the history of religions : ISSN 0169-8834 ; Volume 154 |  Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016031169 (print) | LCCN 2016033563 (ebook) | ISBN  9789004325111 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9789004329003 (E-book) Subjects: LCSH: Religions. Classification: LCC BL80.3.R466 2016 (print) | LCC BL80.3 (ebook) | DDC  200.9/034—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016031169

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 0169-8834 isbn 978-90-04-32511-1 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-32900-3 (e-book) Copyright 2017 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

Contents

Volume Introduction 1 Marion Eggert

Section 1 Religion and the Order of Knowledge

Introduction to Section 1 13 Björn Bentlage

1.01 Anonymous: Which One Is the Right Religion for China’s Future? (China, 1905) 21 Heiner Roetz 1.02 Ouyang Jingwu: Buddhism Is neither Religion nor Philosophy but What the Present Generation Is in Need of (China, 1922) 30 Gotelind Müller 1.03 Yaroe (Nightthunder) alias Yi Tonhwa: [On] the Necessity of Reform of Religion (Korea, 1920) 40 Andreas Müller-Lee 1.04 Gendun Chopel: Grains of Gold—Tales of a Cosmopolitan Traveller (Tibet, 1941) 54 Donald S. Lopez, Jr. 1.05 Chaophraya Thiphakorawong: A Book on Various Things (Thailand, 1867) 63 Sven Trakulhun 1.06 Swami Vivekananda: Reason and Religion (England, 1896) 77 Torkel Brekke 1.07 Muhammad Iqbal: Is Religion Possible? (Pakistan, 1932) 93 Aslam Syed

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1.08 Yūsuf al-Nabhānī: Poem of the Short ‘R’ in Defaming Innovation and Praising the Esteemed Tradition (Lebanon, 1908/09) 111 Amal Ghazal 1.09 Ḥusayn al-Jisr al-Ṭarābulusī: The Hamidian Treatise (Lebanon, 1888) 125 Björn Bentlage 1.10 Muḥammad ʿAbduh: The Theology of Unity (Egypt, 1898) 141 Johann Büssow 1.11 Necmeddīn ʿĀrif: Studying in Paris (Egypt, 1904/05) 160 Leyla von Mende 1.12 Helena Petrovna Blavatsky: Isis Unveiled—A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology (United States, 1877) 172 Gauri Viswanathan 1.13 Ludwig Ankenbrand: Buddhism and the Modern Reform Efforts (Germany, 1911) 186 Jörg Albrecht 1.14 Rowland Williams: Christianity and Hinduism (England, 1856) 197 Paul Hedges

Section 2 Religion, Culture and Power

Introduction to Section 2 215 Stefan Reichmuth

2.01 Kang Youwei: Report to the Throne, with a Petition for Fixing through Consultation a Law Concerning Religious Cases [. . .] (China, 1898) 221 Heiner Roetz 2.02 Shimaji Mokurai: Petition in Criticism of the Three Articles of Instruction (Japan, 1872) 237 Hans Martin Krämer Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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2.03 Haji Omar Said Tjokroaminoto: Islam and Socialism (Indonesia, 1924/1963) 249 Al Makin 2.04 Muhammad Iqbal: Presidential Address to the 25th Annual Session of the All-India Muslim League at Allahabad (India, 1930) 265 Aslam Syed 2.05 Dayānanda Sarasvatī: The Light of Truth (India, 1884) 273 Dermot Killingley 2.06 Rashīd Riḍā: Introduction to the First Annual Volume of al-Manār (Egypt, 1909) 293 Stefan Reichmuth 2.07 Moḥammad Ḥoseyn Na‌ʾīnī: Government from the Perspective of Islam (Iran, 1909) 305 Katajun Amirpur 2.08 George B. Nutting: Letter to the Missionary Herald (Turkey, 1860) and Baha Said Bey: Alevi Communities in Turkey—(Turkey, 1926) 325 Markus Dressler 2.09 Aḥad haAm: Slavery within Freedom (Russia, 1891) 339 Valentina Munz 2.10 Paul de Lagarde: On the Relationship of the German State to Theology, Church and Religion—An Attempt at Orientation for Non-Theologians (Germany, 1873) 354 Elisabeth Hollender and Knut Martin Stünkel

Section 3 The Transformative Power of the Religious Marketplace

Introduction to Section 3 369 Hans Martin Krämer

3.01 Pak Ŭnsik: On Renewing Confucianism (Korea, 1909) 377 Marion Eggert Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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3.02 Watanabe Kaigyoku: The Hopes of Buddhists for the Peace Conference (Japan, 1918) 392 John S. LoBreglio 3.03 Shaku Sōen: Strenuous Endeavors (Japan, 1912) 400 Helen A. Findley 3.04 R. G. Bhandarkar: The Basis of Theism and its Relation to the So-Called Revealed Religions (India, 1883) 415 Dermot Killingley 3.05 Ghulām Aḥmad al-Qādiyānī: The Messiah of the Christians—Peace upon Him—in India (India, 1908) 426 Jonathan Korbel and Claudia Preckel 3.06 ʿAbbās Afandī ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ: Treatise on Civilisation (Iran, 1875) 443 Oliver Scharbrodt 3.07 Speech to the Former French Prime Minister Joseph Caillaux on the Occasion of His Stay in Beirut in May 1912, Written by Members of the Masonic Lodge Le Liban (Lebanon, 1912) 461 Sarah Büssow-Schmitz 3.08 Henry Steel Olcott: The Buddhist Catechism (India, 1881/1908) 472 Sven Bretfeld and Helmut Zander 3.09 Hermann Cohen: Germanness and Judaism (Germany, 1916) 486 Görge K. Hasselhoff and Knut Martin Stünkel 3.10 Max Müller: Chips from a German Workshop (England, 1867) 503 Arie L. Molendijk 3.11 Carrying the Gospel to All the Non-Christian World (Resolution of the World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh) (Scotland, 1910) 512 Christoph Auffarth and Marvin Döbler Index 527

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Volume Introduction

Conceptual Framework and Overall Aims of the Volume

In his history of the “Birth of the Modern World”, C. A. Bayly describes a tendency towards greater architectural uniformity of religious buildings throughout Eurasia, leading to a dominance of “the Arabic mosque style” as well as the “central Indian style of Hindu temple” and the “late Qing Confucian temple style” in the later nineteenth century. He goes on to show that this “diffusion of styles” was the result of contact, although not necessarily “a reaction to the expansion of Christendom”.1 This observation beautifully illustrates a phenomenon the extent of which may be contested,2 but which cannot be completely denied: the emergence of what has alternately been termed a ‘global religious system’ or ‘global religious field’3 in the wake of historical developments during the high tide of imperialism, i.e. the decades around 1900. To the degree that we can make out a globally shared understanding of what ‘religion’ means, of how to apply the label ‘religious community,’ and of how to argue about ‘religious freedom,’ this shared understanding results from events and discourses of that period. Given the secularisation processes that have—although in widely different ways and far from irreversibly—accompanied modernisation processes world-wide, it does not appear self-explanatory that religion has emerged as one of the primary issues of conflict and contestation on a transnational and transregional scale today. A closer look at the religious developments around the turn of the nineteenth century can help us to better understand the undiminished importance of religion and the different but commensurate roles played by religion in contemporary societies all over the world. 1  Christopher A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 361. 2  Jürgen Osterhammel, for instance, has qualified some of Bayly’s statements in the chapter on “Religion” of his The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century, trans. Patrick Camiller (Oxford and Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014). 3  The former term has been used extensively by Peter Beyer, Religions in Global Society (New York: Routledge, 2006). In the collaborative research group from which this publication project arose (see below), we prefer to speak of the ‘continuous emergence’ of the global religious field in order to emphasise that it is not stable, not essential, and socially constructed; see Volkhard Krech, “From Religious Contact to Scientific Comparison and Back: Some Methodological Considerations on Comparative Perspectives in the Science of Religion,” in The Dynamics of Transculturality. Concepts and Institutions in Motion, eds. Antje Flüchter, Jivanta Schöttli (Wiesbaden: Springer, 2015), 39–72, 63.

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In speaking of ‘religion,’ we are aware of the pitfalls of imposing the term as an analytical category on a differently structured past. Much important scholarship has warned of the essentialising, anachronistic qualities of the term as a generic singular, especially when used without proper awareness of its historical genealogies, its Christian baggage, and its changing significance depending on the episteme in the context of which it is applied.4 At the same time, a considerable body of (mostly recent) scholarly work suggests that the Western term ‘religion’ as a generic singular has a pedigree stretching back to the Enlightenment,5 to the Middle Ages or even to antiquity,6 and that rather than ‘religion’ being a purely modern Western invention, religious plurality and contact have given rise to functional equivalents of this term in other times and places as well.7 Be that as it may, there is no doubt that societies around the globe today make use of enunciations of a sedimented name ‘religion,’ sharing a framework of its understanding that also constitutes the basis for contesting it. This volume intends to contribute to such a better understanding of the historical roots of today’s religious situation from the perspective of entangled history, presuming—and attempting to illustrate—that the religious field as it presents itself today is the result of co-evolution, of complex interactions 4  For a culmination of this line of questioning the term in the assertion that it is ‘academic fiction,’ see Russell McCutcheon, Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). For a more differentiated argument that positions ‘religion’ within specific discourses, thus safeguarding the term for academic inquiry while evading its hermeneutical fallacies, see Kocku von Stuckrad, “Reflections on the Limits of Reflection: An Invitation to the Discursive Study of Religion,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 22 (2010), 156–169. 5  As most recently argued by Guy S. Stroumsa, A New Science: The Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010). 6  See most prominently Ernst Feil, Religio: Die Geschichte eines neuzeitlichen Grundbegriffes vom Frühchristentum bis zur Reformation, 4 vols (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986– 2007). For an augmentation of his argument concerning uses of ‘religio’ in Roman imperial times, which sees even more ‘modern’ connotations already present, see Reinhold Glei and Stefan Reichmuth, “Religion between Last Judgement, Law, and Faith: Koranic dīn and its rendering in Latin translations of the Koran,” Religion 42/2 (2012), 247–271. 7  See e.g. Reinhold Glei and Stefan Reichmuth, op. cit.; Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz, Zur Ausdifferenzierung eines autonomen Bereichs “Religion” in asiatischen Gesellschaften des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts. Das Beispiel der Mongolen, Akademievorträge vol. 16 (Bern: Schweizerische Akademie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften, 2007); Christoph Kleine, “Zur Universalität der Unterscheidung religiös/säkular: Eine systemtheoretische Betrachtung,” in Religionswissenschaft. Ein Studienbuch, ed. Michael Stausberg (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012), 65–80.

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and “relations of reciprocal reinvention” between Asian and European intellectuals.8 It does so by presenting a selection of relevant source texts, written in the decades around 1900 by members of a wide array of countries, cultures and religious traditions from all over the Eurasian continent. Juxtaposing reflections on religious issues from such widely different sources, the collection is intended to illustrate entangled history from the angle of religious dynamics: The source texts assembled here may refer to local conditions and events, but the concerns underlying them were largely global in nature, since religious communities everywhere had to respond to the same (or at least corresponding) major challenges. Even under seemingly contrary conditions, as in the case of colonising and colonised countries, the intensified political, cultural and religious contacts—as well as some basic cultural trends brought about by the broader historical developments—served to create a confluence of the major issues with which religious communities and their representatives had to cope. We will detail these shared challenges below. To be sure, the reactions themselves, the ideas, and the methods with which authors attempted to tackle these challenges differed according to the concrete historical situation ‘on the ground,’ to the specific group the authors belonged to, and to their individual creativity. One of the aims of this volume is to convey an impression of the wide range of possible answers and strategies of coping through which the religious dynamics of the period in question were played out, and at the same time allow for the discovery of—sometimes astonishing—structural similarities within or beyond these differences. The collection may thus serve as a material basis for the development of however tentative typologies of (the effects of) religious contact. At the same time, however, the presentation of the source texts—with substantial introductions and footnotes added by the chapter authors—aims at providing the means for a nuanced understanding of the specific context from which each particular reaction arose.

Shared Issues

We have chosen for this undertaking the era when the aggressive expansion of European powers reached its apex, the decades before World War I. Yet, since 8  See David Chidester, Empire of Religion: Imperialism and Comparative Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 18. The phrase is contained in a very useful, concise review of recent Western scholarship on the co-production of ‘religion’ between Asia and Europe, pp. 16–18. Thanks are due to our anonymous reviewer for pointing us to this work.

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the dynamics and effects of the imperialist expansion spread over the Eurasian continent in ripples and waves rather than evenly, time lags in analogous developments had to be taken into account. We have therefore expanded the time scope to include the decades up to World War II, when the system of direct colonial rule finally crumbled and, arguably, with it the hegemony of the Western civilisational model. During the roughly seventy years covered by the source texts in this volume, imperialist encroachments of the non-Western world brought in their wake two very different phenomena which, however, often had combined effects on religious traditions: an impetus for nation building along the organisational and socio-psychological lines of the colonialist states, and an expansion of Christianity (especially in its Protestant forms) on an unprecedented scale. Both sides of the unequal power balance faced the question how the power surplus of the imperialist states was related to the Christian creed. In many of the states and fledgling nations that found themselves under imperialist threat or dominion, religious and other intellectual leaders regarded Christianity as the spiritual formula behind the economic and military success and the seeming political strength and unity of the Western powers, and wondered how best to emulate these perceived strong points of Christianity without giving up the essence of their own traditions. For others, the secret behind the success of Western nations consisted not in the substance of religion or inner-religious structures but in a specific Western relationship between religion and the state, often summed up with the catch phrases ‘freedom of religion’ and ‘separation of religion and state.’ This relationship was, however, highly contested in the West itself. Secularisation processes, which owed their existence to a large degree to the rising awareness of non-Christian, non-monotheistic religiosity brought about by early modern European expansion, had not come to a close by the time of imperialism, and the resulting reconfigurations of the place of religion within state and society were not uniform throughout the Western world, secularism (or laïcité) playing a far larger ideological role in some countries than in others. While non-Western (religious) actors often felt threatened by the encroachment of a seemingly hegemonic Western civilisational model, the forces that had set this encroachment in motion, together with the unforeseen effects of expansion, in turn created enormous tensions within Western civilisation itself. These internal contradictions notwithstanding, the renewed upsurge of Christian (especially Protestant) missions in the nineteenth century was a major factor in spreading an image of Western modernity in which organised religion played a central role. Missionary social institutions, be it hospitals, orphanages, or schools, the semi-public space of church congregations, and Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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indeed missionary activity itself became hallmarks of a truly modern religion. Even for cultures that had long traditions of religious plurality, the advent of this form of Christianity entailed therefore more than just adding one more choice to an already variegated ‘market of religions’; it dynamised the religious field as such and intensified inter-religious competition. Conversely, non-Western religions entered the European religious horizon, often being brought back home by those very missionaries who had set out to spread their own religion abroad, and often in a form already somewhat adapted to contemporary needs (as in Suzuki’s formulation of Zen Buddhism). Christianity in Europe thus suddenly awoke to a greatly amplified competition on its home ground. Finally, an issue that was of concern to religious thinkers all over the Eurasian continent was the rise of science as the leading mode of reasoning and of accruing knowledge, and the new education systems that came in its wake. The importance of science was undeniable in an age when economic and military power was increasingly based on technological superiority, and religious traditions that had functioned as the main reservoirs of knowledge and education in the past now needed to reconfigure their place in the order of knowledge. While these epistemic ruptures appeared more suddenly and thus forcefully in non-Western cultures, the relationship of religion and science was one of the themes that European religious thinkers shared with their counterparts in other parts of the world, even if the strategies of coping with this problematic differed widely due to divergent initial conditions.

Regional Differences

Although the aim of this sourcebook is to illustrate the entanglement of history and the commonality of issues in Europe and Asia during the period in question, differences in conditions and responses should in no way be glossed over. European nations were the carriers of imperialist aggression, and were at the height of exuberant self-confidence in the decades leading up to World War I. Framing the colonialist enterprise as ‘the burden of the white man’ allowed them to maintain a discourse of superiority even within the realms of ethics and religion. However, the shock of the Great War forced wider parts of the public to re-think this civilisational self-image (self-critical voices had not been absent before, but had not been able to dominate the discourse). Missionaries and the knowledge they transmitted to their home bases could contribute both to self-aggrandisement and to its demolishing; concerning the latter, the increased awareness of religious alternatives noted above played a decisive role. Although, by the late nineteenth century, Europe Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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had of course already accrued three hundred years of experience with religious plurality outside of Europe, the developments during these centuries had enormously changed the conditions under which this plurality could be navigated. The increasing factual separation of religion and state, secularism as political ideology, and a general questioning of religiosity as such served to de-stabilise the religious situation in a way that created divergent and controversial new appraisals of religion and religions. One significant outcome of this new wave of reflecting on religion was the onset of a systematic comparative study of religion, a development that spread to the different regions of Asia only much later. Certainly, another major reason behind the emergence of religious studies in Europe was the need to maintain bureaucratic control over different religious communities in the colonies, including rendering such groups and strata as religious communities that had hitherto been amorphous or hardly understood. In the regions that were the main victims of European colonialism, South and Southeast Asia, such imperial control of religious life led to stricter boundaries of ‘religion.’ But the regulatory framework also provided areas for self-assertion, in which newly and re-configured religious movements emerged, often in combination with awakening nationalism. This is especially true of British India, where all major movements seeking national independence during the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries identified strongly either with Islam or some reconstituted version of Hinduism—indeed, ‘Hinduism’ was consciously created in the period under investigation here as a result of the encounter with Western imperialism and its concomitant new forms of knowledge. The recent inter-religious strife and rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party to national prominence attest to how tenuous the secularist compromise was that took shape in the modern nation state of India beginning in the nineteenth century. Another conspicuous aspect of the dynamics of religion in modern South Asia picked up in the chapters below is its intimate connection with social reform. The relationship between (Hindu) religion and caste was constantly renegotiated under the influence of globally circulating new forms of religious knowledge. In the Middle East and the Islamic world in general, the main area of contestation was the loss of political and economic control vis-à-vis the imperialist powers. This loss occurred in areas that came under direct colonial rule and in formally independent empires alike; it was sensed not only by the ruling classes but also by communal groups. A certain loss of legitimacy of religion in its institutional connection with political power ensued, since this entangled structure had proven too weak to keep Western domination at bay. A promi-

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nent result was that the role of religion as the primary reservoir of knowledge was called into question. The reconfiguration of religious authority in the modern world has vexed Muslim intellectuals since that period. Still, religion also served as a medium of resistance; rampant reform movements, while adapting structures and ideas from the West, were more often than not part of this struggle. As the religiously pluralistic Ottoman Empire lost more and more of its predominantly non-Muslim territories, emphasising the Muslim character of the remaining dominion and the ruler buttressed the attempts to consolidate Ottoman rule. At the same time, the conflicting strategies of resistance worked to reinforce religious and confessional divides. East Asia did not experience full colonisation by Western powers, yet had to deal with Western economic and military aggression (and China and Korea soon with the Japanese version of this aggression). Pressure to adapt to the Western civilisational model was accordingly high; through successful implementation of such adaptations, Japan gained the status of the only nonWestern colonialist power during the decades before and after the turn of the century. Perceived Western strength and the imposition of a new world order created a sense of humiliation that fed into discourses of self-reflection and self-assertion. The Western concept of religion and the model presented by missionary Christianity became one of the major areas of contestation, not only when dealing with the West politically (as in the negotiations of religious freedom and extraterritorial rights for missionaries), but also as part of the debate about the most promising paths to self-strengthening. In China and Korea, the age-old tension within Confucianism between secular, especially bureaucratic knowledge and a quasi-religious legitimation of power and elite status served to complicate the interpretation of the Western concept of religion. At the same time, it facilitated a quick transition from ‘religion’ to ‘science’ as the guiding concept in modernisation efforts. Since Confucianism played much less of a role in Japan, different solutions to the religion conundrum were formulated there, most conspicuously the construction of State Shinto, which, although easily recognisable as ‘religion,’ was ironically kept outside the legal fold of ‘religion’ so as to safeguard it from the demands of ‘freedom of religion.’ The new political role of religion, together with the shared East Asian tradition of a rich and comparatively harmonious religious plurality, served to create another phenomenon that again became common to all three East Asian countries: the rise of new religions. While other world regions also saw their share of them, East Asia (and especially Japan) has remained a hotbed for the formation of new religions, Falun Gong and Aum Shinrikyō being only the most well-known recent examples.

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The Sources

What we have offered so far are only the most general outlines of the commonalities and differences of the religious situation on the Eurasian continent around 1900. Many details remain to be explored, and the sources given in this book can hopefully offer some starting points for discussing these issues in the classroom and beyond.9 Given that the aim of this collection is to offer material for exploring the varied responses to shared issues, we have arranged the sources neither chronologically nor according to region, but have grouped them thematically. Our three sections are devoted to the three major challenges to which religious communities were exposed at the time, briefly outlined above: science and its consequences for the order of knowledge; imperialism and its consequences for religious politics; and the turbulences in local or regional religious fields created by an increased religious plurality. Of course, the source texts are not necessarily limited to only one of these issues; in some, all of them are addressed concomitantly. However, most of the sources foreground one of the three major challenges palpably enough that assignment to the sections necessitated no debate. Still, we encourage users of the sourcebook to look for materials of interest across the sections. In selecting the source texts, we have attempted to strike a balance between representative and original items. For each region and each issue, we wanted to present a broad spectrum of responses, and not restrict the voices to be heard to those which proved to be victorious within their society. Well-known, even ‘canonical’ texts are thus found side by side with texts that scholarship has rarely taken note of before. Some of the source texts were written in English originally; almost all others were translated from their original language into English by our contributors, with footnotes added wherever thought necessary

9  There exist, of course, numerous earlier publications that provide students and scholars with relevant sources from many of the regions covered in this book, be it the by now ‘classical’ sourcebooks on Asian civilisations edited by William de Bary and others, Sources of Japanese Tradition, Sources of Indian Tradition (both New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), Sources of Chinese Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960) and the follow-up sourcebooks on Korean Civilization, the Princeton Religions of . . . in Practice series, or the sourcebooks edited by Charles Kurzman and others on Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook (Oxford University Press, 1998) and Modernist Islam, 1840–1940 (Oxford University Press, 2002). We hope, though, that the special focus of the present volume will prove useful in its own right.

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for better comprehension.10 The texts are presented in full where their original length allowed to do so, but some consist of excerpts from longer works which have been done with an eye to the themes of interest to this sourcebook. In order to provide the necessary context and to make the texts accessible to readers outside the respective field of area studies, each source text features an introduction authored by the translator(s) which is also meant to serve as a reading aid to students. The introductions to our three sections offer additional approaches to the source texts by explicating the section theme, highlighting some commonalities of and differences between the source texts contained in the respective section, and pointing out textual and historical interdependences where appropriate. Acknowledgments This volume owes its existence to numerous contributors without whose linguistic and scholarly expertise such an undertaking would have been impossible, and for whose cooperation and patience we are deeply grateful. It was initiated by a research group within the Käte Hamburger Kolleg (KHK) “Dynamics in the History of Religions between Asia and Europe,” a research centre operating since 2008 and financed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, whose financial support we gratefully acknowledge. Christine Isabel Schröder at the KHK, Andreas Koyama at the University of Heidelberg’s Department of Japanese Studies, and Pierre Motylewicz at the Martin Luther University’s Department for Arabic and Islamic Studies (HalleWittenberg) have contributed considerably to the completion of the manuscript with their painstaking redaction work, the last phase of which has been funded by the Johann-Wilhelm-Fück-Stiftung in Halle. Manuel Pachurka at the Ruhr University’s Department for Oriental and Islamic Studies (Bochum) helped to prepare the index. We are also grateful to an anonymous reviewer for his or her most insightful and helpful comments which contained important suggestions on how to better present our work. The KHK not only provided facilities and amenities for our cooperation, it was also the place where the main idea behind this volume—to look at religious developments through 10  There are three exceptions to this: the chapters 2.07 on Moḥammad Ḥoseyn Naʿīnī, 1.05 on Chaophraya Thiphakorawong, and chapter 3.04 on R. G. Bhandarkar, use already published translations by other scholars; the introductions for these chapters, however, were written for the present sourcebook by Katajun Amirpur (2.07), Sven Trakulhun (1.05), and Dermot Killingley (3.04).

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the lens of inter-religious relations—was developed and put into research practice. We are thus deeply indebted to the KHK’s director and main initiator, Volkhard Krech, as well as to the numerous colleagues who have worked with us in the KHK and shared their wisdom and expertise, be it as fellows and collegiates or as research assistants. As cannot be otherwise with a book exploring entangled history, this volume is the result of entangled research. Marion Eggert

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Section 1 Religion and the Order of Knowledge

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Introduction to Section 1 This section deals with religious traditions in their capacity as reservoirs of knowledge and looks at developments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century from that angle. Although the geographic scope of this volume includes a multitude of countries, cultures, and religions, there were transregional dynamics at that time that generated analogous challenges throughout all of Eurasia. Two common problems were the steady increase of information about other cultures due to the early thrust of globalisation, and the success of empirical science made tangible in technological advances. They contributed to a pluralisation and prompted a consolidation and reduction of knowledge at the same time. These challenges affected patterns in the division and arrangement of knowledge that were specific for religious traditions. Such orders of knowledge result from a confluence of various factors: they are shaped by the production and transmission of knowledge, the ideological function that religious knowledge serves in a given society, the status of the groups associated with its explication or application, etc. Becoming entangled in the tightening global relations tested the existing orders of knowledge everywhere and played into ongoing inherent dynamics. The resulting developments share some broad tendencies. Their description and the analysis of the involved processes, especially regarding the aspect of interrelation, are still in the making.1 The following pages suggest some guiding questions and venture points to read, compare, and discuss the source texts gathered in this section. Firstly, the source texts should be understood before the background of colonial power relations (see also section 2). For example, the opening of Korea and China to Protestant missionaries that contributed to far reaching conceptual changes in Confucianism was the result of grave economic and military pressures. Religious and educational reforms were implemented in defence against imperialist encroachment, as measures of self-preservation in formally independent countries, as part of colonial policies in occupied or protected territories, in pursuit of national independence, or as a means to unify and strengthen the colonising homeland vis-à-vis its imperial competitors. Accordingly, there is a sense of urgency, excitement, and danger in many of 1  For an attempt at a broad overview of this issue see, for example, the respective chapters “Knowledge: Growth, Concentration, Distribution” and “Religion” in Osterhammel’s history of the nineteenth century: Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century, trans. Patrick Camiller, (Oxford and Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014).

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the texts, as their authors engaged in discussions about religion, education, or science in reaction to the political challenges of their times. One can secondly ask about the persons who wrote and the people who read the source texts. All their authors were well educated (this can be safely assumed even for the originator of the anonymous text in 1.01—Roetz) and their readers were too, in all likelihood. This means that the texts presented here were part of elite debates; they say little about and were probably of little interest for the majority of people in their daily lives. What they offer is a glimpse at the tip of the ice berg rather than a broad panorama. Yet, this does not necessarily preclude a text from being consequential. Chaophraya Thiphakorawong (1813–1870) was a high ranking member of Siam’s government, whose ideas were translated into administrative policy and had a great effect on many people (1.05—Trakulhun). The nature and character of the educated circles who were the likely audience of the source texts differed in each context. Only some texts were intended for a particular group of people, like Muhammad Iqbal’s (1877–1938) lecture to the Aristotelian Society in London (2.04—Syed), while most were addressed, at least rhetorically, to a general public. The structure and composition of wider public spheres was in flux at the time and there were many consequential developments in transportation and communication. The size of the public that this section’s source texts could possibly reach was largely determined by two factors, literacy rates and the number of printed copies that a publication could reasonably have, both of which had a tendency to rise throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, although at varying paces and starting from very different levels. When Muḥammad ʿAbduh’s (1849–1905) The Theology of Unity was published in 1898 for instance, only 6% of the Egyptian population older than seven years could read and write, whereas texts published at about the same time in Japan, Germany, or England were legible to almost every adult citizen. A third venture point is the education of the source texts’ authors. Almost all of the non-European authors enjoyed what in today’s terms would be primary instruction with a traditional and religious character.2 But that description 2  Ouyang Jingwu (1871–1943), Yi Tonhwa (1884–n.d.), Gendun Chopel (1903–1951), Yūsuf al-Nabhānī (1849–1932), Ḥusayn al-Jisr al-Ṭarābulusī (1845–1909), and Muḥammad ʿAbduh. The main exception is Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), who received a modern education; as to Muhammad Iqbal, it is only his early education in a mosque school that fits the qualification above, he later went on to study at the Scotch Mission College and other institutions. I have no information on Necmeddīn ʿĀrif’s (1871–1926) and Chaophraya Thiphakorawong’s biographies of learning.

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would have made little sense in the context of their time, because they experienced the kind of tutoring that was usual and normal for their homelands and family backgrounds. That could mean either private instruction within the family home (al-Nabhānī), in monasteries, other religious institutions, or in schools affiliated with them (Chopel, Iqbal, al-Nabhānī, al-Jisr, ʿAbduh), or public schooling in government institutions (Jingwu, Tonhwa). At the time that most of the authors started to learn (i.e. early to mid-nineteenth century), the institutional patterns of primary education were quite diverse, and only in later decades would they converge toward compulsory general education controlled by the state.3 That model had first been implemented in some German states since the eighteenth century and was later adopted by other countries throughout the nineteenth century (e.g. France and Japan). But as schooling was originally regarded to be a venue of religious institutions and private initiative in England, the Middle East, and parts of Asia, governments took control and financial responsibility for schools only gradually. As to higher learning and research, modern academic culture took shape in Western societies, and it was there that the spectrum of disciplines evolved that is largely valid until today. It came to replace prevalent curricula in which theology (or other studies of authoritative texts) had a central and integrating function. Such scholastic models had been a common characteristic of higher education throughout much of Eurasia for centuries. Their gradual demise by substitution, reform, and specialisation is one of the broad tendencies of that age. The curricular shift went along with the evolution and spread of what has since become the quintessential institutional setting of science, the modern research university. It should be noted however, that the modern university as a place for teaching and research had only been established in Prussian Berlin at the very beginning of the nineteenth century, while most existing universities continued to teach scholastic curricula. The new British universities in India were mere centres for examination. The main venues for scientific research, at least for the first few decades of the period of interest here, were private circles, clubs, and academies. The case of Ouyang Jingwu illustrates the relevance of a fourth question: for what kind of profession and social position did their education qualify the authors of the source texts? Ouyang Jingwu started his education in preparation for the imperial exams, i.e. within the centralised system of teaching and testing that existed in China and Korea until about the end of the nineteenth century. The state bureaucracy was exclusively recruited through these 3  For an attempt at a digest of developments worldwide, see Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, s. v. “Education” by Robert F. Arnove, last access April 17, 2013.

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examinations which focused on the literary aspects of Neo-Confucian texts. This system fostered a homogenous outlook among the scholar-officials who graduated from it. Had he continued on that path, Ouyang Jingwu might have become, just like his father, part of the Chinese administrative elite. Due to the organic unity of Neo-Confucian scholarship and state bureaucracy the abolishment of the imperial examinations in Korea (1894) and China (1905) instigated drastic changes in the composition of the countries’ elites: within a few decades, Neo-Confucian scholars lost their prestige and much of their social basis in China and Korea. Ouyang Jingwu, however, had at some point changed his course of education and sought instruction from a Buddhist layman, who a few years later founded a teaching monastery that Jingwu was to take over together with the associated Buddhist printing press after the latter’s death. One can argue whether the attempt to separate Shinto rituals from Buddhism in Japan’s Meiji era was an incision of similar gravity and abruptness.4 In most areas, however, transformations were slower. Studying Islamic jurisprudence at the al-Azhar in Egypt had for long qualified students to serve in virtually any position in the judiciary. But since the 1830s, more and more exemptions from the general competence of Muslims jurists serving in Sharia Courts were made, until general judicial competence was finally transferred to the new National Courts in 1883. They applied codified laws and therefore required a different kind of training that was taught at another new institution, the School of Law founded in 1886, which later became part of Egypt’s first university. The profession of the modern lawyer thus emerged next to and in augmentation of Islamic jurisprudence, the applicability of which—and with it the prospects of its students—shrank to the realm of family law, inheritance and endowments. Islamic law was redefined by circumscription and restriction. A fifth point regards the dimension of inter-religious and inter-cultural contact. All source texts deal with some kind of foreign element, be it a Buddhist scholar contemplating scientific discoveries made in Western Europe, an English theologian writing about Hinduism, or a constitutional monarchist from China aiming to restructure Confucianism in emulation of Protestant Christianity. Looking at the way that the authors learned about their topics reveals a process of formalisation regarding the channels for the transmission of such knowledge. Information that had originally been gathered through individual interest and initiative was later being taught as part of a standard program in institutionalised settings. For several of the authors who had received a traditional education, acquiring knowledge about scientific discoveries or 4  See the chapters containing Japanese source texts in this volume 2.02—Krämer, 3.02— LoBreglio, 3.03—Findley.

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other religions would require to travel, to learn a foreign language, to associate with certain teachers or persons. The Tibetan scholar Gendun Chopel, who travelled widely in India and acquired several new languages to that end, is just one example. Sometimes it was governments that promoted such endeavours through funding and special programs, such as the Japanese Iwakura Mission (1871–73) to Europe and North America. It is often just a matter of a generation or two for institutionalisation to take effect. The Siamese minister Chaophraya Thiphakorawong enacted school reforms that were informed, among other things, by what he had gathered about modern science from his personal acquaintances with Christian missionaries. The next generation of Siamese pupils learned about it in school as part of their regular curriculum. Rashīd Riḍā (1865–1935, see 2.06–Reichmuth), to give a second example, was influenced by two figures who had exerted considerable individual effort to learn about modern science and Europe. He was a pupil in a reform school founded by Ḥusayn al-Jisr and was later influenced by Muḥammad ʿAbduh. But like his contemporaries in China and Japan, Riḍā and his generation could already rely on a host of translations and relevant literature in their own languages so that individual travels and language skills had become less essential. Missionary schools had been a considerable factor in that development.5 Margrit Pernau has described the process of institutionalisation in nineteenth-century North India and shows that it was accompanied by educational specialisation.6 Next to schools and colleges that aimed to train the future staff of the colonial bureaucracy, other centres of learning were founded and specialised in educating Muslim preachers and theologians. Only at this point, in a context of differentiating areas of expertise, does it make sense to talk about religious education. The distinction between secular and religious subjects was certainly known before, but neither was it a central one for individual careers nor did it necessarily demand institutional differentiation, as the swaying curricular orientations of the Madrasa Rahimiya in Delhi throughout 5  Missionary schools played an avant-garde role in the development of a national school system in China, Dan Cui, The Cultural Contribution of British Protestant Missionaries and British-American Cooperation to China’s National Development During the 1920s (Lanham: University Press of America, 1998). And the introduction of a civil education system in the Ottoman Empire in 1869 was in direct response to the opening of missionary colleges in the 1860s, Michael Provence, “Ottoman Modernity, Colonialism, and Insurgency in the Interwar Arab East,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 43 (2011), 205–225. 6  Margrit Pernau, Bürger mit Turban: Muslime in Delhi im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck Ruprecht, 2008).

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the eighteenth and the Delhi College in the early to mid-nineteenth century show. Similar developments can be described for other contexts. But whereas educational differentiation is easy to detect in the case of higher learning for Muslims in North India, because it was associated with the establishment of new institutions, it is more difficult to trace when it was one and the same institutional pattern that gradually transformed itself, as was the case with the mosque-adjacent kuttāb-schools in Egypt.7 In Europe, the process of institutionalisation had brought forth specialised personnel and bodies for the generation and transmission of knowledge about non-European cultures in the academic sector, in economic enterprises such as the Dutch and British East India companies, and of course in the colonial administrations and governments. Belletristic literature and art, missionary reports, newspapers, magazines, and exhibitions all contributed to the vast popularisation of such knowledge. The source text by Helena Blavatsky (1.12— Viswanathan) opens up an interesting perspective on that process. Another—the sixth—angle is to consider the terminology of the source texts. Many resort to neologisms and almost all chapters in this section include discussions of the terms the authors chose to relate their thoughts with, in ways that were apparently not self-evident and demanded explanations. Neologisms for and discussions of religion were frequent in East Asia. It is well established that today’s understanding of religion has been formulated by European intellectuals in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Religion, in that European sense, is transcendental and faith-centred, it is typically based on scripture, relates both to communal practices and individual consciousness, and it occupies a realm distinct from politics.8 This concept did not match the prevalent traditions in East Asia, and some of the ensuing debates and concurrent policies in East Asia are reflected in the source texts of this volume. The terminology discussed in the three source texts by European authors frequently includes borrowed terms, as the texts discuss Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism within Christian theology (Rowland Williams, 1817–1870) and in popular culture (Helena Blavatsky, 1831–1891 and Ludwig Ankenbrand, 1888– 1971). The latter texts connect an interest in Oriental religion with a critique of the cultural and religious situation in Europe, which is a characteristic combination for the decades around the turn of the century. Terms denoting science, 7  Mona Russel, “Competing, Overlapping, and Contradictory Agendas: Egyptian Education Under British Occupation, 1882–1922,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 21, no. 1–2 (2001), 50–60. 8  Russell T. McCutcheon, Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

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especially but not exclusively the natural sciences, are a topic of discussion in source texts from everywhere but Europe.9 That does not mean that there were no debates about science and religion in Europe at that time, but they entailed less conceptual and terminological frictions than in other parts of the world, because the bulk of research of that time was being produced and formulated in European languages and cultural terms.10 The last point regards the production of knowledge, which can be questioned as to its aims and methods. For instance, several of the Islamic source texts contain epistemic discussions aimed at reconfiguring the relation of the Islamic tradition’s principle method of attaining authoritative knowledge through textual interpretation of revealed scripture vis-à-vis the methods used to arrive at the scientific discoveries and academic theories that are commented upon and referred to in the source texts. There have always been parts of life and areas of knowledge in which dogma, religion and revelation mattered little and that caused frictions with longstanding interpretations of authoritative texts. What several authors reflect on as new is the high degree of certainty that they acknowledge scientific methods to attain, which leads them to consider the two methods’ scopes of applicability. Al-Jisr tries to accommodate for scientific knowledge within the traditional order of Muslim theology, while Muḥammad ʿAbduh drastically curtails the realm to which traditional scriptural hermeneutics should be applied; and in an example of science trumping traditional hermeneutics, Muḥammad Iqbal (similar to Vivekananda) wants to model Sufi religious experience on empirical methods. Source texts from East Asia show a different dynamic in the epistemic development of Confucianism. The supremacy of moral guidance lies at the heart of Neo-Confucianism, which made it a predominantly this-worldly endeavour that judged the relevance of knowledge accordingly. Up until the late eighteenth century the encounter of Korean sages with Western knowledge was marked by a selective interest in its secular elements and little interest in its

9  Ouyang (1.02), Yaroe (1.03), Vivekananda (1.06), al-Jisr (1.09), Kang (2.01). It should be stressed that in addition to the natural sciences, findings of the humanities were also influential. The historical and comparative perspective that informed terms like ‘civilisation’ and related theories is reflected in several source texts in this chapter: Yi Tonhwa (1.03); Chopel (1.04), Iqbal (1.07), ʿAbduh (1.10), ʿĀrif (1.11), Blavatsky (1.12), Williams (1.14). 10  The specifically Western origin of modern science is stressed in Toby Huff’s comparative study of science in China, Europe and Muslim countries: Toby E. Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003).

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religious dimension.11 But for Yi Tonhwa (1884–n.d.) and several other writers that he cites, it is transcendental beliefs and abstract ideals that are the main concern. This reorientation shows in calls for the reform of Confucianism as well as in movements that led to the creation of new religions, such as the new, syncretic Chondoism supported by Yi Tonhwa. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century brought about consequential transformations on a global scale. The role that sages, priests and monks, Confucian and Islamic scholars played in their societies changed, as the pluralisation of knowledge and (for some regions unprecedented) religious diversity tested the existing orders of knowledge. The source texts in this section were part of the ensuing discussions, and the strategies suggested by their authors range from blunt rejection (Ouyang Jingwu in 1.02; Yūsuf al-Nabhānī in 1.09) and forthright assertion (Gendun Chopel in 1.04; Ḥusayn al-Jisr in 1.09) to all-out acceptance (the anonymous author in 1.01; Ludwig Ankenbrand in 1.13), with many shades of adaption, reform and accommodation in between (e.g. Muḥammad ʿAbduh in 1.10; Swami Vivekananda in 1.06). The respective chapters invite comparisons between regions, cultures, and religions that are not studied together often enough, which can thus help to shed light on the multifaceted processes that explain why it meant something entirely different to be a Confucian scholar, Buddhist monk, or expert of Islamic law by the year 1940 than it had around 1860. Björn Bentlage

11  Marion Eggert, “ ‘Western Learning,’ religious plurality, and the epistemic place of ‘religion’ in early-modern Korea (eighteenth to early twentieth centuries),” Religion 42, no. 2 (2012): 299–318.

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1.01

Anonymous: Which One Is the Right Religion for China’s Future? (China, 1905) Introduction The following article was published in April 1905 in the Shanghai daily Zhong wai ribao (Universal Gazette) and reprinted one month later in Dongfang zazhi (Eastern Miscellany) magazine. Dongfang zazhi was a leading periodical for the modern minded politically interested urban audience. Founded in 1904, it supported the reform movement for the renewal of China after the country had become the plaything of imperialism at the end of the Qing dynasty. The ‘miscellaneous’ content of the magazine was arranged in several sections covering topics of current political concern like internal affairs (neiwu), foreign relations (waijiao), the military ( junshi), education ( jiaoyu), industry (shiye), business (shangwu), fiction (xiaoshuo), and, starting with the first issue and continuing until 1908 when the journal changed its appearance, religion (zongjiao). The existence of this section together with the fact that about 140 contributions dealing with zongjiao1 appeared in it underlines the importance of this historically new topic in the nation building debates at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century, and the effort that was entailed in adapting the modern, differentiated concept of religion. The looming breakdown of the Chinese empire and its falling victim to the Western colonial powers and even Japan had triggered an intense discussion about the reasons of the decay of the old order and the measures to be taken for strengthening the country again. In order to survive the onslaught of imperialism, China had to be turned into a strong nation like the successful Western states. Next to a comprehensive program of technical and industrial modernisation and institutional change, this entailed remoulding the mentality of the people paralysed by superstitious beliefs and to replace the multifaceted religious landscape by a unitary orientation. In this context, Kang Youwei, one of the main protagonists of the reform movement, had suggested to abolish the

1  Cf. the index of the journal under http://em.cp.com.cn/index.do.

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popular ‘illicit cults’ and to turn Confucianism into the state religion of China after the model of the Christian churches.2 This is the background against which Dongfang zazhi provided a platform for articles reprinted from other periodicals and original contributions on religious issues. The thematic spectrum ranges from current religious affairs, often in connection with the Christian mission, over the religious history of China and its impact on the Chinese mind, and the question whether Confucianism in particular should count as a religion at all, to the religious policy of the Western countries, e.g. the separation of state and church in France in 1905. Like many of his intellectual contemporaries, the unnamed author of the present article identifies the Chinese mentality as the main obstacle to a prosperous future of the country. The traditional religions count as unable to cure the ‘disease’ of China since they have degenerated into a chronic evil themselves. Their failure renders China helpless in the struggle for existence and domination that has set the standard for international politics after the victory of social Darwinism. Religion, sharply demarcated from ‘science’ (kexue), but close to the traditional teachings ( jiao), has lost its original power to provide a remedy against the law of the jungle, particularly in China. While other parts of the world, above all, the West, have become ‘rich and powerful’ by their creeds, China is ‘rotten to the highest degree.’ In order to enter the path of ‘progress,’ what is most urgently needed is a mental change which can only be brought about by the reorganisation of the religious field. Christianity is not an option for this task—to promote its practice in China would interfere with the c­ ountry’s ‘foreign relations,’ which probably refers to its strife for independence. Religion needs to be unified in Chinese terms with a renewed Confucianism cleared from all adulterating elements as its core. In some of its essential points, the article is typical of its time. It addresses religion within the political context of nation building and strengthening China. In doing so, it takes a top-down approach—the people with their beliefs and practices, still immersed in magic, become the mere object of religious policy. The ‘knowledgeable,’ the members of the educated elite, ‘choose’ which religion is best suited for the task and even ‘initiate’ a new religion if possible. This betrays an attitude that remains characteristic of the Chinese politician of the twentieth century: the attitude of the social engineer. It entails an instrumental take on religion that has a close affinity with the scientistic understanding of politics which the articles start out to attack. Heiner Roetz 2  See the chapter on Kang Youwei in this volume (2.01).

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Further Reading

Chen, Hsi-yuan. Confucian Encounters with ‘Religion’: Rejections, Appropriations, and Transformations. London: Routledge, 2007. Goossaert, Vincent. “1898: The Beginning of the End for Chinese Religion?” Journal of Asian Studies 65 (2006): 307–336. Goossaert, Vincent and David A. Palmer. The Religious Question in Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Nedostup, Rebecca. Superstitious Regimes: Religion and the Politics of Chinese Modernity. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2009. Yang, Mayfair Mei-hui. Chinese Religiosities: Afflictions of Modernity and State Formation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.



Source Text3

Everything in the universe, between heaven and man, can be included in one of two categories: first, the created things that exist naturally; second, the ideas thought up by humankind. The things that exist by nature are sound, light, chemical processes, electricity, the rules of logic and of mathematics, matter, and energy and so on. These things come into existence by themselves, they may be understood by wise men, but not be increased or diminished. The things that are thought up by the human mind are the likes of worship of insects and fish, earth and trees, the arts of the shamans, taboos and spells, as well as the four Vedas Rigveda, Yajurveda, Atharvaveda and Samaveda, the Buddhist sutras, the Six [Confucian] Classics, the two Testaments and the Quran. These things have been created artificially; they can be commonly believed, but not be commonly perceived. Teachings concerning the former are called ‘science,’ those concerning the latter are called ‘religion.’ In former times, science was weak and not able to influence society; the roots of all the different societies are in religion. But of late, the people of Europe and America have brought forward ever deeper evidences and explanations for science and thus been able to clearly evince the falsehood of the different religions. Therefore, the trust in religion is dwindling, and the power of science is increasing. This phenomenon has existed since the days of Napoleon I. When at last Darwin’s Origin of Species appeared, the world’s politicians and scholars have followed it as the mainstream and ceased to have different opinions. The religions have been utterly unable to stop this tide. The reasons for the success 3  “Lun zhongguo qiantu dang yong hezhong zongjiao,” Dongfang zazhi 5 (1905): 19–24.

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of the one and the downfall of the other are as follows: Scientific teachings are based on facts, they can be put to the test and their correctness proved under all circumstances. The teachings of religion consist of mere [lit.: empty] words, looking at them there is nothing to be seen, listening to them there is nothing to be heard, reaching out for them there is nothing to be touched. It is common for the human mind to believe that which one regards as true, so it is no wonder that people choose science over religion. However, if the logic of science is the truth, this implies that those with great strength exert their power, and this continues whether the creatures are aware of it or not. Darwin’s ‘struggle,’ when brought forward against this lordship of creation, is really just what Zhuangzi called ‘[the exertions of] a mosquito, a gnat.’4 This cruelty of the way of nature is hard to bear for humans. Therefore, the benign and wise men of antiquity have used all their capacities of knowledge, humaneness and courage to bring forward teachings that run counter to this way of nature. They had the best of intentions, and have taken utmost troubles, with deep thought and great creativity, and never retreated. Fortunately, in later generations there were those who made these teachings binding. From then on, the principle of the victory of the strong and the defeat of the weak was somewhat alleviated; the strong could not do everything they pleased, the weak were not completely annihilated. This was great luck for humanity. Today, it is opportune to uphold the truth of science in order to attack the pretence of religion; this is like howling with the wind, who would argue against it? But when one considers the situation after religion is gone, then the forces of evolution will be completely uncontrolled. It is comparable to a great flood: if the situation is beyond control, one will not be completely successful in keeping it back with dykes. However, to therefore pull down the dykes to please the floods will not be a fortunate decision. The same is true for revering science to the detriment of religion. Seen in this light, human communities cannot do without religion. This is a fixed rule. What needs to be enquired into is which kind of religion is appropriate for which kind of culture. Now, our China is rotten to the highest degree. Whether under the rule of the old law or the new law, everywhere this decay is visible. The knowledgeable all agree that this is the effect of our mentality. If the mentality doesn’t 4  Referring to Zhuang Zhou’s (ca. 350–280) criticism of the philosopher Hui Shi in Zhuangzi 33, see Burton Watson, The Complete Works of Chuang-tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), 377: “If we examine Hui Shih’s accomplishments from the point of view of the Way of Heaven and earth, they seem like the exertions of a mosquito or a gnat . . . He abused and dissipated his talents without ever really achieving anything!”

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change, nothing can be achieved. But what among all the things in the world is able to reform the mentality? Nothing but religion. So the question which religion would be best suited to salvage the minds of the Chinese is a problem of utmost priority that we need to discuss. Now, I will first elucidate which kinds of religion have brought about Chinese society of today; then I will enquire into today’s world religions, one after the other, to see which one of them is suitable to heal the illness of our country. Five teachings ( jiao) can be distinguished that the Chinese follow today: 1.

The Way of the Heavenly Master.5 (Branches of this are vulgar teachings like medicine, astrology, physiognomics, White Lotos, Eight Trigrams, Tibetan rites) 2. The Confucians (rujia) 3. Buddhism 4. Islam 5. Christianity (in the two teachings of Roman church and Lutheran church) Among these five religions, only the followers of Islam and Christianity don’t mix it with other creeds; as for the adherents of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism, it is difficult to definitely make out their affiliation. While it is still possible to make out the differences between Buddhism and Daoism, with the Confucians it is most difficult. For although Confucianism is called the national religion (guojiao) of China, the Chinese do not at all sincerely believe in it. (All religionists without exception revere the canonical writings bequeathed by the founders of the respective religion, reading them aloud on their knees, but in the case of the Religion of Confucius (kongjiao), the Four Books and Five Classics are always object to riddles, jokes and all kinds of merry-making, which would not be dared in other religions. This has probably started with the examination candidates.) If the scholar-officials are like this already, one can imagine what it is like with women and the lower classes. But as the Religion of Confucius could not be earnestly practiced, and as one encountered a world of machinations with a mind without learning and without discipline, one could not do without something [else] to rely on. Therefore, the Way of the Heavenly Master was used to fill up the lacuna. The Way of the Heavenly Master was completed by the Three Zhang,6 but in fact it can be traced back to the magicians who formed China’s old religion before Confucius. But even after 5  By and large, this refers to popular Daoism. 6  Zhang Daoling, Zhang Heng, and Zhang Lu (father, son and grandson), leaders of the Daoist theocratic movement Wudoumi at the end of the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE).

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the Religion of Confucius came into practise, there was no change in society’s trust in the magicians, up to today. The Boxer Uprising was not a hair different from Zhang Jiao’s [rebellion].7 When Buddhism came to the East, the theories of Mahayana were too sophisticated to be understood well, so it became a special discipline, which has been studied by only a few for two thousand years. The Hinayana united inseparately with the Way of the Heavenly Master.8 This is the reason that today, women and lowly folks in China call any demon or deity indiscriminately ‘pusa’ [Bodhisattva]. Therefore, there is no pure Confucianism left in China; there is always some Buddhism or Daoism mingled into it. From the emperor to the common people, everyone professes allegiance to Confucianism, but at the border between life and death, they all hope for salvation from Buddha or Laozi; this is the evidence. Now, religion is like a machinery where wheels and axles interplay with each other and that needs a unified make-up. If one and the same society makes indiscriminate use of different religions, then it is necessary to choose the one religion among them that is best suited to its culture. If the function of interplay is lost, that what is sought for cannot be achieved, and society will daily develop backwards. This is a common rule of religion. As China makes indiscriminate use of different religions, those with religion and those without religion are all harmed. Having no religion would be better than that. As it is, over the last two thousand and several hundred years, we have removed ourselves far from the original principles of Confucian religion. What permeates our outer appearance as well as our mentality is something completely else, but it is common and traditional usage to still call it Religion of Confucius. There are many people today who have their doubts about the Religion of Confucius, and this is obviously well-grounded; the Religion of Confucius indeed cannot but draw objections. But to be just, today’s situation is not of the sort that Confucius could have anticipated. Now Confucianism since Qin and Han times can be divided into three epochs that help to clarify the respective state of affairs: 1.

The dynasties Qin [221–206 BCE] and Han [206 BCE–220 CE] were the era of the rule of priests. 2. From the Three Kingdoms [220–280 CE] up to the Sui dynasty [581–618 CE] was the time of the rule of learned aristocrats. 7  Zhang Jiao (n.d.–184 CE), the leader of the Yellow Turban Rebellion. 8  This is a somewhat unconventional view of the development of Mahayana and Hinayana Buddhism in China—perhaps the two names should be interchanged.

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From the Tang dynasty [618–907 CE] up to today is the era of the rule of scholar-officials.

I speak of the ‘era of priests’ as people earnestly believed in the religion, and there was much talk about the mysterious. In name it was the Religion of Confucius, but in fact it was hybrid, not a pure Religion of Confucius. It very much resembled the Catholic Church, this is also a reason to speak of ‘priests.’ Since Xunzi, Dong Zhongshu and Liu Xiang,9 the highest positions in the two Han dynasties have been in the hands of scholars of the Confucian classics. Even the mothers and wives of the emperors used the classics. Together with the growing importance of the classics, more and more awkward explanations appeared. They spoke of golden pills and jade women, just as it would come from the mouth of [the ancient Confucians] themselves. What an error! Nevertheless, the endeavors and words of these people still had a fixed orientation, and they were not content before they had reached their goals according to the meaning of the classics. This is clearly visible from the rules of the Han how to serve the emperor and to withstand foreign threat. I speak of the ‘era of learned aristocrats’ because the high officials of the Wei and Jin dynasties all hailed from the noble families. They were cultivated and [emotionally] refined, but due to the brutal rulers and chaotic times, they could not stay on track, but rather pursued pleasure, opportunistically shirking their duties. In the beginning, this was nothing but the sagacity necessary to safeguard one’s own life, but with time it became a trend in society: those who did otherwise were looked upon as too worldly. With this lot, politics could not succeed. But these people still had their principles; these sons of nobility did not bring forward a habit of greed, lowliness and shamelessness. I speak of the ‘era of scholar officials,’ because these people get their posts not through mastery of learning transmitted by a master or through belonging to a tradition, but through being the lucky one within a large horde [of examination candidates] on a single day. Therefore, the lack of learning and of good conduct reached its historical climax. As those who were willing to toady to the examiners, they [later] of course did not resist the evils of the monarch. As those who were willing to compete enviously with their peers, they of course excluded all those who are not of their ilk. As those who were willing to pride themselves before their wives and concubines through the fame and riches attained on one day, they of course didn’t hesitate to harm the whole world. 9  Xunzi (ca. 310–230) is a Confucian of the late Zhou dynasty, Dong Zhongshu (179–104) and Liu Xiang (77–6 BC) are Confucians of the Western Han Dynasty. Dong Zhongshu in particular was one of the main protagonists of the Confucian bureaucratic state.

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If one traces the course of their lives, there was nothing they were not willing to do out of concern for their own profit. Everyone just turned into examination candidates. Han Yu was the one who invented this practice;10 after him, it became the common trend. He was almost thought of as replacing Confucius, but this is so unfathomably far removed from the Way of Confucius! And the tyrants of the Yuan [1271–1368] and Ming [1368–1644] dynasty were not only great robbers themselves, their ministers also were nothing but helping hands to great robbers. This way, it is impossible to regulate the world and reach Great Peace. As for the present dynasty, when I contemplate the holy intentions of the Kangxi and Yongzheng emperors,11 they always despised these people and were of the opinion that they lacked the refinement of religion, but at the time, the empire had just been settled, the view-points of Chinese and Manchu had not yet merged, and they could not but cater to [the scholar-officials]. By now, when the contact with foreign countries turned out to be a great danger to China, the officials’ ‘ability’ has become openly visible to all the world. I dare say that the days of the officials have ended. But even if the era of the officials is over, if those who replace them have nothing but the learning and knowledge of the officials, then the course of events can be easily guessed. Therefore, it is necessary to choose another, most suitable religion in order to build a trustworthy road into China’s future. Only then can the flaws in the mentality of the people be corrected, and only then can we speak of real politics. The Way of the Heavenly Master is the oldest and most prevalent [religion] in our country. But need it be said that its Way is harmful for the nation’s progress? Should the Religion of Confucius be practiced? This is already the national religion we practice. However, it has accumulated a history of malpractice as outlined above. Should Buddhism be practiced, or Catholicism, or Protestantism? Others have succeeded in becoming rich and powerful with these religions. But because it would involve foreign relations, it seems like it is not possible for us to practice them ourselves.

10  Han Yu (768–842) was a poet and essayist of the Tang dynasty and one of the founders of ‘Neo-Confucianism.’ It is not clear in which respect he is held responsible for the decay of the examination system. 11  Era names of two early Qing rulers (1662–1722 and 1723–1735).

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Thus it seems best to initiate another religion. But this is something for which the right person must appear, and I don’t presume to be able to presage this. Thus it seems best to reform the Religion of Confucius (kongjiao). But in order to reform the Religion of Confucius, one must choose what it originally possessed and show it forth clearly while weeding out what was originally not part of Confucianism. One cannot refuse to talk about what Confucianism originally possessed while greatly slandering what was originally not part of it. The task [ahead of us] would indeed require a second Confucius. Selected by Heiner Roetz; translated by Heiner Roetz, Yitao Qian and Marion Eggert

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Ouyang Jingwu: Buddhism Is neither Religion nor Philosophy but What the Present Generation Is in Need of (China, 1922)* Introduction The following piece marks the most famous and provocative attempt by Ouyang Jingwu (1870–1943), an influential Buddhist layman, to stem the tide of reinterpreting Buddhism along Western lines of reasoning. Instead, Ouyang argued for a self-conscious insistence on genuine Buddhist categories which he held to be not only superior but also the only adequate way to express Buddhism even in the modern age. By this, he meant to challenge not only general perceptions and ascriptions by non-Buddhists, but also the strategy of those Buddhist ‘modernisers’ who in his eyes succumbed terminologically to alien concepts. His provocation would be taken up by the leading voice of those ‘modernisers,’ the monk Taixu (1890–1947),1 thus turning the whole affair into one of the most notable debates in early twentieth-century Chinese Buddhism on how to deal with the challenges of modernity. The author, Ouyang Jian, courtesy name Jingwu, was born into a literati household in Jiangxi province. Although he at first followed the provisioned path of the civil service examinations, the early death of his father and elder brother and later of his beloved mother led him to question the answers his Neo-Confucian upbringing held to the most fundamental problems in life.2 He therefore began turning to Buddhism. In 1904, Ouyang first had contact with Yang Wenhui, the ‘father of the Buddhist revival’ in China and a layman, with whom he studied in Nanjing. On the latter’s recommendation, he also briefly *  The author thanks the publisher Edition Global for the permission to reuse some material published in her article “Buddhism and Historicity in early 20th Century China” in issue 2007/2 of its journal Orientierungen. 1  Taixu refuted Ouyang’s views in various texts, including “Fofa shi fo zhexue” [Is Buddhism philosophy?] (1925) in Haichaoyin wenku (Text collection of the [journal] ‘Sound of the sea tide’), 26 vols. (Taipei: Xinwenfeng 1985), vol. 19/1, 222–34; or “Wo zhi zongjiao guan” [My views on religion] (1925) in Haichaoyin wenku, vol. 2/1, 9–19. 2  See a letter by Ouyang cited in the biographical sketch by Zhou Bangdao and Zhang Douhang in Ouyang’s collected works: Ouyang Dashi Yiji [Collection of writings left behind by master Ouyang], 4 vols. (Taipei: Xinwenfeng 1976), vol. 1, i–x.

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went to Japan where he met the well-known Chinese intellectuals Zhang Binglin and Liu Shipei, who were also at that time interested in Buddhism. Back in China, Ouyang took up a teaching position in Canton, but a severe illness, which he only barely survived, soon forced him into giving up his job. In 1910 he was back in Nanjing with Yang Wenhui, studying Buddhism, namely weishi (mere consciousness)-Buddhism, a school largely forgotten in China after the Tang dynasty but at the time newly en vogue because of its perceived ‘modernity’ and compatibility of its epistemological thrust with Western logical, scientific thinking.3 This school stood in the tradition of Buddhist logic and argued that all phenomena were mere emanations of consciousness. The latter was further differentiated into eight types of consciousness to explain origination and the process of cognition in a highly complex manner. This very intellectualist teaching would remain central to Ouyang’s thinking, and when Yang Wenhui died in 1911, Ouyang took over the latter’s Buddhist printing press and the adjunct educational centre, in the course of time establishing an ‘Institute for Inner Studies’ (Neixueyuan)4 (1922) there to teach Buddhism to interested intellectuals. His lectures became famous for their quality, and noted Chinese intellectuals including Liang Qichao, Zhang Junmai, Li Shicen, Liang Shuming, Xiong Shili, and Tang Yongtong attended. Western observers, however, noted

3  This new ‘fad’ for weishi had become possible historically only through the mediation of Japanese Buddhists who had made accessible the texts long vanished in China. Japanese Buddhism and Buddhology at the turn of the century was heavily influenced by Western philology (e.g. Sanskrit studies) and the nineteenth-century ‘back to the roots’ movement associated with Max Müller in Oxford, with whom early Japanese Buddhologists had studied. The equation of authenticity and antiquity brought early Buddhism and thus Hinayana back to appreciation. Müller’s East Asian students, Buddhists themselves, were surprised, and there even rose a movement to relaunch Buddhism in India, mainly pushed by the Sri Lankan Anagārika Dharmapāla. This context suggests that Mahayana as a later development in Buddhism was liable to the charge of ‘forgery’ or ‘aberration.’ One of the consequences was a new interest in the Indian foundations of Buddhism, another the quest for inner-Buddhist criteria for authenticity which could bolster Mahayana against ‘forgery’ charges, since ‘Hinayana’ was never seen as a real alternative to draw on in East Asia. The fact that Ouyang favoured weishi thus has to be seen in a broader context, even though he himself did not express this directly but rather put forward mainly dogmatic considerations. 4  The term ‘inner studies’ was used to distinguish the teaching from all ‘outer’ ways, e.g. Indian non-Buddhist teachings or Confucianism and Daoism. Ouyang defined ‘inner’ as ‘untainted’ and ‘unmitigated experience.’ The translation sometimes given in Western literature as ‘Metaphysical Institute’ is not pertinent to Ouyang’s intentions and therefore not used here.

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the rather aristocratic, elitist atmosphere and complained about the difficult, overly erudite teaching style.5 Ouyang focused not only on the weishi (Vijñapti mātra) school of the Yogācāra branch, but also covered other Indian traditions such as texts centreing on prajñā (wisdom) and Nirvana. This emphasis on the Indian (in contrast to ‘sinified’) traditions made the famous Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore remark during a visit to China that Ouyang appeared to him as an incarnation of the long-lost Indian soul.6 Ouyang insisted on a systematic approach and on sharp distinctions, refuting the alternative approach mainly embodied by his one-time class-mate at Yang Wenhui’s, the reformer monk Taixu, who aimed at a Buddhist reform via integrationalist means. This ‘conciliatory’ attitude, which tried to integrate all of received Buddhist tradition (and even of non-Buddhist thinking) in the traditional model of a hierarchy of teachings (panjiao), was to Ouyang’s mind a mere hodgepodge, an intellectual selling-out of truth claims, gave up standards of judgement, and was logically inconsistent from the start. Therefore, he not only insisted on inner-Buddhist distinctions, e.g. rejecting long-accepted ‘apocrypha,’ but also launched the provocative lecture “Buddhism is neither religion nor philosophy but what the present generation is in need of” (1922) to claim Buddhism’s total alterity.7 Ouyang mainly held lectures and wrote prefaces to canonical writings (in itself already suggesting that he did not see himself as a ‘philosopher’ but rather as an exegete). Since both ‘philosophy’ and ‘religion’ are Western terms, his argumentation is of obvious relevance to the question of confronting Buddhism with Western thought, but the second part of the lecture has to be considered as well as it reveals Ouyang’s attitude toward the times he lived in. In the end, although Ouyang meant to oppose the self-styled ‘reformers,’ his own version

5  See Karl Reichelt, Truth and Tradition in Chinese Buddhism (Shanghai: The Commercial Press, 1927), 303; James Pratt, The Pilgrimage of Buddhism (New York: Macmillan, 1928), 387–88. 6  See Zhou/Zhang, Ouyang Dash Yiji, ix. 7  Ouyang announced the complete lecture but actually gave only the first part (“Buddhism is neither religion nor philosophy”), addressing it to an educational philosophical study association. Consequently, he printed only this first part in his own collection of writings (Ouyang Jingwu xiansheng neiwaixue [Inner and outer teachings of Mr. Ouyang Jingwu] Nanjing: Jinling kejingchu, n.d.), whereas the second (“Buddhism is what the present generation is in need of”) was completed by his follower Wang Enyang, who had also written down the first part, but in this case without being proof-read by Ouyang. The whole piece appears in the collection of Ouyang’s writings assembled after his death: Ouyang dashi Yiji, 3457–3482. The whole lecture had also appeared in the non-Buddhist intellectual journal Minduo [People’s bell], vol. 3, no. 3, in March 1922.

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of Buddhism was not ‘traditional’ either, but in itself just another way of reacting to the changed circumstances. With his famous dictum “Buddhism is neither religion nor philosophy,” Ouyang provocatively took up the problem of defining Buddhist identity in an increasingly complex intellectual surrounding. His term for ‘Buddhism,’ fofa, literally ‘buddha dharma,’ decidedly rejected other terms like the common fojiao (Buddhist teaching), since this went hand in hand with other jiao (teachings) and was part of zongjiao, the Chinese term for Western ‘religion,’ taken over from Japanese.8 With this accent on fa or dharma, Ouyang expressed a claim to universality which a jiao could not pose. Fa, in Chinese also meaning law, in this sense and context could not be plural: it implied the law governing the universe, whereas there could be many jiao. Therefore, Ouyang insisted on the inapplicability of ‘religion’ and ‘philosophy’ to Buddhism. Ouyang’s primary argument against a terminological compatibility between the Western categories of ‘religion’ and ‘philosophy’ rests on the premise that Buddhism as buddha dharma is per definition absolute and all-comprising. Thus, the problem of Western categories versus Buddhism is framed in a ‘parts and whole’ relationship. Still, Ouyang does not limit himself to the formal level, but goes on to show that the nature of ‘religion’ and ‘philosophy’ is also incomparable to Buddhism. In this context, he gives definitions of ‘religion’ and of ‘philosophy’—as if these were uncontested—to demonstrate that Buddhism does not meet either of these definitions and thus cannot be considered a member of these categories. Ouyang’s aim in these definitions is obvious. Both religion and philosophy are partial because they are one-sided: religion stresses pure deduction and faith, enslaving the believer, philosophy stresses pure induction and conventional reasoning, but leads nowhere. Buddhism instead holds the offer of satisfying the intellect and leading to deliverance. The definitions furthermore show that Ouyang saw the greater problem in the current identification of Buddhism with religion (as a jiao), being well aware of the anti-religious bias of the intellectual elite. While this problem was not limited to his own times, it was nevertheless very virulent at the moment of his lecture because of the anti-religious movement of the early 1920s. As for the delineation between Buddhism and philosophy (something that was more prestigious at this time—Ouyang, e.g., specifically named Russell who had just toured China and was critical about many trends in Western thinking, as a relatively positive 8  Federico Masini, “The Formation of Modern Chinese Lexicon and Its Evolution, Toward a National Language: The Period from 1840 to 1898,” Journal of Chinese Linguistics 6 (Berkeley: University of California, 1993), 100–101 and 222.

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figure), his main issue was to retain an ultimate scope for reasoning: deliverance, distinguishing Buddhism from a purely intellectual exercise. Science he included in philosophy, hinting only at the point of partial convergence between recent findings in science and age-old knowledge in Buddhism. The difference between science and Buddhism remains rather implicit: science is based only on the experimental level, whereas Buddhism has achieved these insights by meditational practice, being able also to explain causes unknown to science and its piecemeal induction approach. Still, the fact that science is subsumed under philosophy, obviously on the common ground of inductive approach, shows that it was not so important for Ouyang to attack science, or, put differently, that science had the highest prestige among non-Buddhist teachings. Since Ouyang was aware of the intellectual debates of his times, one may note that his relatively positive presentation of science also reflects a kind of reaction to Wu Zhihui, with whom Ouyang corresponded, and to Wu’s ‘scientism,’ popular at that historical moment.9 In the second part of Ouyang’s intended complete lecture, “Buddhism is what the present generation is in need of,” he then expounds how he sees the specific relationship between Buddhism and the historical moment he lived in: Above all, he stresses the claim of Buddhist categories to absoluteness against Western ones. Therefore, Ouyang warns his compatriots against relying on Western modernity as a means to cure China’s ills, especially in the form of religion (i.e., above all, Christianity) and philosophy. Only Buddhism can answer the questions of the times—as it does at all times. Ouyang’s most famous piece shows that he tended to stress the total alterity of Buddhism vis-à-vis Western thinking not only on the quantitative but also on the qualitative level with the self-confidence that Buddhism is per definition always the most actual answer to the problems of the times. Still, behind his seeming self-confidence there lingered the attacks on Buddhism as superstitious, anti-intellectual, unscientific etc. of his age. But throughout his argumentation, starting from the absolute level of ‘truth,’ there was no possible matching of categories, and he obviously never intended to achieve such a matching. Thus, his definitions of Western categories like ‘religion’ or ‘philosophy’ were basically designed for apologetic use only. In sum, Ouyang argued for the transhistorical nature of Buddhism and did not want to ‘modernise.’ Still, regarding his endeavours from without, he

9  See Daniel W. Y. Kwok, Scientism in Chinese Thought, 1900–1950 (New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1971).

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actually did all but propound a simple ‘traditional’ or ahistorical Buddhism and thus—in his own special way—clearly reflected the times he lived in. Gotelind Müller

Further Reading

Goldfuß, Gabriele. Vers un Bouddhisme du XXe Siècle. Yang Wenhui, Réformateur Laïque et Imprimeur. Paris: De Boccard, 2001. Müller, Gotelind. Buddhismus und Moderne: Ouyang Jingwu, Taixu und das Ringen um ein zeitgemäßes Selbstverständnis im chinesischen Buddhismus des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1993. Pittman, Don A. Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism: Taixu’s Reforms. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2001.



Source Text10

What is Buddha ( fo), dharma ( fa) and buddha dharma ( fofa)? [. . .] He who has attained the unsurpassable true awakening is named Buddha. The realm of the dharma is extremely broad. All the true and the illusionary, the phenomenal and the principle-natured, the conditioned and the unconditioned is comprised by it [. . .]. This dharma is that which is experienced by the truly awakened and that upon which the one striving for awakening bases himself; therefore, this is called the buddha dharma. The two terms ‘religion’ (zongjiao) and ‘philosophy’ (zhexue) are originally Western terms which have been translated into Chinese and have by way of analogy been forced unto Buddhism. But how can they, being each of diverse meaning and of a very restricted field of content, comprise this enormously broad fofa? If one sets straight the terms and defines the words, there is no

10  “Fofa fei zongjiao fei zhexue er wei jinshi suo bixu,” Ouyang dashi Yiji, 3457–3482, partial translation. The translation is based on—though not completely coextensive with—my German partial translation in Müller: Buddhismus und Moderne, 30–40, part of which appeared in English in my “Buddhism and Historicity in Early 20th Century China: Ouyang Jingwu, Taixu and the Problem of Modernity” in Orientierungen 2/2007, 28–51, here: 30–33.

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way of using either term of ‘religion’ or ‘philosophy.’ Fofa is just fofa, fofa is just called fofa. Further to explain: why do I say Buddhism is not religion? Answer: All religions of the world necessarily comprise four factors, but Buddhism is contrary to each. Therefore, I say Buddhism is no religion. What are these four? 1. All religions venerate one or more gods and the founder of the respective religion. These gods and founders are called holy and not to be transgressed against, they are almighty and can decide about the reward and punishment of all human beings. But all human beings have to rely on them. Buddhism is not like this. When the Buddha was close to entering Nirvana, he taught his disciples the four reliances. These are: first: rely on the dharma (teaching), not on human beings; second: rely on the meaning, not the words; third: rely on scriptures revealing the whole truth, not provisional ones; fourth: rely on wisdom, not consciousness [. . .]. Religion therefore cannot but curb the character of men and add to the laziness of men. In Buddhism nothing of this exists at all [. . .]. 2. Every religion necessarily has its holy scriptures which are to be abided by and which cannot be discussed by the believers, on the one hand to stabilise the content of the teaching, on the other to keep the grip on people’s belief. With Buddhism this is again different [. . .]. It is wrong to follow blindly; to be able to choose and to follow the key [teachings] is what is praised by the Buddha. This is the freedom he allows for human thinking. But to this one may object: if Buddhism is different from religion, why is there the measure of holy words?11 Answer: The measure of holy words [in Buddhism] is not like imperial edicts or directives which one may not discuss, but consists only in already proven and generally accepted words [. . .]. 3. Each religion necessarily has obligatory dogmas and precepts [. . .]. Again, in Buddhism this is not the case. Buddhism has only one ultimate goal. Everything else is only an expedient means [to achieve this]. This ultimate goal is the great awakening [. . .]. 4. All people of a religious kind necessarily have a religious type of faith. What does a religious type of faith consist of? It consists of purely emotional obedience which does not permit the least of rational critique. In Buddhism this is different. The ultimate holy realisation has to be achieved by personal experience. It thus is based on one’s own effort [. . .]. There are two kinds of faith: one is the blind following of the simple-minded, the other the joyful wish 11  This is one part of a variant of the fivefold syllogism in Buddhist logic which testifies to the correctness of a dictum by demonstrating its congruence with the sutras.

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of the knowledge-having one. The former has to be discarded, the latter one is to be honored. The faith in the unsurpassable awakening and in [the fact that] others have experienced it already and that oneself and others are able to experience it by oneself, this faith is perfect, strong, and unshakable [. . .].12 To say that Buddhism is no philosophy is based [on the fact that] philosophy has basically three contents, but Buddhism is contrary to each, therefore Buddhism is no philosophy. What are these three? 1. The quest of philosophy is searching for the truth, and this truth must by definition posit something that is the final substance of all things and which is the origin of everything [. . .]. Every day [philosophy] is searching, but can [the truth] be attained by it? If one opens a history of Western philosophy, famous philosophers—after doing away with a personal god—only superstitiously believe in an impersonal one, after doing away with monotheism they just cling to some pantheism; if they do not believe in materialism, then in idealism, if not in idealism, then in realism. A Descartes was strong at doubting, thus he did away with all things in the world as not real, but only to superstitiously believe in an ego [instead], thinking that “If I can doubt everything to be unreal, then I must be real.” Now today’s [Bertrand] Russell holds that this “My ego can doubt, thus the ego is real” cannot be established. Although Russell may refute materialism and idealism as not the truth, he nevertheless still clings to the phenomena as real. Thinking about it thoroughly, where is the big difference between his claim that the phenomena are real and Descartes’ claim that the ego is real? In sum, all Western philosophies [. . .] hold on to the existence of a principle: the first thinks it lies in this, the second thinks it lies in that, others hold that both are untenable but have themselves no irrefutable teaching to convince people. To reject one tenet and set up another is nothing but augmenting the many false opinions of mankind [. . .]. Buddhism destructs reliance. Who does not hold onto anything, is a Buddha. Therefore Buddhism does not talk about ‘truth’ (zhenli)13 but about ‘absolute thusness’ (zhenru, tathatā) [. . .]. If this exists, one does not have to search for it, if it does not exist, one cannot search for it [. . .]. 2. Philosophy discusses the question of cognition, but all topics of epistemology like the origin of cognition, its functioning, and its nature do not go beyond reasoning differentiation. With Buddhism, this is different. In the

12  “Fofa fei zongjiao fei zhexue er wei jinshi suo bixu,” Ouyang dashi Yiji, 3457–3460. 13  This is the usual term to translate the Western concept of ‘truth’ in philosophical writings.

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four reliances it is said: rely on wisdom, not on differentiating consciousness.14 [. . .] If there is no object, there is no consciousness [. . .], therefore this is no idealism [. . .]. If there is no subject, there is again no consciousness [. . .], therefore this is no realism [. . .]. If both are not there, there is again no consciousness [. . .], therefore this is no phenomenology [. . .]. Philosophy [separating cognition from subject and object in one way or other] is thus a teaching without results. 3. Philosophers deal with explanations of the cosmos. First there was idealism, materialism, monism, dualism; then the theory of atoms and electrons. Today science has developed the theory of relativity and has started to understand that the cosmos is nothing real. [Thus], not only has idealist monism of one-time metaphysicians no longer a reasonable basis to exist, but materialist realism is equally difficult to establish. Today’s science requires equations and that all things existing in the world are only singular items, not singular material entities. Russell’s followers take this up. They analyse matter and analyse mind. Analysing matter they [find] mind, analysing mind, they [find] matter, but thus they [take into consideration] only the phenomena, but they do not see their true essence (benti). Now, if there is no true essence, wherefrom should the phenomena arise? [. . .]15 What does it mean that Buddhism is what the present generation is in need of? Answer: For this question one first has to clarify a few things: For all sentient beings there are only two ways of existence: the awakened one and the aberrant one. To return from aberrance to awakening [i.e. the original state of being] there is no other way than Buddhism. Therefore, if one wants to get away from aberrance, one has to start with Buddhism. The buddha dharma is not only needed now and today, or especially by the Chinese, or mankind. Buddha expounded the necessity of awakening to [. . .] let all sentient beings enter the Nirvana without rest [i.e. the ultimate one of the four nirvanas as understood in the weishi theory] and have them [attain final] deliverance [. . .]. The heart of man cannot be without something to be based upon (suo yong); if it does not believe in the right, then it believes in the wrong. The body of man cannot be without something that it fulfils (suo dong), if not the Way, then violence. Thus, what kind of evil, be it robbery, burglary, adultery, or deceit, 14  Ouyang here contrasts Western epistemology with the weishi theory of eight consciousnesses and the four parts of the cognition process: subject, object, consciousness, and conscious realisation of the whole process of cognition, to argue for the interdependence of consciousness, subject, and object. 15  Again, Ouyang introduces the weishi theory of the eight consciousnesses and how origination is explained through them. Ouyang dashi Yiji, 3461–3472.

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would not be done? The confusion of today’s world is only a special result, the cause of which lies in the confusion of human hearts.16 [. . .] In his last lecture in Beiping,17 Russell told us Chinese: “You Chinese should not simply rely on Western civilisation and by mere copying introduce it in the same way to China. You should realise that Western civilisation has already run up into a dead end. During the last decades it has led more and more into wars. It might be that in the future the wars produced by its civilisation will destroy that very civilisation.” These words were not spoken without reason. If we do not quickly deal [with the issue], break up all doubts of mankind, and solve all ignorance of mankind, pave away all superstition in religion and give mankind a correct faith; if we do not clarify all false opinions in philosophy and give mankind a correct understanding, let the human heart have something to rely upon, and block future disaster, then our guilt will bring never-ending calamity over our sons and grandsons. Could you, my gentlemen, endure that in your hearts?18 Selected and translated by Gotelind Müller

16   Ouyang dashi Yiji, 3473–3474. Here one may note the congruence with Confucian thought (cf. Daxue [The Great Learning] chapter 1). 17  At that time, Beijing was called Beiping. 18   Ouyang dashi Yiji, 3477–3478.

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Yaroe (Nightthunder) alias Yi Tonhwa: [On] the Necessity of Reform of Religion (Korea, 1920)* Introduction Yi Tonhwa was born in 1884 in Hamgyŏng Province in the Northeast of the Korean peninsula. Despite of the abolition of the traditional examination and recruiting system in 1894 he received a traditional education (with a strong focus on literary Chinese and early Confucian texts). In 1902 he became a member of the religio-political Tonghak (Eastern Learning)-movement which redefined itself in 1905 as a religious community with the name Ch’ŏndo-gyo (Teaching of the Heavenly Way) due to the administrative changes following the Japanese protectorate over Korea and the integration of the peninsula into the colonial empire five years later. The fact that he had also a religious name, Kŭng-am (studio of extension),1 indicates a close relation or even strong religious commitment, although the possibility of a sort of later honor granted by the congregation should not be ruled out. Since 1910 he worked and wrote for the Ch’ŏndogyo-hoe wŏlbo, the “Chondoist monthly gazette,” and within a few years he became an important thinker and ideologist of the congregation. The factual basis for his biography, however, is very thin. He is known explicitly for and through his writings, among them Ch’ŏndo-gyo ch’anggŏn-sa (History of the Founding of Chondoism), the authoritative history and self-description of the congregation, religio-philosophical writings and countless journal articles authored during the colonial period (1910–1945). In the second half of 1919, a couple of months after the significant March 1 independence movement, Yi Tonhwa became a founding member and functionary of the Ch’ŏndo-gyo ch’ŏngnyŏn-hoe, the Chondoist youth organisation, and in close relation with his engagement there he and others founded the monthly journal Kaebyŏk (‘creation,’ ‘to open,’ or ‘to begin,’ later also given in *  I owe thanks to Jang Sukman (Seoul) who was so kind to discuss in detail the translation and some related problems, as well as to Isomae Jun’ichi (Kyoto), Sven Osterkamp (Bochum), Jan Schmidt (Bochum), Takahashi Hara (Tokyo), and Myoungin Yu (Bochum) who helped with expertise on early 20th century Korea and Japan. 1  Often mistakenly given as Tu-am (bean-studio).

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the Esperanto parallel title as La Kreado), for which he contributed his article about the “Necessity of Reform of Religion.” In Kaebyŏk and elsewhere he published under his pen-name Yaroe and his personal name, but also under the pen-names Paektusan-in (Man from Mt. Paektu, i.e. from Hamgyŏng Province), Ch’anghae kŏsa (Hermit of/from the Blue Sea), and probably under other pennames not identifiable today. Kaebyŏk had a strong educational impetus and tone, and it might thus not be surprising that Yi Tonhwa was also active as an educator in the early 1920s, namely at the private Christian and early nationalist Osan-School in Chŏngju in the north-western province of P’yŏngan. The research on Yi Tonhwa, however, is for at least two reasons problematic and also politically sensitive. The fact that he stayed in the North after the liberation of the peninsula in 1945 indicates a certain preference for and of the Communist side, although one also has to consider that the majority of members of the Chondoist congregation stayed in the Northern half for a number of historical reasons. Some publications mention (without any reference) that he had been captured by the Communist troops from a Chondoist training (or meditation) centre in April 1946, others declare that he was saved by the North Korean People’s Army shortly after the beginnin of the Korean War and then killed during an American attack in 1950.2 The unknown circumstances of his death may be due to the confusions of the war or may also indicate an interference with historical and ideological interests on both sides of the 38th parallel: it is likely that he was captured from the South and executed for reasons of collaboration with the Japanese or that he was executed in the North for insufficient cooperation (as the Chondoist youth organisation became later and still is one out of three North Korean ‘block-parties’), but it is likely as well that the early republicans, Christians, and Buddhists in the South had similar reservations against earlier leading figures of Chondoism or simply punished preference for Communism. The other reason is the status of documentation which is not only lacking materials for the period after 1945, but also limited to self-descriptions and presentations from the side of the congregation in the South for the period until 1945. After 1945 Yi Tonhwa contributed five articles to Kaebyŏk since its relaunch in January 1946 (No. 73) until August 1948 (No. 79), before the journal was discontinued again since March 1949 (No. 81). As the access to North Korean materials is limited, it is not easy to describe his status in North Korean public

2  Hŏ Su, Yi Tonhwa yŏn’gu: chonggyo-wa sahoe-ŭi kyŏnggye [Study on Yi Tonhwa: The Boundaries Between Religion and Society] (Seoul: Yŏksa pip’yŏng-sa, 2011), 253f.

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and academic discourses (which were worth of the name until the mid 60s). He was, however, not included in major dictionaries and encyclopedias from the 80s and 90s which seems consistent with the domination of the Christian and Chondoist parties by the foremost politically weaker Worker’s Party since the late 60s. Furthermore, the status of the Chondoist religious congregation in the North remains unclear almost to the same extent. In the South, on the other hand, Yi Tonhwa was included in major dictionaries and encyclopedias, but both he as a historical figure, as well as the history of the Chondoist congregation after 1919, have long been avoided as a topic of research. The Chondoist religious congregation in the South republished Yi Tonhwas writings until the 1970s, but since then the congregation shrank severely and in relation to this might have returned to the veneration of only the early leaders of Tonghak and Chondoism. For these reasons Yi Tonhwa is today almost only visible through the discourses he participated in during the colonial period. The text translated here, “On the Necessity of Reform of Religion,” is part of a series with the title “Innaech’ŏn-ŭi yŏn’gu” (Study of [the Chondoist Doctrine] ‘Man is Heaven’) which appeared in the monthly journal Kaebyŏk from No. 1 in June 1920 to No. 9 in February 1921. This series is the only directly theological or ideological contribution from the side of the congregation in the early issues of the journal. On the structural surface “Innaech’ŏn-ŭi yŏn’gu” seems more like a roughly defined column as there is no visible architecture and as only the parts two, seven, eight, and nine have a clear heading. As for parts three to six the title of the series contains an additional ‘sok’ (continuation), whereas parts seven to nine appear with an own title and give the name of the series only in the subtitle, together with a numbering. Every piece of “Innaech’ŏn-ŭi yŏn’gu” is furthermore equipped with a coin-shaped icon, which was also used with a little inconsistence as in part one it shows a sort of mask whereas in parts two to nine it appears clearly as a human burdened with thinking or working. As to the texts themselves, they either directly state their connection with the piece of the last month and/or finish simply with the term ‘miman’ (not yet complete). As to the contents there is also no clear-cut line of discussion and it seems rather that the series followed an implicit agenda, which introduced the reinterpretations and redefinitions of Chondoism to the modern discourse arenas on philosophy, religion, society, and finally also deals with some sort of response from the readers. “On the Necessity of Reform of Religion” appeared in No. 2 and 3 in July and August 1920. The audience and awareness of especially the first two numbers was limited to members of the congregation due to smaller print runs and still

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missing channels of distribution.3 The 1920s, however, were also the eve of a new publicistic mass culture and so it should not be ruled out that the journal was passed to neighbours and friends—just as had been the habit with books in earlier years. Starting from its third issue, Kaebyŏk quickly became popular beyond the borders of the congregation and a sort of publicistic landmark and intellectual institution. The ideas and narratives presented in the series found their ways into other contributions by Yi Tonhwa and others as well, but probably in different compositions and then mainly for a Chondoist audience.4 So far, although the literary and educational influence of the journal during the colonial period in general is well known, we do not know very much about the influence of this series in particular. After the liberation, parts of the journal and also of the series (especially the first issue) have been included in collections of historical material, but it is only in recent years that developments in Chondoism during the colonial period became a focus of study. The texts of the series have been available as parts of original copies of the journal in some public libraries (now also digitalised), and since the 1970s in a number of facsimile editions by the Chondoist publishing house as well as by one or two other publishers. The journal Kaebyŏk appeared at the beginning of a less rigid phase of Japanese colonialism that was later coined ‘colonial modernity’ and is not necessarily consistent with usual perceptions of colonial rule. This phase is characterised by rapid developments in the publicistic, educational and other sectors as well as by an emerging Korean national identity temporarily accepted under the umbrella of the Japanese colonial empire. The journal accompanied these developments and, as the visual interference by censors in later numbers indicates, to some degree also tested the possibilities the new medium offered. Given the remarkable diversity of contents of the journal, encompassing literature, philosophy, history, or religion, the West as well as the East, the premodern as well as the modern, it is not easy to judge the significance of the 3   Ch’oe Suil, “Yi Tonhwa-ŭi innaech’ŏn-juŭi-wa sŏ’gu kŭndae ch’ŏrhag-ŭi suyong” [Lee Donhwa’s Innaecheonism and the Acceptance of Modern Western Philosophie], Tonghak hakpo 19 (2010), 168ff. The Korean title included an English translation suggested by the original author. ‘Innaecheonism’ refers to the doctrine ‘man is heaven’; ‘Acceptance’ should rather be understood in the terms of reception. 4  See for instance the piece “Changnae-ŭi chonggyo” [On the future of religion], published under the name Yi Tonhwa in three parts in Ch’ŏndogyo-hoe wŏlbo 11/102 (1920), 1–6 and 11/103 (1920), 1–8 und 11/105 (1920), 6–10. See also the introductory chapter on the religious requests of the new society in his doctrinal Innaech’ŏn yoŭi [The Essentials of the Doctrince ‘Man is Heaven’] (Kyŏngsŏng [i.e. Seoul]: Kaebyŏk-sa, Taisho 13 [i.e. 1924], 2ff.

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doctrinal series “Innaech’ŏn-ŭi yŏn’gu.” From an internal perspective the series was probably not very orthodox or even controversial insofar as it described the success of the congregation not only in terms of their leaders but also as historical development and due to an age of scientific and economic progress. From an external perspective the series was simply doctrinal as it introduced all the elements of Chondoist belief and clearly identified the journal as a Chondoist endeavor. Journal and series were directed at a broad Korean audience but could also be understood as some sort of testing ground for the whole congregation which had to adapt to the changing parameters of colonial rule and Korean society as much as other religious traditions. Parts of the series, such as “On the Necessity of Reform of Religion,” present a programmatic vision of a future religion which is defined as a core element of humanity that periodically could be expressed in non-religious terms (e.g. as materialism) but would finally find its way back to the grounds of religion. Yi Tonhwa, however, did not understand secularisation as an irreversible development. He rather claimed that the response to the progress of science and society has to be reformed and modernised religion. There is no direct claim that Chondoism meets all the conditions of that future religion, but the sum of all the details in the potpourri of citations, doctrinal elements and own opinions does not allow another conclusion nor does it suggest another candidate. The future religion has to be compatible with science, has to form a modern organisation (as the party-like central organisation of the Chondoist congregation), and should be capable to fulfill the ideal of the harmonisation and unification of religions in East Asia. In contrast to other religions Chondoism is introduced without any claim to dominate certain areas of knowledge; instead, Yi Tonhwa claims it will be fully consistent with science and philosophy. The consequence of this would be that Chondoism will become the other side of the coin of, for instance, science and by this it would in fact dominate not only certain areas of but all kinds of knowledge. The unity of politics and religion, one fundament of Chondoism, has obviously no space in this vision, and it seems that Yi Tonhwa tested with this series in how far the congregation could become more religious and less political in nature. In the colonial context this was probably the best option for securing survival and further growth. In the long run, however, Chondoism did not survive as a mass movement, neither in the North where it became a ‘block-party’ nor in the South where it still exists as religious congregation of minor importance. Andreas Müller-Lee

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Further Reading

Bell, Kirsten. “Cheondogyo and the Donghak Revolution: The (un)Making of a Religion.” Korea Journal 44/2 (2004), 123–148. Weems, Benjamin B. Reform, Rebellion and the Heavenly Way (Tucson/Arizona: The University of Arizona Press, 1964), 122.



Source Text5

The philosopher Hoen-gir-i-man6 argued that there are four reasons for the decline of traditional religions which need to be differentiated: Firstly, there is the conflict between canonical writings of religions and the progress of knowledge and morality in society. In other words, the contents of religions are conceived as originating in the very beginning from a revelation by a so-called god which absolutely cannot be shaken. The conflict then arises because knowledge and morality of the individual cannot obey to the original commandments of this church. Secondly, there is the conflict between the creed of the individual and the creed of the church. In other words, the church cannot exist a single day as a community without fixed creeds and rituals. Why is that so?—because [without them] the necessity to unite those believers would be intermitted. As a matter of fact, the church demands from everyone to serve collectively in all of those prescribed creeds and rituals. In

5  Yi Tonhwa, “Innaech’ŏn-ŭi yŏn’gu [Study of the Chondoist Doctrine ‘Man is Heaven’]: Chonggyo-ŭi kaehyŏg-ŭi p’iryo [On the Necessity of Reform of Religion],” Kaebyŏk 2 (July 1920), 64–72; and idem, “Innaech’ŏn-ŭi yŏn’gu: sok [continuation],” Kaebyŏk 3 (August 1920), 71–74. 6  Due to the sometimes cloudy glyphs this name could also be read as ‘Hŭin-gir-i-man,’ however, neither of both variants lead to an actual philosopher or author, who could not be identified in earlier studies and did not appear in other sources. ‘Nightthunder’ was probably informed through Japanese academia, so if this name meant an existing person one could assume that he is being informed by a Japanese translation. Specialised libraries in Japan possess a handful of translations of German and English works from respective fields up to the year 1920, but none of them is close to the variants mentioned above. Furthermore, the examples of Eucken, who won the Nobel Prize in 1908, and Nietzsche or others in the early numbers of Kaebyŏk show that Western names in general can easily be decoded from Korean transliterations. One may conclude that ‘Nightthunder’ either quoted an author unknown to us today or only pretended to follow an analysis by a foreign philosopher.

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reality, ­however, this is not possible to exercise. Why? [A person] A rejects this doctrine and [a person] B rejects that doctrine, and in the light of the cultural progress it is thus unavoidable that all these subjective beliefs cannot be completely identical. Thirdly, there is the conflict between laity and clergy. In other words, what is called the church was established on an original order through which doctrines and ceremonies were unified and which naturally required a particular regular staff for the administration of all sorts of outer services. Since then those who were employed as regular staff hold a great amount of power in contrast to the ordinary believers, but is this not a natural tendency? The doctrine of the Christian teaching, however, all of a sudden instructs us that all people are equal before god, and when things came to the point where, owing to the gradual progress of human wisdom, the exegesis of the canonical writings was not solely the vexing task of the clergy anymore, it became unavoidable that the conflict between the two arose by necessity. Fourthly, there is the conflict between church and state which had presaged the decline of traditional religions. It is so, indeed, that the progressive human knowledge of today—really without having to be the insights of a philosopher—is capable to announce such a fallacy. As to the traditional religions, their beginnings lie approximately two or three thousand years in the past. Therefore, no matter how harmonious their tenets, how clear their creeds, they naturally could not keep abreast with the progressive knowledge of our era. How much more so as at the time of their formation the founders of the religions established the tenets and the creeds allegorically and introduced them metaphorically in order to adapt them to the mind of the people of their era. The sudden rise of scholarship in the course of the ‘movement for the revival of literature and art’ [i.e. the renaissance], through which also the methods of the study of religion won depth, resulted in the idea of belief in religion being shaken to the core. What is called ‘movement for the revival of literature and art’ was originally Greek naturalistic thinking which arose out of resistance against Christian thinking. In other words, it can be called carnal thinking that arose out of spiritual resistance. This thinking continued up to the eighteenth and nineteenth century and opposed religion with extraordinary strength. Thereupon the mind of the people of one generation leant accordingly toward materialistic thinking and there were even scholars who asserted that the universe and human life is only made of matter. Those like the German Nietzsche advocate an extreme carnal instinctivism [i.e. a doctrine of the affections] which leads to their wrongly being judged in Christian teaching as a sort of false swindlers. This shows one side of common thinking. But how can man live only as something carnal? Those who lost the centre of their belief due Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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to the sudden rise of science finally sought the salvation of the ‘other shore’7 in matter, but they did not gain anything and returned in complete failure. Thereupon those ones were skeptical and in agony. It is said that the result of the worship of matter comes finally to an end in [the conviction that] one cannot know [anything]. [The conviction that one] cannot know consequently originated from being skeptical and being skeptical consequently originated from agony. Agony is the great enemy of comfort, and when comfort is lost, how could we as spiritually knowledgeable8 mankind be peaceful for even one moment? For this reason, those ones have once again recognised the value of religion. What is called the skepticism and sorrow of the end of the century [i.e. the fin de siècle] signifies exactly this, one generation of the world of thought indulging in skepticism and sorrow, roaming around in darkness for a long time. The heavenly destiny,9 [however,] is something that circulates, and history is something that recurs.10 The mind of the people which was forced to retreat in agony for a long time is now about to become thirsty for the value of belief. As to what they called belief, however, they are not again demanding the rotten and moldy old belief, but only a new belief which is manifested through new truths. In other words, only the unchanging truths were picked from the various old beliefs and merged into one another, they were furthermore harmonised with scientific thought, and as philosophical ideals were added it became a well-rounded and faultless modern belief. If the very modern belief is asked for religion, it is not affronting the tenet, if asked for science, it is not opposing to science, and if contrasted with philosophy, it will be a belief consistent with philosophy. The modern demand will be for such a belief indeed, and that the people then aim at the unification of religion through the new belief can definitely be called modern thinking. Moreover, treatises on the unification of religion pass through modern times in East and West likewise, and in order to document one sufficiently representative opinion of this thought I will now present a paragraph on the treatise on the religion of the future by Ukita Kazutami,11 who is famous in Japan. He says: 7  I.e. the Buddhist nirvana or a rather undefined ‘other world’ 8  The term yŏngsik (‘spirit’ and ‘to know’) is not a lexical compound. 9  The term ch’ŏnun, translated here as heavenly ‘destiny,’ could be interpreted as ch’ŏnmyŏng (heavenly mandate) or as some kind of natural destiny. However, it is likely that Yi Tonhwa implies a Chondoist notion of destiny which by necessity has to refer to heaven. 10  The term choban (‘to spin’ and ‘to return’) is a compound in Japanese, but not in Korean or Chinese. 11  Ukita Kazutami (1860–1946) published a work entitled Shakai to jinsei (Society and Life) probably as early as 1912. The third chapter discusses religion and includes a paragraph of

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I think the religion of the future will mostly emerge under the following harmonisation. First of all, the current religions, be it the teaching of Buddha, the teaching of the scholars [i.e. Confucianism], or the teaching of Christ, will approach each other, merge into one another and finally, a united new religion will naturally emerge. This new religion is then free of mutual conflicts, because if seen from the perspective of the teaching of Buddha it is an evolution of Buddha, if seen from the perspective of the teaching of Christ it is a development of the teaching of Christ and if seen from the perspective of the teaching of the scholars [Confucianism] it is a perfection of the teaching of the scholars. Furthermore, it is not that one is overthrown by another and dogmatises himself alone as ‘all under heaven,’ and that they will not merge into one another is impossible. Originally, every of the three teachings equally had its unique features, its own strong points, and the merger will occur by taking up each of those strong points of every religion. (. . .)12 Originally, the main object of veneration in the religions is an inscrutable being, so it can be called an ideal, [but it] cannot be simply called a being. It was not an easy task to live under the influence of this form- and shapeless ideal. Those like Shakyamuni, Master Kong [i.e. Confucius], and Christ were able to live like this and transmitted those ideals to later generations. But this is really not what the ordinary people were able to do. Ordinary people need to feel the influence of form- and shapeless ideals for the first time through an object or a person with form and shape. A religion that appears through13 leaning on objects is then an inferior religion and one that is revealed in leaning on persons is a superior religion. In fact, the main object of veneration of religions has been called heaven or god through idealisation. Persons that realised this have then been called son of heaven or son of god. This duality, however, is not a ‘two’ through an original ‘one,’ it can be called an ideal or impersonation of an ideal with one and the same origin. This ‘one’ is a shapeless [i.e. abstract] ideal, the other ‘one’ is only on the way to become a concrete ideal.[. . .] Religion probably requires an original meta-ethical or trans-ethical basis, but by no means ignores ethic. If we look now at the three teachings of the scholars, Buddha, and Christ, these ethical elements are already magnificently equipped with the ultimate. Examples like the teaching of ten pages on the future of religion (shorai no shukyo). See: Ukita Kazutami, Shakai to jinsei (Tokyo: Hokubunkan, Taisho 1 [1912]), 279–280. 12  Marked in the text as ‘chungnyak’ (interior [parts] omitted). 13  The term t’onghyŏn (‘to go through’ and ‘to appear’) is not a lexical compound.

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Buddha, where this is called compassion, the teaching of the scholars, where it is called “do unto others as you would have others do unto you”,14 and the teaching of Christ, where it is called to love universally [i.e. charity], are already at an ethical height, and because of this it is impossible to create something new through the differentiation in ‘I/us’ and ‘he/them’ or ‘that’ and ‘this.’ Although equipped with elements of knowledge like this, their methods of application do absolutely not go along with today’s civilisation. In general, one can say with Buddha that within the point of “seeing the Buddha-nature and illuminating the mind” there is instinct inherent, but also a tendency of world-weariness or pessimism. Furthermore, [from] teachings like those of the scholars one can gain from the point of the mundane or this world, but because of the essence of an excessive life in the here and now, the taste of degeneration cannot be avoided to a certain extent. Furthermore, [in] the teaching of Christ the tendency to social activity and community is good, but different bad effects and influences go along with its doctrine. To conclude in one word, each teaching has strengths and weaknesses likewise and can absolutely not be called perfect and flawless. At the time when those strengths are mutually absorbed and assimilated, I think, a well-rounded and perfected new religion will emerge for the first time. (. . .)15 Of course, his [i.e. Ukitas] treatise, if seen from a religious [perspective], wishes to artificially merge each religion’s strong points, however limited or little they may be. But whether artificially or naturally, we will bow to his theory at the point of that ideal! If we think about this again, that what is called belief of religions, can surely not reign supreme by artificial means. At least there must be some mythical or revealed hints that must be relied on in order to attain the foundation of a real religion. I am confident that the thinking of Master Ch’oe Suun16 opened the outstanding foundation of the unification of religion through the enlightenment of a divine revelation indeed. Regarding this, there is plenty of evidence through the Master’s belief of one period [of his life] and the respective thinking and acting.

14  This Chinese version of the golden rule is quoted from the Analects 12.2, representing a short dialogue between Confucius and his disciple Zigong. 15  Marked in the text as ‘haryak’ (following [parts] omitted). 16  Suun (‘Watercloud’) is a pen-name of Ch’oe Cheu (1824–1864), first master or ‘spiritual leader’ of the Tonghak-movement.

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Eras, however, create men,17 and men again create eras. Even though one could be called a religionist of divine revelation, if he cannot receive support by the age it is absolutely impossible that this thinking will spread. In China during the Spring and Autumn Period,18 for example, at the time the theories of the ‘hundred schools’ have been fermented, great master Kong, the practical ethicist, was born; together [with him] appeared the great Shakyamuni, who advocated freedom and equality due to the Indian evil of a creed which was established through the class [i.e. caste] thinking of the Brahmanic teaching; together [with them] Jesus was born in Judea, where at the time prognosticators were criss-crossing the country and one whole generation was longing for the son of god. [Figures] like those can all be called a product of the ages. The very idea of the unification of religion by the Great Spiritual Master19 relied also on the age and the place and received their influence to some degree. Takahashi Toru,20 doctor of literature, presented the following general thoughts on the subject called “history of the treatises on the unification of the ‘three teachings’ in Korea.”21 He said: 17  The term inmul refers to ‘human being’ but also to more singular important figures or persons. 18  This period roughly dates from eighth century BCE to 5th century BCE. 19  ‘Taesinsa’ is a posthumous honorific religious title for Ch’oe Cheu. 20   Takahashi Toru (1878–1967) came to the peninsula already during the Japanese Protectorate over Korea. He helped to found the Japanese Imperial University in Seoul and became professor for Korean studies there. His publications focused on Korean Buddhism and Confucianism, and to some extent also on broader religious and other issues. 21  This actually is a quotation from an article by Takahashi with exactly the same title, see: idem, “Chosŏn-e taehan samgyo habillon-ŭi yŏksa” [History of syncretism of the Three Religions as pertaining to Korea], Pando siron (Peninsular History) 2/11 (Taisho 7 [1918]). It probably represents a part of his doctoral dissertation, “Chosen no kyoka to kyosei” (Tokyo: Tokyo Imperial University, Taisho 8 [1919]), which was finished before Yi Tonhwa began his series. According to the list of publications given in “Takahashi Toru sensei chosaku nenpyo” [Chronological List of Publications of Master Takahashi Toru], Chosen gakuho 14 (Showa 34 [1959]), 15–21, the thesis was never published and it cannot be localised today, either. The most authoritative proofs are a report in Keijo nippo [Keijo, i.e. Seoul, Daily] of December 7th, Taisho 8 [1919] (see the Newspaper Clipping Collection of Kobe University Library via http://www.lib.kobe-u.ac.jp/sinbun/index.html) and his academic biography in “Takahashi Toru nenpuryaku” [Short Biographical Register of Takahashi Toru], Chosen gakuho 14 (Showa 34 [1959]), 6, as well as in “Takahashi Toru nenpuryaku,” Chosen gakuho 48 (Showa 43 [1968]), 8. One should also consider that Yi Tonhwa might further had oral information about Takahashi, who was, according to his academic biography, in 1918 headmaster of the ‘higher common school’ (koto futsu gakko

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The unification of the three teachings of the scholars, the Buddha, and the immortals [i.e. Daoism] is the highest philosophical and religious ideal of the Chosŏn [i.e. Korean] people and can be called the apex of their thinking. For this reason the unification of the ‘three teachings’ has been the one signboard of Korean religion, no, East Asian religion. For master Ch’oe Cheu, founder of Tonghak [i.e. the ‘Eastern Learning’] and predecessor of the teaching of the heavenly way and the teaching of the serving of heaven,22 to raise Tonghak was based upon that advocacy [of the ideal], and when Ha Sangyŏk23 established the teaching of the great ancestor,24 he as well built its tenets on the basis of the amalgamation of the three teachings. Speaking about the unification of the three teachings, one can say that there is no other lofty or recondite thinking the Koreans are targeting at. Consequently, the Korean treatises on the unification of the three teachings are the peak of thinking and believing, will be the culmination of philosophy and religion and their spiritual and intellectual power will expand greatly. Accordingly, the Teaching of the Heavenly Way and the Teaching of the Serving of Heaven have made much use of this. Furthermore, the study of the historical experiences of these treatises [shows that] those who advocated this [i.e the unification of the in Japanese or kodŭng pot’ong hakkyo in Korean) in Taegu in the Southern part of the peninsula. 22  Sich’ŏn-gyo was a short-lived split-off from Chondoism formed in 1906 by Yi Yonggu (1868–1912), a former member of the inner circle of Tonghak. According to nationalist historiography the split-off Sich’ŏn-gyo was a reaction to the decision of the Chondoist congregation to refuse collaboration with the Japanese, however, this was probably not the only reason. After Yi’s death Sich’ŏn-gyo split further and was renamed several times. Sich’ŏn-gyo reportedly existed in the early years of the Republic of Korea (South Korea), but was seemingly not statistically relevant anymore. 23  Ha Sangyŏk (1859–1916) was the founder of a new religion with the name Taejong-gyo (teaching of the great ancestor). Not much is known about him, Kŭm Changt’ae shortly mentions him as stemming from a certain Namhak (Southern Learning) of Kim Hang (1826–1898), a ‘folk-religious’ movement with ties to Confucianism. See: idem, Han’guk kŭndae-ŭi yugyo sasang (Seoul: Seoul taehakkyo ch’ulp’an-sa, 1990), 91. His source is the history of Korean Daoism by Yi Nŭnghwa (1869–1943), a manuscript unpublished during the colonial period. See: idem, Chosŏn togyo-sa (Seoul, Posŏng munhwa-sa, 2000), 334ff. and 496–497. According to Yi Nŭnghwa, Taejong-gyo was a self-designation of Namhak. 24  The Taejong-gyo of Ha Sangyŏk should not be confused with another Taejong-gyo (teaching of the great progenitor) of Na Ch’ŏl (1863–1916). It was founded in 1909 as Tan’gun-gyo (teaching of prince sandalwood) and renamed to Taejong-gyo in 1910, although centreed on Tan’gun, the mythical progenitor of Korea. The Taejong-gyo of Ha Sangyŏk was either older (according to Yi Nŭnghwa) or founded in 1909, too (according to Kŭm Changt’ae).

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three teachings] changed because of the rise and decline of the teachings of the scholars and the teaching of the Buddha. When the teaching of the Buddha flourished, the treatises on the unification of the ‘three teachings’ were advocated from the side of the scholars, and when the teaching of the scholars flourished, the treatises on the unification of the ‘three teachings’ were advocated from the side of the monks. These are very interesting materials, indeed! In the present this became the unification of the ‘three teachings’ of the Heavenly Way and the Serving of Heaven, which have found several million devotees. In fact, the pedigree of what is called treatises on the unification of the ‘three teachings’ stemmed from the monks. [. . .] This treatise by Takahashi Toru examines the treatises on the unification of the three teachings historically and very much grasped reasons and circumstances. The idea of the unification of religion is, indeed, the integral idea of the Chosŏn people! At the same time, it is not an exaggeration to call it also the integral ideal of the East Asian people. Thinking that the [teachings of] the scholars, the Buddha, and the immortals existed as long as suns and moons of several thousand years, the East Asian people had a deep basis therein and they received those ideals and those cultures long ago. That these [teachings] are to be unified by the East Asian people is a necessary ideal, and is this furthermore not principle and proof 25 of a result? If the unification of the three teachings by the Great Spiritual Master will indeed be realised, it will dominate one era and also cannot be called a strange matter. It is a natural and necessary fact and the Great Spiritual Master, on the basis of his marvelous personality, saw [that] clearly.26 However, through what ideal the Great Spiritual Master wished to unify the three teachings, this is a question to study, indeed! After the enlightenment of the fifth day of the fourth month in the year kyŏngsin27 [i.e. 1860], the Great Spiritual Master replied to the questions of his disciples: “Our way is the heavenly way.”28 He declared furthermore: “Our way is something never heard in the present and never heard in the past, and it is a

25  The term ich’e (‘principle’ and ‘to judge’) is not a lexical compound. The character ch’e could refer to ‘judgment’ and ‘investigation,’ or to ‘truth’ in a Buddhist context. 26  The characters for ch’ehyŏn (‘to judge’ and ‘to appear’) in the text are not known as a compound and probably a misprint of ch’esi (the character si, ‘to look at,’ is similar to hyŏn). 27  The year and month are given according to the lunar calendar. There is a difference of four to six weeks to the solar calendar. 28  The quotation could stem from different texts; it is too short to judge from which one.

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precept with no comparison in the present and the past.”29 Based on this declaration, the unification of [the teachings of] the scholars, the Buddha, and the immortals by the Great Spiritual Master did not [simply] merge each tenet of [the teaching of] the scholars, the Buddha, and the immortals under reference to earlier examples or as rice mixed with other ingredients, but was going to unite these under a new ideal. In other words, the unification of [the teachings of] the scholars, the Buddha, and the immortals by the Great Spiritual Master is not a unification by force, but was manifested in an ideal which is the result of cultivation and praxis30 as well as the ultimate enlightenment. And is not the result of an analysis of this manifested ideal that a part of those ideals of each of [the teachings of] the scholars, the Buddha, and the immortals [lead to the] initial enlightenment? Selected and translated by Andreas Müller-Lee 29  This is a quotation from the canonical Chondoist text Nonhang-mun [‘Treatise on Learning’ or ‘Discussion of the Teaching’]. There are two slightly different English translations by Yong Choon Kim: “On Learning Truth” in Peter H. Lee ed., Sourcebook of Korean Civilization, vol. II (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 317–321; and “A Discussion on Learning” in Yong Choon Kim and Suk San Yoon, eds. Chondogyo Scripture: Donggyeong Daejeon (Great Scripture of Eastern Learning) (Lanham et al.: University Press of America, 2007), 7–13. 30  The characters for suryŏn in the text are not known as a compound and probably a misprint of the given homonym.

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Gendun Chopel: Grains of Gold—Tales of a Cosmopolitan Traveller (Tibet, 1941) Introduction Unlike so many Asian nations, Tibet escaped the most direct impact of imperialism and colonialism between 1860 and 1940. It was ten years later, in 1950, that troops of the People’s Liberation Army invaded Tibet. Nine years later, in March 1959, the fourteenth Dalai Lama fled into exile to India, where he continues to reside. What was once Tibet has been absorbed into the People’s Republic of China. Its vast region has been apportioned among the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan, and Yunnan, and the newly created Tibet Autonomous Region. Although Tibet did not become absorbed into an empire until the last half of the twentieth century, it had vexed relations with two empires in the previous century. The Manchu rulers of China had held firm control over Tibetan foreign relations during much of the eighteenth century. During the late nineteenth century the Qing Dynasty moved toward its demise; the infant emperor Puyi would abdicate in 1912. During this period, Chinese influence over Tibet grew progressively weaker. During this same period, the British, long established in India, came to regard Tibet to the north as a buffer state between their Raj and Russia. By the end of the nineteenth century, they had become concerned about possible Russian influence in Tibet. Among the advisors of the thirteenth Dalai Lama was Agvan Dorzhiev (1854–1938), a monk from the ethnically Mongol region of Buryatia near Lake Baikal. In 1898, Czar Nicholas II had presented him with a watch in recognition of the intelligence he had gathered during his time in Tibet. Alarmed that Tibet might fall under Russian influence, the British demanded greater trade relations with Tibet. When these demands were refused, British troops under the command of Colonel Francis Younghusband crossed into Tibet in December 1903. Over the next six months they marched on Lhasa, encountering along the way Tibetan forces armed with matchlock rifles, swords, and spears. In a series of skirmishes and battles, some three thousand Tibetans were killed. By the time they reached Lhasa, the Dalai Lama had fled to Mongolia. Negotiating with the senior monk of the Geluk sect, they

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extracted a trade agreement that allowed the British to establish stations in two Tibetan towns, but not in the capital of Lhasa. In 1903, the year of the British invasion, Gendun Chopel (Dge ’dun chos ’phel) was born in the Reb gong region of Amdo in the far northeast corner of the Tibetan cultural domain. He would become one of the most important Tibetan intellectuals of the twentieth century, renowned as a scholar, translator, historian, essayist, poet, and painter. The son of a respected lama of the Nyingma (Rnying ma) sect of Tibetan Buddhism, at the age of five, he was recognised as the incarnation of the abbot of the famous Nyingma monastery of Dorje Drak (Rdo rje brag). Following his father’s untimely death, Gendun Chopel entered a local monastery of the Geluk (Dge lugs) sect before moving to the major Geluk monastery of the region, called Labrang (Bla brang). There he gained particular notoriety as a debater, able to uphold unorthodox positions on points of Buddhist doctrine. In 1928 he left Amdo for Lhasa, where he entered Drepung (’Bras spungs) monastery, the largest monastery in the world, with over ten thousand monks. There, he resumed his studies, again gaining a reputation as a skilled debater and controversial figure. In 1934, the Indian scholar and nationalist Rahul Sankrityayan (1893–1963) arrived in Lhasa in search of Sanskrit manuscripts preserved in Tibet. He enlisted Gendun Chopel as his guide, just as he was completing the final examinations of the Geluk geshe, the highest academic degree in the monastic curriculum of that sect. After their bibliographic tour of southern Tibet was concluded, Rahul Sankrityayan invited Gendun Chopel to return with him to India. Over the next decade, he would travel extensively, and often alone, across India, also making a long visit to Sri Lanka. During his time abroad, he learned Sanskrit, Pāli, several Indian vernaculars, as well as English. He assisted the Russian Tibetologist, George Roerich, in the translation of an important fifteenthcentury history of Tibetan Buddhism that would be published in 1949 as The Blue Annals. Some years earlier, in Kalimpong, he assisted the French scholar Jacques Bacot in the translation of several Dunhuang manuscripts from the Tibetan dynastic period. He visited and made studies of many of the important Buddhist archaeological sites and pilgrimage places in India, writing Rgya gar gyi gnas chen khag la ’grod pa’i lam yig (Guidebook for Travel to the Holy Places of India),1 a work that is still used by Tibetan pilgrims. He also studied Sanskrit erotica and frequented Calcutta brothels, producing his famous sex manual,

1  For a translation, see Toni Huber, The Guide to India: A Tibetan Account by Amdo Gendun Chöphel (Dharamsala, India: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 2000).

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written in verse, the ’Dod pa’i bstan bcos (Treatise on Passion).2 Among his translations from Indian languages into Tibetan were the Dhammapada and several chapters of the Bhagavadgītā. In the spring of 1945, after twelve years abroad, Gendun Chopel returned to Lhasa, where he taught Sanskrit poetics to a circle of friends and students, both lay and monastic. He also gave teachings on Madhyamaka philosophy, which would be published posthumously as the controversial Klu sgrub dgongs rgyan3 (Adornment for Nāgārjuna’s Thought). Within a year of his arrival in Lhasa, Gendun Chopel was arrested on the fabricated charge of counterfeiting foreign currency; the true reasons for his arrest remain unknown. Sentenced to three years in prison, he served at least two. He was given paper and pen in his cell and continued to write, working on his unfinished political history of Tibet, Deb ther dkar po (The White Annals) and also writing poetry. He emerged from prison a broken man and died on October 14, 1951 at the age of 48, shortly after troops of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army marched into Lhasa. Although the works mentioned above are his most famous, Gendun Chopel considered his most important work to be his lengthy collection of essays on Indian and Tibetan culture composed during his time in India and Sri Lanka. It is entitled, Rgyal khams rig pas bskor ba’i gtam rgyud gser gyi thang ma (Grains of Gold: Tales of a Cosmopolitan Traveller). Over six hundred pages in the original Tibetan, it was intended to be published with several hundred watercolour illustrations by Gendun Chopel himself. However, the work remained unpublished for decades, during which most of the paintings were lost. It was published for the first time in 1990. Its seventeen chapters contain, among other things: his translation of rock edicts of the Buddhist emperor Aśoka; analyses of the development of the Tibetan language, expositions of classical Indian art and architecture; descriptions of the flora and fauna of India; discussions of Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Islam, and Theosophy; and a scathing critique of European colonialism. The last chapter includes the first sustained discussion of Western science to appear in Tibetan. That discussion is translated here in its entirety. Donald S. Lopez, Jr.

2  For a translation, see Jeffrey Hopkins, Tibetan Arts of Love: Sex, Orgasm, and Spiritual Healing (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1992). 3  For a translation, see Donald S. Lopez, Jr., The Madman’s Middle Way: Reflections on Reality of the Tibetan Monk Gendun Chopel (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006).

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Further Reading

Gendun Chopel. Grains of Gold: Tales of a Cosmopolitan Traveler. Translated by Thupten Jinpa and Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014. Gendun Chopel. Guide to India: A Tibetan Account. Translated by Toni Huber. Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works & Archives, 2000. Goldstein, Melvyn. A History of Modern Tibet, 1913–1951. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991. Lopez, Donald S., Jr. Gendun Chopel: Tibet’s First Modern Artist. Chicago: Serindia Publications, 2013. Lopez, Donald S., Jr. The Madman’s Middle Way: Reflections on Reality of the Tibetan Monk Gendun Chopel. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006. Schaedler, Luc. Angry Monk: Reflections on Tibet. Brooklyn, NY: First Run / Icarus Films, 2005. Stoddard, Heather. Le mendiant de l’Amdo. Paris: Société d’ethnographie, 1985.



Source Text4

Now I shall offer a sincere discussion for those honest and far-sighted dharma friends who are members of my religion. The system of the new reasoning ‘­science’ is spreading and increasing in all directions. In the great countries, after baseless accusations by so many, both learned and foolish, who say, “It is not true,” they all have become exhausted and had to keep silent. In the end, even the Indian Brahmins, who value the defence of their scriptures more than their lives, have had to powerlessly accept it. These assertions of the new reasoning are not established just through one person arguing with another. For example, a telescope constructed by new machines sees something thousands of miles away as if it were in the palm of one’s hand, and similarly, a glass instrument that perceives what is close by makes even the smallest particles appear the size of a mountain; it is like being able to analyse its many parts, actually seeing everything. Thus, apart from closing their eyes, they [the opponents of science] have found no other way to persist. At first, even those who adhered to the Christian religion in the European lands joined forces with the king, casting out the proponents of the new reasoning [science], using whatever means to stop them, imprisoning 4  Dge ’dun chos ’phel, ’Dzam gling rig pa’i dpa’ bo mkhas dbang dge ’dun chos ’phel gyi gsung ’bum, vol. 3 (Hong Kong: Zhang kang gyi ling dpe skrun khang, 2006), 166–72.

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them, burning them alive, and so forth. In the end, when the light of the sun could not be concealed with their hands, they were forced to place their religion within the new system, even though it did not fit, and had to admit that it was utterly false. As the glorious Dharmakīrti5 said, “Those who are mistaken about the truth cannot be changed, no matter how one tries, because their minds are prejudiced.”6 The rejection of reason is a most despicable act. Even so, when we Tibetans hear the mere mention of the new system, we look wide-eyed and say, “Oh! He is a heretic!” Acting in this way, some, like those Mongolians from the Urga region,7 eventually come to impulsively believe in the new reasoning, and lose all faith in the Buddha, becoming nonBuddhists. Thus, whether one either stubbornly says, “No!” to the new reasoning or believes in it and utterly rejects the teaching of Buddhism, both are prejudice; because it is simply recalcitrance, this will not take you far. No matter what aspect is set forth in this religion taught by our Teacher [the Buddha], whether it be the nature of reality, how to progress on the path, or the good qualities of the fruition, there is absolutely no need to feel embarrassed in the face of the system of science. Furthermore, for any essential point [in Buddhism], science can serve as a foundation. Among the Westerners, many scholars of science have acquired a faith in the Buddha and become Buddhists; some have even become monks. One of them said: “First, I followed the system of the ancient religion of Jesus. Later, I learned science well and a new understanding was born. Then I thought that all the religions in this world are just assertions rooted in a lie, requiring that one rely only on the letter. One day, I saw a stanza of the Dhammapada translated into a European language and thought, ‘Oh! The only one who follows the path of reason is the Buddha. Not only did he climb the ladder of science, but having left that [ladder] behind, he travelled even further beyond,’ and conviction was born.” These days, the famous monk Trailokajñāna,8 who lives in Sri Lanka, said that in the future the religion of the Buddha will be the religion of science, that 5  The seventh-century Indian Buddhist monk Dharmakīrti is renowned in Tibet as the foremost Buddhist logician. 6  Pramāṇavārttika, chapter 1, verse 221. 7  Gendun Chopel is referring here to Mongolians who rejected Buddhism and became Communists after the Russian Revolution. 8  Gendun Chopel refers here to Ñāṇatiloka Mahāthera (1878–1957), a distinguished Theravāda monk and scholar. Born Anton Walther Florus Gueth in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1878, he took ordination as a Buddhist novice in 1903 in Rangoon, apparently the first German ever to be ordained. In the following year he took his higher ordination as a monk (bhikkhu). He moved to Sri Lanka in 1905 where he spent the rest of his life, apart from lecture tours to

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is, a religion of reason, and other religions will be religions of faith. Another Buddhist pundit says, “Having mastered scientific reasoning, I came to especially respect the Buddha. The religion of my teacher works hand in hand with scientific reasoning; when one side tires, the other still is able to leap over [to assist]. If other religions join hands with science, they collapse, either immediately or after a few steps.” For example, the followers of the new reasoning [science] say that in the second moment immediately after any object comes into existence, it ceases or dissolves. These collections of disparate things disperse like lightning. Consequently, the first moment of a pot does not persist to the second moment, and even the perception of a shape does not exist objectively apart from unexpressed habit or the power of mind. Moreover, when examined as above, even colours are merely the ways a wave of the most subtle particles moves. For example, regarding waves of light, there is no difference of colour whatsoever to be seen in the particles themselves that are the basis for that colour; it is simply that eight hundred wavelengths in the blink of an eye appear as red and four hundred appear as yellow, and so on. Furthermore, they have invented another apparatus for seeing things that move too quickly to be seen, like drops of falling water. Something that lasts for one blink of an eye can be easily viewed over the duration of six blinks of an eye. More than ten years have passed since they made a viewing apparatus that is not obstructed [in seeing] things behind a wall or inside of a body. All of this is certain. They have also made a machine by which what is said in India can be heard in China in the following moment. Because they are able to show in China a film of something that exists in India, all people can be convinced. The final proof that all things run on waves of electricity is seeing it with one’s own eyes. Many great scholars of science made limitless praises of the Buddha, saying that two thousand years ago, when there were no such machines, the Buddha explained that all compounded things disintegrate in each moment and he taught that things do not remain even for a brief instant, and now we have actually seen this using machines. The statement by Dharmakīrti that “continuity and collection do not exist ultimately” can be understood in various ways, but in the end one can put one’s finger on the main point. Similarly, Europe and periods of internment by the British in both the First World War and the Second World War. Upon his death in 1957, he received a cremation ceremony of the highest honor in Independence Square in Colombo, Sri Lanka, with both the Prime Minister of Ceylon and the German ambassador attending. He published his most famous work, The Word of the Buddha, in 1906. He also published many articles and books in both English and German, including Buddhist Dictionary, Guide Through the Abhidhamma, and Path to Deliverance.

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because white exists, black can appear to the eye; there is no single truly white thing that can exist separately in the world. Some people say that this was first understood fifty years ago. However, our Nāgārjuna9 and others understood precisely that in ancient times. They also say that all these external appearances are projections of the mind; they do not appear outside. Whatever we see, it is seeing merely those aspects or reflections that the senses can handle; it is impossible to see the thing nakedly. Because these things are not even mentioned in other [religions] like Christianity, scientific reasoning is considered to be something that did not exist previously. However, for us, these [ideas] are familiar from long ago. Furthermore, the formation of the body’s channels and drops that is actually visible is amazingly similar to the explanations in the yoganiruttara tantras.10 Yet, to be excessively proud and continually assert that even the smallest details of all the explanations in our scriptures are unmistaken seems attractive only temporarily; it is pointless stubbornness. Nothing will come from your being angry with me. If I could remain silent, I could control the peace of my own ears; other than that, there is no benefit. For example, the followers of the new reasoning assert that trees are alive. Furthermore, in ancient times the Jains claimed that trees are sentient because they fold their leaves at night. [The Buddhist] could say, “Well then, it must follow for you that a piece of leather is sentient because if it comes near a fire, it withers.” However, there are flowers named Sundew and Venus [fly-trap] that, as soon as an insect lands on them, grab it, suck its blood, hollow out the body, and discard it on the ground. Every Sundew kills more than two hundred insects every day, and the bodies just keep piling up. Similarly, in another continent, there are many trees that suck blood when they catch humans or animals. This is evident to everyone. Since these are easy to understand, I have explained them; but recently, a Bengali scholar in India invented an electronic machine that actually recognises the presence of life.11 If such a flower were brought before us, would we 9  Nāgārjuna, generally placed in the second century CE, is regarded as the founder of the Madhyamaka (Middle Way) school of Buddhist philosophy, renowned for its doctrine of emptiness (śūnyatā). His most famous work is Madhyamakakārikā (Stanzas on the Middle Way). 10  The yoganiruttara tantras or ‘highest yoga tantras’ are a genre of texts regarded in Tibet as the supreme tantric teachings, setting forth techniques for the rapid attainment of buddhahood. They describe a complicated physiology in which a network of 72,000 channels (nāḍī) are located throughout the body, through which energies called drops (bindu) circulate. 11  Gendun Chopel is likely referring to Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937), the distinguished Bengali scientist who made important contributions to both radio science and botany.

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dare contest its existence? Would we say it is the nature of the plant? Even those who assert that insects and so forth are alive must at some point show various proofs for the existence of life. Would we describe the plant as a trifling hell?12 However, all types of those flowers are just like that. Look at the illustration I have drawn [not extant]. The Sinhalese scientists who are Buddhists say the Teacher had this in mind when he prohibited [monks from] cutting plants. But that explanation is [only] temporarily convincing. Only fifty years ago a great debate took place between a Christian and a Buddhist in Sri Lanka. On that occasion a monk called Guṇaratna [in fact, Guṇānanda] annihilated the opponents and admitted many thousands who had converted to Christianity back to Buddhism.13 Even then, none of the [Sinhalese] could deny the new reasoning like we [Tibetans] do. Whenever very foolish people of the Tibetan race hear talk about science, they say that it is the religion of Christianity. In countries that have no familiarity [with Christianity], even the Christians themselves shamelessly pretend that this is true. What could be more annoying than this? A great desire arose in me to write a separate book on the advantages of thinking about this new reasoning, but because of the great difficulty involved and because it would disillusion everyone, I decided it would be pointless and set the task aside. Please do not think that I am a dullard, believing immediately in whatever others say. I too am rather sharp-witted. In matters related to the [Buddha’s] teaching, neither have I found disciples to whom I can expound the dharma nor have conditions been suitable for me to establish a monastery; I am not capable of those great deeds. My concern for the dharma is not less than yours. For that reason, do not dismiss my statements with only the wish to The device mentioned here is probably the crescograph, invented by Bose, which measures the response of plants to various stimuli. 12  Here, Gendun Chopel is referring to a form of hell in the traditional Buddhist cosmology, called prādeśikanāraka (trifling hell). In this hell, rather than being reborn in a specific hot or cold hell, one is reborn inside an inanimate object, which becomes one’s body. Thus, Gendun Chopel says, somewhat sarcastically, that a Buddhist might explain the apparent sentience of plants by claiming that it is simply a case of a sentient being having been reborn inside the plant. 13  Gendun Chopel mistakes the name and the date here. He is in fact referring to the Sri Lankan monk Migettuwatte Guṇānanda Thera (1823–1890) who in 1873 participated in the Pānadurē Debate against a Christian minister. For studies of relations between Buddhist monks and Christian missionaries in Sri Lanka during the nineteenth century, including a detailed account of the debate, see R. F. Young and G. P. V. Somaratna, Vain Debates: The Buddhist-Christian Controversies of Nineteenth-Century Ceylon (Vienna: Publications of the De Nobili Research Library, 1996).

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attack me. If one does not want the tree trunk of the [Buddha’s] teaching and these roots of our Buddhist knowledge to be completely uprooted, one must be far-sighted. Having become an open-minded person who sees what is central and what is marginal, you should strive to ensure the survival of the teaching [Buddhism] so that it remains together with the ways of the new reasoning. Otherwise, if, fearing complaints by others, one is simply intransigent, then one may temporarily gain great profit and many friends. As it says on the pillar of Emperor Xuande at Drotsang (Gro tshang), “Like the light rays of the sun and moon in the vastness of space, may the teachings of the Buddha and my reign remain together for tens of thousands of years.” Please pray that the two, this modern reasoning of science and the ancient teaching of the Buddha, may abide together for ten thousand years.14 Selected and translated by Donald S. Lopez, Jr.

14  For a discussion and analysis of Gendun Chopel’s exposition on science here, see Donald S. Lopez Jr., Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 105–31.

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Chaophraya Thiphakorawong: A Book on Various Things (Thailand, 1867) Introduction Chaophraya Thiphakorawong (1813–1870) and His Time Chaophraya Thiphakorawong, the author of Nangsue sadaeng kitchanukit (A Book on Various Things),1 was born in Bangkok as Kham Bunnag on 1 October 1813. He was a member of the powerful Bunnag family, which played an important role in the administration of the kingdom of Siam. The Bunnags are of Arabo-Persian descent, whose ancestors had immigrated to Siam in the early seventeenth century. Over the years they had climbed up the social ladder, built up close ties with the royal Thai family by intermarriage and steady diplomatic service, adopted Buddhism during the eighteenth century to permanently secure their position at court, and produced in this manner at least five state ministers (Chaophraya) until the end of the Ayutthaya period (1351–1767). Kham Bunnag started his career in the Harbour Department during the reign of king Rama III (Phra Nangklao, r. 1824–51). As a member of one of the most eminent noble families in the country, it came easy to him to succeed in office. By the mid-nineteenth century, the Bunnags obtained the most prestigious and lucrative posts in the official hierarchy and effectively controlled much of the political administration in the country. When King Rama III died in 1851 without appointing an heir to the throne, the Bunnags were among those who decided on the royal succession. Kham was actively involved in the election process and determinedly supported the case of Prince Mongkut who had been one of his closest friends since many years. Once elected, Mongkut (King Rama IV) rewarded for his loyalty, and raised him to the noble rank of Chaophraya (or minister of state) in 1853, and finally conferred to him the title of Thiphakorawong in 1865, by which Kham is best known today. In 1855 he succeeded his father as a minister of the royal treasury (Phra Khlang), who in those days effectively acted as a minister of foreign affairs. Suffering from ill health later in his life Thiphakorawong retired in 1867 and spent his final years writing books and essays on Thai history, culture and religion. The NSK 1  Chaophraya Thiphakorawong, Nangsue sadaeng kitchanukit [1867] (Bangkok: Sueksaphanit, 2014/1971) (hereafter NSK).

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treated below is a significant result of his late vocation as an author and selftaught historian and the major source for an assessment of his comparative study of religions.2 The reign of King Rama IV was a period of reform on various levels of society, changing the ways in which the Bangkok government administered the country, how the Siamese government dealt with foreigners (in particular with those from Western countries) and how both clerics and laymen practiced the Buddhist religion. From an economic point of view, the period of 1851–68 is marked by the conclusion of the Bowring Treaty between Britain and Siam in April 1855. This treaty had a significant effect on the development of the country because it opened up Siam to Western trade. The British came to Siam as an imperial power and left no doubt that they were willing to use force to protect their economic interests. The outcome of the agreement therefore met London’s chief conditions.3 The treaty did not bring about an instant ‘Revolution’ of Siam’s economic and political system, as the British might have had hoped or expected. Yet one consequence that was immediately felt was a remarkable influx of European and other foreign residents who were attracted by new trade opportunities in Siam and who significantly grew in number after 1855.4 Christianity in Siam Christianity was not unknown in nineteenth-century Siam. First Christian settlements date back to the sixteenth century, when Portuguese merchants began to operate in Ayutthaya, the former capital of the kingdom. In the second half of the seventeenth-century king Louis XIV with the newly-founded French Foreign Mission (Société des Missions Étrangères) made a first serious attempt to spread the Catholic faith in Siam and even tried to convert the Siamese king Narai to Christianity. But these plans failed in 1688 and led to an interruption of Christian missionary activities in Siam for the next 140 years. It was during the reign of king Rama III that the Christian mission was revived in the country. The Catholic Church was re-established in 1830 and eight years later the Vatican installed Jean-Baptiste Pallegoix as Vicar 2  A detailed account of Thiphakorawong’s life is provided in Somjai Phirotthirarach, “The Historical Writings of Chao Phraya Thiphakorawong” (PhD diss., DeKalb: Northern Illinois University 1983), 30–80. 3  Barend J. Terwiel, Thailand’s Political History: From the 13th Century to Recent Times (Bangkok: River Books, 2010), 153–63. 4  Similar treaties were concluded with other nations in subsequent years, the United States, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal and Prussia among them.

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Apostolic of Siam and titular bishop of Mallus.5 The first Protestant missionaries explored the field in Siam in 1828, when the German Karl Gützlaff arrived in Bangkok. He was joined by Rev. Jacob Tomlin in 1830. Both stayed on until 1831 and then left for China.6 The Protestant mission maintained a continuous presence in Siam since 1833, when the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions ordered the Baptist missionary John Taylor Jones (then based in Burma) to establish a mission in Bangkok. Two years after his arrival he was sided by the physician and missionary Dr. Dan Beach Bradley, who was to stay in Siam until his death in 1873. Bradley is well remembered in Thai history for his pioneering work in medicine, printing and publishing.7 Nineteenth-century Christian missionaries had only limited success in making conversions; but they did have a profound effect on Siamese religion, albeit in a perhaps unexpected manner. One of the strengths of the missionaries was their ability to offer religion in tandem with modern science and technology. They did their best to present these realms of knowledge as intrinsically tied to each other, even though they knew that materiality and spirituality had long been effectively separated in modern Western thought. It was obvious that steamboats would go, printing presses would run and cannons would fire with or without Christianity. Many Siamese honestly admired the scientific expertise of foreigners from the West. Learned missionaries had been advisors and favourites of kings and nobles and were sought after as instructors to teach the Siamese the use of modern technology or medicine, but their Christian message was frequently ignored. The Siamese responded to the challenges posed by Western knowledge by separating the material world from the spiritual, however tentative and imprecise such a distinction turned out to be in practice.

5  Pallegoix authored a valuable account of the kingdom: Jean-Baptiste Pallegoix, Description du Royame de Thai ou Siam (Paris: Au Profit de la Mission de Siam,1854). He also published in the same year a four language dictionary in Thai: Jean-Baptiste Pallegoix, Dictionarium Linguae Thai. Sive Siamensis. Interpreatione Latina, Gallica et Anglic (Paris: Jussu Imperatoris Impressum / In Typographeo Imperatorio MDCCCLIV [1854]). 6  Both missionaries later published accounts of their experiences in Asia: Karl Gützlaff, Journal of the Three Voyages Along the Coast of China, in 1831, 1832, 1833 (London: Frederick Westley and A. H. Davies, 1834); Jacob Tomlin, Missionary Journals and Letters (London: James Nisbet & Co, 1844). 7  On Bradley see Donald C. Lord, Mo Bradley and Thailand (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1969).

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The Buddhist Reform Movement Religious debates became increasingly harsh over the years. One principal reason for disagreement between Christian missionaries and educated Siamese Buddhists was that there were striking similarities in their respective claims for purity and universality. Siamese religious eclecticism not only proved detrimental to the spread of Christianity in the country but also began to pose a problem for the Buddhist community (Sangha). Thiphakorawong was a prominent member of the Buddhist reform movement Thammayut, or the “Order Adhering to the Dhamma.” The group proposed a purified version of Buddhism based on the Pali canon, redefining in effect virtually all aspects of religious life according to principles derived from the Theravada-Buddhist canon Tripiṭaka (Thai: Traipidok). They regarded Siamese Buddhism in its present form as impure since in daily life both clerics and laymen unconsciously made use of various religious traditions not in accordance with the Buddhist canon. Over centuries the Siamese had adopted practices from Brahman sources and maintained older beliefs and rituals such as the veneration of supernatural spirits. The reformers militated against these ‘foreign’ influences and deemed nonBuddhist spirit worship and the veneration of Hindu deities as inconsistent with the ancient scriptures.8 Founded during the reign of king Rama III, the Thammayut movement instigated one of the most important religious changes in Siamese history. Its recognised leader was Prince Mongkut, then the highest-ranking prince in the country. Mongkut had spent the years from 1824 to 1851 in monkhood before becoming king. As a priest he learned Pali, studied the sacred texts of Buddhism and later obtained a religious degree. As an educated cleric Mongkut frequently met Christian missionaries from all denominations and with their assistance became acquainted with Western languages. He obtained some knowledge of Latin and French from father Pallegoix and took English lessons from Jesse Caswell, who had joined Bradley’s station in Bangkok in 1840.9 Mongkut’s vision of Buddhism is partly indebted to Protestant criticism of superstitious elements in Buddhist cosmology. Yet another important source of inspiration was Singhalese Buddhism which in his eyes represented an exemplary version of the faith that was still intact and uncontaminated.10 Mongkut re-examined the Thraibhumikatha (Thraiphum Phra Ruang), a fourteenth8  A. Thomas Kirsch, “Modernizing Implications of 19th Century Reforms of the Thai Sangha,” Contributions to Asian Studies 8 (1975): 8–23. 9  William L. Bradley, “Mongkut and Jesse Caswell,” Journal of the Siam Society 54/1 (1966): 29–41. 10  M. L. Manich Jumsai, King Mongkut and the British (Bangkok: Chalermnit, 2000), 16–17.

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century cosmological text which by the nineteenth century had provided the basis of the Theravada Buddhist understanding of nature and existence, and sought to reassess all of its assumptions that were inconsistent with insights of modern science.11 In doing so Mongkut diverged from traditional local conceptions of Buddhism in many ways and at the same time he was drawn back to the most ancient Pali texts. The truth of Buddhism, he argued, would only reveal itself through the study of the holy scriptures in their original form. Mongkut pursued his quest for religious purity in an almost Orientalist manner, searching for the most ancient texts and traditions like the British did in India or the French in Egypt. He believed that a reformed version of Buddhism would be compatible with (or at least not in contradiction to) modern scientific epistemology, and at the same time he proposed that Christianity was not. Mongkut’s ideas on Buddhism and Christianity found a congenial expression in the NSK written by his minister. Thiphakorawong played a key role in cross-cultural encounters between Siam and Western countries, because as Phra Khlang he could choose with whom of the foreigners it would be worthwhile to get in contact with. Thiphakorawong’s attitude towards Western envoys and missionaries has often been characterised as curious and openminded, although he was not at all uncritical of Euro-American culture and in particular of Christianity. Thiphakorawong apparently was able to discuss religious and worldly issues without prejudice and derived from these conversations insights into Western culture and science. He studied the Christian tracts that the missionaries distributed in Thai and frequently argued with them on religious issues. The Nangsue sadaeng kitchanukit The NSK was published in 390 octavo pages in two hundred copies and was on sale in Bangkok on 23 November 1867. It was the first textbook on science in Thai and reportedly the first book printed by the Siamese without foreign assistance. Thiphakorawong stated in the preface that his book was intended to improve school education in Siam, which he thought was based on obsolete intellectual principles that contradicted empirical observation and the laws of nature. Like his king he was particularly critical of traditional Siamese cosmography as exposed in the Traiphum that still served in temple schools as

11  Frank E. Reynolds & Mani B. Reynolds, trans., Three worlds according to King Ruang: A Thai Buddhist Cosmology. Translation with Introduction and Notes by Frank E. Reynolds & Mani B. Reynolds (Berkeley, California: Distributed by Asian Humanities Press/Motila Banarsidass, 1982).

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the general frame of knowledge of the world.12 Thiphakorawong’s knowledge of science was still superficial and in many cases inaccurate, not derived from personal experience but primarily from information provided by personal communication with his Western discussants. But his book is an important document on the intellectual strategies employed by the Siamese intelligentsia to come to terms with the intrusion of Western knowledge. The work is roughly organised in questions and answers to evoke a dialogue form of class teaching as practiced in the West. There are no chapters or crossheadings structuring the text. The first part of the book contains a basic critique of Buddhist cosmology in which the author dismissed mythological explanations for natural phenomena and instead preferred rational explanations as provided by his Western informants. In this section Thiphakorawong adopted some of the views of Western missionaries of astronomy as well as their methods of explaining natural phenomena such as floods and earthquakes, the reasons for the appearance of comets, or for the outbreak of epidemic diseases. The remainder of the book is devoted to a comparative study of religions, focusing in particular on a juxtaposition of Buddhism and Christianity.13 Obviously Thiphakorawong felt compelled to defend Buddhism against attacks from Christian missionaries in Bangkok, who publicly insulted images of the Buddha as pagan idols, scorned indigenous beliefs and rituals as superstitious and primitive, condemned polygamy, and in public sermons denounced the Buddhist Dhamma. Thiphakorawong took for granted that Europe and the United States had a monopoly in technology, government, military power, and scientific knowledge. The only way to compete with them was to demonstrate that Western superiority in grasping the material world did not necessarily imply spiritual superiority of Christianity over Buddhism. Thiphakorawong acknowledged that Siamese Buddhism was in its own cosmology far from scientific, but in the Thammayut reconstruction those elements that could be construed as compatible with modern science were emphasised while those that were not were suppressed or rendered allegorical.14 Conversely, he was aware that Christianity itself had its problems with modern science. Thiphakorawong found the Biblical narrative as irrational and fabulous as the Thraiphum. Buddhist modernism as proposed by the reformers, he claimed, was better fitted to withstand scientific scrutiny than Christianity. The NSK has been partly translated into English in 1870 by Henry Alabaster, who worked in Bangkok as a deputy Consul of the British and in 1872 became 12   NSK, 1. 13   NSK, 109–28 (see translation below). 14   NSK, 80–81.

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a personal adviser to King Chulalongkorn, a position he retained until his death in 1884. One year later he published a revised and enlarged version as the first part of his The Wheel of the Law (1871), a study of Buddhism based on Siamese texts.15 The book did not pass completely unnoticed in the West. It was particularly well received by Western critics of the missionaries’ activities in Asia.16 Alabaster’s translation is in general reliable and accurate, but he did not translate the book in full. He skipped or summarised some passages on science in the first part of the NSK and omitted, among other things, a defence of the practice of polygamy in Siam later in the book.17 The English version also contains interpolations, in which Alabaster further elucidated or “corrected” Thiphakorawong’s arguments according to his judgment. The Modern Buddhist is therefore both a translation of and a comment on the NSK. Sven Trakulhun

Further Reading

Harrison, Rachel and Peter A. Jackson eds. The Ambiguous Allure of the West: Traces of the Colonial in Thailand. Hong Kong: Hongkong University Press, 2010. Reynolds, Craig J. Seditious Historie: Contesting Thai and Southeast Asian Pasts. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2006. Somjai Phirotthirarach. “The Historical Writings of Chao Phraya Thiphakorawong,” PhD diss., Northern Illinois University, 1983. Thongchai Winichakul. Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation. Bangkok: Silkworm Books 1998. Yoneo Ishii. Sangha, State, and Society: Thai Buddhism in History. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1986.

15  Henry Alabaster, The Modern Buddhist; Being the Views of a Siamese Minister of State on His Own and Other Religions (London: Trübner & Co, 1870); The Wheel of the Law-Buddhism (London: Trübner & Co., 1871; New Delhi: Aryan Books International, 1996), 1–73. 16  “A Buddhist Matthew Arnold,” in Littell’s The Living Age, 4th Series, vol. XVII (Boston, 1870), 235–38; The Westminster Review, New Series, vol. XL (London: Trübner, 1871), 499. 17  The passage on polygamy has been translated in Craig J. Reynold, Seditious Histories: Contesting Thai and Southeast Asian Pasts (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2006), 208–12; (NSK, 221–24).

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Source Text18

[. . .] I propose to write a book for the instruction of the young. To my mind the course of teaching at present followed in the temples is unprofitable. That course consists of the spelling-book, religious formulae, and tales.19 What knowledge can anyone gain from such nonsense as “O Chan, my little man, please bring rice and curry nice, and a ring, a copper thing round my little brother’s arm to cling?”—jingling sound without sense, a fair example of a large class of reading exercise.20 I shall endeavor to write fruitfully on various subjects, material knowledge and religion,21 discussing the evidence of the truth and falsity of things. The young will gain more by studying this than by reading religious formulae and novels, for they will learn to answer questions that may be put to them. My book will be one of questions and answers, and I shall call it A Book Explaining Various Things. [. . .] Our Siamese literature is not only scanty but nonsensical, full of stories of ghosts stealing women, and men fighting with ghosts, and extraordinary persons who could fly through the air, and bring dead people to life. And even those works which profess to teach anything generally teach it wrong, so that there is not the least profit, though one studies them from morning to night. Though I may be wrong, still, what I write will serve to stimulate men’s thoughts, and lead to their finding out the truth.22 [. . .]

18   Translation of: Chaophraya Thiphakorawong, Nangsue sadaeng kitchanukit [1867] (Bangkok: Sueksaphanit, 1971). The present translation is based on Alabaster’s English rendering of the book’s central sections on Christianity and Buddhism, with some modifications based on the 1971 edition of the Thai text and a number of additional footnotes. 19  Education in Siam was a principal domain of the Buddhist monasteries which were distributed widely over the country. Traditional monastery education was open to boys only and primarily aimed at religious instruction, although reading and writing, and rudimentary mathematics were also part of the syllabus. 20  Probably a reference to rhymed (but otherwise often meaningless) sentences which Thai pupils learned in school to memorise the alphabet. 21  T. here invokes the Pali word sasana to distinguish the material world from the nonmaterial. I follow Alabaster’s translation as ‘religion,’ but elsewhere in the book sasana may also denote Buddhism more specifically, as distinguished from other faiths such as Christianity or Islam. The term probably maintained this ambiguity until 1932, when the authors of Siam’s first permanent constitution extended its meaning to religion in general (in the modern Thai spelling satsana). 22   NSK (1867/1971), 1–3; Alabaster, The Modern Buddhist, 5–7; Alabaster, The Wheel of the Law, 4–5.

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How is it that in some years fevers prevail, in others not; in some ophthalmia,23 smallpox, etc., arise as epidemics, and in some animals are attacked by epidemics? Those who believe in devils say they cause it. Those who believe in God the Creator say He inflicts them as a punishment. The Muslims say that there are trees in heaven, on each of whose leaves is the name of a human being, and whenever one of these leaves withers and falls the man whose name it bears dies with it. Old Siamese sages held that Phaya Naga mixed poison with the air.24 Those who do not believe in devils ascribe epidemic diseases to the change of seasons, the change from heat to cold and cold to heat, disturbing the body which is healthy enough when the season is well set in and becomes thoroughly hot, or cold, or rainy, as is the case. They further say, the evil element in the atmosphere is a poisonous gas, affecting all those whose bodily state cannot resist its entry. Epidemics among animals can be accounted for by the poisonous gas finding an affinity for the elements of the animals. I find corroboration in the fact that exposure to bad air brings on sicknesses which those who remain sheltered do not suffer from. Moreover, the sea water, which is a coarse atmosphere, when it is discolored and stinking kills the fish which are in it, but those which are strong enough to swim out of the foul part manage to escape. The same is seen with fish in a basin, which die if fresh water is not given to them. So we find many people live to old age without having the smallpox, by always running away from any place where it has broken out. In the same way outbreaks of fever are local, and danger is escaped by moving to another locality where there is none. Now if it was a visitation of God, there would be no running away from it. I leave you to form your own opinion whether it is the work of devils, or the visitation of God, or the result of the fall of the leaves in heaven, or of Phaya Naga’s poison, or of a bad atmosphere.25 [. . .] Dr. Caswell26 said that if everyone in the world would follow the teachings of the Buddha, it would be the end of mankind because people would die out, as all men would become monks, and there would be no children. This, he 23  Ophthalmia (also called ophthalmitis) is inflammation of the eye. T. probably refers to this illness because he went blind in his final years. But he was wrong in believing this illness to be infectious. 24  Phaya Naga is a mythical serpent often associated with water. 25   NSK (1867/1971), 13–15; Alabaster, The Modern Buddhist, 9–13; Alabaster, The Wheel of the Law, 6–9. 26  Jesse Caswell was a missionary of the American Board of Commissioners for the Foreign Missions, who served in Siam from 1840 until his death in Bangkok in 1848. He was Prince Mongkut’s English teacher in 1845 and 1846.

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urged, showed that it could not be the universal religion and could therefore not be true. I answered that the Lord Buddha never claimed his religion to be universal. Buddhism was but as a transient gleam of light for the humans, indicating the path of truth. It is like a stone thrown into a pool covered with floating weeds; it cleared an opening through which the pure water was seen, but the effect soon died away, and the weeds closed up as before. The Lord Buddha saw the bright, the exact, the abstruse, the difficult course, and but for the persuasion of angels would not have attempted to teach what he considered too difficult for men to follow. The remark of the doctor really does not bear on the question. Dr. Gützlaff 27 declared that Samana Khodom28 only taught people to reverence himself and his disciples, saying, that by such means merit and heaven could be attained, teaching them to respect the temples, and po-trees,29 and everything in the temple grounds, lest by injuring them they should go to hell, a teaching designed only for the protection of himself and his disciples, and of no advantage to any others. I replied, “In Christianity there is a command to worship God alone, and no other; Mahomet also taught the worship of one only, and promised that he would take into heaven everyone who joined his religion, even the murderer of his parents, while those who would not join his religion, however virtuous their lives, should surely go to hell; also he taught that all other religions were the enemies of his religion, and that heaven could be attained by injuring the temples, idols, and anything held sacred by another religion. Should one believe in such teachings? Buddha did not teach that he alone should be venerated, nor did he, the just one, ever teach that it was right to condemn other religions. As for adoration, so far as I know, men of every religion adore the holy one of their religion. It is incorrect of the doctor to say that Buddha taught men to adore him alone. He neither taught that such was necessary, nor offered the alternative of hell as all other religions do.”

27  The German Karl Friedrich August Gützlaff (1803–1851) was one of the first Protestant missionaries in Bangkok but is better known for his evangelical work in China, where he earned some merits for his translations of Christian texts into Chinese and founded a Christian Union of Chinese in 1840. 28  Alabaster’s “Samana Khodom” is one of various spellings in European languages for Siddhārtha Gautama, or the Buddha, in the nineteenth century (in Thai: Phra phuttha khodama). An early European rendering is the entry “Sammonocodon” in Voltaire’s “Dictionnaire philosophique” (1772), in Œvres Complètes. Nouvelle édition, vol. 20, 390–93 (Paris: Garnier, 1877–85). 29  The sacred fig tree (or Bodhi tree) under which the Buddha is said to have achieved enlightenment.

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The doctor told me that “Jehovah, our Creator, although jealously desirous that men should not hold false religions, permits them to hold any religion they like, because in His divine compassion, doing that which is best for them, He will not force man’s conversion by the exercise of His power, but will leave it to their own free will.” I answered, “Why did the Creator of all things create the holy chiefs of the religions of the Siamese, Brahmins, Muslims and others? Why did He permit the teaching of false religions which would lead men to neglect His religion, and to suffer the punishment of hell after death? Would it not have been better to have made all men follow the one true religion that would lead them to heaven? Muslims believe that Allah sent prophet after prophet to teach the truth, but that evil spirits corrupted their teachings, and made it necessary for him to send an emanation from himself in human form (Mohammed) to teach the truth as they now have it. Brahmins hold that God the Father, ordering the descent of Shiva in various avatars, such as Krishna and others, has so given rise to several sects. But irrespective of the sect one belongs to, he will go to heaven if he was a true follower of his faith during his lifetime. The missionaries declare that God Jehovah made all men to worship the same way, but that the devil has caused false teachings opposed to God.” Such are the various stories told by Muslims, Brahmins, and [Christian] missionaries. I leave it to the reader to form their own opinion on these issues. I said to the missionary, “how about the devas30 the Chinese believe in, are there any?” He said “No; no one has seen them; they do not exist; there are only the angels, the servants of God, and the evil spirits whom God drove out to be devils and deceive men.” I said, “Is there a God Jehovah?” He answered, “Certainly, one God!” I rejoined, “You said there were no devas because no one had seen them, why then do you assert the existence of a God, for neither can we see him?” The missionary answered, “Truly, we see him not, but all the works of creation must have a master; they could not have originated of themselves.” I said, “There is no evidence of the creation, it is only a tradition; why not account for it by the self-producing power of nature?” The missionary replied, “that he had no doubt that God created everything, and that not even a hair, or a grain of sand existed of itself, for the things on the earth may be likened to dishes of food arranged on a table, and though no owner should be seen, none would doubt but that there was one; no one would think that the things came 30   Deva (theo) is actually a Sanskrit word for different types of supernatural beings in Hinduism and Buddhist mythology. It is therefore not clear why Thiphakorawong used it as an example for superstitious beliefs of the Chinese. However, there was also great number of ghosts and spirits that inhabit the world according to Siamese popular beliefs (phi).

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into the dishes of themselves.” I said, “Then you consider that even a stone in the bladder is created by God!” He replied, “Yes. Everything. God creates everything!” “Then,” answered I, “if that is so, God creates in man that which will cause his death, and you medical missionaries remove it and restore his health! Are you not opposing God in so doing? Are you not offending Him in curing those whom he would kill?” When I had said this the missionary became angry, and saying I was hard to teach, left me. Dr. Gützlaff once said to me, “The Buddha, having entered Nirvana, is entirely lost and non-existent, who, then, will give any reward for recitations in his praise, benedictions, reverences, observances, and merit-making? It is as a country without a king, where merit is unrewarded, because there is no one to reward it; but the religion of Jesus Christ has the Lord Jehovah and Christ to reward merit, and receive prayers and praises, and give a recompense.” I replied, “It is true that, according to the Buddhist religion, the Lord Buddha does not give the reward of merit; but if any do as he has taught, they will find their recompense in the act. Even when Buddha lived on earth, he had no power to lead to heaven those who prayed for his assistance, but did not honor and follow the just way. The holy religion of Buddha is perfect justice evolving from a man’s own meritorious disposition. It is that disposition which rewards the good and punishes the evil. The recitations are the teachings of the Lord Buddha, which are found in various sutras, set forms given by Buddha to holy hermits, and some of them are descriptions of that which is suitable and becoming in conduct. Even though the Lord has entered Nirvana, his grace and benevolence are not exhausted. You missionaries praise the grace of Jehovah and Christ, and say that the Lord waits to hear and grant the prayers of those that call to Him. But are those prayers granted? So far as I see, they get no more than people who do not believe in prayer. They also die and they are equally liable to age and disease and sorrow. How, then, can you say that your religion is better than any other? In the Bible we find that God created Adam and Eve, and desired that they should have no sickness nor sorrow, nor know death; but because they, the progenitors of mankind, ate of a forbidden fruit, God became angry, and ordained that thenceforth they should endure toil and weariness, and trouble and sickness, and from that time fatigue and sorrow, and sickness and death fell upon mankind. It was said that by baptism men should be free from the curse of Adam, but I do not see that anyone who is baptized nowadays is free from the curse of Adam, or escapes toil and grief, and sickness and death, any more than those who are not baptized.” The missionary answered, “Baptism for the remission of sin is only effectual in gaining heaven after death, for those who die unbaptized will certainly go to hell.” But the Missionary did not explain the declaration that by baptism men Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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should be free from pains and troubles in their present state. He further said, “It does at times please God to accede to the requests of those that pray to Him, a remarkable instance of which is, that Europeans and Americans have more excellent arts than any other people. Have they not steamboats and railways, and telegraphs and manufactures, and guns and weapons of war superior to any others in the world? Are not the nations which do not worship Christ comparatively ignorant?” I asked the doctor about sorrow and sickness, things which prevail throughout the world, things in which Christians have no advantage over other men, but he would not reply on that point, and spoke only of matters of knowledge. Where is the witness who can say that this knowledge was the gift of God? There are many in Europe who do not believe in God, but are indifferent, yet have subtle and expanded intellects, and are great philosophers and politicians. How is it that God grants to these men, who do not believe in Him, the same intelligence He grants to those who do? Again, how is it that the Siamese, Burmese, Cochin Chinese, and other Roman Catholic converts, whom we see more attentive to their religion than the Europeans who reside among us, do not receive some reward for their merit, and have superior advantages and intelligence to those who are not converted. So far as I can see, the reverse is the case: the unconverted flourish, but the converted are continually in debt and bondage. There are many converts in Siam, but I see none of them rise to wealth, so as to become talked about. They continually pray to God, but, it seems, nothing happens according to their prayer. The missionary replied, “They are Roman Catholics, and hold an untrue religion, therefore God is not pleased with them.” I said to the missionary, “You say that God sometimes grants the prayers of those who pray to Him; now, the Chinese, who pray to spirits and devils, sometimes obtain what they have prayed for; do you not, therefore, allow that these spirits can benefit man?” The missionary answered, “The devil receives bribes.” I inquired, “Among the men and animals God creates, some die in the womb, and many at or immediately after birth, and before reaching maturity, and many are deaf, dumb, and crippled: why are such created? Is it not a waste of labor? Again, God creates men, and does not set their hearts to hold to His religion, but sets them free to take false religions, so that they are all damned, while those who worship Him go to heaven: is not this inconsistent with His goodness and mercy? If He, indeed, created all men, would He not have shown equal compassion and goodness to all, and not allowed inequalities? Then I should have believed in a creating God. But, as it is, it seems nothing but a game with dolls.” The missionary replied, “With regard to long and short lives, the good may live but a short time, God being pleased to call them to heaven, Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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and sometimes He permits the wicked to live to a full age, that they may repent of their sins. And the death of innocent children is the mercy of God calling them to heaven.” I rejoined, “How should God take a special liking to unlovable, shapeless, unborn children?” The missionary replied, “He who would learn to swim must practice in shallow places first, or he will be drowned. If any spoke like this in European countries, he would be put in prison.” I invite particular attention to this statement. Another time I said to the missionary Gützlaff, “It is said in the Bible that God is the creator of all men and animals. Why should he not create them spontaneously, as worms and vermin arise from filth, and fish are formed in new pools by the emanations of air and water? Why must there be procreation, and agony and often death to mothers? Is not this labor lost? I can see no good in it.” He replied, “God instituted procreation so that men might know their fathers and mothers and relatives, and the pains of childbirth are a consequence of the curse of Adam.” I said, “If procreation was designed that men should know their relatives, why are animals, which do not know their relatives, produced in the same manner? And why do they, not being descendants of Eve, suffer pain in labor for her sin of eating a little forbidden fruit? Besides, the Bible says, by belief in Christ man shall escape the consequences of Eve’s sin, yet I cannot see that men do so escape in any degree, but suffer just as others do.” The missionary answered, “It is waste of time to converse with evil men who will not be taught,” and so left me.31 Selected and annotated by Sven Trakulhun

31   NSK (1867/1971), 108–19; Alabaster, The Modern Buddhist, 25–35; Alabaster, The Wheel of the Law, 18–26.

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Swami Vivekananda: Reason and Religion (England, 1896) Introduction Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) was the most famous Hindu leader of the late nineteenth century and he did more than anybody at the time to make Hinduism a global religion. Born into a privileged Kayastha family of colonial Calcutta, he received an excellent education in the liberal arts with emphasis on Western philosophy and history of ideas. Vivekananda was able to mould a new form of Hinduism and present this to a global audience by drawing on his British-style college education, a grasp of classical Indian religious knowledge, and a strong spiritual impulse from the mystic Ramakrishna. The essay “Reason and Religion” is probably not among Swami Vivekananda’s best-known pieces of writing, but it is highly instructive if we want to understand some of the key ideas and forces that were shaping religion at the very end of the nineteenth century. If we look broadly at Vivekananda’s statements about the relationship between human reason, revealed religion and religious realisation (moksha) it is impossible not to note some ambivalence and perhaps some uncertainty. His famous predecessor Shankara (late eighth century) is regarded as the founder of the Advaita (non-dual) Vedanta claiming that the atman (i.e. the self or the soul) is ultimately identical with Brahman (the supreme totality, or God). However, Shankara relied on revealed truth (shruti) as the ultimate valid means of knowledge, the classic texts of Hinduism formed the basis for his understanding of Vedanta, and he saw reason as a necessary means for the correct interpretation of texts. Vivekananda, on the other hand, played down his reliance on the classical texts of Hinduism for the formulation of his own version of Advaita Vedanta. Perhaps the reason for this was that he was conscious of constructing a global and modern Hinduism in which ‘blind faith’ in texts would be problematic. After all, in Vivekananda’s times textual scholars at Western universities had undermined faith in religious texts by the application of new methods and approaches, often summed up by the label ‘Higher Criticism,’ and this had caused strong reactions from conservative Christians. Certainly, Vivekananda would often mention Hindu texts, but he could not plausibly claim that they were true in a radically different sense from the Bible or the Quran. That would Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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not rhyme with his historicist and comparative view of religions. In the place of revealed texts and religious faith the modern Hindu leader offered something else as the bedrock for religious insight. He claimed that reason had to be transcended and make room for a supra-rational experience. Reason had a role to play to sort out bad arguments and interpret sense-perception, but in order to gain salvation by realising the oneness of atman and Brahman only individual transcendent consciousness would suffice. In Vivekananda’s world view, reason was one of three fundamental states of mind, the other two being instinct and transcendental consciousness. Instinct can develop into reason, and reason into transcendental consciousness, with the right kind of practice and awareness. According to Vivekananda, his system of Rajayoga was a science because it relied solely on observation. Whereas the physicist or chemist observed the external world and applied reason in building arguments and theories from observations, so the person engaged in Rajayoga was simply observing the world of the mind and making statements about inner realities by applying the same reason to his or her observations. In both cases, in the world of science and in the world of religion, reason was fundamental in making progress and reaching insight into the nature of reality.1 Vivekananda’s discussion of the place of reason in relation to religion points to a number of important characteristics of religion in the period. Firstly, the essay demonstrates the immense status and importance achieved by the sciences during the second half of the nineteenth century. Vivekananda’s ideas were to a large extent based on classical Hindu concepts, but he felt compelled to defend these ideas by reformulating them in scientific terms as the way towards direct perception of inner reality resulting in knowledge of the self (atman). His writings are scattered with references to the scientific method as simply one version of a general rational approach to getting knowledge, which religion, too, had to follow in order to be valid. Vivekananda wanted to use reason to destroy those religions, or those elements of religions, that cannot withstand its test. Religions and their claims should be subjected to scientific scrutiny and all the ideas and practices that are destroyed by such tests should be discarded, he claims in this essay. Vivekananda insisted that he did not see science as a threat to the Hindu world view because he believed that Western science was in fact encompassed by ancient Hindu philosophy. Modern scientific insights could be found in 1  Anantanand Rambachan, “The Place of Reason in the Quest for Moksha: Problems in Vivekananda’s Conceptualization of Jñānayoga,” Religious Studies 23 (1987): 277–288; Anantanand Rambachan, “Swāmī Vivekānanda’s Use of Science as an Analogy for the Attainment of mokṣa,” Philosophy East and West 40, 3 (1990): 331–342.

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ancient Hindu texts and, in his view, the Western world was simply repeating many of the discoveries made in India two or three millennia earlier. It was a positive sign that the Christian world was finally able to allow scientists to think freely, according to Vivekananda. In the essay presented here, Vivekananda writes about generalisation and evolution as the two key aspects of reason. What did he know about evolutionary theory? In 1898, Swami Vivekananda visited the zoological gardens in his hometown Calcutta with a group of followers and there was a conversation about the subject of biological evolution. The Swami was asked what he thought of Darwin’s theory. Vivekananda answered that Darwin was correct, but that his theory was not sufficient to explain what went on in the natural world. Vivekananda briefly reminded the group about the fundamentals of evolutionary theory according to which change and development in nature arises from “the struggle for existence, survival of the fittest, natural selection, and so forth . . .”2 These principles explain how most individuals in a population of animals will die and only a few survive, he continued, and they lead to the development of new animal species. However, Vivekananda said, mankind develops not through physical competition and destruction, but through conscious development of the spirit and the rational faculties. In these matters, the ancient Hindu philosophers had in fact given a better explanation than Darwin. Vivekananda worked roughly 30 to 40 years after the publication of Darwin’s masterpiece Origin of Species, which dramatically changed debates about science and religion in Europe and America. Vivekananda’s knowledge of evolutionary theory, which is apparent in several of his essays, is a testimony to the rapid globalisation of scientific ideas in this period. However, his view on evolution is also a testimony to the ambivalent relationship many people had to science. In the statements of many religious leaders of the period we find similar claims that their ancient religious traditions in fact encompassed the basic truths of modern science. Secondly, the essay shows, like many other writings, how Swami Vivekananda had come to see the world of religions as consisting of a plurality of traditions that were different in terms of theology and ideas but similar in the sense that they all belonged to the class of religions. From the early 1800s the institutions and ideas of Christianity were globalised through the contacts established by the colonial expansion of Europe. The differentiation of a religious system, which had taken place in Europe over some time, was replicated in Asian and African countries. Religion as a distinct category was globalised. This made it possible to draw clear boundaries around the religious system and delimit 2  The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda vol. 7 (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1992), 154.

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its previous influence in other spheres of society, which was a precondition for the secularisation of politics, law, education and other fields. The emergence of the academic discipline variously called comparative religion or history of religions or religious studies, was part of this development and it is no coincidence that Vivekananda friends with some of the most important scholars in this field at his time, like Friedrich Max Müller.3 In all the writings of Vivekananda, it is obvious that he has appropriated a concept of religion that presupposes this process of differentiation. Hinduism, like all the systems we call ‘world religions,’ was always much more than what was implied in the new English word ‘religion’ introduced to Indian social reality in the colonial period. ‘Hindu’ had been a label of geographic origin, a way of life, a system of law, a political ideology, a great culture, or even many cultures, as well as rituals and theology. In the late 1800s, Hinduism was reconstructed or re-imagined, to be a world religion comparable to Christianity. Of course, Christianity, too, was re-imagined in the same period. The process of reconstruction or re-imagining took place in the dialogue between Hindu intellectuals and Western scholars who were keen to explore the ancient traditions and the living customs of India. Vivekananda was hugely important in disseminating and popularising this new concept of Hinduism.4 Thirdly, we see how he approaches the plurality of religions at least as a challenge, if not as a problem. He discusses how adherents of different religious traditions quarrel about the truths of their respective traditions. In fact, Vivekananda’s view of the world contained a vision of religious communities in historical struggle for dominance. In the mind of Vivekananda, the world religions are engaged in a global dialogue about the relative merits of different ideas and practices. This view of the world, and of the world religions, was strongly reinforced or inspired by Vivekananda’s experience at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, where he met representatives of other religious traditions. In this vision of the globe as a playing-field where different religions, including world religions, jockeyed for adherents and quarrelled about doctrine, reason had a crucial role to play, Vivekananda believed. Reason was the only plausible, indeed the only possible, universal standard that all people, regardless of religious affiliation, could embrace in this globalised debate.

3  See the chapter on Max Müller in this volume (3.10). 4  Gwilym Beckerlegge, “The Early Spread of Vedanta Societies: An Example of ‘Imported Localism,’ ” Numen 51, 3 (2004): 296–320.

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Fourthly, Vivekananda reveals his strong missionary and apologetic impulses when he arrives at the conclusion that his own religion, Vedanta, is in fact the only system that is not destroyed by an honest application of the test of reason. Vivekananda belonged to that crucial period of rapid globalisation in the late nineteenth century when the different nations became increasingly aware of each other. It was a period of dramatic changes in national consciousness and identity for many people and global leaders like Vivekananda laid the foundations for new ways addressing global concerns. Torkel Brekke

Further Reading

Morgan, Peggy. “The Study of Religion and Interfaith Encounter.” Numen 42 (1995): 156–71. Kittelstrom, Amy. “The International Social Turn: Unity and Brotherhood at the World’s Parliament of Religions, Chicago, 1893.” Religion and American Culture, A Journal of Interpretation 19/2, (2009): 243–274. Radice, William. Swami Vivekananda and the Modernization of Hindu Tradition. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pranab, Bandyopadhyay. Swami Vivekananda and the Modern World Calcutta: United Writers, 1990. Seager, Richard Hughes. The World’s Parliament of Religions: The East/West Encounter, Chicago, 1893. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.



Source Text5

A sage called Nârada went to another sage named Sanatkumâra to learn about truth, and Sanatkumara inquired what he had studied already. Narada answered that he had studied the Vedas, Astronomy, and various other things, yet he had got no satisfaction. Then there was a conversation between the two, in the course of which Sanatkumara remarked that all this knowledge of the Vedas, of Astronomy, and of Philosophy, was but secondary; sciences were but secondary. That which made us realize the Brahman was the supreme, the 5  Swami Vivekananda, “Reason And Religion,” The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, vol. 1 (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1992). “Reason And Religion” was a lecture held in London in 1896.

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highest knowledge. This idea we find in every religion, and that is why religion always claimed to be supreme knowledge. Knowledge of the sciences covers, as it were, only part of our lives, but the knowledge which religion brings to us is eternal, as infinite as the truth it preaches. Claiming this superiority, religions have many times looked down, unfortunately, on all secular knowledge, and not only so, but many times have refused to be justified by the aid of secular knowledge. In consequence, all the world over there have been fights between secular knowledge and religious knowledge, the one claiming infallible authority as its guide, refusing to listen to anything that secular knowledge has to say on the point, the other, with its shining instrument of reason, wanting to cut to pieces everything religion could bring forward. This fight has been and is still waged in every country. Religions have been again and again defeated, and almost exterminated. The worship of the goddess of Reason during the French Revolution was not the first manifestation of that phenomenon in the history of humanity, it was a re-enactment of what had happened in ancient times, but in modern times it has assumed greater proportions. The physical sciences are better equipped now than formerly, and religions have become less and less equipped. The foundations have been all undermined, and the modern man, whatever he may say in public, knows in the privacy of his heart that he can no more ‘believe.’ Believing certain things because an organised body of priests tells him to believe, believing because it is written in certain books, believing because his people like him to believe, the modern man knows to be impossible for him. There are, of course, a number of people who seem to acquiesce in the so-called popular faith, but we also know for certain that they do not think. Their idea of belief may be better translated as ‘not-thinking-carelessness.’ This fight cannot last much longer without breaking to pieces all the buildings of religion. The question is: Is there a way out? To put it in a more concrete form: Is religion to justify itself by the discoveries of reason, through which every other science justifies itself? Are the same methods of investigation, which we apply to sciences and knowledge outside, to be applied to the science of Religion? In my opinion this must be so, and I am also of opinion that the sooner it is done the better. If a religion is destroyed by such investigations, it was then all the time useless, unworthy superstition; and the sooner it goes the better. I am thoroughly convinced that its destruction would be the best thing that could happen. All that is dross will be taken off, no doubt, but the essential parts of religion will emerge triumphant out of this investigation. Not only will it be made scientific—as scientific, at least, as any of the conclusions of physics or chemistry—but will have greater strength, because physics or chemistry has no internal mandate to vouch for its truth, which religion has. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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People who deny the efficacy of any rationalistic investigation into religion seem to me somewhat to be contradicting themselves. For instance, the Christian claims that his religion is the only true one, because it was revealed to so-and-so. The Mohammedan makes the same claim for his religion; his is the only true one, because it was revealed to so-and-so. But the Christian says to the Mohammedan, “Certain parts of your ethics do not seem to be right. For instance, your books say, my Mohammedan friend, that an infidel may be converted to the religion of Mohammed by force, and if he will not accept the Mohammedan religion he may be killed; and any Mohammedan who kills such an infidel will get a sure entry into heaven, whatever may have been his sins or misdeeds.” The Mohammedan will retort by saying, “It is right for me to do so, because my book enjoins it. It will be wrong on my part not to do so.” The Christian says, “But my book does not say so.” The Mohammedan replies, “I do not know; I am not bound by the authority of your book; my book says, ‘Kill all the infidels.’ How do you know which is right and which is wrong? Surely what is written in my book is right and what your book says, ‘Do not kill,’ is wrong. You also say the same thing, my Christian friend; you say that what Jehovah declared to the Jews is right to do, and what he forbade them to do is wrong. So say I, Allah declared in my book that certain things should be done, and that certain things should not be done, and that is all the test of right and wrong.” In spite of that the Christian is not satisfied; he insists on a comparison of the morality of the Sermon on the Mount with the morality of the Quran. How is this to be decided? Certainly not by the books, because the books, fighting between themselves, cannot be the judges. Decidedly then we have to admit that there is something more universal than these books, something higher than all the ethical codes that are in the world, something which can judge between the strength of inspirations of different nations. Whether we declare it boldly, clearly, or not—it is evident that here we appeal to reason. Now, the question arises if this light of reason is able to judge between inspiration and inspiration, and if this light can uphold its standard when the quarrel is between prophet and prophet, if it has the power of understanding anything whatsoever of religion. If it has not, nothing can determine the hopeless fight of books and prophets which has been going on through ages; for it means that all religions are mere lies, hopelessly contradictory, without any constant idea of ethics. The proof of religion depends on the truth of the constitution of man, and not on any books. These books are the outgoings, the effects of man’s constitution; man made these books. We are yet to see the books that made man. Reason is equally an effect of that common cause, the constitution of man, where our appeal must be. And yet, as reason alone is directly connected with this constitution, it should be resorted to, as Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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long as it follows faithfully the same. What do I mean by reason? I mean what every educated man or woman is wanting to do at the present time, to apply the discoveries of secular knowledge to religion. The first principle of reasoning is that the particular is explained by the general, the general by the more general, until we come to the universal. For instance, we have the idea of law. If something happens and we believe that it is the effect of such and such a law, we are satisfied; that is an explanation for us. What we mean by that explanation is that it is proved that this one effect, which had dissatisfied us, is only one particular of a general mass of occurrences which we designate by the word ‘law.’ When one apple fell, Newton was disturbed; but when he found that all apples fell, it was gravitation, and he was satisfied. This is one principle of human knowledge. I see a particular being, a human being, in the street. I refer him to the bigger conception of man, and I am satisfied; I know he is a man by referring him to the more general. So the particulars are to be referred to the general, the general to the more general, and everything at last to the universal, the last concept that we have, the most universal—that of existence. Existence is the most universal concept. We are all human beings; that is to say, each one of us, as it were, a particular part of the general concept, humanity. A man, and a cat, and a dog, are all animals. These particular examples, as man, or dog, or cat, are parts of a bigger and more general concept, animal. The man, and the cat, and the dog, and the plant, and the tree, all come under the still more general concept, life. Again, all these, all beings and all materials, come under the one concept of existence, for we all are in it. This explanation merely means referring the particular to a higher concept, finding more of its kind. The mind, as it were, has stored up numerous classes of such generalizations. It is, as it were, full of pigeon-holes where all these ideas are grouped together, and whenever we find a new thing the mind immediately tries to find out its type in one of these pigeon-holes. If we find it, we put the new thing in there and are satisfied, and we are said to have known the thing. This is what is meant by knowledge, and no more. And if we do not find that there is something like it, we are dissatisfied, and have to wait until we find a further classification for it, already existing in the mind. Therefore, as I have already pointed out, knowledge is more or less classification. There is something more. A second explanation of knowledge is that the explanation of a thing must come from inside and not from outside. There had been the belief that, when a man threw up a stone and it fell, some demon dragged it down. Many occurrences which are really natural phenomena are attributed by people to unnatural beings. That a ghost dragged down the stone was an explanation that was not in the thing itself, it was an explanation from outside; but the second explanation of gravitation is something in the nature Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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of the stone; the explanation is coming from inside. This tendency you will find throughout modern thought; in one word, what is meant by science is that the explanations of things are in their own nature, and that no external beings or existences are required to explain what is going on in the universe. The chemist never requires demons, or ghosts, or anything of that sort, to explain his phenomena. The physicist never requires any one of these to explain the things he knows, nor does any other scientist. And this is one of the features of science which I mean to apply to religion. In this religions are found wanting and that is why they are crumbling into pieces. Every science wants its explanations from inside, from the very nature of things; and the religions are not able to supply this. There is an ancient theory of a personal deity entirely separate from the universe, which has been held from the very earliest time. The arguments in favour of this have been repeated again and again, how it is necessary to have a God entirely separate from the universe, an extra-cosmic deity, who has created the universe out of his will, and is conceived by religion to be its ruler. We find, apart from all these arguments, the Almighty God painted as the All-merciful, and at the same time, inequalities remain in the world. These things do not concern the philosopher at all, but he says the heart of the thing was wrong; it was an explanation from outside, and not inside. What is the cause of the universe? Something outside of it, some being who is moving this universe! And just as it was found insufficient to explain the phenomenon of the falling stone, so this was found insufficient to explain religion. And religions are falling to pieces, because they cannot give a better explanation than that. Another idea connected with this, the manifestation of the same principle, that the explanation of everything comes from inside it, is the modern law of evolution. The whole meaning of evolution is simply that the nature of a thing is reproduced, that the effect is nothing but the cause in another form, that all the potentialities of the effect were present in the cause, that the whole of creation is but an evolution and not a creation. That is to say, every effect is a reproduction of a preceding cause, changed only by the circumstances, and thus it is going on throughout the universe, and we need not go outside the universe to seek the causes of these changes; they are within. It is unnecessary to seek for any cause outside. This also is breaking down religion. What I mean by breaking down religion is that religions that have held on to the idea of an extra-cosmic deity, that he is a very big man and nothing else, can no more stand on their feet; they have been pulled down, as it were. Can there be a religion satisfying these two principles? I think there can be. In the first place we have seen that we have to satisfy the principle of generalization. The generalization principle ought to be satisfied along with the principle Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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of evolution. We have to come to an ultimate generalization, which not only will be the most universal of all generalizations, but out of which everything else must come. It will be of the same nature as the lowest effect; the cause, the highest, the ultimate, the primal cause, must be the same as the lowest and most distant of its effects, a series of evolutions. The Brahman of the Vedanta fulfils that condition, because Brahman is the last generalization to which we can come. It has no attributes but is Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss— Absolute. Existence, we have seen, is the very ultimate generalization which the human mind can come to. Knowledge does not mean the knowledge we have, but the essence of that, that which is expressing itself in the course of evolution in human beings or in other animals as knowledge. The essence of that knowledge is meant, the ultimate fact beyond, if I may be allowed to say so, even consciousness. That is what is meant by knowledge and what we see in the universe as the essential unity of things. To my mind, if modern science is proving anything again and again, it is this, that we are one—mentally, spiritually, and physically. It is wrong to say we are even physically different. Supposing we are materialists, for argument’s sake, we shall have to come to this, that the whole universe is simply an ocean of matter, of which you and I are like little whirlpools. Masses of matter are coming into each whirlpool, taking the whirlpool form, and coming out as matter again. The matter that is in my body may have been in yours a few years ago, or in the sun, or may have been the matter in a plant, and so on, in a continuous state of flux. What is meant by your body and my body? It is the oneness of the body. So with thought. It is an ocean of thought, one infinite mass, in which your mind and my mind are like whirlpools. Are you not seeing the effect now, how my thoughts are entering into yours, and yours into mine? The whole of our lives is one; we are one, even in thought. Coming to a still further generalization, the essence of matter and thought is their potentiality of spirit; this is the unity from which all have come, and that must essentially be one. We are absolutely one; we are physically one, we are mentally one, and as spirit, it goes without saying, that we are one, if we believe in spirit at all. This oneness is the one fact that is being proved every day by modern science. To a proud man it is told: You are the same as that little worm there; think not that you are something enormously different from it; you are the same. You have been that in a previous incarnation, and the worm has crawled up to this man state, of which you are so proud. This grand preaching, the oneness of things, making us one with everything that exists, is the great lesson to learn, for most of us are very glad to be made one with higher beings, but nobody wants to be made one with lower beings. Such is human ignorance, that if anyone’s ancestors were men whom society honored, even if they were brutish, if they were robbers, even robber Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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barons, everyone of us would try to trace our ancestry to them; but if among our ancestors we had poor, honest gentlemen, none of us wants to trace our ancestry to them. But the scales are falling from our eyes, truth is beginning to manifest itself more and more, and that is a great gain to religion. That is exactly the teaching of the Advaita, about which I am lecturing to you. The Self is the essence of this universe, the essence of all souls; He is the essence of your own life, nay, “Thou art That.” You are one with this universe. He who says he is different from others, even by a hair’s breadth, immediately becomes miserable. Happiness belongs to him who knows this oneness, who knows he is one with this universe. Thus we see that the religion of the Vedanta can satisfy the demands of the scientific world, by referring it to the highest generalization and to the law of evolution. That the explanation of a thing comes from within itself is still more completely satisfied by Vedanta. The Brahman, the God of the Vedanta, has nothing outside of Himself; nothing at all. All this indeed is He: He is in the universe: He is the universe Himself. “Thou art the man, Thou art the woman, Thou art the young man walking in the pride of youth, Thou art the old man tottering in his step.” He is here. Him we see and feel: in Him we live, and move, and have our being. You have that conception in the New Testament. It is that idea, God immanent in the universe, the very essence, the heart, the soul of things. He manifests Himself, as it were, in this universe. You and I are little bits, little points, little channels, little expressions, all living inside of that infinite ocean of Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss. The difference between man and man, between angels and man, between man and animals, between animals and plants, between plants and stones is not in kind, because everyone from the highest angel to the lowest particle of matter is but an expression of that one infinite ocean, and the difference is only in degree. I am a low manifestation, you may be a higher, but in both the materials are the same. You and I are both outlets of the same channel, and that is God; as such, your nature is God, and so is mine. You are of the nature of God by your birthright; so am I. You may be an angel of purity, and I may be the blackest of demons. Nevertheless, my birthright is that infinite ocean of Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss. So is yours. You have manifested yourself more today. Wait; I will manifest myself more yet, for I have it all within me. No extraneous explanation is sought; none is asked for. The sum-total of this whole universe is God Himself. Is God then matter? No, certainly not, for matter is that God perceived by the five senses; that God as perceived through the intellect is mind; and when the spirit sees, He is seen as spirit. He is not matter, but whatever is real in matter is He. Whatever is real in this chair is He, for the chair requires two things to make it. Something was outside which my senses brought to me, and Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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to which my mind contributed something else, and the combination of these two is the chair. That which existed eternally, independent of the senses and of the intellect, was the Lord Himself. Upon Him the senses are painting chairs, and tables, and rooms, houses, and worlds, and moons, and suns, and stars, and everything else. How is it, then, that we all see this same chair, that we are all alike painting these various things on the Lord, on this Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss? It need not be that all paint the same way, but those who paint the same way are on the same plane of existence and therefore they see one another’s paintings as well as one another. There may be millions of beings between you and me who do not paint the Lord in the same way, and them and their paintings we do not see. On the other hand, as you all know, the modern physical researches are tending more and more to demonstrate that what is real is but the finer; the gross is simply appearance. However, that may be, we have seen that if any theory of religion can stand the test of modern reasoning, it is the Advaita, because it fulfills its two requirements. It is the highest generalization, beyond even personality, generalization which is common to every being. A generalization ending in the Personal God can never be universal, for, first of all, to conceive of a Personal God we must say, He is all-merciful, all-good. But this world is a mixed thing, some good and some bad. We cut off what we like, and generalize that into a Personal God! Just as you say a Personal God is this and that, so you have also to say that He is not this and not that. And you will always find that the idea of a Personal God has to carry with it a personal devil. That is how we clearly see that the idea of a Personal God is not a true generalization, we have to go beyond, to the Impersonal. In that the universe exists, with all its joys and miseries, for whatever exists in it has all come from the Impersonal. What sort of a God can He be to whom we attribute evil and other things? The idea is that both good and evil are different aspects, or manifestations of the same thing. The idea that they were two was a very wrong idea from the first, and it has been the cause of a good deal of the misery in this world of ours—the idea that right and wrong are two separate things, cut and dried, independent of each other, that good and evil are two eternally separable and separate things. I should be very glad to see a man who could show me something which is good all the time, and something which is bad all the time. As if one could stand and gravely define some occurrences in this life of ours as good and good alone, and some which are bad and bad alone. That which is good today may be evil tomorrow. That which is bad today may be good tomorrow. What is good for me may be bad for you. The conclusion is, that like every other thing, there is an evolution in good and evil too. There is something which in its evolution, we call, in one degree, good, and in another, evil. The storm that kills my friend I Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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call evil, but that may have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people by killing the bacilli in the air. They call it good, but I call it evil. So both good and evil belong to the relative world, to phenomena. The Impersonal God we propose is not a relative God; therefore, it cannot be said that It is either good or bad, but that It is something beyond, because It is neither good nor evil. Good, however, is a nearer manifestation of It than evil. What is the effect of accepting such an Impersonal Being, an Impersonal Deity? What shall we gain? Will religion stand as a factor in human life, our consoler, our helper? What becomes of the desire of the human heart to pray for help to some being? That will all remain. The Personal God will remain, but on a better basis. He has been strengthened by the Impersonal. We have seen that without the Impersonal, the Personal cannot remain. If you mean to say there is a Being entirely separate from this universe, who has created this universe just by His will, out of nothing, that cannot be proved. Such a state of things cannot be. But if we understand the idea of the Impersonal, then the idea of the Personal can remain there also. This universe, in its various forms, is but the various readings of the same Impersonal. When we read it with the five senses, we call it the material world. If there be a being with more senses than five, he will read it as something else. If one of us gets the electrical sense, he will see the universe as something else again. There are various forms of that same Oneness, of which all these various ideas of worlds are but various readings, and the Personal God is the highest reading that can be attained to, of that Impersonal, by the human intellect. So the Personal God is true as much as this chair is true, as much as this world is true, but no more. It is not absolute truth. That is to say, the Personal God is that very Impersonal God and, therefore, it is true, just as I, as a human being, am true and not true at the same time. It is not true that I am what you see I am; you can satisfy yourself on that point. I am not the being that you take me to be. You can satisfy your reason as to that, because light, and various vibrations, or conditions of the atmosphere, and all sorts of motions inside me have contributed to my being looked upon as what I am, by you. If any one of these conditions change, I am different again. You may satisfy yourself by taking a photograph of the same man under different conditions of light. So I am what I appear in relation to your senses, and yet, in spite of all these facts, there is an unchangeable something of which all these are different states of existence, the impersonal me, of which thousands of me’s are different persons. I was a child, I was young, I am getting older. Every day of my life, my body and thoughts are changing, but in spite of all these changes, the sum-total of them constitutes a mass which is a constant quantity. That is the impersonal me, of which all these manifestations form, as it were, parts. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Similarly, the sum-total of this universe is immovable, we know, but everything pertaining to this universe consists of motion, everything is in a constant state of flux, everything changing and moving. At the same time, we see that the universe as a whole is immovable, because motion is a relative term. I move with regard to the chair, which does not move. There must be at least two to make motion. If this whole universe is taken as a unit there is no motion; with regard to what should it move? Thus the Absolute is unchangeable and immovable, and all the movements and changes are only in the phenomenal world, the limited. That whole is Impersonal, and within this Impersonal are all these various persons beginning with the lowest atom, up to God, the Personal God, the Creator, the Ruler of the Universe, to whom we pray, before whom we kneel, and so on. Such a Personal God can be established with a great deal of reason. Such a Personal God is explicable as the highest manifestation of the Impersonal. You and I are very low manifestations, and the Personal God is the highest of which we can conceive. Nor can you or I become that Personal God. When the Vedanta says you and I are God, it does not mean the Personal God. To take an example. Out of a mass of clay a huge elephant of clay is manufactured, and out of the same clay, a little clay mouse is made. Would the clay mouse ever be able to become the clay elephant? But put them both in water and they are both clay; as clay they are both one, but as mouse and elephant there will be an eternal difference between them. The Infinite, the Impersonal, is like the clay in the example. We and the Ruler of the Universe are one, but as manifested beings, men, we are His eternal slaves, His worshippers. Thus we see that the Personal God remains. Everything else in this relative world remains, and religion is made to stand on a better foundation. Therefore, it is necessary, that we first know the Impersonal in order to know the Personal. As we have seen, the law of reason says, the particular is only known through the general. So all these particulars, from man to God, are only known through the Impersonal, the highest generalization. Prayers will remain, only they will get a better meaning. All those senseless ideas of prayer, the low stages of prayer, which are simply giving words to all sorts of silly desire in our minds, perhaps, will have to go. In all sensible religions, they never allow prayers to God; they allow prayers to gods. That is quite natural. The Roman Catholics pray to the saints; that is quite good. But to pray to God is senseless. To ask God to give you a breath of air, to send down a shower of rain, to make fruits grow in your garden, and so on, is quite unnatural. The saints, however, who were little beings like ourselves, may help us. But to pray to the Ruler of the Universe, prating every little need of ours, and from our childhood saying, “O Lord, I have a headache; let it go,” is ridiculous. There have been millions of Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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souls that have died in this world, and they are all here; they have become gods and angels; let them come to your help. But God! It cannot be. Unto Him we must go for higher things. A fool indeed is he who, resting on the banks of the Gangâ, digs a little well for water; a fool indeed is he who, living near a mine of diamonds, digs for bits of crystal. And indeed we shall be fools if we go to the Father of all mercy, Father of all love, for trivial earthly things. Unto Him, therefore, we shall go for light, for strength, for love. But so long as there is weakness and a craving for servile dependence in us, there will be these little prayers and ideas of the worship of the Personal God. But those who are highly advanced do not care for such little helps, they have wellnigh forgotten all about this seeking things for themselves, wanting things for themselves. The predominant idea in them is—not I, but thou, my brother. Those are the fit persons to worship the Impersonal God. And what is the worship of the Impersonal God? No slavery there—“O Lord, I am nothing, have mercy on me.” You know the old Persian poem, translated into English: “I came to see my beloved. The doors were closed. I knocked and a voice came from inside. ‘Who art thou?’ ‘I am so-and-so’ The door was not opened. A second time I came and knocked; I was asked the same question, and gave the same answer. The door opened not. I came a third time, and the same question came. I answered, ‘I am thee, my love,’ and the door opened.” Worship of the Impersonal God is through truth. And what is truth? That I am He. When I say that I am not Thou, it is untrue. When I say I am separate from you it is a lie, a terrible lie. I am one with this universe, born one. It is self-evident to my senses that I am one with the universe. I am one with the air that surrounds me, one with heat, one with light, eternally one with the whole Universal Being, who is called this universe, who is mistaken for the universe, for it is He and nothing else, the eternal subject in the heart who says, “I am,” in every heart—the deathless one, the sleepless one, ever awake, the immortal, whose glory never dies, whose powers never fail. I am one with That. This is all the worship of the Impersonal, and what is the result? The whole life of man will be changed. Strength, strength it is that we want so much in this life, for what we call sin and sorrow have all one cause, and that is our weakness. With weakness comes ignorance, and with ignorance comes misery. It will make us strong. Then miseries will be laughed at, then the violence of the vile will be smiled at, and the ferocious tiger will reveal, behind its tiger’s nature, my own Self. That will be the result. That soul is strong that has become one with the Lord; none else is strong. In your own Bible, what do you think was the cause of that strength of Jesus of Nazareth, that immense, infinite strength which laughed at traitors, and blessed those that were willing to murder him? It was that, “I and my Father are one;” it was that prayer, “Father, Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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just as I am one with you, so make them all one with me.” That is the worship of the Impersonal God. Be one with the universe, be one with Him. And this Impersonal God requires no demonstrations, no proofs. He is nearer to us than even our senses, nearer to us than our own thoughts; it is in and through Him that we see and think. To see anything, I must first see Him. To see this wall I first see Him, and then the wall, for He is the eternal subject. Who is seeing whom? He is here in the heart of our hearts. Bodies and minds change; misery, happiness, good and evil come and go; days and years roll on; life comes and goes; but He dies not. The same voice, “I am, I am,” is eternal, unchangeable. In Him and through Him we know everything. In Him and through Him we see everything. In Him and through Him we sense, we think, we live, and we are. And that “I,” which we mistake to be a little “I,” limited, is not only my “I,” but yours, the “I” of everyone, of the animals, of the angels, of the lowest of the low. That “I am” is the same in the murderer as in the saint, the same in the rich as in the poor, the same in man as in woman, the same in man as in animals. From the lowest amoeba to the highest angel, He resides in every soul, and eternally declares, “I am He, I am He.” When we have understood that voice eternally present there, when we have learnt this lesson, the whole universe will have expressed its secret. Nature will have given up her secret to us. Nothing more remains to be known. Thus we find the truth for which all religions search, that all this knowledge of material sciences is but secondary. That is the only true knowledge which makes us one with this Universal God of the Universe. Selected by Torkel Brekke

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Muhammad Iqbal: Is Religion Possible? (Pakistan, 1932) Introduction The Industrial Revolution ushered a new era of scientific discoveries in the nineteenth century. Some of these discoveries such as the age of earth, theory of evolution and natural selection were not only rejected by the religious institutions but also were ridiculed by the general public. These ideas reached India during the second half of the nineteenth century. Like Europe, it had a mixed response: some intellectuals welcomed these discoveries while the others, with more religious convictions, attempted either to reject them as transient and hypothetical or explained religious doctrines in the light of scientific paradigms. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817–1898), who is considered the father of Islamic Modernism in South Asia, understood the importance and implications of the advancement in science and technology for religion as well as the religious people. In 1864, he founded the Scientific Society at Ghazipur, the first of its kind in the sub-continent. He invited Muslims from all over the country to become members of this society. It was open to other communities also. The inaugural session had 109 members, 47 Muslims, 34 Hindus, and 28 were British. The society held annual conferences, published translations of scientific works and a journal on scientific subjects in English and Urdu. Sir Syed took the initiative in writing on some of the most controversial issues. As an educator, he founded the Aligarh University, he felt that Muslims must face these new challenges and learn science. In one of his essays, he wrote that just as human thoughts, lifestyle and civilisation experience change over a period of time, so do religions and beliefs. He argued, “There was a time of faith and people believed in anything however irrational it may seem. This was the period of faith (yaqīn). But the present time is the time to suspect (shakk). Truth needs proof.”1 His most famous quotation about nature and religion (qurʾān) is: “Quran is the word of God and Nature is the work of God. Therefore, there could be no contradiction between the two.” If there was a 1  Muhammad Ismail Panipati, ed. Maqalat-i-Sir Sayyid [Articles of Sir Sayyid](Lahore: Majlisi-Taraqqi-i-Adab, 1962), Part 5, 31.

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contradiction, it was only in the mind or because of lack of understanding the Holy Scripture.2 Similarly, he justified the theories of geology and evolution. He endorsed the idea that the Earth has a much longer life than what is commonly believed. Since Charles Darwin’s theory had generated more controversies, he wrote a detailed article on “Human evolution from lower condition to higher condition” (adna halat se a⁠ʾla halat par insan ki taraqqi). He refuted the religious doctrine of creation and accepted the theory of evolution. This was based on his own interpretation of the Quran.3 The ulama, traditional Muslim scholars, ridiculed his interpretation of the Quran especially with regard to the theory of evolution. He was called a nechari (Naturalist). They believed that he had interpreted the Quran not to educate Muslims but to please the British. But nonetheless, his ideas and the continuing progress of science and technology had a profound effect on young minds. He had attempted to bring harmony between science and religion but it was generally believed that his educational institution at Aligarh had pushed religion, especially Islam, in the background. The reaction against his ideas and educational policies came in the shape of religious decrees ( fatāwā, i.e. fatwas), anti-Aligarh literature and poetry. The impact of these controversies was felt by all. We will confine our comments to the verses of a contemporary poet, Akbar Allahabadi (1846–1921) who conveyed his thoughts on these issues in his satirical and humourous poetry. Akbar Allahabadi was not a religious scholar. In fact, he was opposed to those aspects of religion which were subjected to ritual and tradition. He worked for the British in various capacities retiring as a Session Judge. He felt that under the spell of science, people have forsaken religion: The heart is empty, therefore, no feelings in what I hear, Religion, gone long ago, now, just history of religion.4 [. . .] Akbar, it is useless to long for Paradise, The road of Science is running through that5 [. . .] They have left mosques for the taverns,

2  “Majid ki Tafsir,” in Maqalat-i-Sir Sayyid Part 2, 56. 3  Ibid. 4  Akbar Allahabadi (Lahore: Feroze Sons, 1977), 15. 5  Ibid., 28.

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Vow! What a zeal Muslims show for ‘progress’6 He feels that it was a crime even to utter the name of God in this age of science: My enemies went to the police station to complain Akbar, even in these times, remembers God.7 Charles Darwin occupies a special place in his satire. In one couplet, he points a finger towards the British and exclaims: “Oh, God, what kind of monkeys these are? Evolution, they went through, but still could not become humans!”8 Reflecting on the state of affairs of the Indians, he says that they were going through amazing times, they entrusted their wisdom to masters (school teachers), their wealth to Englishmen, their life to doctors, and their soul to Darwin. The result is that instead of talking about the Holy Book, they discuss Darwin, and on the seat of Adam, now monkeys are jumping. And finally, he had the last word to say: Mansur declared: ‘I am God’!9 Darwin said; ‘I am a monkey’ Amused after hearing this, one of my friends, said: Our thoughts reflect our inner strength.10 It was in these circumstances that Muhammad Iqbal,11 a strong believer in the development of science as well as religion, delivered this lecture. Iqbal was also disturbed by the attitude of Muslims in general and youth in particular towards religion. In 1931, when he was in Cambridge to participate in a conference, he expressed his concern over the fate of religion: I would like to offer a few pieces of advice to the young men who are at present studying at Cambridge. . . . . . I advise you to guard against atheism and materialism. The biggest blunder made by Europe was the separation of Church and State. This deprived their culture of moral soul and 6  Ibid., 52. 7  Ibid., 31. 8  Ibid., 28. 9  Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj (857–922) was a Sufi famous for his saying “I am the Truth” (Arabic anā al-ḥaqq), with ‘Truth’ as a synonym for God. 10   Akbar Alahbadi, op. cit., 28 . 11  The transliteration of his name in Urdu is ‘Muḥammad Iqbāl,’ for a brief biography, see the chapter on Iqbal’s “Presidential Address” in this volume (2.06).

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diverted it to the atheistic materialism. I had twenty-five years ago seen through the drawbacks of this civilization and therefore had made some prophecies. They had been delivered by my tongue although I did not quite understand them. This happened in 1907 . . . After six or seven years, my prophecies came true, word by word. The European war of 1914 was an outcome of the aforesaid mistakes made by the European nations in the separation of the Church and the State.12 This lecture was delivered in a meeting of the Aristotelian Society in London. While it clearly shows impact of Western philosophy, Iqbal has successfully retained the Muslim legacy in terms of looking at religion as a medium that regulates human behaviour in terms of discipline leading to a rational understanding and culminating in ascension of human soul/self (khudi). The original lecture did not contain references. I have added some wherever I thought it would be useful. Aslam Syed

Further Reading

Ahmed, Aziz. Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan: 1857–1964. London: Oxford University Press, 1967. Maruf, Mohammed. Iqbal’s Philosophy of Religion: A Study in the Cognitive Value of Religious Experience. Lahore: Iqbal Academy, 2003. Schimmel, Annemarie. “Mohammad Iqbal and German Thought.” In Mohammad Iqbāl Poet and Philosopher: A Collection of Translations, Essays, and other Articles, edited by Annemarie Schimmel and Mumtaz Hasan. Karachi: Pakistan-German Forum, 1960. Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. Islam in Modern History: The Tension Between Faith and History in the Islamic World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957. Vahid, S. A. Thoughts and Reflections of Iqbal. Lahore: Muhammad Ashraf, 1964.

12  Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Lahore: Muhammad Ashraf, 1958), also published in London in 1934 and many editions from Lahore. Iqbal Academy’s website has all his works, including this one, at www.iap.gov.pk (last checked February 2014).

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Source Text13

Broadly speaking religious life may be divided into three periods. These may be described as the periods of ‘Faith,’ ‘Thought,’ and ‘Discovery.’ In the first period religious life appears as a form of discipline which the individual or a whole people must accept as an unconditional command without any rational understanding of the ultimate meaning and purpose of that command. This attitude may be of great consequence in the social and political history of a people, but is not of much consequence in so far as the individual’s inner growth and expansion are concerned. Perfect submission to discipline is followed by a rational understanding of the discipline and the ultimate source of its authority. In this period religious life seeks its foundation in a kind of metaphysics—a logically consistent view of the world with God as a part of that view. In the third period metaphysics is displaced by psychology, and religious life develops the ambition to come into direct contact with the Ultimate Reality. It is here that religion becomes a matter of personal assimilation of life and power; and the individual achieves a free personality, not by releasing himself from the fetters of the law, but by discovering the ultimate source of the law within the depths of his own consciousness. As in the words of a Muslim Sufi—“no understanding of the Holy Book is possible until it is actually revealed to the believer just as it was revealed to the Prophet.”14 It is, then, in the sense of this last phase in the development of religious life that I use the word religion in the question that I now propose to raise. Religion in this sense is known by the unfortunate name of Mysticism, which is supposed to be a life-denying, fact-avoiding attitude of mind directly opposed to the radically empirical outlook of our times. Yet higher religion, which is only a search for a larger life, is essentially experience and recognized the necessity of experience as its foundation long before science learnt to do so. It is a genuine effort to clarify human consciousness, and is, as such, as critical of its level of experience as Naturalism is of its own level. As we all know, it was Kant who first raised the question: “Is metaphysics possible?”15 He answered this question in the negative; and his argument applies with equal force to the realities in 13  This lecture was published in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 47–64, as well as in The Muslim Revival (Lahore), I/iv (Dec. 1932), 329–49. 14  Some scholars believe that this Sufi was Iqbal’s father, see Muhammad Said Sheikh, “Philosophy of Man,” Iqbal Review XIX/I (April–June 1988). 15  Iqbal’s personal copy of Carl Rahn’s Science and the Religious Life (London, 1928), contains a note “Is religion Possible? Kant’s Problem,” see: Muhammad Siddique, Descriptive Catalogue of Allama Iqbal’s Personal Library (Lahore), 21–22.

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which religion is especially interested. The manifold of sense, according to him, must fulfill certain formal conditions in order to constitute knowledge. The thing-in-itself is only a limiting idea. Its function is merely regulative. If there is some actuality corresponding to the idea, it falls outside the boundaries of experience, and consequently its existence cannot be rationally demonstrated. This verdict of Kant cannot be easily accepted. It may fairly be argued that in view of the more recent developments of science, such as the nature of matter as ‘bottled-up light waves,’ the idea of the universe as an act of thought, finiteness of space and time and Heisenberg’s principle of indeterminacy in Nature, the case for a system of rational theology is not so bad as Kant was led to think. But for our present purposes it is unnecessary to consider this point in detail. As to the thing-in-itself, which is inaccessible to pure reason because of its falling beyond the boundaries of experience, Kant’s verdict can be accepted only if we start with the assumption that all experience other than the normal level of experience is impossible. The only question, therefore, is whether the normal level is the only level of knowledge-yielding experience. Kant’s view of the thing-in-itself and the thing as it appears to us very much determined the character of his question regarding the possibility of metaphysics. But what if the position, as understood by him, is reversed? The great Muslim Sufi philosopher, Muhyaddin Ibn al-‘Arabi of Spain, has made the acute observation that God is a percept; the world is a concept.16 Another Muslim Sufi thinker and poet, ‘Iraqi, insists on the plurality of spaceorders and time-orders and speaks of a Divine Time and a Divine Space.17 It may be that what we call the external world is only an intellectual construction, and that there are other levels of human experience capable of being systematised by other orders of space and time—levels in which concept and analysis do not play the same role as they do in the case of our normal experience. It may, however, be said that the level of experience to which concepts are inapplicable cannot yield any knowledge of a universal character, for concepts alone are capable of being socialized. The standpoint of the man who relies on religious experience for capturing Reality must always remain individual and incommunicable. This objection has some force if it is meant to insinuate that the mystic is wholly ruled 16  Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ʿArabī (1164–1240), the reference is probably from his Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam [Wisdom of Prophets] ed. Abī l-Aʿlā ʿAfīfī (Nīnawā: Manshūrāt maktabat Dār al-thaqāfa, 2001). 17  Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIrāqī (1213–1289), the reference is from his Ghāyat al-imkān fī dirāyat al-makān [The Extent of Possibility in the Science of Space] (Karachi: Maktaba-yi Nadīm, 1984).

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by his traditional ways, attitudes, and expectations. Conservatism is as bad in religion as in any other department of human activity. It destroys the ego’s creative freedom and closes up the paths of fresh spiritual enterprise. This is the main reason why our medieval mystic techniques can no longer produce original discoveries of ancient Truth. The fact, however, that religious experience is incommunicable does not mean that the religious man’s pursuit is futile. Indeed, the incommunicability of religious experience gives us a clue to the ultimate nature of the ego. In our daily social intercourse we live and move in seclusion, as it were. We do not care to reach the inmost individuality of men. We treat them as mere functions, and approach them from those aspects of their identity which are capable of conceptual treatment. The climax of religious life, however, is the discovery of the ego as an individual deeper than his conceptually describable habitual selfhood. It is in contact with the Most Real that the ego discovers its uniqueness, its metaphysical status, and the possibility of improvement in that status. Strictly speaking, the experience which leads to this discovery is not a conceptually manageable intellectual fact; it is a vital fact, an attitude consequent on an inner biological transformation which cannot be captured in the net of logical categories. It can embody itself only in a world-making or world-shaking act; and in this form alone the content of this timeless experience can diffuse itself in the time-movement, and make itself effectively visible to the eye of history. It seems that the method of dealing with Reality by means of concepts is not at all a serious way of dealing with it. Science does not care whether its electron is a real entity or not. It may be a mere symbol, a mere convention. Religion, which is essentially a mode of actual living, is the only serious way of handling Reality. As a form of higher experience it is corrective of our concepts of philosophical theology or at least makes us suspicious of the purely rational process which forms these concepts. Science can afford to ignore metaphysics altogether, and may even believe it to be “a justified form of poetry,” as Lange defined it, or “a legitimate play of grown-ups,” as Nietzsche described it. But the religious expert who seeks to discover his personal status in the constitution of things cannot, in view of the final aim of his struggle, be satisfied with what science may regard as a vital lie, a mere ‘as-if’ to regulate thought and conduct. In so far as the ultimate nature of Reality is concerned, nothing is at stake in the venture of science; in the religious venture the whole career of the ego as an assimilative personal centre of life and experience is at stake. Conduct, which involves a decision of the ultimate fate of the agent, cannot be based on illusions. A wrong concept misleads the understanding; a wrong deed degrades the whole man, and may eventually demolish the structure of the human ego. The mere concept affects life only partially; the deed is dynamically related to Reality and issues Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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from a generally constant attitude of the whole man towards reality. No doubt the deed, i.e. the control of psychological and physiological processes with a view to tune up the ego for an immediate contact with the Ultimate Reality is, and cannot but be, individual in form and content; yet the deed, too, is liable to be socialized when others begin to live through it with a view to discover for themselves its effectiveness as a method of approaching the Real. The evidence of religious experts in all ages and countries is that there are potential types of consciousness lying close to our normal consciousness. If these types of consciousness open up possibilities of life-giving and knowledge-yielding experience, the question of the possibility of religion as a form of higher experience is a perfectly legitimate one and demands our serious attention. But, apart from the legitimacy of the question, there are important reasons why it should be raised at the present moment of the history of modern culture. In the first place, the scientific interest of the question. It seems that every culture has a form of Naturalism peculiar to its own world-feeling; and it further appears that every form of Naturalism ends in some sort of Atomism. We have Indian Atomism, Greek Atomism, Muslim Atomism, and Modern Atomism. Modern Atomism is, however, unique. Its amazing mathematics which sees the universe as an elaborate differential equation; and its physics which, following its own methods has been led to smash some of the old gods of its own temple, have already brought us to the point of asking the question whether the casualty-bound aspect of Nature is the whole truth about it? Is not the Ultimate Reality invading our consciousness from some other direction as well? Is the purely intellectual method of overcoming Nature the only method? “We have acknowledged,” says Professor Eddington: That the entities of physics can from their very nature form only a partial aspect of the reality. How are we to deal with the other part? It cannot be said that other part concerns us less than the physical entities. Feelings, purpose, values, made up our consciousness as much as sense-impressions. We follow up the sense-impressions and find that they lead into an external world discussed by science; we follow up the other elements of our being and find that they lead–not into a world of space and time, but surely somewhere.18 In the second place we have to look to the great practical importance of the question. The modern man with his philosophies of criticism and scientific 18  Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (New York: Macmillan Co. and Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1928).

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specialism finds himself in a strange predicament. His Naturalism has given him an unprecedented control over the forces of Nature, but has robbed him of faith in his own future. It is strange how the same idea affects different cultures differently. The formulation of the theory of evolution in the world of Islam brought into being Rumi’s tremendous enthusiasm for the biological future of man. No cultured Muslim can read such passages as the following without a thrill of joy: Low in the earth I lived in realms of ore and stone; And then I smiled in many-tinted flowers; Then roving with the wild and wandering hours, O’er earth and air and ocean’s zone, In a new birth, I dived and flew, And crept and ran, And all the secret of my essence drew Within a form that brought them all to view— And lo, a Man! And then my goal, Beyond the clouds, beyond the sky, In realms where none may change or die— In angel form; and then away Beyond the bounds of night and day, And Life and Death, unseen or seen, Where all that is hath ever been, As One and Whole. (Rumi: Thadani’s Translation)19 On the other hand, the formulation of the same view of evolution with far greater precision in Europe has led to the belief that “there now appears to be no scientific basis for the idea that the present rich complexity of human endowment will ever be materially exceeded.” That is how the modern man’s secret despair hides itself behind the screen of scientific terminology. Nietzsche, although he thought that the idea of evolution did not justify the belief that man was unsurpassable, cannot be regarded as an exception in this respect. His enthusiasm for the future of man ended in the doctrine of eternal 19  Nanakram Thadani, The Garden of the East (Kharachi: Bhara Publishing House, 1932), 63–64. Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī was a thirteenth-century mystic and poet.

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recurrence—perhaps the most hopeless idea of immortality ever formed by man. This eternal repetition is not eternal ‘becoming’; it is the same old idea of ‘being’ masquerading as ‘becoming.’ Thus, wholly overshadowed by the results of his intellectual activity, the modern man has ceased to live soulfully, i.e. from within. In the domain of thought he is living in open conflict with himself; and in the domain of economic and political life he is living in open conflict with others. He finds himself unable to control his ruthless egoism and his infinite gold-hunger which is gradually killing all higher striving in him and bringing him nothing but lifeweariness. Absorbed in the ‘fact,’ that is to say, the optically present source of sensation, he is entirely cut off from the unplumbed depths of his own being. In the wake of his systematic materialism has at last come that paralysis of energy which Huxley apprehended and deplored. The condition of things in the East is no better. The technique of medieval mysticism by which religious life, in its higher manifestations, developed itself both in the East and in the West has now practically failed. And in the Muslim East it has, perhaps, done far greater havoc than anywhere else. Far from reintegrating the forces of the average man’s inner life, and thus preparing him for participation in the march of history, it has taught him a false renunciation and made him perfectly contented with his ignorance and spiritual thraldom. No wonder then that the modern Muslim in Turkey, Egypt, and Persia is led to seek fresh sources of energy in the creation of new loyalties, such as patriotism and nationalism which Nietzsche described as “sickness and unreason,” and “the strongest force against culture.” Disappointed of a purely religious method of spiritual renewal which alone brings us into touch with the everlasting fountain of life and power by expanding our thought and emotion, the modern Muslim fondly hopes to unlock fresh sources of energy by narrowing down his thought and emotion. Modern atheistic socialism, which possesses all the fervour of a new religion, has a broader outlook; but having received its philosophical basis from the Hegelians of the left wing, it rises in revolt against the very source which could have given it strength and purpose. Both nationalism and atheistic socialism, at least in the present state of human adjustments, must draw upon the psychological forces of hate, suspicion, and resentment which tend to impoverish the soul of man and close up his hidden sources of spiritual energy. Neither the technique of medieval mysticism, nor nationalism, nor atheistic socialism can cure the ills of a despairing humanity. Surely the present moment is one of great crisis in the history of modern culture. The modern world stands in need of biological renewal. And religion, which in its higher manifestations is neither dogma, nor priesthood, nor ritual, can alone ethically prepare the modern man for the burden of the great responsibility which the advancement of modern science Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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necessarily involves, and restore to him that attitude of faith which makes him capable of winning a personality here and retaining it in hereafter. It is only by rising to a fresh vision of his origin and future, his whence and whither, that man will eventually triumph over a society motivated by an inhuman competition, and a civilization which has lost its spiritual unity by its inner conflict of religious and political values. As I have indicated before, religion as a deliberate enterprise to seize the ultimate principle of value and thereby to reintegrate the forces of one’s own personality, is a fact which cannot be denied. The whole religious literature of the world, including the records of specialists’ personal experiences, though perhaps expressed in the thought-forms of an out-of-date psychology, is a standing testimony to it. These experiences are perfectly natural, like our normal experiences. The evidence is that they possess a cognitive value for the recipient, and, what is much more important, a capacity to centralize the forces of the ego and thereby to endow him with a new personality. The view that such experiences are neurotic or mystical will not finally settle the question of their meaning or value. If an outlook beyond physics is possible, we must courageously face the possibility, even though it may disturb or tend to modify our normal ways of life and thought. The interests of truth require that we must abandon our present attitude. It does not matter in the least if the religious attitude is originally determined by some kind of physiological disorder. George Fox may be a neurotic; but who can deny his purifying power in England’s religious life of his day? Muhammad, we are told, was a psychopath.20 Well, if a psychopath has the power to give a fresh direction to the course of human history, it is a point of the highest psychological interest to search his original experience which has turned slaves into leaders of men, and has inspired the conduct and shaped the career of whole races of mankind. Judging from the various types of activity that emanated from the movement initiated by the Prophet of Islam, his spiritual tension and the kind of behaviour which issued from it, cannot be regarded as a response to a mere fantasy inside his brain. It is impossible to understand it except as a response to an objective situation generative of new enthusiasms, new organizations, new starting-points. If we look at the matter from the standpoint of anthropology it appears that a psychopath is an important factor in the economy of humanity’s social organization. His way is not to classify facts and discover causes: he thinks in terms of life and movement with a view to create new patterns of behaviour for mankind. No doubt he has his pitfalls and illusions just as the scientist who relies on sense-experience has 20  The reference is to Aloys Sprenger’s, The Life of Mohammad (Allahabad: Presbyterian Mission Press, 1851).

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his pitfalls and illusions. A careful study of his method, however, shows that he is not less alert than the scientist in the matter of eliminating the alloy of illusion from his experience. The question for us outsiders is to find out an effective method of inquiry into the nature and significance of this extraordinary experience. The Arab historian Ibn Khaldun, who laid the foundations of modern scientific history, was the first to seriously approach this side of human psychology and reached what we now call the idea of the subliminal self. Later, Sir William Hamilton in England and Leibniz in Germany interested themselves in some of the more unknown phenomena of the mind. Jung, however, is probably right in thinking that the essential nature of religion is beyond the province of analytic psychology. In his discussion of the relation of analytic psychology to poetic art, he tells us that the process of artistic form alone can be the object of psychology. The essential nature of art, according to him, cannot be the object of a psychological method of approach. “A distinction,” says Jung, must also be made in the realm of religion; there also a psychological consideration is permissible only in respect of the emotional and symbolical phenomena of a religion, where the essential nature of religion is in no way involved, as indeed it cannot be. For were this possible, not religion alone, but art also could be treated as a mere sub-division of psychology.21 Yet Jung has violated his own principle more than once in his writings. The result of this procedure is that, instead of giving us a real insight into the essential nature of religion and its meaning for human personality, our modern psychology has given us quite a plethora of new theories which proceed on a complete misunderstanding of the nature of religion as revealed in its higher manifestations, and carry us in an entirely hopeless direction. The implication of these theories, on the whole, is that religion does not relate the human ego to any objective reality beyond himself; it is merely a kind of well-meaning biological device calculated to build barriers of an ethical nature round human society in order to protect the social fabric against the otherwise unrestrainable instincts of the ego. That is why, according to this newer psychology, Christianity has already fulfilled its biological mission, and it is impossible for the modern man to understand its original significance. Jung concludes: Most certainly we should still understand it, had our customs even a breath of ancient brutality, for we can hardly realize in this day the 21  Carl Jung et al., Contributions to Analytical Psychology (New York et al., 1928): 225.

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whirlwinds of the unchained libido which roared through the ancient Rome of the Caesars. The civilized man of the present day seems very far removed from that. He has become merely neurotic. So for us the necessities which brought forth Christianity have actually been lost, since we no longer understand their meaning. We do not know against what it had to protect us. For enlightened people, the so-called religiousness has already approached very close to a neurosis. In the past two thousand years Christianity has done its work and has erected barriers of repression, which protect us from the sight of our own sinfulness.22 This is missing the whole point of higher religious life. Sexual self-restraint is only a preliminary stage in the ego’s evolution. The ultimate purpose of religious life is to make this evolution move in a direction far more important to the destiny of the ego than the moral health of the social fabric which forms his present environment. The basic perception from which religious life moves forward is the present slender unity of the ego, his liability to dissolution, his amenability to reformation and the capacity for an ampler freedom to create new situations in known and unknown environments. In view of this fundamental perception higher religious life fixes its gaze on experiences symbolic of those subtle movements of reality which seriously affect the destiny of the ego as a possibly permanent element in the constitution of Reality. If we look at the matter from this point of view modern psychology has not yet touched even the outer fringe of religious life, and is still far from the richness and variety of what is called religious experience. In order to give you an idea of its richness and variety I quote here the substance of a passage from a great religious genius of the seventeenth century—Shaikh Ahmad of Sirhind23– whose fearless analytical criticism of contemporary Sufism resulted in the development of a new technique. All the various system of Sufi technique in India came from Central Asia and Arabia; his is the only technique which crossed the Indian border and is still a living force in the Punjab, Afghanistan, and Asiatic Russia. I am afraid it is not possible for me to expound the real meaning of this passage in the language of modern psychology; for such language does not yet exist. Since, however, my object is simply to give you an idea of the infinite wealth of experience which the ego in his divine quest has to sift and pass through, I do hope you will excuse me for the apparently outlandish terminology which possesses a real substance of meaning, but which was formed 22  Carl Jung and Beatrice Moses Hinkle, Psychology of the Unconscious (New York, 1916), 42–43. 23  Shaykh Aḥmad Sirhindī (1564–1624), a Sufi of the Naqshbandī order.

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under the inspiration of a religious psychology developed in the atmosphere of a different culture. Coming now to the passage. The experience of one ‘Abd al-Mumin was described to the Shaikh as follows: Heavens and Earth and God’s Throne and Hell and Paradise have all ceased to exist for me. When I look round I find them nowhere. When I stand in the presence of somebody I see nobody before me: nay even my own being is lost to me. God is infinite. Nobody can encompass Him; and this is the extreme limit of spiritual experience. No saint has been able to go beyond this. On this the Shaikh replied: The experience which is described has its origin in the ever varying life of the Qalb (heart); and it appears to me that the recipient of its [sic, A. S.] has not yet passed even one-fourth of the innumerable ‘Stations’ of the Qalb. The remaining three-fourths must be passed through in order to finish the experiences of this first ‘Station’ of spiritual life. Beyond this ‘Station’ there are other ‘Stations’ know as Ruh (soul), Sirr-i-Khafi (the inner hidden), and Sirr-i-Akhfa [sic] (the inner veiled), each of these ‘Stations’ which together constitute what is technically called ‘Alam-i Amr (the world of directive energy) has its own characteristic states and experiences. After having passed through these ‘Stations’ the seeker of truth gradually receives the illuminations of ‘Divine Names’ and ‘Divine Attributes’ and finally the illuminations of the ‘Divine Essence.’ Whatever may be the psychological ground of the distinctions made in this passage it gives us at least some idea of a whole universe of inner experience as seen by a great reformer of Islamic Sufism. According to him this “world of directive energy” (ʿalam-i amr), must be passed through before one reaches that unique experience which symbolizes the purely objective. This is the reason why I say that modern psychology has not yet touched even the outer fringe of the subject. Personally, I do not at all feel hopeful of the present state of things in either biology or psychology. Mere analytical criticism with some understanding of the organic conditions of the imagery in which religious life has sometimes manifested itself is not likely to carry us to the living roots of human personality. Assuming that sex-imagery has played a role in the history of religion, or that religion has furnished imaginative means of escape from, or adjustment to, an unpleasant reality—these ways of looking at the matter cannot, in the least, affect the ultimate aim of religious life, that is to say, the Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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reconstruction of the finite ego by bringing him into contact with an eternal life-process, and thus giving him a metaphysical status of which we can have only a partial understanding in the half-choking atmosphere of our present environment. If, therefore, the science of psychology is ever likely to possess a real significance for the life of mankind, it must develop an independent method calculated to discover a new technique better suited to the temper of our times. Perhaps a psychopath endowed with a great intellect—the combination is not an impossibility—may give us a clue to such a technique. In modern Europe, Nietzsche, whose life and activity form, at least to us Easterns, an exceedingly interesting problem in religious psychology, was endowed with some sort of a constitutional equipment for such an undertaking. His mental history is not without a parallel in the history of Eastern Sufism. That a really ‘imperative’ vision of the Divine in man did come to him, cannot be denied. I call his vision ‘imperative’ because it appears to have given him a kind of prophetic mentality which, by some kind of technique, aims at turning its visions into permanent life-forces. Yet Nietzsche was a failure; and his failure was mainly due to his intellectual progenitors such as Schopenhauer, Darwin, and Lange whose influence completely blinded him to the real significance of his vision. Instead of looking for a spiritual rule which would develop the Divine even in a plebeian and thus open up before him an infinite future, Nietzsche was driven to seek the realization of his vision in such scheme as aristocratic radicalism. As I have said of him elsewhere: The ‘I am’ which he seeketh, Lieth beyond philosophy, beyond knowledge. The plant that groweth only from the invisible soil of the heart of man, Groweth not from a mere heap of clay! Thus failed a genius whose vision was solely determined by his internal forces, and remained unproductive for want of expert external guidance in his spiritual life, and the irony of fate is that this man, who appeared to his friends “as if he had come from a country where no man lived,” was fully conscious of his great spiritual need. “I confront alone,” he says, “an immense problem: it is as if I am lost in a forest, a primeval one. I need help. I need disciples: I need a master. It would be so sweet to obey.” And again: “Why do I not find among the living men who see higher than I do and have to look down on me? Is it only that I have made a poor search? And I have so great a longing for such.” The truth is that the religious and the scientific processes, though involving different methods, are identical in their final aim. Both aim at reaching the Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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most real. In fact, religion, for reasons which I have mentioned before, is far more anxious to reach the ultimately real than science. And to both the way to pure objectivity lies through what may be called the purification of experience. In order to understand this we must make a distinction between experience as a natural fact, significant of the normally observable behaviour of Reality, and experience as significant of the inner nature of Reality. As a natural fact it is explained in the light of its antecedents, psychological and physiological; as significant of the inner nature of Reality we shall have to apply criteria of a different kind to clarify its meaning. In the domain of science we try to understand its meaning in reference to the external behaviour of Reality; in the domain of religion we take it as representative of some kind of Reality and try to discover its meanings in reference mainly to the inner nature of that Reality. The scientific and the religious processes are in a sense parallel to each other. Both are really descriptions of the same world with this difference only that in the scientific process the ego’s standpoint is necessarily exclusive, whereas in the religious process the ego integrates its competing tendencies and develops a single inclusive attitude resulting in a kind of synthetic transfiguration of his experiences. A careful study of the nature and purpose of these really complementary processes shows that both of them are directed to the purification of experience in their respective spheres. An illustration will make my meaning clear. Hume’s criticism of our notion of cause must be considered as a chapter in the history of science rather than that of philosophy. True to the spirit of scientific empiricism we are not entitled to work with any concepts of a subjective nature. The point of Hume’s criticism is to emancipate empirical science from the concept of force which, as he urges, has no foundation in sense-experience. This was the first attempt of the modern mind to purify the scientific process. Einstein’s mathematical view of the universe completes the process of purification started by Hume, and, true to the spirit of Hume’s criticism, dispenses with the concept of force altogether. The passage I have quoted from the great Indian saint shows that the practical student of religious psychology has a similar purification in view. His sense of objectivity is as keen as that of the scientists in his own sphere of objectivity. He passes from experience to experience, not as a mere spectator, but as a critical sifter of experience, who by the rules of a peculiar technique, suited to his sphere of inquiry, endeavours to eliminate all subjective elements, psychological or physiological, in the content of his experience with a view finally to reach what is absolutely objective. This final experience is the revelation of a new life-process—original, essential, spontaneous. The eternal secret of the ego is that the moment he reaches this final revelation he recognizes it as the ultimate root of his being without Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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the slightest hesitation. Yet in the experience itself there is no mystery. Nor is there anything emotional in it. Indeed with a view to secure a wholly nonemotional experience the technique of Islamic Sufism at least takes good care to forbid the use of music in worship, and to emphasize the necessity of daily congregational prayers in order to counteract the possible anti-social effects of solitary contemplation. Thus the experience reached is a perfectly natural experience and possesses a biological significance of the highest importance to the ego. It is the human ego rising higher than mere reflection, and mending its transiency by appropriating the eternal. The only danger to which the ego is exposed in this Divine quest is the possible relaxation of his activity caused by his enjoyment of and absorption in the experiences that precede the final experience. The history of Eastern Sufism shows that this is a real danger. This was the whole point of the reform movement initiated by the great Indian saint from whose writings I have already quoted a passage. And the reason is obvious. The ultimate aim of the ego is not to see something, but to be something. It is in the ego’s effort to be something that he discovers his final opportunity to sharpen his objectivity and acquire a more fundamental ‘I am’ which finds evidence of its reality not in the Cartesian ‘I think’ but in the Kantian ‘I can.’ The end of the ego’s quest is not emancipation from the limitations of individuality; it is, on the other hand, a more precise definition of it. The final act is not an intellectual act, but a vital act which deepens the whole being of the ego, and sharpens his will with the creative assurance that the world is not something to be merely seen or known through concepts, but something to be made and re-made by continuous action. It is a moment of supreme bliss and also a moment of the greatest trial for the ego: Art thou in the stage of ‘life,’ ‘death,’ or ‘death-in-life.’ Invoke the aid of three witnesses to verify thy ‘Station.’ The first witness is thine own consciousness— See thyself, then, with thine own light. The second witness is the consciousness of another ego— See thyself, then, with the light of an ego other than thee. The third witness is God’s consciousness— See thyself, then, with God’s light. If thou standest unshaken in front of this light, Consider thyself as living and eternal as He! That man alone is real who dares— Dares to see God face to face! What is ‘Ascension’? Only a search for a witness Who may finally confirm thy reality— Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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A witness whose confirmation alone makes thee eternal. No one can stand unshaken in His Presence; And he who can, verily, he is pure gold. Art thou a mere particle of dust? Tighten the knot of thy ego; And hold fast to thy tiny being! How glorious to burnish one’s ego. And to test its lustre in the presence of the Sun! Re-chisel, then, thine ancient frame; And build up a new being. Such being is real being; Or else thy ego is a mere ring of smoke! Javid Namah Selected and annotated by Aslam Syed

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Yūsuf al-Nabhānī: Poem of the Short ‘R’ in Defaming Innovation and Praising the Esteemed Tradition (Lebanon, 1908/09) Introduction Yūsuf al-Nabhānī, the author of the poem presented here, has often and unduly been neglected in the academic literature about the period and region that he lived in because of a primary interest in Muslim reformist trends. Reading al-Nabhānī—everything but a reformer—opens up new perspectives in this regard. Besides its originality, one other virtue of his work is its obvious embeddedness in the Arab Sunni Muslim context of his time, making frequent reference to other thinkers and their arguments and touching on various issues that were debated and important for him and others. Moreover, he integrated these aspects into a coherent interpretation of his contemporary history, warning of an exterior attack on Islam and Muslims. By presenting his arguments and emphasizing his (hostile) relation to other authors, al-Nabhānī’s poem translated below can serve as an original and yielding starting point to better grasp the multifaceted, controversial and lively context of his time and the religious developments that it spurred. Our understanding of the latter can benefit from considering al-Nabhānī, the staunch anti-reformer, because of the biased imbalance of the predominant picture. For the historiography of religious thought in the late Ottoman period has focused, in a rather obsessive manner, on religious thought identified as modern reformist and on the different ways that thought sought accommodation with modernity. There is no doubt that the movements of Islamic reform, or islāḥ, have had a remarkable impact on Islamic thought since the late nineteenth century. But the literature has repeated over and over the ideas of Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī, Muḥammad ʿAbduh, Rashīd Riḍā, etc., and has ignored other trends in Islamic thought that held different attitudes towards modernity.1 Islamic reform, after all, was but one form of intellectual engagement with 1  This has been a persistent trend since the publication of Charles Adams’ work in 1933 on the modernist reformers of Egypt. See Charles C. Adams, Islam and Modernity in Egypt: A Study of the Modern Reform Movement Inaugurated by Muhammad ʿAbduh (New York: Russell & Russell, 1933). See also the chapter on ʿAbduh in this volume by Johann Büssow (1.10).

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modernity and its source, the West. When the literature attempts to shed light on the diversity within Islam and Islamic thought, it turns to the mystical tradition of Sufism. And yet, the trend has been to locate the ‘modern’ in Sufi thought and Sufi movements and to highlight the adaptability of Sufism to the modern age. In the language of the historiography, the dynamism of Islamic thought can only be captured by recording the degree to which Muslims responded positively to modernity and found ways to accommodate it to Islam.2 All of the above is seen through the prism of the ‘Liberal Age’3 that has been used to describe the intellectual trends in the late Ottoman period, a prism that excludes other trends and only allows us a partial understanding of Islamic thought in the late Ottoman period. The historiography has overlooked and remains largely oblivious to an intellectual trend that was adamantly antimodern and that rejected any accommodation between Islam and modernity. It perceived any reconciliation between the two as a threat not only to Muslim identity but also to the very existence of the Ottoman state itself, being the only Muslim empire at the time. This movement was critical of and hostile to modernist reformers such as Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī, Muḥammad ʿAbduh and Rashīd Riḍā, accusing them of sacrificing Islam for the sake of pleasing Europe and of betraying the Ottoman state whose fate such reformers could seal because religious reform would not only corrupt Islam and Islamic practices, it would also create a loyalty among Muslims to Europe instead of the Ottoman state. Thus, religious reform, according to its opponents, was harmful to Muslims as both a religious community and a political one. A core issue for the entire controversy about religious reform rested upon the dichotomy of ijtihād versus taqlīd, that is of independent reasoning versus the adherence to tradition. The question was how to relate to the vast corpus of transmitted religious tradition, which contained theological interpretations, moral and legal prescriptions, as well as manners and trivia. To open the gates of ijtihād and abandon taqlīd had become the Shibboleth of reformist Islam, intending to do away with the bulk of tradition and allow for fresh interpretations of Islam’s founding texts based on current circumstances. What was seen as an invigorating liberation by reformers was perceived as a threat to the very tenets of their religious and political identity by their opponents. They denied the need for and the possibility of ijtihād and affirmed the adherence to 2  See Martin von Bruinessen and Julia Day Howell, Introduction to Sufism and the “Modern” in Islam (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007), 3–18. 3  This is in reference to Albert Hourani’s seminal work that has shaped fundamentally the parameters of modern Arab thought. Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798– 1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962).

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transmitted norms, practices and beliefs through taqlīd. The inherent general theme played out in several variations, one of which concerned the questionable method of talfīq. Traditional Muslim orthodoxy recognises four canonical schools of religious jurisprudence (madhhab, pl. madhāhib), each of which offers a set of legal and moral norms that sometimes vary from or contradict the norms of the other canonical schools. Talfīq meant the combination or selection of individual rulings from different canonical schools, and reformers promoted talfīq in order to allow religious scholars more leeway in accommodating traditional rulings to the challenges of a changing world. Their opponents maintained the need to adhere to just one of the madhāhib. Ijtihād, talfīq, and similar measures were seen by opponents of reform as an attempt to undermine the Islamic tradition and the authority of past renowned scholars. One dangerous outcome, according to the anti-reform camp, was the introduction of innovations in religion that would harm Islam and Muslims. The proponents of reform were also critical of a wide range of Sufi beliefs and practices. Sufism, i.e. the mystical strand within Islam, was popular throughout the Ottoman Empire and displayed a great variety of movements, most of them mainstream Muslim, some of them bordering on the heterodox. Organised into religious orders with a strong sense of hierarchy, Sufism was a trend that had both firm roots in large parts of the population and was intertwined with the state bureaucracy and high figures in the Ottoman Empire and semi-­ independent Egypt. While reformers did not criticise Sufism per se, they specifically condemned the concept of sainthood and supplication to Sufi saints, and over time their condemnation became more generalised. For reformers, Sufism, as it had developed throughout the centuries, both encapsulated and aggravated the illnesses of Islam, describing it as superstitious, backwards, and spreading ignorance and blind obedience among Muslims. According to reformers, the authority of saints in Sufi orders, like that of the founders of schools of jurisprudence, should be undermined in order to empower the intellect of individual Muslims and cultivate their independent reasoning in religious matters. Thus, many opponents of religious reform were Sufis who were offended by such an attack of Sufi traditions and rituals. Thus, the antireform movement was the product of its own time, framing a response to the fast changes in the Ottoman state within the boundaries of the Muslim tradition as envisioned by conservative Sufis, in an attempt to preserve Muslim rule and defend the Muslim tradition. Wahhabism, the religious renewal movement that emerged in late eighteenth century in Najd in Arabia, had already initiated an attack on Sufis and called for a purification of Islam from the innovations introduced by Sufism. The Wahhabis also undermined Ottoman authority and threatened Ottoman Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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suzerainty in Arabia. Modern religious reformers intersected with Wahhabis on some issues like ijtihād and the veneration of Ibn Taymiyya4 and they did comment positively on some of the Wahhabi contributions to Islamic thought, but they were not the same. While the modern reformers in the late Ottoman period supported the pan-Islamic policy of the strongman of the Otto­man Empire, its Sultan Abdülhamid II (reg. 1876–1909), they were critical of his authoritarian style of rule and his suspension of the constitution and parliamentary life. The reformist calls for political reform were considered by Abdülhamid II as a destabilising factor that endangered his policies of protecting the Empire from present and impending dangers. The relationship between modern reformers and Abdülhamid II was oscillating between uneasiness and hostility. Thus, Abdülhamid II and the Sufis shared a common enemy. While Abdülhamid II was a moderniser and had a worldview much wider than that of the antireform movement, that alliance was driven by political exigencies rather than dogmatic ones.5 Added to this were his considerable attempts to reach out to the Arab provinces, leading to him courting Sufi orders and their leaders with influence there. The Sufi anti-reform movement in particular was strongly linked to the Hamidian court and enjoyed the Sultan’s patronage. The antireform movement insisted on establishing an intellectual genealogy between Wahhabism and modern reformism and considered the latter as much of a threat to the Ottoman state as was the former, thus also succeeding in linking them in terms of their political goals, and further delegitimising modern reformers in the eyes of the Ottoman state and the Ottoman court. The person at the helm of this anti-modernity and anti-reform movement was the most prolific Sufi writer at the time, Yūsuf al-Nabhānī, whose writings shed light on the nature of this intellectual and political movement that refused modernity categorically and sought no compromise with it. Yūsuf ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Yūsuf ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Nabhānī was born in 1850 in Ijzim, a Palestinian village in the district of Nablus. He was tutored by his father and when he turned seventeen, he went to al-Azhar College in Cairo, where he spent seven years, during which he had the chance to meet Muslim reformers and encounter their ideas. But this is also where his traditional conservative education was sharpened. He returned to Palestine where 4  Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) is a famous Muslim scholar who was the first to lead a vicious attack on visitations to tombs and supplication to saints, arguing that various grades of such behaviors were ‘unorthodox’ and might lead to idolatry. 5  See Kemal H. Karpat, The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman State (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

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he occupied judicial posts before travelling to Istanbul in 1876, where he spent two years working for the official periodical al-Jawāʾib. Later, al-Nabhānī was appointed for fifteen months as a judge in a district in Kurdistan. After a short visit to Baghdad and Damascus he returned in 1880 to Istanbul for two years during which he became one of the court ulama of Sultan Abdülhamid II. His close association with the Hamidian court culminated in lucrative judicial posts. He was appointed the head of the court of first instance in Latakia and then in Jerusalem, where he met Ḥasan Abū Ḥalāwa al-Ghazzī who introduced him into the Sufi Qādiriyya Order, and who seems to have secured him a promotion in 1888 as the head of the civil tribunal in Beirut. He remained in this position until he was dismissed in 1909, following the Young Turks revolution against Abdülhamid II in 1908. He went to Medina and then returned to his home village in 1916 after the revolt of Sharīf Ḥusayn. He died in Beirut in 1932. His writings can be classified in three interdependent categories: polemics against religious reform, political propaganda in support of Abdülhamid II and against his enemies and missionary schools operating in the Empire, and prophetic eulogies. In the first category, he led a scathing attack on those who supported the practice of ijtihād and abandoned taqlīd (see above). He believed that they did not care about Islam, despised Islamic traditions, and followed Western manners and system of thought. Muslim scholars, as he claimed, had already written enough commentaries and exegesis and no new interpretations were needed. Legal matters emanating from the Quran and the Sunna were relevant to every century and every time. Contrary to what reformers claimed, he believed that the modern age was the worst and the most evil and the only reason why reformers related to it was because they were corrupt Muslims who wanted to tailor religion to modern tastes. He criticised Muslim reformers for praising this century as a century of science, knowledge, virtues, and good and refined manners and did not agree with them that the time of ignorance and savagery was now replaced by one of sciences and modernisation. He could only see evil in the modern age. In the second category, that of political propaganda against missionary schools and in support of the Sultan, he wrote the treatise “Guiding the Lost by Warning Muslims against Missionary Schools” published in April 1901.6 It articulated al-Nabhānī’s fear of missionary schools and their harmful impact on Muslims and on the Ottoman Empire. He believed that Western countries 6  Yūsuf bin Ismāʿīl al-Nabhānī, Irshād al-ḥayārā fi tahdhīr al-muslimīn min madāris al-naṣāra (n.p., 1901).

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and missionaries were spending so much money on the education of Muslims in order to make them abandon their religion. By making Muslims read European languages, biographies, and stories, criticising Islam and famous Muslim scholars, they turn Muslims against their religion and their state and give allegiance to the countries sponsoring that missionary education. While al-Nabhānī was warning against missionary schools he was as well aware of the reason behind their popularity, which among others, included the languages they taught. Although he knew there was high demand for foreign language training among Muslim Ottomans, he did not perceive language study as necessary and desirable since it might lead to the perdition of Muslim children. His advice was to remove children from these schools, although they would have better opportunities for studying foreign languages, and, instead, register them in the Islamic schools, which held the responsibility of teaching them what they needed from the world and from religion, guaranteeing the safety of their beliefs. Al-Nabhānī’s writings portray a more complex image of Islamic thought in the late Ottoman period that witnessed major socio-economic, intellectual, and political developments that have shaped the modern history of the Middle East and of Islam. Al-Nabhānī resorted to Islamic tradition, not to justify a midway between Islam and modernity, but to protect and shelter the former from the latter. While much of the historical practice focuses on recognising nuances, there was nothing nuanced about al-Nabhānī and his position towards modernity and the harms he believed it would bring to Islam and to the Ottoman Empire. He remained until the end of his career an adamant opponent of iṣlāḥ. While this anti-reform movement weakened considerably with the revolt of 1908 and even more with the collapse of the Ottoman order and the rise of the nation-state and the modernisation processes that followed in the Arab world, many of its tenets have survived. Al-Nabhānī himself remains venerated by contemporary Sufis, with some of his books still appearing in new editions and sold widely. His warnings of religious reform undermining old-established religious authority in Islam and leading to arbitrary religious verdicts, and of the West and Muslim engagement with its modernity undermining Muslim rule embodied by the Ottoman state, have resonated among many Muslims as being valid. On the Translation Al-Nabhānī’s poem “The Short ‘R’ in Defaming Innovation and Praising the Esteemed Tradition,” excerpts of which are translated below, captures his main

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concerns about and the main arguments against religious reform. The rhythmic poem has around 450 verses, all ending with the letter ‘R.’7 It is entitled the short ‘R’ because there is another, longer, ‘R’-poem in which al-Nabhānī compared Islam to Judaism and Christianity. The polemics of al-Nabhānī against the reformers and the modern age reached their peak in his ad hominem poem of the “Short ‘R,’ ” in which he assaulted the reformers and did not refrain from using the strongest language to describe their (mis)conduct and (dis)beliefs. It is also perhaps one of his most significant publications as it serves as a significant source on the conservative anti-reform thought at the time. It has no specific date of publication but from its content one concludes that it was written between 1908 and 1909. It is divided into eight sections. The first consists of praise to God, the Prophet, the Quran and the Sunna, the four Imams and their schools of legal interpretation. The second, third and fourth sections were a denunciation of al-Afghānī, ʿAbduh and Riḍā respectively, with the fifth being devoted to an attack on Wahhabism and some Wahhabi scholars, contemporaries of al-Nabhānī. The sixth consisted of eulogies for Prophet Muhammad and of a lamentation of what al-Nabhānī described as the sad and sorry state of Islam and Muslims at the time. The seventh section, an appendix part of which is in prose, is a summary of his warnings against the reformers and what he believed were their religious innovations. This is also where he connects his enmity towards Muslim reformers with his more general interpretation of contemporary events that, according to him, constituted a Christian European attack on Islam by all means, including education and the foreign promotion of reformist Muslims. The eighth and last section included forty hadith, i.e. transmitted reports of the Prophet Muhammad’s words and deeds, attacking religious innovations and defending the Muslim tradition. Below are excerpts from several sections of the treatise. Amal Ghazal

7  In the nineteenth century, Arabic poetry, prose, and literature combining both genres had much different literary and social functions than they have today. In short, poetry had the highest prestige, and stylistic excellence was a necessity for all texts. Al-Nabhānī’s choice to express his opposition to religious reform through poetry has to be seen before this background. He was addressing a relatively small audience of traditionally educated religious scholars who were both receptive to his frequent allusions, be it persons, events, or religious concepts, and appreciative of the stylistic form.

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Further Reading

Commins, David Dean. Islamic Reform: Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Bruinessen, Martin von, and Howell, Julia Day eds. Sufism and the “Modern” in Islam. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007. Ghazal, Amal. “Sufism, Ijtihad and Modernity: Yusuf al-Nabhani in the Age of Abd al-Hamid II.” Archivum Ottomanicum 19 (2001): 239–272.



Source Text8

Section II [Denunciation of Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī]9 Many centuries have passed and no scholar has permitted absolute ijtihād10 How would ignorant ones in our time make such a claim? What an ugly call and what a horrible matter First among them was an evil Shaykh11 to whom the King of Afghans did what he did He [the evil Shaykh] sought to corrupt his folks’ religion, hence he was forcefully exiled He is called Jamāl al-Dīn despite his ugly deed, the same way the desert is called a saviour12 They say he is the greatest reformer who has made religion easy in our time

8  Yūsuf bin Ismāʿīl al-Nabhānī, Al-Rāʾiyya al-ṣughra fī dhamm al-bidʿa wa-madh al-sunna [The Poem of the Short ‘R’ in Defaming Innovation and Praising the Esteemed Tradition], 4th ed. (n.p., n.d.). 9  Al-Nabhānī, Short ‘R,’ 6–8. 10  Independent religious reasoning as opposed to taqlīd. See the commentary to the translation above. 11  Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī (d. 1897) is an early and central figure to the Islamic reform movement He took sides in an Afghan power struggle and had to leave the country when the prince that he had supported lost. 12  The literal translation of al-Afghānī’s first name Jamāl al-Dīn is ‘Beauty of Religion.’ One word for ‘desert’ in Arabic is mafāza, which is derived from a word stem with the meaning ‘to win,’ although the desert is usually associated with defeat and death. To refer to something by its antonym, no matter if by irony or wishful thinking, is what al-Nabhānī implies to be the similarity here.

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And this Shaykh fashioned a new madhhab13 with lax regulations that fit the age . . . He came to Egypt banished and he plundered in it.14 What an ugly Shaykh and what a beautiful country . . . And when ʿAbduh and his likes came to him, he revealed to them that secret He revealed to them the abolition of all madhāhib15 so that religion turns, as he alleged, a virgin one . . . [They are] devils among Muslims who are divided due to their deception. How many ignorant they have deceived . . . They have imitated Protestants with their ijtihād, as the Prophet said: “If they entered a hole . . .”16 Section III [Denunciation of Muḥammad ʿAbduh]17 They have a Shaykh of ill of Coptic origin, his lineage can be read on his disfigured appearance18 A whim, to which he is enslaved, occupies his heart, a devil inhabits his head A contemporary Abū Jahl who has become a Mufti in Egypt, where he revived ignorance . . .19 13  A madhhab (pl. madhāhib) in this context is one of the four canonical schools of Muslim jurisprudence. The very thought of a ‘new’ madhhab is a breach of a longstanding consensus in Islam. 14  Al-Afghānī stayed in Egypt from 1871 to 1879. Owing to a government annuity with no obligations in return he spent his time with teaching, discussions, and political activism. Here he met Muḥammad ʿAbduh (see the chapter on him in this volume, 1.10) and founded a Freemason lodge that would develop into the core of Egypt’s movement for independence after 1919. In 1879 he was expelled from Egypt because of his uncompromising stance against the British. 15  This is a paraphrase for the disregard of religion in its traditional form, the legal and moral prescriptions of which are systemised by the schools of jurisprudence. 16  This is in reference to a Prophetic hadith that warns against the imitation of Christians and Jews: “You shall follow the traditions of those who came before you inch by inch and, even if they enter a hole of a lizard, you shall follow them. They said: Jews and Christians? He said: Who else?” (Hadith Nr. 6889 in the collection of al-Bukhārī). The hadith is repeated in its entirety further below in the “Third warning,” where al-Nabhānī expounds his argument against the reformers more explicitly. 17  Al-Nabhānī, Short ‘R,’ 14–18. 18  For Muḥammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905), a prominent Muslim reformer, see the chapter by Johann Büssow in this volume (1.10). 19  ʿAbduh became the Grand Mufti of Egypt for some time while Egypt was occupied by the British and used this position to implement part of his programme for religious and educational reform. Abū Jahl, the figure that ʿAbduh is likened to by al-Nabhānī, was a leader

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He recounted the worst knowledge from Jamāl al-Dīn but he multiplied the evil . . . He is raving with his call for ijtihād, spouting error that has profaned earth and sea He pretends to be an Imam on the one hand but he imitates infidels on the other hand He criticises good Muslims and when needed, he prefers apostasy20 So that it is said that the Shaykh [ʿAbduh] has a free mind and thus he reaches a high status with the folks [the Europeans]21 His vice in religion has been witnessed although blind people pretend there is good in him He might have unintentionally benefited Islam but how much he has intentionally caused it harm He supported the enemies of the country [Egypt] and deceived the ignorant that they were good He justified to people their wrongdoings and he found them excuses every time they sinned The more he betrayed the country and advised its enemies the more the latter elevated his status . . . He gives atheists merit and wherever he sees any innovator [in religion]22 he thanks him He glorifies the innovations and mistakes of Ibn Taymiyya23 But he did not follow him in his asceticism, good sayings, and other deeds He praises misleading Wahhabis and thus, he sins . . .

of the Arab tribe Quraysh who was very hostile to Prophet Muhammad and thus personifies heresy and enmity towards Islam. Al-Nabhānī takes up ʿAbduh’s call for a ‘revival’ but turns it into a revival of ‘ignorance,’ i.e. another word that in Arabic denotes heresy. 20  Apostasy is the harshest critique possible between two religious scholars and using this term laxly is definitely frowned upon. In the excerpt from Section VII below, al-Nabhānī explains in more detail in what way and to what degree he considers or does not consider ʿAbduh and his likes an apostate. 21  ʿAbduh became Grand Mufti only after the intercession of the British. He was a personal friend of Lord Cromer (Evelyn Baring 1841–1917), the British Consul-General of Egypt (1882–1907). 22  In a Sunni Muslim context ‘innovation’ (bidʿa, pl. bidaʿ ) as well as ‘innovator’ (mubdiʿ ) have a negative meaning as a deviation from tradition as the only reliable source for a true understanding of God’s commandments and the Prophet’s message. 23  See above, footnote 4.

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He has allowed the wearing of hats and interest [on money], which is, according to scholars, tantamount to infidelity24 How often he visited Paris and London but he did not visit Mecca and Medina25 Section IV [Denunciation of Rashīd Riḍā]26 As for Rashīd of al-Manār, he is the least smart and the most evil27 His deeds show his hideous error and reveal his apostasy He has contradictory verdicts that depend on his whim How many times did he want to speak in a mosque but pious ones prohibited him28 How many times did he deliver a sermon in a church, substituting a priest and embracing another How many times did he stand up in a mosque to preach, mixing faith with apostasy And this evil Manār that mirrors his glory only shows his malignity He came to Egypt expelled after betraying his religion and his state, how sorrowful for Egypt my heart is He was sheltered by Shaykh ʿAbduh who satiated him with bread and with alcohol And he taught him an evil craft that earned him the world but made him loose the afterlife And this, the Manār of ill, he [ʿAbduh] founded it for him and taught him deception line by line . . . And I realised in my dream that his Manār brought him hellfire and earned him loss . . . 24  Al-Nabhānī refers to controversial fatwas (i.e. answers to specific questions based on religious expertise) that Muḥammad ʿAbduh had issued during his time as the Grand Mufti of Egypt (the chief official tasked with issuing fatwas). While the question of allowing Western clothing was more or less symbolical, the prohibition of interest is usually taken to be a prescription that is central to Islam. 25  Muḥammad ʿAbduh had learned French and went on frequent travels to Europe where he immersed in discussions with intellectuals and influential people and visited the continents’ prime universities. 26  Al-Nabhānī, Short ‘R,’ 20–25. 27  Rashīd Riḍā (1865–1935) was only one of ʿAbduh’s many pupils, see the chapter by Stefan Reichmuth in this volume (2.06). Al-Manār is the title of a Journal that was Published by Riḍā. 28  Before he came to Cairo and joined ʿAbduh, Riḍā was a pupil of Ḥusayn al-Jisr in Tripolis (see chapter 1.09 by Björn Bentlage) and had heated arguments with the town’s religious elite because of his stark anti-Sufism.

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His fatwas in religious affairs depend on his whim that earns him disgrace and loss . . . Section V [Critique of Wahhabism]29 The strangest thing is a Muslim whose heart has no love for the Prophet30 Such are the Wahhabis who went astray, considering calamity good and guidance evil With weak intellect, their ancestors are the Arabs of Najd from whom they inherited lies and sins31 Musaylima and his wife are their ancestors . . .32 They [Wahhabis] wanted to get closer to God by belittling His dear ones, so they achieved distance from Him and gained only loss33 They are Ḥanbalis but the madhhab of the guided [Imam] Aḥmad exonerated from their deeds34 Their corruption has spread everywhere, sparing neither Syria nor Egypt The odd Ḥanbalis are not the only [misguided] ones, followers of our other madhāhib went astray too Section VII, Conclusion [A Summary of His Warnings]35 I call on people, screaming passionately as if coal burns inside me Beware, my people, of enemies who turned against us and brought our religion decline and loss They knew Islam was a strong fortress and that they won’t defeat it36 29  Al-Nabhānī, Short ‘R,’ 27–29. 30  The Wahhabi creed harshly rebukes anything that may potentially lead to a deviation from monotheism in its strictest sense. Wahhabis thus condemned the veneration of the Prophet Muhammad for the fear that believers may attribute more than human qualities to him. Sufis such as al-Nabhānī on the contrary celebrated the veneration of the Prophet as the perfect human and encouraged expressions of love to Muhammad. 31  Najd is an area in today’s Saudi Arabia. Arab Bedouins such as those living in the Najd had a bad reputation with the inhabitants of other, usually more urbanised, areas of the Muslim world. 32  Musaylima was a contemporary of Prophet Muhammad who claimed to be a prophet. He is a symbol of falsehood, deception and untruth. 33  Someone ‘close’ or ‘dear’ (walī, pl. awliyāʾ) to God was a term used for Sufi saints and shaykhs. 34  The Hanbalis are the followers of one of the four canonical schools of religious jurisprudence, founded by Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (d. 855), and they became closely associated and even identified with the Wahhabis after the latters’ success. 35  Al-Nabhānī, Short ‘R,’ 31–34. 36  The pronoun ‘they’ refers to Christians. Al-Nabhānī implies that non-Muslims are per se trying to harm Islam. Having realised—probably in the more glorious days of the Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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So they invaded it with an army of their sinful schools, with it they won a victory without a war Schools like churches, through them their devils held sway with tricks and deceit37 Tasty subjects in their menus of knowledge, but in it they put poison and blew magic Our sons turned into our enemies, and the calamity looked to us like a big grace . . . Our God: dishonor whomever intends ill for our religion and our state and make victory ours . . . The Second Warning38 Those astray, deceived, and deceptives have followed Protestant Christians who claim to reform Christianity by abandoning the sayings of previous religious leaders and by only following the religious laws of the Bible and the Torah. This is why they called themselves reformers but they are wrong and are, by following those people, a shame on Muslims and Islam . . . The Third Warning39 We thank God that we were not in that astray and misguiding movement that emerged among us in this age. It was inevitable for that to happen, confirming the prophetic saying: “You shall follow the traditions of those who came before you inch by inch and, even if they enter the hole of a lizard, you shall follow them. They said: Jews and Christians? He said: Who else?”40 The Protestant movement took place among Christians 300 years ago and they [followers of that movement] called themselves the reformers of the Christian religion. It was inevitable that some Muslims were going to follow them and adopt Ottoman Empire—that they cannot harm Islam by open attacks, they changed tactics to more subversive methods, as explained in the following lines. 37  Missionary schools were generally suspect of proselytising, especially as the subjects they taught, including European languages and natural sciences, and the career opportunities opened up by their education, were potentially attractive to Muslims as well, even if the numbers of Muslim students in missionary schools were usually marginal. So al-Nabhānī emphasises the religious impetus behind the spread of European style education, likening schools to churches and scientific discoveries to mischievous magic, thus situating it within the overspanning narrative of enmity towards Islam as another subversive method. 38  Al-Nabhānī, Short ‘R,’ 36–37. The rhymed style changes after al-Nabhānī’s “Conclusion” and the “Warnings” are written in prose. 39  Al-Nabhānī, Short ‘R,’ 37–8. 40  C.v. footnote 9 above. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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the same description, as a validation to the aforementioned Prophetic saying. Hence Shaykh Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī appeared in Egypt in the late 13th century [of the Muslim calendar] when I was studying at al-Azhar. He attended the class of our Shaykh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Shirbīnī, may God have mercy on him, who answered his [al-Afghānī’s] questions. Then, he [Shirbīnī] smelled misguidance and expelled him from his class. Al-Afghānī then became famous, his evil spread, and was accompanied by a group of evils, the worst of whom was Shaykh Muḥammad ʿAbduh, his most devout follower. The worst of his students is Shaykh Rashīd al-Qalamūnī, the owner of al-Manār newspaper. Their number multiplied and they were disseminated all over the countries, and called themselves the reformers of Islam while they are the most ignorant among the people of error and corruption, those ones are far away from righteousness and reform, may God fight them wherever they are. The Fourth Warning41 God’s words in the opening of the Quranic chapter al-Baqara apply to those corrupting ones who call themselves reformers When they are told: “Do not cause mischief on earth,” they say: “We are only reformers.”42 Indeed they are the mischievous ones but they don’t realise it . . . Every time I read these verses, it occurs to me that they match the description of these mischievous ones who claim to reform religion . . . I do not accuse them all of apostasy, even if they deviate from the straight path . . . But if they persist in their call for absolute ijtihād, in tempering with rules, and in their enmity for the leading scholars of Islam, then they are not very far off from being apostates. Selected and translated by Amal Ghazal

41  Al-Nabhānī, Short ‘R,’ 38–9. 42  Al-Nabhānī adduces verse number 7 from the second sura of the Quran to give the very terms ‘reform’ (islāḥ) and ‘reformers’ (musliḥūn) a negative connotation. In Arabic, the word islāḥ can mean both ‘reform’ and ‘doing good.’ It is in the latter sense that it is part of the dichotomy of ‘doing good’ (islāḥ) and ‘causing mischief’ (ifsād) that the Quranic verse employs to warn against hypocrites. Al-Nabhānī uses the ambiguity of the word ‘iṣlāḥ’ to once again identify reformers as enemies of the faith.

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Ḥusayn al-Jisr al-Ṭarābulusī: The Hamidian Treatise (Lebanon, 1888) Introduction Ḥusayn al-Jisr was a renowned Muslim scholar from one of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, the founder of a short-lived religious reform school and his hometown’s first newspaper. Although almost forgotten today, al-Jisr was a widely read author in his time who had access to the highest circles of political power. His ideas and books shaped the reception of natural sciences in the Ottoman Empire and the attitude towards European and American Christians among many of his contemporaries. But his differentiated positions and his traditional mode of argumentation did not easily fit into the categories of emerging Islamic modernism. They were blended out over time by what was to become the dominant dichotomy of urgent reformism versus rigid traditionalism. Al-Jisr was born 1845 in the Lebanese coastal city of Tripoli.1 Despite the constant rise of silk exports to France, Tripoli had been losing economical and political weight to Beirut. With a growing population of about 20.000 inhabitants, Tripoli had a considerable Christian minority of about 10% in the city itself and 50% in the adjacent suburb of al-Mīnāʾ. In the late nineteenth century it was a conservative and traditional city and its affairs and politics were determined by an upper class of Ottoman officials, religious scholars, and local notables who were often entrenched in shifting rivalries and alliances, but ultimately had enough common interests to cooperate vis-à-vis other parts of the population. Wealth and influence were either based on trade, government posts, or religious titles, some of the latter referring to functionary positions and others being of a purely representative nature. Prestigious religious titles and the teaching positions that were associated with them had often remained within certain families over generations. Adherence to Sufi orders and attendance to their sessions was an important part of social life 1  Unless indicated otherwise, all information on Ḥusayn al-Jisr’s biography, background, and his work comes from Johannes Ebert, Religion und Reform in der Arabischen Provinz: Ḥusayn al-Ǧisr aṭ-Ṭarābulusī (1845–1909): Ein Islamischer Gelehrter Zwischen Tradition und Reform (Frankfurt am Main and New York: P. Lang, 1991).

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and brought together the different social classes and branches of occupations that were otherwise clearly separated and discernible by, for instance, differentiated styles of traditional clothing. Education meant to learn in schools that were adjacent to either churches or mosques, and almost all of Tripoli’s Muslim teachers had been educated at the famous al-Azhar in Egypt. As the son of a renowned family of Muslim scholars, Ḥusayn al-Jisr too received a traditional education in his home town and later at al-Azhar College in Cairo. In 1862 when he went to Egypt the Azhar’s curriculum had not yet been reformed, formalised and restricted to the religious. He studied a variety of subjects, learned French and philosophy, and natural sciences were a topic of discussion with his teacher of Arabic and logic. After five years, Ḥusayn went back to Tripoli for family reasons, but he continued to read about chemistry, biology and other natural sciences after his return. Back in his home town he followed in his father’s footsteps and headed the local branch of the Khalwaṭiyya Sufi order in addition to teaching at several mosques and religious schools while giving private lessons as well as public lectures on Islamic law and theology. Missionary schools, in contrast to the traditional religious schools of local Muslims and Christians, taught modern curricula including mathematics and natural sciences. American Protestant schools in Beirut were using Arabic as a teaching language and developed Arabic text books for natural sciences, but in Tripoli it was their Catholic and Orthodox counterparts that attracted much more pupils and taught them education was in European languages. Missionary schools were almost exclusively frequented by Christian Arabs who, after graduation, were much better qualified for positions in the state bureaucracy and private businesses than graduates from traditional schools. Already privileged through their protection by European powers and their access to foreign markets, the opportunities for many Christian Arabs improved while their Muslim neighbours began to feel marginalised in some respects. Al-Jisr had already been aware of modern scientific discoveries when he returned from Egypt in 1868. After twelve years of teaching in Tripoli, his acquaintance with the reform-minded Ottoman governor Midhat Pasha (1822–1884) gave him the opportunity to realise some of his own ideas about education that he had developed by then. At that time and parallel to the introduction of a new system of state schools in 1869, Midhat Pasha was encouraging local notables to establish Islamic reform schools, combining a religious education with modern sciences and Arabic as the language of instruction. In Beirut, the Society for Islamic Welfare was founded for exactly that purpose in 1878. Ḥusayn al-Jisr established the Homeland School (al-madrasa al-waṭaniyya) in Tripoli in 1879 and served as its headmaster. The school was Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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closed down in 1882 due to local rivalries and shifts in the Empire’s politics, but it nevertheless left an imprint on many of its students. Its innovative curriculum and style of teaching attracted students from as far as Beirut and Palestine, among them Rashīd Riḍā (1865–1935), a future pivotal figure in the Salafi movement.2 Al-Jisr’s intention in founding the Homeland School becomes quite clear in the translated source text below: Missionary schools, in his view, posed a grave danger for Islam and the well-being of Muslims in Tripoli. He was convinced that in order to face and cope with the challenge created by these schools, it was inevitable to reform traditional religious teaching and engage with natural sciences. After the school was closed in 1882, al-Jisr went on to serve for a few more months as the headmaster of another reform school in Beirut that had been established in the same year by the Society for Islamic Welfare. He met and worked with Muḥammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905) and had access to the latest Arabic translations of scientific works.3 Ḥusayn al-Jisr returned to Tripoli, where he continued to teach and, beginning in the late 1880s, wrote and published a series of books.4 He was a successful author and received an invitation to Istanbul from the Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II (1876–1909), whom al-Jisr advised for a short period of time. However, he soon decided against immersing himself into politics more deeply and returned to Tripoli after a few months. He secured the permission to establish Tripoli’s first newspaper in 1894 and contributed articles for many years, which was so unusual for a religious scholar that he used a pseudonym for several years. Al-Jisr’s major work is the Hamidian Treatise on the Truthfulness of the Islamic Religion and the Praiseworthy Path of Muhammad, which appeared in 1888 and was dedicated to the Sultan. The Treatise is an apologetic of Islam that is set up as a parable: a town is visited by a messenger who brings orders from the faraway king, and these new orders contradict the king’s previous laws. Among the parable’s townspeople, several groups are described as reacting differently towards the messenger (the Prophet Muhammad) and the directives that he delivers (Islam).5 With regard to most of these, al-Jisr reproduces the standard 2  See the chapter on Riḍā in this volume (2.06). 3  See the chapter on ʿAbduh in this volume (1.10). 4  He wrote more than 25 books on various topics, including theology, education, poetry and literary criticism, ʿAbdallāh Saʿīd, Āl al-Jisr fī Ṭarābulus 1757–1980: Min al-irshād al-dīnī ilā al-ʿamal al-siyāsī [The Family al-Jisr in Tripoli 1757–1980. From Religious Guidance to Political Work], including an English translation of the introduction (Tokyo: Research Inst. for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 2007), 87–88. 5  Al-Jisr, Treatise, 4–7.

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positions of Islamic apologetics towards Jews, Christians, ‘hypocrites,’ etc. But more than half of the entire text (274 out of 454 pages) deals with “those who did not know that there is a king,” i.e. atheists and Western scientists, and the narrator engages in long discussions with his imagined opponents on various topics.6 The source text translated below is a compilation of two excerpts from the Treatise about school reform and evolutionary theory. Al-Jisr’s terminology and mode of argumentation in this very rich text are particularly instructive to consider. The Treatise belongs to the earlier discussions of evolutionary theory in Arabic. In a series of articles from 1878–1882, Shiblī Shumayyil (1850–1917) had introduced the ideas of Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) and Ludwig Büchner (1824– 1899) to the Arab speaking world.7 Al-Jisr employs by and large the same terminology that Shumayyil used in his writings. Haeckel’s and Büchner’s strictly materialist mode of evolutionary theory stressed the unity of matter and force and explicitly excluded any possibility of creation. According to that monistic version of the theory of evolution (nushūʿ), all of the universe is a direct result of the natural laws (nawāmīs, sg. nāmūs) that determine how force, or movement (ḥaraka, ḥarakāt) works on matter (mādda) and its smallest parts, i.e. atoms or particles ( juzʾ, ajzāʾ), which are uncreated and eternal. Humans are just the latest instance in a direct line of progress (taraqqin) from inanimate matter to ever more complex living organisms. For al-Jisr, a trained theologian, there were striking similarities to the dahriyya, a philosophical current that Muslim theologians had refuted centuries earlier. Sciences in general he calls ʿilm, ʿulūm (knowledge, science) and sometimes fann (art, craft), qualifying the respective disciplines with the adjectives ṭabīʿiyya (natural), dunyāwiyya (worldly), ʿaqliyya (rational), or by defining their subject matter as ṭabīʿiyyāt (natural things), or kāʾināt (objects, physical existence). At first sight it might be tempting to interpret this variance as an indicator of conceptual change and the formation of a new terminology; but these terms are not new and al-Jisr’s Treatise, with the exception of his discussion of evolution, should be seen as part of a debate that had been going on 6  Al-Jisr, Treatise, 12–13. This group is introduced again on 138–39: “One group consisted of naturalists (ṭabīʿiyyūn), materialists (māddiyyūn), and eternalists (dahriyyūn), that means that they are convinced that the world’s matter is eternal (azliyya).” 7  See Susan Laila Ziadeh, A Radical in His Time: The Thought of Shibli Shumayyil and Arab Intellectual Discourse (1882–1917) (Michigan: University of Michigan, 1991), 63–109. Shumayyil’s articles were re-published as a book in 1883 under the title Falsafat al-nushūʾ wa-l-irtiqāʾ [The philosophy of Evolution and Progress] (Beirut: Dār Mārūn ʿAbūd, reprint 1943), where Shumayyil’s synopsis of Büchner’s thoughts can be found on the pages 81–132.

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for some time.8 Rather, the use of alternating substitutes with slight shades of difference is a general characteristic of Ḥusayn al-Jisr’s writing, as can also be seen from the multifaceted array of terms that signify Islam: dīn and diyāna (religion), aqīda, ʿaqāʾid (beliefs), iʿtiqād (belief and faith), sharīʿa (religion, law, tradition), sharʿ (revelation), and—with the further qualification islāmī (Islamic)—ṭarīqa (path), adab, adāb (morals, manners, custom), manhaj, manāhij (way), milla and umma (community). This diction accentuates the dogmatic, pragmatic, social, and legal dimensions of religion that al-Jisr foregrounds according to context. The terms umma and milla have political meanings as well, with umma designating the ‘community’ of (possibly all) Muslims while milla can presuppose the religious plurality of the Ottoman Empire and often intends the ‘community’ of its Muslim subjects. The religious and political vocabulary that al-Jisr uses shows him to be one of the Empire’s loyal subjects with Sufi leanings. Religion (dīn), state (dawla), and homeland (waṭan) are the reference points of his loyalty, which makes him an almost prototypical example for the kind of imperial identity (as opposed to a nationalist or proto-national one) that was characteristic for the late Ottoman era. He also shows the high veneration for the Prophet that is typical of Sufism, for instance when he speaks of Muslims as ‘followers of Muhammad’ (atbāʿ Muḥammad) or qualifies groups with the adjective muḥammadī (‘related to Muhammad’ or ‘Muhammadan’). Al-Jisr’s line of thought is not always easy to keep track of, especially in the excerpt on evolution with its convoluted arguments and counter arguments. Yet it is worthwhile to exert the effort, because it is in the details that he makes his most important points. Al-Jisr’s reasoning is formalistic and he employs the traditional categories and methods of Islamic theology and religious law. In order to arrive at a conclusion or to uphold a position (al-murād), one must first identify the evidence or reason (dalīl, adilla) that indicates that position. Al-Jisr differentiates between three types of indication: transmitted (naqlī), rational (ʿaqlī), and hypothetical (ẓannī), with a clear preference for the first kind of reasoning. Whereas transmitted and rational proof can be decisive (qāṭiʿ), this seems not to be the case for ẓannī-indications. A text (naṣṣ, nuṣūṣ) or an utterance (lafẓ, alfāẓ) both have a standard meaning (aṣl, uṣūl), i.e. on that is literal (ẓāhir, ẓawāhir) or intuitive (mutabādir). Interpretation (ta‌ʾwīl) 8  The terms ‘rational sciences’ and ‘sciences of natural things’ for example can already be found in Arabic texts on the division of the sciences from before 1200 CE, see Wolfhart Heinrichs, “The Classification of the Sciences and the Consolidation of Philology in Classical Islam,” Centres of Learning. Learning and Location in Pre-Modern Europe and the Near East, eds. Jan Willem Drijvers and Alasdair MacDonald (Leiden: E.J. BRILL, 1995).

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can also establish a remote (baʿīd) meaning, but it must be motivated by some indication (dāʿin), for example a conflict (muʿāraḍa) between text and certain knowledge (ʿilm yaqīn). Regarding his actual arguments, al-Jisr often adduces the opinions of respected classical exegetes while showing a general predilection for linguistic analysis and logic. His usual point of venture are authoritative ‘texts’ (naṣṣ, nuṣūṣ), i.e. the Quran and reports about the Prophet Muhammad (hadith). He selects from them what appears relevant to the topic, either quoting directly or summarising their literal content (ẓāhir, ẓawāhir), and informs on the degree of their reliability. Whereas the text of the Quran as God’s verbatim revelation enjoy the highest authority possible, hadith-reports are considered to have different degrees of reliability. At the time when the hadith-collections were systematised, a report’s reliability was estimated according to the abundance (wurūd) of persons who were said to have originally reported it. In the excerpt translated below, al-Jisr uses only two categories of the many different shades of how certain (yaqīn) a text and the knowledge derived from it can be: 1) ‘authoritative’ (nuṣūṣ [. . .] allatī ʿalayhā madār al-iʿtiqād, literally ‘texts that fall in the realm of belief’); and 2) ‘singular reports’ (nuṣūṣ āḥādiyya), i.e. hadith that go back to just one line of transmission. When the Treatise appeared in the late 1880s, al-Jisr was celebrated for it by reformers and moderate conservatives alike, some comparing him to the luminaries of Islamic scholarship, like al-Ashʿarī and al-Ghazālī.9 But especially in his later years, he was criticised by reformers for not going far enough in his thought and words and for being too acquiescent towards conservative forces. On the question of ijithād, i.e. breaking away from tradition for the sake of a new interpretation of Islam’s founding texts, he denied the necessity for such measures. And with regard to the modern sciences that he was interested in, al-Jisr gave so much priority to transmitted knowledge and held up so many reservations against rational and experimental proof that he could not even bring himself to ascertain that the earth is round or that classical eschatology does not harmonise with established geographical findings. Nevertheless, and although he is almost forgotten today, Ḥusayn al-Jisr was an influential and sometimes innovative thinker. His attempt to appropriate modern science was probably known to the majority of educated Ottoman Muslims before the turn of the century. His inclusivist and conciliatory 9  Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī (873–935/36) and Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (1058– 1111) were scholars famed for defending traditionalist Islam against the critique of philosophy through integrating some of its aspects. One late example for such a comparison is Saʿīd, The Family Al-Jisr, 95.

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approach, featuring a high degree of eclecticism and tolerance toward a manageable number of sometimes contradictory, yet equally possible opinions in matter of dogma and law, was well rooted in traditional Islamic scholarship before the establishment of nation-states. It stood however, in contrast to the turn that both the reformist and the traditionalist movements would take: In many respects, rigid distinctions have become predominant in Islamic responses to modernity. But in the late nineteenth century a book like the Treatise could still win appraisal from a wide readership and its author gain access to the highest political circles. Björn Bentlage

Further Reading

Commins, David. Islamic Reform: Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Elshakry, Marwa. Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860–1950. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Fortna, Benjamin. The Imperial Classroom: Islam, the State and Education in the Late Ottoman Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Peters, Rudolph. “Resurrection, Revelation and Reason: Husayn Al-Jisr (d. 1909) and Islamic Eschatology.” Hidden Futures: Death and Immortality in Ancient Egypt, Anatolia, the Classical, Biblical and Arabic-Islamic World, edited by Jan Maarten Bremer, Theo P. J. van den Hout and Rudolph Peters, 221–231. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1994. Sirriyeh, Elizabeth. Sufis and Anti-Sufis. London: Routledge, 1999.



Source Text10

[Excerpt on secular schools] Some people want to proceed to medical studies and the like. They therefore enter those schools in which the sciences of the material world (ʿulūm al-kāʾināt) and especially the science of plants and animals are taught. We see 10  Ḥusayn al-Jisr, Kitāb al-risāla al-ḥamīdiyya fī ḥaqīqat al-diyāna al-islāmiyya wa-ḥaqqiyyat al-shārīʿa al-Muḥammadiyya [The Hamidian Treatise on the Truth of the Islamic Religion and the Verity of Muhammad’s Sharia] (Beirut: Majlis al-maʿārif, 1888), 254–59 (excerpt on schools); 302–309 (excerpt on evolution).

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some of them leaving [the schools] after their studies with a most confused knowledge, they become apostates, who divert from the Islamic faith like arrows gone astray. We also see them rejecting the belief in the world’s Creator. They have attributed the existence of material things and phenomena to material matter, the movement of its particles, to nature and the [natural] laws (nawāmīs, sg. nāmūs), and so on. When this pillar is destroyed within them, what of their belief in the Islamic faith will remain? What of their worship will still have meaning, and what of their morals will still be praiseworthy? [That happens] especially when they have studied the art of natural things ( fann al-ṭabīʿiyyāt), made inquiries about the laws of the material world and the mode of their effects in interactions. If somebody says all of the above, namely that those who study the intricacies of these sciences lack the power of faith and the belief in the existence of the Creator, then I will give the decisive and sufficient answer to this problem, if God wills.11 With my answer, I wish to alert the people of our Muhammadan community to the grave confusion that has befallen some of their young people and to the great danger for religion, so that they deal with the situation before it deteriorates. It should be understood that the mentioned sciences—such as biology, astronomy, meteorology, and the remaining natural sciences, which search for the laws of material things, like the laws of light, water, air, electricity, and so on—without any doubt deliver the strongest evidence with their research for the existence of the Creator of the [same] material world that is the object of these sciences, for [His] power and [His] wisdom. [This is so] because they are His deeds (āthār), as the agent (muʾaththir) is indicated by his effects (āthār),12 the secrets and laws of which are revealed through studying them. It becomes apparent, then, that they are formed with purpose and set in place according to a plan. However, an [almost] insurmountable obstacle lies in this way of indicating the agent and that is the slippery slope of early conclusions.13 You can see that when the human mind perceives phenomena, starts to investigate their origin 11  The entire text is structured by the back and forth between the narrative’s various groups (Christians, materialists, etc.) and the messenger (al-Jisr). The original paragraph begins with the phrase “If somebody said” (law qāla qāʾil), indicating a question raised by the messenger’s rhetorical opponent; it ends with a phrase signifying the beginning of al-Jisr’s response: “Then I would answer . . .” ( fa-aqūl innī ujīb). My English translation has contracted both phrases for stylistic reasons. 12  The word muʾaththir can be read as (a personal) ‘agent’ as well as (an impersonal) ‘cause.’ The word āthār (sg. athr) can likewise mean either ‘effects’ or ‘deeds.’ 13  Literally “the slipping of feet and the sliding [off] of thoughts.”

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and does not look very closely, it only arrives at an apparent cause, thinks that this is the true one and stops there. Some who have ventured into these sciences and investigated the studied effects have started to search for their cause without precision and true immersion. They didn’t have the belief in the true Revelation (al-sharʿ) to awaken their thoughts and guide them to the real origin, so that they [only] arrived at apparent causes like matter and its laws. They also believe that the movement of atoms, in the existence of which they trust, is the true cause of actions. Because of the short-sightedness of their views, their minds are not alerted to [the question] of whether or not that movement and those laws can truly be the cause of these peculiarities and wonders. [Nor do they ask] whether matter can be a real cause without coming forth from something else, or if [on the contrary] it must derive from something else because it has necessarily been brought about in time. Then they stop at this point and become convinced that the cause of these created things (kāʾināt) is matter, its laws, and the movement of its particles. They become ignorant about the existence of a god for this world, grow accustomed to ignorance and attribute every occurring phenomenon to matter, its movements, and the laws surrounding it. This is what they express in many statements that convince their short-sighted minds. Sometimes they say that this phenomenon is an act of nature, and sometimes they say that that effect is a result of [natural] laws and so on. They have reached the utmost rigidity of conviction in this way. The shiny appeal of these sciences has qualified some of them to become employed as teachers in the same schools that you learn in. You brought before them young, heedless and gullible students who have not learned the true doctrines of the Islamic religion, nor what the faithful believe about the occurrence of these phenomena, how these objects come into existence, and that they belong to the creation of the Creator of the earth and the heavens. In the course of teaching, these teachers have begun to spread among their pupils the wrong convictions contained in their own minds. And in the course of teaching these sciences and the wonders of this world, every time that they treat one of the secrets of existence, or one of the hidden truths of creation— instead of saying to them: students, look at this wonder of God’s work and at the sublimity of His wisdom in the creation of this wonderful phenomenon— they say: look at the work of nature and admire the effect of this or that law. Now, if you let it continue, this state will take roots in their hearts, these imaginations will be imprinted on the slates of their minds, not only for the time of their school attendance but until their hearts are permeated with [the conviction] that there is no agent in the world but nature, matter, the movement of its atoms, and the [natural] laws. This [conviction] replaces the belief Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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that there is a god and creator to this world. They have hence abandoned the religion (dīn) of their fathers and the community of their ancestors by the time that they leave these schools, although it had been the wish of the Islamic community (ahl al-milla al-islāmiyya) to gain learned men to serve the people of their religion (dīn), to uphold their law (sharīʿa), and to struggle for the success of their homelands (awṭān, sg. waṭan). But that wish will fail and the endeavour will be unsuccessful, because a great many among them will meet disaster— those who must be seen as deadly enemies of the religion, the Empire (dawla), and the homeland. They deviate from their people with regard to faith (iʿtiqād), differ from them in their ways of conduct, their decisions and aims. But it is God we return to! The leaders among the defenders of the Islamic religion must understand the affliction that will come from this disease. They must select only those teachers for these schools who have firmly set their belief in the Islamic path (manhaj), who have cleared their conscience from error and deviation, are true believers, fear God, and who are adorned with Islamic morals, taking up the according burden as far as possible. That is so because the student is a mirror of his teacher (shaykh), in which the latter’s image is reflected. Students should be sent to these schools only after they have attended religious schools for a sufficient period first, in order to correct their Islamic beliefs in all respects, so that doubt does not confuse them, vain questions do not scare them, their souls become pious by the virtue of manners and familiar with the performance of worship. This may be too hard because of the fear to lack the appropriate time for the teaching of the worldly sciences (al-ʿulūm al-dunyawiyya). But in that case it is absolutely necessary that qualified teachers of the Islamic creed and of all other laws of the Muhammadan religion be instated in these schools. They must teach them the beliefs and religious commandments during their entire schooling, from the beginning of enrolment until graduation. Even if it were only for one hour per day, they would thus safeguard their beliefs, their morals, worship, and conciliate the commandments of religion and the apparent contradictions in rational sciences (al-ʿulūm al-ʿaqliyya). [So] there are two conditions: [firstly] to choose teachers from among the people of the right religion; [secondly] to teach the Islamic beliefs and the other laws of their community (milla), either in these schools or prior to enrolment. These two conditions will protect the students’ beliefs from error, save their religious morals from corruption, and secure their worship against neglect. Their beliefs will be strong, as the observation of the Exalted God’s creation and the wonders of His acts will gird their studies. Every time they witness a wondrous thing or a strange secret, they hear their faithful teacher say: look at this work of God and His exalted wisdom in the perfection of this peculiar creation. Then Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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they praise: The Creator is great and exalted. They venerate Him, so that His greatness grows in their hearts as His power is extolled in their souls. By the time that they graduate from these schools, they have become the best believers and the most virtuous monotheists. Among them, you will see men who defend the territory of the Islamic religion and support the Empire and the homeland. We ask the Sublime and Elevated to grant success to our patrons in what is good for this Muhammadan community and to give them reward from God Almighty’s grace and the intercession of the Prophet. [Excerpt on evolution]14 It is transmitted in the authoritative texts of the Muhammadan sharia that God the Sublime began the creation of man from clay. He formed him from dust, a choice of sticky clay, moulded mud, and from potter’s clay.15 It is also transmitted that He created him from water. The Imam al-Rāzī and other Muhammadans say that earth and water are the two essences of the human,16 which means that he was created from them. Sometimes the sources mention this [version] and sometimes they mention the other. It occurs [also] that God the Sublime created him [man] with His hands. This expression indicates that the creation [of man] happened in a way that is distinguished from that of the rest of creation.17 It is also transmitted that He—praise to Him—brought man into being as a single soul (Adam) and [then] created his wife (Eve) from it. From these two He propagated many men and women. These texts literally convey that God the Sublime created mankind as an independent species, not in the way of evolution (nushūʾ), as you say, and that He did not derive him (yashtaqqhu) from another species. This holds true especially for the tradition conveying the creation of man from clay. Some singular reports state that the creation of man happened independently, not by derivation from something else. These texts—even if they are not authoritative in themselves—clearly support the literal understanding of the authoritative [texts]. It must also be rejected that the origin of man should be vile 14  Al-Jisr, Treatise, 301–309. 15  Al-Jisr enumerates the vocabulary used in the Quran for the description of the creation of Adam and Eve: from dust (turāb) (7:12; 30:20), clay (tīn) (6:2; 37:11; 32:7), moulded mud (ḥama‌ʾ maṣnūn) (15:26 etc.), and sounding clay like pottery (ṣalṣāl ka-l-fakhkhār) (55:14). 16  Muḥammad Ibn ʿUmar Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (1149–1210) was a Muslim theologian and philosopher. 17  The term ʿawālim (sg. ālam, literally ‘world’ and ‘worldly [being]’) in this case indicates the biological ‘kingdoms,’ i.e. the kingdom of plants, the kingdom of animals, or the kingdom of organic beings etc., see Shumayyil, Philosophy, 86–87.

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matter (mādda), as you say, that developed into molecules, living matter (i.e. protoplasm),18 into lower animals, which then developed (taraqqā) until [progress] reached the ape, the ape-man, and the human. Considering all this, should God the Sublime [really] neglect to mention all of that and content Himself with saying that the creation of man began from clay, although He explained and laid out in detail the developments and evolutions in the [continuous] creation of man’s progeny? He explains creation in the revelation, firstly [the creation] from ‘dust’ (meaning that their fathers’ nourishment was based on dust, which was then transformed into semen— this is taken from al-Rāzī; in another exegesis ‘created them from dust’ refers to the creation of their father Adam), then from a ‘drop,’ then from a ‘clot of blood,’ then from an ‘embryo,’ then He brought them forth as children.19 This explanation is an impressive indication of the power of the Sublime Creator because of what it says of the transition of matter from one stage to [another] stage.20 From the silence of the mentioned texts on [any] explanation for the 18  With regard to the theory of evolution, the question of how life could have started in the first place was hotly debated in the second half of the nineteenth century. Darwin’s four principles of evolution cannot affect inorganic material. Haeckel had proposed that monera—simple beings with one cell and no nucleus, neither animal nor plant—would perhaps constitute a biological kingdom (regnum) of their own. Monera could then be seen as the link between inorganic matter, complex organic molecules, and simple life forms: what al-Jisr calls brutūblāsm corresponds to Shumayyil’s kurayyāt blāsmawiyya, see Shumayyil, Philosophy, 121–122; 124–128. 19  Al-Jisr contrasts the two different accounts of creation mentioned in the Quran as an argument against evolution. In addition to God’s one-time creation of Adam from dust (Quran 6:2; 7:12; 30:20; 37:11), God continues to create and ensoul every human being from a drop [of semen] (‘first from dust, then from a drop,’ Quran 18:37; 23:12–14; 32:7–9; 75:36– 40) in his or her mother’s womb, where each unborn human goes through several stages: ‘clot of blood’ (ʿalaqa), ‘embryo’ (muḍgha), etc. Al-Jisr’s argument is that if the second account of continuous creation is so detailed and in accordance with observable facts, why should the first account be less precise? The mentioned variant interpretation that tweaks the ‘creation from dust’ to stand for an aspect of creation as sexual reproduction is a little odd at this point of al-Jisr’s argumentation but corroborates what he says later on. 20  In this paragraph and the next al-Jisr adduces an interpretation by al-Rāzī of Quran 30:20 in which al-Rāzī implies a hierarchy with inorganic matter at the bottom and complex beings (humans, angels) at the top. The creation of Adam from dust is thus seen as an example of God’s wondrous power, because it jumps from the lowest to highest. The hierarchy is based on qualities like consistency, temperature, colour, the ability to move, homogenous composition, etc. Underlying these hierarchically ordered classes is something similar to a continuum, as every class itself contains an ascending order, for example from lower plants (those growing underground) to higher plants (trees growing

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evolution and derivation of man from a species other than his own and their contentment with the explanation that has [just] been presented, it is obvious that man was created as an independent species and is not derived, as you say, even if both cases are rationally possible and subsumable under the free disposal of God the Sublime’s power. It is true that these texts do not state with absolute certainty that God either created the first human from dust in one instance, or [that He created him] in slow, consecutive formation (bi-takwīn mutamahhil ʿalā infirādihi). This uncertainty with regard to the two scenarios is in accord with the authoritative texts, even if some texts with a singular transmission suggest that the formation of man (Adam) happened slowly and took a certain period of time. God is [surely] capable of both ways. Some scholars (the Imam ar-Rāzī) among the followers of Muhammad explain the words of the Sublime “He created you From dust; and then (idhā)—Behold, ye are men Scattered (far and wide)” as follows:21 “The creation of man began with an independent start and not by evolving from the lowest [form of life] until he became what he is today; that is what He said if it is a ‘then’ (idhā) of surprise, as when someone says: I went out, ‘then’ (idhā) there was a lion at the door.”22 This is an indication (ishāra) that God the Sublime created man from dust with [the word] ‘be!’ and then he was. [It does not mean] that [man] was a mineral, then a plant, then an animal, and then a man. It refers to a philosophical issue,23 “it means, firstly, that God the Sublime created a human, then He alerts him to the fact into the air and reproducing by distributing seeds that are similar to the reproduction by chicken’s eggs). See Muḥammad Ibn ʿUmar Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, al-Tafsīr al-kabīr [The Great Interpretation], vol. 9, new edition (Beirut: Dār iḥyāʾ al-turāth al-ʿArabī, 1995), 90–91. 21  Quran 30:20, Abdullah Yusuf Ali trans., comment., The Holy Qurʾan: Text, Translation and Commentary (with Arabic Text), U.S. Edition 2001 (New York: Tahrike Tarsile Qurʾan, Inc., 2001), reprint of the text of the 3rd edition (Lahore, 1938). The edition of al-Jisr’s text lacks punctuation and direct quotes are not marked typographically. In this line and the following, al-Jisr quotes from al-Rāzī’s commentary on Quran 30:20 almost verbatim. The quote ends with a lexical marker at the end of the next paragraph (intahā, ‘he finished’). 22  Arab scholars differentiated between several functions and meanings of the word ‘then’ (idhā). The meaning intended here, which is termed ‘then (idhā) of surprise’ and which could be best demonstrated in English by adding the word ‘suddenly,’ is often explained with the saying quoted by al-Jisr: “I went out, then (suddenly) there was a lion at the door. (. . . ḥattā balagh mā huwa ʿalayhi wa-hādha mā qāl idhā li-l-mufāja‌ʾa yuqāl kharajt wa-idhā al-asad bi-l-bāb . . .).” 23  In the following lines, al-Rāzī—and with him al-Jisr—connects the verse from the Quran quoted above (30:20) with the two concepts of creation mentioned above. The first concept is that of the ‘historical,’ singular creation of Adam and Eve that the first half of the quoted verse alludes. The second concept of creation is the continuous creation and

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that He ensouls a growing” human24 “and so on. [It does] not [mean] that He first created an animal and then made him a human. The creation of species is the first implication (murād), then that there be sexes among the species. God the Sublime made the highest stage [of creation] in a matter that is very remote from [dust], without a transition from one stage to another one of the stages” that he mentioned. [Here he] finishes. This explains that the text conveys that man’s formation happened in the way of creation, independently and initially, and not in the way of evolution as you presume. The way of creation is given to us by the literal meaning of the remaining texts, and the followers of Muhammad, peace be upon him, insist on it and do not believe in evolution. They are not allowed to interpret the literal meaning and to avert the [transmitted texts] from their literal meaning, unless there is definitive rational evidence (dalīl ʿaqlī qāṭiʿ ) to prove that God the Sublime created man in the way of evolution, as you presume (how wrong, how wrong!). In that case they would be forced to interpret the literal wording of these texts, as is their rule in order to harmonise between a transmitted proof (dalīl naqlī) and a contradicting rational proof (dalīl ʿaqlī). But even if evolution was proven, it is clear that it would be different for [Muslims] from what it is for you. Because if it is proven, they would say that [evolution] is [part of] God’s creation, due to the evidence they have that He is the sole creator and agent. The laws that accompany [creation], what are they but ordinary causes that have no power? Yet you imagine evolution to be caused by those laws. What difference lies between the two springs! You should know that the indications mentioned in your books on evolution do not, after just consideration, obligate the followers of Muhammad—peace be upon him—to interpret the literal wording of these texts according to the position of evolution. The indications are derived through speculation and based on assumptions, and [Muslims] are not forced to interpret [beyond the literal meaning of a text] except in case of a contradiction with knowledge that is certain (yaqīn), as you have learned. It may be that you embrace the Islamic faith, the basis of which is that God the Sublime is the creator of existence, that there is no power but Him. If you thereafter arrive at certain and decisive evidence (yaqīniyya qāṭiʿa) for man’s creation through evolution, nothing would prevent you from interpreting the texts. You could divert from the literal meaning and harmonise [the texts] with the certain evidence that you would then have. You would not leave the Islamic ensoulment of embryos in their mothers’ wombs, which, according to al-Jisr, is implied by the connotation of sexual reproduction in the words ‘humans who disperse.’ 24  “Animal” in the original commentary by al-Rāzī.

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religion that way. [But] I warn you again not to fall into error by thinking that hypothetical indications (ẓanniyya) are certain. Revise the evidence and investigate your method! [If you converted,] it could disturb you what the mass of the followers of Muhammad, peace be upon him, say, namely that the first human (Adam) was created in the paradise of ʿAdan, which is not a part of this world. Or [it may disturb you] what others (like al-Suddī in The Treasure of Secrets) say, namely that [Adam] was created in the nearest heaven.25 These two statements do not agree with evolution, of which it is mendaciously said that it occurred on earth. But there is a way out for you by turning to what some [Muslims] say (this is Mundhir ibn Saʿīd al-Ballāṭī and others, as also occurs in the Treasure of Secrets), namely that [man] was created in a paradise of this world. You would thus agree to an opinion held by some followers of Muhammad, peace be upon him, and be relieved from contradicting the Islamic faith.26 It could also disturb you that after He had brought the first human (Adam) into existence, God the Sublime created from him his wife and let them both dwell in paradise. This paradise is the house of reward that God the Sublime promised to his believing servants after death and resurrection and is not of this world. That is the opinion of the vast majority of the followers of Muhammad, peace be upon him. Again you have a way out by turning to the opinion of a minority (these are Abū Qāsim al-Balkhī and Abū Muslim al-Iṣfahānī, great exegetes from whom al-Rāzī has transmitted),27 namely that this heaven was on earth, and that [the expression] their “fall from it” may also be understood as the translocation from one place to another, as in His words “go down to any town.”28 Another problem for you may be what the majority of the followers of Muhammad, peace be upon him, say—(which is no [real] problem, since the range of what is rationally possible and falls under the free disposal of Godly power includes that the animal Hydra can be cut into three segments and that each segment then comes back as an independent animal, as has been 25  Quran 37:6, which Abdullah Yusuf Ali understands as an allusion to the notion of seven heavenly spheres. 26  Ismāʿil ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Karīma al-Suddī (d. 745) was an early exegete, Mundhir ibn Saʿīd al-Ballāṭī (878–966) the chief preacher of the Caliph of Cordoba. 27  Abū l-Qāsim ʿAbdallāh Aḥmad Maḥmūd al-Balkhī (d. 931) and Abū Muslim al-Iṣfahānī were both adherents of the Muʿtazilī school of theology which had strong inclinations toward rational philosophy. 28  Quran 20:123 describes Adam and Eve’s expulsion from paradise as “a fall [downward].” The same verb ahbaṭ/ yuhbiṭ is used in Quran 2:61 to signify the ordinary relocation to a town.

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mentioned; we nevertheless go along with the opponent to explain the matter to him). [They say] that after the creation of the first human (Adam), God the Sublime created his wife (Eve) from him, meaning from one of his left ribs. [This is] according to a singular transmission in their religion about the creation of the woman from a curved rib: “If you try to rectify it, you break it, but if you let her be with this curve, then you may enjoy her.”29 [Should this disturb you, then] the explanation given by some of his prominent followers (Ibn Masʿūd and Ibn ʿAbbās and some of the Companions, as it occurs in the exegesis of Abū Masʿūd) provides a solution for you.30 In accordance with what some [Muslims] (Abū Muslim al-Iṣfahānī as well as al-Rāzī) have done, you can interpret the [. . .] Revelation [. . .] so that ‘her creation from him’ means that she is of his species (min jinsihi), as occurs in another [Quranic] text “He made you wives from among yourself.”31 That way you have again agreed with the interpretation of some scholars among the followers of Muhammad, peace be upon him. You would not contradict the Islamic religion in any way that would exclude you from the ranks of his followers, especially since you have not negated any authoritative text nor diverged from a consensus of the followers of Muhammad, peace be upon him, in any matter that is known to be a necessary part of the faith. You have disagreed with the majority while having agreed with a few, as I have just explained, and you have interpreted the text with an explanation that harmonises between the transmitted and the rational evidence. God is the guide whatever the way. Selected and translated by Björn Bentlage

29  This hadith employs the figurative meaning of the Arabic word for curve (ʿiwaj), i.e. a deviation or a flaw. Eve’s creation from a curved part of Adam’s rib thus serves as an explanation for presupposed female flaws of character. The seemingly physiological account of the creation of Eve and the unflexible yet fragile quality of a curved bone in this account is actually meant as an advice on how to treat women. The line of reasoning rests on the double meaning of iwaj in Arabic. The fact that in the hadith ‘rectify’ and ‘break’ can grammatically relate to both the (curved) rib and the (flawed) woman lets the analogy border on a pun. The hadith is mentioned in: al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ wa-huwa sunan al-Tirmīdhī, ed. Muḥammad Fuʾād and ʿAbd al-Bāqī, vol. 3 (Cairo, 1937), 493–494 (kitāb al-ṭalāq, bāb 14). 30  ʿAbdallāh ibn al-ʿAbbās (619–687/688) was the legendary first-generation interpreter to whom many traditions, interpretations, and texts are attributed. 31  Quran 16:72.

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Muḥammad ʿAbduh: The Theology of Unity (Egypt, 1898) Introduction The treatise Risālat al-tawḥīd (The Theology of Unity)1 by the Egyptian scholar and intellectual Muḥammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905)2 is a modern classic of Islamic reformist theology. Since its first edition in 1898, it has maintained a continuous presence on the Arabic book market3 and has seen numerous translations into other languages.4 In fact, ʿAbduh’s Risāla might be regarded as one of the most prominent programmatic texts of late-nineteenth-century Islamic reformism. In the excerpt from the text presented here, ʿAbduh defines Islam through a catalogue of principles or values (uṣūl) that according to him characterise the true ‘spirit’ (rūḥ) of the message of Muhammad.5 The Theology of Unity originated in classes in Islamic theology which ʿAbduh taught between 1885 and 1888 at the Sultaniyya School (al-Madrasa al-Sulṭāniyya), an Ottoman government high school in Beirut. The Sultaniyya was a prestigious institution of higher education which served as a flagship 1   ‘Theology of Unity’ has become an established translation since the publication of Muhammad Abduh, Ishaq Masaʿad and Kenneth Cragg, trans., The Theology of Unity (London: Allen & Unwin, 1966). ‘Theology of Unity’ brings out the double meaning of tawḥīd in this book. It denotes the act of professing God’s unity as well as ʿAbduh’s reformist goal of unifying both the Islamic creed and thereby the Muslim world community. On this, see below. 2  For introductions to ʿAbduh’s life and works, see Anke von Kügelgen, “ ʿAbduh, Muḥammad,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Three (Leiden: Brill, 2008–, Print; Brill Online, 2016, Online); Mark J. Sedgwick, Muhammad ʿAbduh (Oxford: Oneworld, 2010). 3  According to Mohamed Haddad, ʿAbduh’s Risāla in the edition of the Al-Manār publishing house saw its seventeenth edition already in 1960, while several pirate editions had appeared in parallel. Mohamed Haddad, “Les Oeuvres de ʿAbduh: Histoire d’une Manipulation.” IBLA 60, no. 180 (1997): 197–222, here 209. 4  For translations into English and French see Ishaq Masaʿad and Kenneth Cragg, trans., The Theology of Unity, (London: Allen & Unwin, 1966); Bernard Michel and Moustapha Abdel Razik, trans., Rissalat al Tawhid: Exposé de la religion musulmane, (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1925). 5  Risālat al-tawḥīḍ, first edition (Bulaq: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Amīrīyya al-Kubrā, 1315 AH / 1898 CE) in the following abbreviated as RT, 97–116.

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of the intensified Ottoman efforts to offer a Muslim alternative to the growing number of Christian and Jewish educational institutions in the city. It was directed by a notable Muslim scholar and a graduate of Cairo’s al-Azhar College, Ḥusayn al-Jisr (1845–1909).6 In addition to all these assets, the school was also distinguished by its location in the heart of Beirut, a cosmopolitan city and one of the centres of the Nahḍa movement.7 All this certainly made the Sultaniyya a desirable working place for an Arab Muslim intellectual during this period. Muhammad ʿAbduh, however, had not come to Beirut entirely voluntarily. The city was a place of exile for him, after he had been forced out of Egypt for his involvement in the aborted ʿUrabi revolt of 1882. Before he settled in Beirut, he had lived several months in Paris, where he, together with his mentor Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī (1839–1897),8 co-edited the controversial journal al-ʿUrwa al-wuthqā (The Strongest Bond). He continued to travel widely during the following years. In 1888, ʿAbduh could finally return to Egypt. After his return, he started an extraordinary career in the Egyptian Islamic judicial and scholarly institutions, which eventually culminated in his appointment to the post of Grand Mufti of Egypt (Muftī al-diyār al-miṣriyya) in 1899. It was during the years of his ascent on the institutional ladder in Egypt that ʿAbduh published his Risāla. In his preface to the Risāla, ʿAbduh provides insight in the way in which he himself wanted his book to be understood. His teaching, he writes “[. . .] was a deliberately concise summary and argued within carefully considered boundaries.” ʿAbduh proudly states that his lectures for the first grade followed an innovative method, without much consideration for inherited conventions in the teaching of Islamic theology. He writes: I used to start with the presentation of several premises and went through to conclusions, with no concern other than the validity of proof. I did not mind if in the process I departed from customary forms of presentation.9 This fresh tone, which sometimes bordered on nonchalance, was certainly something that made ʿAbduh a noted and—in some more conservative cir6  Hanssen, Fin de Siècle Beirut, 171–178. On Ḥusayn al-Jisr see chapter 1.09. 7  On Beirut’s intellectual life during the late nineteenth century see Hanssen, Fin de Siècle Beirut. On the Nahḍa movement see Nada Tomiche, “Nahḍa,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2008, Print; Brill Online, 2012, Online). 8  On whom see below. 9  R T, 2–3.

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cles—also a controversial writer. It clearly distinguishes him from other contemporary Muslim reformists such as the director of the Sultaniyya, Ḥusayn al-Jisr, who presented their thoughts according to customary standards of Islamic scholarly writing. ʿAbduh’s youthful attitude made him popular especially with a younger generation of intellectuals with revolutionary ambitions, such as Saʿd Zaghlūl (1859–1927), a future leader of Egypt’s independence movement, or Qāsim Amīn (1863–1908), the author of a famous manifesto for women’s emancipation. Muslim reformers in ʿAbduh’s time differed according to the roles they attributed to earlier authorities in developing novel approaches to Islamic theology or law. ʿAbduh positions himself in this debate, saying that his lectures series at the Sultaniyya followed “the way of the early authorities, without impugning their successors’ views” and continues to say that “it also stayed clear of the controversies between the schools of law.”10 In other words, ʿAbduh proposes to identify a new middle path for Islamic theology—retrieving the (alleged) purity of early Islamic thought without getting caught in those discussions that had divided earlier generations of scholars. He adds that “[r]egarding controversial content,” he had limited himself to “allusions that were only comprehensible to the initiated reader (al-rajul al-rashīd).” This suggests that ʿAbduh, in his Risāla, tried to address two groups of readers simultaneously: While the book was mainly a textbook for beginners, it also presented allusions to more advanced subjects and possibly more daring opinions which were only to be understood by the initiated. So far, we know little about how the first edition of the text was in fact received by the public. What we do know, however, is that after ʿAbduh’s death in 1905, the reception of the text was shaped decisively by Rashīd Riḍā (1865–1939). Riḍā, a Muslim scholar and journalist of Lebanese origin, closely cooperated with ʿAbduh from 1897 onwards.11 He prepared a second edition of the Risāla in 1908, for which he edited the text in a way designed to make it appealing to more conservative readers. Most importantly, Ridā added notes and chapter headings of his own and deleted one passage which he apparently found theologically daring. This is the text used in most, if not all, Arabic re-editions since then. The reception of the Theology of Unity is symptomatic for the way in which ʿAbduh’s works have been interpreted in general. Scholarly studies regularly refer to ʿAbduh as a founding father of modern reformist Islamic thought, and 10   R T, 3. 11  Werner Ende, “Rashīd Riḍā,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. See also the chapter 2.06 by Stefan Reichmuth.

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his life and work have been the objects of several major studies. However, until recently most scholarship followed certain unquestioned guidelines. ʿAbduh was generally portrayed as an outstanding individual writer, while not much attention was paid to his immediate context. In terms of content, many, if not most, studies focused on his political and legal ideas. If ʿAbduh’s religious writings were examined, then almost exclusively with an eye to uncovering his relation to certain intellectual trends, such as Islamic rationalist theology, Sufism, the traditionalist current of Salafism, or agnosticism. In short, the main prism through which ʿAbduh’s religious oeuvre has been viewed so far is that of intellectual genealogy and taxonomy. In contrast, the following remarks consider ʿAbduh as a Muslim author who grappled with the public issues and conflicts of the period and who mobilised various resources from the patrimony of Islamic literature with the ambition to provide guidance to his contemporaries. Islamic reformism was a very broad intellectual trend. During the late nineteenth century, a number of authors called for ‘reform’ (iṣlāḥ), or ‘renewal’ (tajdīd) of Islam,12 whereby they envisaged a variety of goals and made reference to a variety of sources and traditions. In ʿAbduh’s immediate surroundings in Cairo and Beirut, the Islamic reform movement was closely intertwined with the trans-confessional Nahḍa movement that aimed at a comprehensive reform of Arab society, mainly through language, education and culture. As many Islamic reformists were also working as journalists, they were in close contact with Muslim, Christian and Jewish exponents of the Nahḍa, and intellectual borrowing and lending between both currents was so close that it seems often impossible to decide whether some idea or formulation was first coined in a Muslim reformist or in a Nahḍa context. Thus Islamic reformism constituted no clearly delimitated theological or intellectual school but rather a pool of ideas which were combined with a great variety of individual interests and approaches. In addition, Islamic reformists need to be understood as being part of a situation of globalising religious exchange, the participants of which, among others, included Islamic trends branded as ‘heterodox,’ such as that of the Baha’i, reformist thinkers from the Christian communities and secular intellectuals. In the case of Muhammad ʿAbduh, the last aspect is especially obvious, as his life and work are marked by increasing religious contact on a global scale, within the Islamic world and beyond.13 The most prominent example for religious contact with other Islamic schools of thought in ʿAbduh’s life is his 12  Ali Merad, “Iṣlāḥ,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. 13  See for this Johann Büssow, “Re-imagining Islam in the Period of the First Modern Globalization: Muhammad ʿAbduh and His Theology of Unity,” in A Global Middle East:

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encounter with Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī,14 an Iran-born Shiite philosopher and anti-colonial activist. ʿAbduh became Afghani’s most important disciple and co-worker and received some of his main theological and political inspirations from him. He also was in close contact with leading Christian intellectuals and with ʿAbbās Efendi ʿAbd al-Bahā’ (1844–1921), the leader of a Shiite Messianic movement what was eventually to become the Baha’i religion.15 Membership in several Masonic lodges provided ʿAbduh with contacts to the ruling elite as well as to a wide array of personalities in Cairo and Beirut, among them merchants, intellectuals and educators of different faiths.16 Religious contact did not happen through personal interaction alone, but also through printed texts and manuscripts, which circulated in ever greater numbers. ʿAbduh’s knowledge of French and Persian enabled him to engage with the work of authors of various religious and philosophical backgrounds. In sum, ʿAbduh’s life and work forms part of a global public sphere which began to emerge during the late nineteenth century.17 This global public sphere was constituted by the rapidly increasing mobility of people and texts and consolidated by institutions such as modern-style educational institutions, publishing houses, journals and newspapers. ʿAbduh, as a Muslim scholar and intellectual, was an active participant in all these fields. He integrated elements from the shared repertoire of ideas into his conceptual toolbox in various ways. Thereby the often fused them with arguments from the classical Islamic heritage as he knew it from his education at Cairo’s Al-Azhar college. The excerpt presented here illustrates this well. However, before we turn to the text, it is useful to take a brief look at the overall structure of the book.

Mobility, Materiality and Culture in the Modern Age 1880–1940, ed. Liat Kozma, Cyrus Schayegh and Avner Wishnitzer (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2014), 273–320. 14  On Afghānī, see Nikki R. Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamāl ad-Dīn “al-Afghānī” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968); for his Iranian background 5–11. 15  On ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ, see Oliver Scharbrodt, Islam and the Baha‌ʾi Faith: A Comparative Study of Muhammad ʿAbduh and ʿAbdul-Baha‌ʾ ʿAbbas (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), and his chapter in this volume (3.06). 16  Sedgwick, Muhammad Abduh, 19–21. For details see A. Albert Kudsi-Zadeh, “Afghani and Freemasonry in Egypt,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 92, 1 (1972): 27–8; Karim Wissa, “Freemasonry in Egypt, 1798–1921: A Study in Cultural and Political Encounters,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 16, 2 (1989), 155. On freemasonry in Beirut, see the chapter by Sarah Büssow-Schmitz in this volume (3.07). 17  Dietrich Jung, Orientalists, Islamists and the Global Public Sphere: A Genealogy of the Modern Essentialist Image of Islam (Sheffield: Equinox, 2011), 88–93.

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Contents The Theology of Unity can be characterised as a brief survey of Islamic theology (ʿilm al-tawḥīd or ʿilm al-kalām), which is framed by a historical introduction (chapter 1) and an apologetic final part (chapters 13–17). In theological terms, the book presents a new reading of Islamic theology according to the two schools that had emerged as dominant in Sunni Islam since the tenth century CE, the Ashʿarites and the Maturidiyya. A discussion of the theological positions taken in the Risāla is beyond the framework of this introduction. Suffice it to say that ʿAbduh signals his openness to a number of positions and approaches but at the same time is eager to stress the necessity to maintain a strictly abstract conception of God and to limit theological speculation in order not to jeopardise the unity of believers through controversial discussions that might arise from such speculation. The Arabic title Risālat al-tawḥīd underlines these two goals, tawḥīd being an ambiguous term which can equally be understood as ‘profession of God’s unity’ and ‘union among people.’18 Two aspects set the Risāla apart from previous works in Islamic theology: The first aspect is ʿAbduh’s consistent use of arguments derived from the academic disciplines of history and the social sciences as they had developed in nineteenth-century Europe. The second novel aspect is, as mentioned, the new language ʿAbduh employs. He presents his material in a prose replete with rhetorical figures and in a plot-structure of decline and revival which is reminiscent of what nineteenth-century European theorists of drama called anticlimax and climax. The book opens on a solemn note, quoting the entire first chapter of the Quran (sūrat al-fātiḥa). A few preliminary remarks are followed by a historical part, which exposes the main problem, namely the fact that the Muslim community has been divided into different schools of thought and belief (chap. 1). The historical account breaks off with a lamentation on the weakened state of the Muslim community at the time when it was confronted with the challenge of the rising European powers. Here ʿAbduh’s narrative has reached its anticlimax. Now that the problem has been exposed and the urgency of a new understanding of Islam has been established, ʿAbduh continues with a very sober chapter in which he expounds principles of logic (chap. 2). This is a turning point insofar as ʿAbduh uses the logical principles as the base for a summary of Islamic theology which proceeds from the proof of God’s existence to the divine attributes, the foundations of ethics, the mission and message of the Prophet Muhammad and to the nature of the Quran (chaps. 3–12). The language of these chapters becomes more and more emphatic from chapter 18  Cf. note 1, above.

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to chapter, and the use of imagery and rhetorical devices increases steadily. All this prepares the reader for three chapters of a truly novel kind that top ʿAbduh’s carefully constructed edifice: The first of these (chap. 13)19 is the origin of the excerpt presented here and will be summarised below. The following two chapters (chaps. 14 and 15) aim at proving that human progress in the future can reach its culmination “within Islam.” These chapters are the triumphant antithesis of the first chapter, which detailed the misère of the contemporary Muslim world. At this point, ʿAbduh’s narrative has reached its dramatic climax. What remains is a brief part providing the reader with guidelines how to defend Islam in polemical discussion (chaps. 16–17). Here the imperilled state of contemporary Islam is again brought to the readers’ mind. Now, however, the solution to the problem has been made clear, and so the book ends on a hopeful note. Comments on the Translated Excerpt As can be seen from the above discussion, the excerpt is taken from a central chapter of ʿAbduh’s Risāla. It summarises some of the main theses of the previous sections and opens the apologetic parts of the treatise that dominate the last quarter of the book. In the beginning of the excerpt, ʿAbduh summarises some central tenets of the Islamic creed which he has already explained in previous sections of the book. In so doing, he presents a reformulation of classical theological positions according to the Ashʿarite and Maturidite schools. Among them are: God is absolutely transcendent and a strictly limited number of divine attributes can be deduced from their traces in the created world. The prophets, God’s messengers to humankind, are distinguished by certain qualities and the veracity of their message is proven by miracles; these miracles, however, all happen according to God’s preordained will and do not allow the conclusion that the prophets themselves possess any superhuman qualities. Man ‘acquires’ (kāsib) all his deeds as a ‘grace’ or ‘favour’ (niʿma) from God, but he or she possesses a free will insofar as he or she is asked to use this divine gift responsibly. From here onwards, ʿAbduh proceeds to four more general observations on the nature of the Islamic creed. These observations depart from classical theology to a greater degree, as they stress values which gained almost universal currency during the nineteenth century. Thus ʿAbduh describes the creed of divine unity (tawḥīd) as a doctrine that implies complete freedom for the entrepreneurial human being, save certain obligations to charity and the common good. This goes along with a valorisation of individual achievement 19  R T, 97–116.

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over status acquired by birth. In addition, ʿAbduh continues, the Islamic creed forbids blind adherence (taqlīd) to religious authorities.20 From this follows that the individual believer is called to judge the claims of any authority based on his own knowledge and convictions. Finally, Islam represents the original monotheistic creed. This pure monotheism holds the promise to unite humankind, which is plagued by discord on grounds of dogmatism and hypocrisy. In the following passages, ʿAbduh discusses the place of Islam within the context of an evolutionary model of religious history. Here he adapts an argument made by an authority from the classical Islamic heritage. Al-Jāḥiẓ, a famous author of the eighth century, had stated in his tract Ḥujaj al-nubuwwa (The Proofs of Prophecy) that while Moses had impressed the eyes of the Israelites by the miracle of cleaving the sea, Muhammad had impressed the intellect of his contemporaries by the ‘inimitability’ of the Quran.21 Al-Jāḥiẓ, and later generations of Muslim scholars after him, then took this comparison further by adding the idea that God had endowed each prophet with precisely that faculty which was most valued among a particular people. Thus, Moses surpassed the magical practices at the Pharaonic court and Jesus revived people from the dead in a context where medicine was most highly valued. Muhammad, finally, was the prophet of a people who excelled in poetry, and accordingly his prophetic sign was a linguistic one.22 ʿAbduh presents his readers a revised version of al-Jāḥiẓ’s argument, whereby he adds a temporal dimension to it and combines it with evolutionary thought along the lines of the ‘law of the three stages’ which was formulated by the pioneer of academic sociology Auguste Comte (1798–1857). Comte’s model stipulates that humankind develops through three intellectual stages, which he likened to the stages in the development of the human individual: a ‘childlike’ theological stage, a ‘youthful’ metaphysical stage and a ‘mature’ positive stage.23 Following Comte’s model, ʿAbduh presents Judaism as a religion fixed on rules as it befits the mind of a child. Then Christianity is introduced as a religion full of

20  Compare with chapter 1.08 by Amal Ghazal. 21  Al-Jāḥiẓ, Rasāʾil, 3:153. On the Islamic dogma of the inimitability of the Quran (iʿjāz al-Qurʾān) see Angelika, Neuwirth, “Das islamische Dogma der ‘Unnachahmlichkeit des Korans’ in literaturwissenschaftlicher Sicht,” Der Islam 60 (1983): 166–83. 22  Neuwirth, “Das islamische Dogma,” 156. See Navid Kermani, Gott ist schön: Das ästhetische Erleben des Koran (München: Beck, 2000), 22–3. 23  On maturity see Auguste Comte, Auguste Comte on Positivism: The Essential Writings, ed. G. Lenzer (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1998), 34–42. For a general remark on Comte’s writings as an inspiration for ʿAbduh, see Hourani, Arabic Thought, 139.

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‘youthful’ emotions,24 and finally Islam as a ‘mature’ system of belief and the only one fully compatible with modern science. This leads to the final passages of the excerpt, in which ʿAbduh describes Islam as an ethical system for the modern age. ʿAbduh does so by presenting another list of values which according to him characterise the true nature of Islam. These final passages of the excerpt do not argue or exemplify. They simply proclaim a set of beliefs. ʿAbduh presents his views as the expression of the ‘true’ nature of Islam, similar to statements made in a creed or a political manifesto. ʿAbduh’s list of Islamic core values bears close resemblance to the values promoted by contemporary bourgeois liberal authors all over the world, among them the ideals of the French Revolution, freedom, equality and brotherhood, as well as self-discipline and individual achievement.25 Thus, according to him, Islamic ritual prescriptions serve clearly identifiable goals in this world, such as the strengthening of character and bodily hygiene. In addition, Islam highly values entrepreneurship (in contrast to what he describes as glorification of poverty in Christian thought); and Islam repudiates discrimination on racial grounds while stressing the dignity of every human being. Finally, Islam, according to ʿAbduh, encourages purposefulness, trust and ‘brotherly’ cooperation. These values, the author states, are the secret to the well-being not only of individuals but of whole nations. The catalogue of values that ʿAbduh enumerates here comes close to what the English author Samuel Smiles, in a widely-read book of 1860, described as ‘the spirit of self-help.’26 The Christian journalist Yaʿqūb Ṣarrūf published an Arabic translation of Smiles’ Self Help in 1880 under the title Sirr al-Najāḥ (The Secret of Success).27 ʿAbduh, similar to his adaptation of Comte in the passage on religious evolution, fuses arguments 24  According to Adams, ʿAbduh’s view of Christianity as appealing to emotions is reminiscent of discussions in Protestant circles during the nineteenth century (Adams, Islam and Modernism, 174–6). 25  This aspect is further developed in Büssow, “Re-imagining Islam.” On the world-wide spread of middle class values during the nineteenth century see Jürgen Osterhammel, Verwandlung der Welt, 1085–1104 (München: C. H. Beck, 2009). For a succinct list of typical elements of a nineteenth-century middle-class worldview see John L. Comaroff, “Images of Empire, Contests of Conscience: Models of Colonial Domination in South Africa,” in Tensions of Empire, ed. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (Berkley: University of California Press, 1997), 169–70. 26  Samuel Smiles, Self Help; With Illustrations of Character and Conduct (London: Murray, 1860). 27  Ṣarrūf’s translation was published in Beirut 1880 and in Cairo 1886. For its reception in Lebanon and Egypt, see Gudrun Krämer, Hasan al-Banna (Oxford: Oneworld, 2010), 109.

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made by Smiles with others from a classical Islamic source. This time he draws directly on the Quran, quoting several verses from the Holy Scripture that threaten punishment of entire human communities who do not abide to divine commands, alongside others that promise earthly rewards to those who strive to better themselves. For ʿAbduh, the Quranic verse “God changes not what is in a people, until they change what is in themselves” (Q 13:11) clearly resonated with the opening sentence of Smiles’ book, which reads “Heaven helps those who help themselves.”28 At this point, the reader is taken directly into the debates of the late nineteenth century in which Middle Eastern authors, Muslims as well as non-Muslims, tried to identify methods to counter the threat of their societies being subjugated to the hegemony of more powerful European nations. In ʿAbduh’s view, the ‘secret of success’ clearly lay in embracing a reformed Islam. Muslims needed to gain a comprehensive picture of ‘true’ Islam, ranging from the issue of the divine attributes to questions of practical ethics. This view, in turn, is connected to a vision of the future in which Muslims fully ‘own’ their religion again, overcome their manifold internal divisions and are thus able to reassert themselves on the world stage.29 Johann Büssow

Further Reading

ʿAbduh, Muḥammad. Rissalat Al Tawhid: Exposé de la Religion Musulmane: Translation and introduction by Bernard Michel and Moustapha Abdel Razik. Paris: Geuthner, 1925. ʿAbduh, Muḥammad. The Theology of Unity: Translation and introduction by Ishaq Masaʿad and Kenneth Cragg. London: Allen and Unwin, 1966. Adams, Charles C. Islam and Modernism in Egypt: A Study of the Modern Reform Movement Inaugurated by Muhammad ʿAbduh. London: Routledge 2000. Büssow, Johann. “Re-imagining Islam in the Period of the First Modern Globalization: Muhammad ʿAbduh and His Theology of Unity.” In: A Global Middle East: Mobility, Materiality and Culture in the Modern Age, 1880–1940. Edited by Liat Kozma, Cyrus Schayegh and Avner Wishnitzer, 273–320. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2015. Sedgwick, Mark. Muhammad Abduh. Oxford: OneWorld, 2010. 28  Smiles, Self Help, 1. 29  For more detailed observations on the concept of religion (dīn) in ʿAbduh’s Risāla, see Büssow, “Re-imagining Islam.”

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Source Text30

The Islamic Religion, or Islam [God’s attributes and transcendence]31 [. . .] The Islamic religion brought the creed that God—exalted be He—is one (tawḥīd Allāh) in His essence and His acts, and that He is transcendent above all comparison with created beings. It has come with proofs that the universe has one creator, and that He is to be described by what the traces of His handiwork reveal as exalted attributes, such as knowledge, power and will.32 [The Islamic religion also teaches] that none of His creatures resembles Him and that there is no relation between Him and them, except the fact that He is their originator, that they belong to Him and that to Him they return.33 “Say: ‘He is God, One, God, the Everlasting Refuge, who has not begotten, and has not been begotten, and equal to Him is not any one.’ ”34 [. . .] [Prophets do not possess superhuman qualities and act according to a divine law]35 [The Islamic religion also teaches that] [I]t is impossible that His essence or His attributes should manifest themselves in the form of the body or the spirit of any of the world’s inhabitants (al-ʿālamīn).36 But He—praised be He—distinguishes whom He wills among His servants (ʿibādihi)37 as He wills through knowledge or power for the deeds He ordains to them. This follows 30  The translation retains the paragraphs of the Risāla’s first edition of 1898. In order to make the topics treated in the text more transparent, additional subheadings have been inserted, marked by square brackets. At the beginning of each new section, the corresponding pages in the first edition are indicated in a footnote. The translation of Quranic verses generally follows Arthur John Arberry, The Koran Interpreted (London: Oxford University Press, 1964). In some cases, Arberry’s translation has been modified in order to bring out those aspects of the verse that ʿAbduh presumably wanted to highlight in the context of the quote. 31  R T, 97–8. 32  On concepts of divine attributes (ṣifāt Allāh) in Islamic theology, see Daniel Gimaret, “Ṣifa; 2. In theology,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. 33  Paraphrase of Quran 2:156: “Who, when they are visited by an affliction, say, ‘Surely we belong to God, and to Him we return.’ ” 34  Quran 112:1–3. 35  R T, 98. 36  See Quran 1:2: “Praise belongs to God, the Lord of all Being (rabb al-ʿālamīn).” 37  In Islamic religious literature, ‘servants’ (ʿibād) is a common synonym for human beings. The following passages refer to the special qualities of prophets.

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an unchangeable law which He has ordained for this matter in His eternal and unchangeable knowledge.38 [The Islamic religion] forbids any rational mind to attribute such unusual qualities to anyone, without proof, the premises of which must be able to prevail in front of the judgement of the senses and the related axioms of intuition (al-badīhīyāt) of which are at least as clear, if not more so. [Among such axioms would be,] for example, the impossibility to affirm both of two opposites at the same time or that it is necessary that the whole be greater than the part.39 [The Islamic religion] teaches us that they, [His prophets,] like other human beings, “have no power to profit or hurt themselves.”40 The entire truth about them is that they are [especially] honored servants and that everything that He makes happen through their hands needs special authorisation and special enablement, following a special end, according to a special wisdom. As we have explained above, God’s involvement in this can only be known on the basis of clear proof. [Man is responsible for his deeds]41 This religion provides hints such as this from the Holy Book: “God brought you forth from your mothers’ wombs, knowing nothing. He gave you hearing and sight and hearts, so that perhaps you will be grateful.”42 Gratitude, among the Arabs, means using the grace (niʿma) given in loyalty to the intention within in. So in this way, [the Islamic religion] points us the fact that God has endowed us with senses and has implanted faculties within us which we should use 38  “[. . .] ʿalā sunnatin lahu fi dhālika sannahā fī ʿilmihi al-azalī alladhī lā yaʿtarīhi al-tabdīl” (RT, 98). Islamic theologians in the tradition of al-Ashʿarī have traditionally maintained that all deeds of man are ordained by God in his eternal foreknowledge. In a subtle reinterpretation, ʿAbduh interprets Quranic references to foreknowledge as part of the ‘laws’ (sunan, sg. sunna) which God supposedly has ordained for his creation. On the concept of ‘God’s law’ (sunnat Allāh) in the Quranic commentary Tafsīr al-Manār (co-authored by ʿAbduh and Rashīd Riḍā) see Christian van Nispen tot Sevenaer, Activité humaine et agir de Dieu: Le concept ‘sunan de Dieu’ dans le commentaire coranique du Manār (Beirut: Dar el-Machreq, 1996). See for the concept of God’s sunna also the chapter 2.07 on Rashīd Riḍā in this volume. 39  I.e. each proof must prevail in front of the double judgement of the senses and of logic. 40  Quote from Quran 13:16: “[. . .] Say: ‘Then have you taken unto you others beside Him to be your protectors, even such as have no power to profit or hurt themselves?’ [. . .]” The context of the Quranic chapter suggests that this verse refers to those who seek help from other instances than God, such as men or women who allegedly possess superhuman qualities. 41  R T, 98–9. 42  Quran 16:78.

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only in accordance to what He has intended with these gifts. Thus, everyone who acquires (kāsib) a specific activity [from God], acquires certain rights and obligations connected to it.43 Those things, however, that perplex our rational conception, [things] without which we would be at the end of our forces, through which our soul feels that she is subject to a ruler who overwhelms her or strengthens her, this power that makes her humble, since it goes beyond every power that she knows, which defeats her, subjects her and lets her seek refuge in it—all this goes back to God alone. It is only in front of Him that the soul is allowed to humble herself, and only Him she can trust entirely. The same is true for what she fears and for what she longs with regard to the other life. The soul is not allowed to see refuge anywhere else than in God, in order to seek a reward for her good deeds and forgiveness for her misdeeds. He alone is “Master of the Day of Judgement.”44 [. . .] [The creed of unity means freedom]45 Man became by the profession of divine unity (tawḥīd) the servant of God alone. He was freed from bondage to anyone except Him and obtained the right of a free man (al-ḥurr) among free men. There were no inequalities of ‘high’ and ‘low’ and no ‘inferior’ and no ‘superior’ anymore between men, except in their deeds, the only distinction being intelligence and knowledge. The only drawing closer to God was by the way of purification of the mind from the stain of prejudice, and by the freeing of action from deviance and hypocrisy. In addition, the possessions of the earners of livelihood (al-kāsibīn) were freed from all claims, saving only the obligations to the poor and needy and those to the common good. At the same time, they were protected from the grip of those parasites and idlers who pretended to have a claim to them due to rank and status, but not out of any work or service.

43  This is a moralistic interpretation of the Islamic theological doctrine of ‘acquisition’ (kasb). In its classical form, this doctrine, which was developed by the Ashʿarite theological school, meant to solve the conflict between the ideas of God’s omnipotence and human free will by stating that all human deeds were created by God, but that man ‘acquired’ each of them. See Louis Gardet, “Kasb; As a theological term,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition; Wilferd Madelung, “Der Kalām,” in Helmut Gätje and Wolfdietrich Fischer, eds., Grundriss der arabischen Philologie, vol. 2 (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1987), 330–4. 44  Quran 1:4. 45  R T, 100.

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[Islam values individual achievement]46 Islam has called all able-bodied to work. It ordained that each individual should receive what he deserves, in the positive as well as in the negative sense. “And whoso has done an atom’s weight of good shall see it, and whoso has done an atom’s weight of evil shall see it.”47 “And that a man shall have to his account only as he has laboured.”48 [Islam] has allowed every man to consume from the good things what he desires, be it food or drink, dress or adornment. It has forbidden him only what is harmful to himself or to those within his protection, or what occasions harm to others. For this purpose, it has laid down general limits (al-ḥudūd al-ʿāmma) adequate to preserve the common interests of humankind at large.49 It has ensured each man in his independence of action and has given wide room for competition and endeavour, without let or hindrance, as long as they do not conflict with the established rights of others. [Islam forbids blind adherence to authorities]50 Islam has forbidden blind adherence to authorities (taqlīd) and has fought against it a relentless battle, scattering its cohorts, who had taken possession of men’s minds, eradicating its roots, which had taken deep hold in the spirits, and shattering its pillars in the peoples’ beliefs. Islam has roused reason from its lethargy and woke it up from its long slumber. For whenever it was touched by a ray from the light of truth, the temple guardians of all prejudices intervened, murmuring quietly, “Sleep on, the night is dark, the way is rough and the goal distant. The riding camel is tired, and provisions are scant.” The voice of Islam rose above these unworthy whispering and declared that man was not created in order to be led by a bridle, but that it was inscribed in his nature ( faṭara) that he should be led by knowledge and by insight into the signs in the created world and in past events.51 Islam has taught that teachers are to alert and to guide, directing men to the paths of study. It declared that the adherents of truth are those “who give ear to the Word and 46  R T, 100–1. 47  Quran 99:7–8. 48  Quran 53:39. 49   Maṣāliḥ al-bashar kāffatan. This formulation testifies to ʿAbduh’s global perspective on social and religious matters. See Büssow, “Re-imagining Islam.” 50  R T, 101. 51   Aʿlām al-kawn wa-dalāʾil al-ḥawādith. The formulation reminds one of the so-called ‘sign passages’ in the Quran which speak of certain phenomena of nature and human life as ‘signs’ (āyāt) of God in his creation (See Alford T. Welch, “Ḳurʿān,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, section 7 b. The passage can as well be understood as an exhortation to study natural sciences and history.

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follow the fairest of it.”52 It described them as those who ponder all what is said, irrespective of who the speakers are, in order to adopt the fairest of it, and reject what does not give evidence of validity or usefulness. Islam attacked the religious authorities and pushed them down from the high place whence they uttered their commands and prohibitions. It made them answerable to their followers, so that these could scrutinise them as they liked and examine their claims according to their own judgement, and pronounce a verdict based on their knowledge and convictions, and not on speculation and prejudice. [. . .] [Islam represents the original monotheistic creed]53 When Islam came, mankind was divided into religious sects, and only a few stood at the side of true belief. They excommunicated each other, cursed one another, while pretending that they were holding on to “the rope of God.”54 Separatism, discord and quarrelling appeared to them the best way of serving God. Islam repudiated all that and affirmed unequivocally that the religion of God—through all periods and according to the messages of all prophets— is one. God said: “The true religion with God is surrender (islām). Those who were given the Book were not at variance except after the knowledge came to them, being insolent one to another.”55 “No, Abraham in truth was not a Jew, neither a Christian; but he was someone who has surrendered to God (muslim) and one pure of faith (ḥanīf ); certainly he was not one of those who associate other gods with God (al-mushrikūn).”56 “He has laid down for you as religion that He charged Noah with, and that We have revealed to thee, and that We charged Abraham with, Moses and Jesus. Establish the religion, and be not divided therein. Hard for those who associate others with God is that to which you invite them.”57 “Say: ‘People of the Book! Come now to a word common between us and you, that we serve none but God, and that we do not associate anything with Him, and do not some of us take others as lords, apart from God.’ And if they turn their backs, say: ‘Bear witness that we have surrendered to God (muslimūn)!’ ”58

52  Quran 39:18. 53  R T, 104–5. 54  Quran 3:103. 55  Quran 3:19. 56  Quran 3:67. 57  Quran 42:13. 58  Quran 3:64.

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There is much more to be quoted here, which, however, would be too long for these pages. Everyone who reads the Quran as it deserves to be read, knows the noble verses which admonish the people of the faith who disputed and disagreed, despite the clear case and the straight path shown to them leading to the knowledge of that over which they divided. The Book declares unambiguously that the religion of God through all ages is to acknowledge His Lordship alone, to surrender in worship only to Him, to follow His commands and prohibitions, which contain the common good of humankind and the basis for their happiness in this world and the Hereafter. God has set that down in the books which he has sent upon His chosen messengers, and He has called the minds to understand them and the will to act accordingly. This meaning of religion is the principle (aṣl) one has to return to when the storm of discord is rising. It is the sure balance on which statements can be weighed when two opposing opinions have an equal number of proponents. Dogmatism and hypocrisy in controversy cut men off from religion and lead them astray from its path. However, when its wisdom is rightly esteemed and the divine care in the benediction it brings to humankind is recognised, disagreement ends and the hearts return to their true guide. Under its leadership, all men become brothers, holding fast to the truth and working together for its victory. [. . .] [The evolution of religion until Islam]59 When religions first came,60 men understood their interests—common as well as private—in a way that resembles that of an infant lately born, who knows only what comes within his senses and who can hardly distinguish between today and yesterday, who can hardly appreciate anything he cannot touch, and who has no inner awareness by which to sympathise with family or fellow. The chief concern of such an infant is self-preservation and he is too pre-occupied to understand the implication of his relationships with others, unless it be the hand that feeds him or steadies him in sitting or standing. It would not have been wise for religions in this context to speak to people about subtle aspects of consciousness or to even go beyond it on the ladder of proof. On the contrary, it is a sign of great grace that they treated the peoples—God’s children—like a parent treats his child in the age of innocence, not confronting it with anything other than that what it can perceive by hearing or seeing. The religions gave them straight commands and deterring restraints, called them to obedience to the utmost possible degree. Although 59  R T, 106–7. 60  The following is, at least partly, a characterisation of Judaism.

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the religions made only obligations that were most clearly sensible, men did not understand their meaning, and their comprehension did not grasp their aim. So they approached them with miracles that impressed men’s eyes and aroused their feelings, and they imposed forms of worship on them in consonance with their condition. Ages passed, during which the peoples ascended and descended, flourished and declined, during which they were tested and profited from it, during which they quarrelled and agreed. They tasted bitter days of pain and experienced happiness and calamity alternately—for days and days. The souls, through the influence of events and the lessons of disasters developed sensibilities which were finer in their perceptive faculty and anchored deeper in consciousness. These sensibilities, however, did not go above what happens in the hearts of women, or what is engendered by the passionate feelings of youth. Then, a religion appeared which spoke to the emotions, appealed to charity and cultivated the passions into empathy.61 This religion spoke to the dispositions of the hearts and prescribed ascetic exercises to men, drawing them away from the world altogether and raising their faces to the highest kingdom. It taught that even someone with a legitimate claim should not insist on his right, that the gates of heaven are barred to the rich and similar well-known beliefs of this kind. It prescribed rules of religious service to men that were in line with their state and with this religion’s message. Its call found an echo among the souls that hearkened to it, freeing them from corruption and healing them from diseases. But after only a few generations the resolve of men suffered from the burden of this religion. Men were no longer able to adhere to its limits and to hold fast to its words. The conviction grew that it was impossible to hold on to its teachings. The very custodians of this religion began to rival kings for their authority and to vie in wealth with the rich. The majority of people diverted from its path through arbitrary interpretation (ta‌ʾwīl) and randomly added to it all kinds of false accretions. Thus was the development of their morals and practices. They forgot the purity of religion and sold its integrity, while in the domain of creed they became divided into sects. [. . .] [General traits of the ethics inherent to Islam]62 At length, human society reached a point at which man reached maturity, helped by the moral of past events. Now came Islam and spoke to reason, appealed to intelligence and understanding, connecting them to emotions and sensations, in order to lead man to happiness in this world and in the Hereafter. 61  What follows is a characterisation of Christianity. 62  R T, 108–9.

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It explained the issues over which men were divided and revealed to them the sense of those over which they quarrelled. It proved that the religion of God was one through all ages and that there is only one way in which they could improve their matters and purify their hearts, and that He has created outward forms of religious service only in order to renew the contemplation of God in the souls, since God does not look at the outward form but at the heart.63 It called upon the believer to cultivate both his body and his soul as well as to keep his exterior as clean as his inner being, and it made both part of the prescribed ritual purity. It made sincerity the spirit of religious service and prescribed only such rites which strengthen the character. “Verily, worship preserves from lewdness and iniquity.”64 “Man was created anxious. When evil befalls him, he becomes impatient, and niggardly when good touches him— except those who pray.”65 Islam raised the rich man who is grateful to the level of the poor man who endures patiently—perhaps even higher. It deals with man in his exhortations like a wise and sober counsellor would deal with a mature person, calling upon him to use all his external and internal powers and affirming unambiguously that this is the way of earning God’s favour and the reward of His blessings. For this world is the sowing field of the Hereafter, and there is no way to eternal salvation but to strive for the betterment of this world. [. . .] [Islam is opposed to racial discrimination]66 Islam has abolished any discrimination between the human races and has awarded each human creature the dignity of being related to God through His act of creation and the dignity of belonging to the race of the human species and the merit, privilege and honor to stand on the level of perfection which God has given to this species. Therewith it contradicts those who pretend to privileged status denied to others, who declare other races as being inferior, who deny them to ever be able to reach their level of development, and who have thus killed the spirit of most nations and reduced most peoples to walking skeletons and shadows. [. . .] 63  This is an indirect statement regarding the question of true belief. While some theologians, like ʿAbduh, regard only the profession of the heart as essential, others also include the outward religious service into the necessary components of the Islamic creed. For an overview see W. Montgomery Watt, Islamic Creeds: A Selection (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994). 64  Quran 29:45. 65  Quran 79:19–22. 66  R T, 110.

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[The principle of self-help]67 The spirit which God has implanted into all His Divine laws calls upon us to correct our thought and to get our reflection on the right track, to cultivate our passions and to set limits to our desires, to assess every matter first on its proper merits, to pursue all objectives soundly, to keep the trust confided to oneself (al-amāna), to be inspired from fraternity and collaboration in the name of benevolence, to counsel each other, be it in good or in bad times, among other moral principles (uṣūl al-faḍāʾil). This spirit is the source of the nations’ wellbeing and their shining bliss in this life, before the other world is reached. “Whoso desires the reward of this world, We will give him of this.”68 God will never withdraw his blessing from a nation, as long as this spirit is alive in them. God multiplies their blessings if this spirit is strong, and he diminishes when it is weak. If eventually this spirit should leave a nation completely, happiness will leave in its wake, and peace will follow suit. God then transforms the power of the people into weakness, its prosperity into poverty, its wellbeing into misery and its peace into trouble. While they are still slumbering in indolence, they will be overpowered by dictators, no matter whether they are just or unjust. “And when We desire to destroy a city, We command its men who live at ease, and they commit ungodliness therein, then the Word is realised against it, and We destroy it utterly.”69 “We have commanded righteousness,” says God in this verse, “but they have perverted it to evil.” In that event, moaning will not benefit them and weeping will be to no avail. What remains as appearances of activity will not redeem them, and their prayers will not be answered. They have only one hope of redemption from the calamity that has come down on them, namely to take refuge to this most noble spirit and to use the messengers of thought, contemplation, patience and gratefulness to seek its renewed descent from the heaven of mercy. “God changes not what is in a people, until they change what is in themselves.”70 “This was God’s way in the case of those who passed away before; and thou shall not find any change in the way of God.”71 Selected and translated by Johann Büssow

67   R T, 112–13. 68  Quran 3:145. 69  Quran 17:16. 70  Quran 13:11. 71  Quran 33:62.

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Necmeddīn ʿĀrif: Studying in Paris (Egypt, 1904/05) Introduction In 1904–5 Necmeddīn ʿĀrif (1871–1926) published an Ottoman study guide for Paris.1 He had gone to Paris in 1899 where he combined political exile with education by pursuing his medical studies and his political activities against Abdülhamid II. He seems to have been involved with the Committee of Union and Progress, an organisation that was an outgrowth of the Young Turk movement. He continued his political involvement when he went to Cairo in 1900. After 1902, the city became a centre for Young Turk publications, and ʿĀrif became co-publisher for the journal Türk which took a Turkish-nationalist and anti-imperialist stance.2 His study guide was influenced by the politicised environment of the late Ottoman period as well as the Young Turk circles in Paris and Cairo. His family background also likely had an impact. His father Meḥmed ʿĀrif was an Ottoman bureaucrat and religious scholar. While by no means unique, ʿĀrif is nonetheless a good example of someone who participated with his appeal to study in Europe in the period’s different, sometimes overlapping and contradictory discourses. First, ʿĀrif offers his views on the question of how to save the Ottoman Empire: He sees in Europe an ideal model for advancing knowledge and science that has to be adopted. Second, ʿĀrif was immersed in a broader Muslim discourse. Europe was viewed as a place of Christianity or unbelief. His religious self-perception as well as the Muslim Ottoman readership he addressed required a religious justification. Finally, ʿĀrif was part of the Young Turk discourse. Given his anti-imperialist and nationalist tendencies, he must be related to them. It influenced his plea for orientation towards Europe, but also resulted in his critical assessment of its benefits and dangers. He describes Europe as a place of civilisation,

1  Necmeddīn ʿĀrif, Pārisde taḥṣīl: Pārisiñ mekātib-i ʿāliyyesinden ve proġrāmlarından uṣūl-i taḥṣīl ve maʿīşetinden bāḥis rehberdir [Studying in Paris: A Guide to the Higher Educational Institutions of Paris and Their Curricula, Study Methods and Living Expenses] (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-tawfīq, 1904/05). 2  Şükrü Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902–1908 (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 64ff.

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yet his appraisal of the ‘European’ civilisation leads him to call for one that is ‘­genuinely’ Ottoman. “The Secret Wisdom of the West” 3 The Ottoman state began to send students to Europe in the early nineteenth century as a short-term strategy for quickly producing well-educated and schooled men. Around the 1870s, the state began to doubt the usefulness of this practice. These doubts increased during the Hamidian period (1876–1908), when the state aimed to control the educational system and European influence. Individual decisions to study in Europe became more urgent. ʿĀrif wanted to provide an aid for studying in Paris with this audience in mind. By imparting knowledge and skills and in giving advice for living and studying in Paris, his guide focuses on the functional. The body of the work consists of a description of Paris’ higher educational institutions, its entry requirements, study guidelines, curricula and fees. Most of ʿĀrif’s perceptions of Europe and his own society are in the introduction to his guide, which serves to convince young Ottomans of studying in Europe. He suggests that only those educated abroad are able to develop their abilities and oppose external threats. All this is “a service to humanity” and leads to “the spread of civilisation.”4 In this way, ʿĀrif hopes to strengthen the Ottoman Empire. ʿĀrif’s claim about the need to study abroad is based on his view that the Ottoman state lacked an appropriate educational system for producing qualified personnel. Europe, on the other hand, was conceived of as a bastion of knowledge and sciences abounded in superior educational institutions. Herein lay the main justification for studying in Europe. Consequently, the pursuit of knowledge is central to ʿĀrif’s work. In the nineteenth century Ottoman intellectuals sought the ‘knowledge of the West,’ which was thought to be responsible for European superiority and strength. They wanted to benefit from such knowledge, but the content they regarded as valuable seems to have been very diffuse. ʿĀrif, too, does not define exactly the knowledge he has in mind. He uses the term ʿilm in reference to the knowledge located in Europe: Paris is called “a shining light of knowledge and expertise,” yet ʿilm could be found everywhere in Europe.5 Originally, this word had a religious connotation and was 3  Benjamin Fortna, Imperial Classroom: Islam, the State, and Education in the Late Ottoman Empire (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 43. 4  ʿĀrif, Studying in Paris, 41–42. 5  ʿĀrif, Studying in Paris, 3 and 15.

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used in contrast to maʿrifet “in the sense of profane knowledge.”6 However, the Islamic concept of ʿilm should not be reduced to religious knowledge, it was rather open and dynamic. ʿĀrif seems to use ʿilm as a more generic term to denote knowledge/science in general. In combination with maʿrifet or fenn he either uses those terms synonymously as a stylistic device or as pairs which denote the theoretical and more general knowledge (ʿilm) as well as the more application-oriented expertise (maʿrifet) or practical knowledge/science ( fenn). ʿĀrif’s choice of location and allusion to European educational institutions reveal that he promotes a concept of ʿilm that signified positive sciences serving worldly aims.7 Korkut Tuna calls this general understanding of ʿilm in the Ottoman nineteenth century the “Westernisation of knowledge.”8 Yet, the knowledge to be gained is never called ‘European’ by ʿĀrif. He rather suggests that it is a universal commodity that happened to be situated and cherished in Europe. Other regions like the Arab world fulfilled this function centuries earlier. Only on this basis was European civilisation able to evolve.9 From his perspective, it is not about the ‘Westernisation of knowledge,’ but rather the ‘Westernisation of place’ where this knowledge has to be gained. The Study Guide as Part of a Muslim Discourse on Europe Although ʿĀrif wants to see the entire Ottoman Empire strengthened, he makes clear that Muslim Ottomans have to study in Europe, while also emphasising his own and the Empire’s Muslim identity. Central to ʿĀrif’s religious justification for studying in Europe is the hadith, “Seek knowledge, even in China!”10 It serves to stress the importance of knowledge in the Islamic context and to dispel religious reservations against travelling to non-Muslim regions. The motive of travel in order to gain knowledge has great significance in the

6  Clifford E. Bosworth, “ ‘Ilm,” The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2008, Print; Brill Online, 2012, Online). 7  Kemal Karpat, The Politicization of Islam (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 98–99. 8  Korkut Tuna, “Osmanlı, Batılılaşma ve Bilimler [The Ottomans, Westernisation and Sciences],” Osmanlı, vol. 8 (Yeni Türkiye Yayınları: Ankara, 1999), 50. 9  ʿĀrif, Studying in Paris, 12–13. 10  ʿĀrif, Studying in Paris, 12 and 14. Juynboll states that this hadith is not authentic but was fabricated at the end of the eighth century. He remarks that the hadith scholars of the Middle Ages qualified its content as sound; G. H. A. Juynboll, Muslim Tradition: Studies in Chronology, Provenance and Authorship of Early Ḥadīth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 68–69.

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Islamic ­tradition and is justified by the concept riḥla fī ṭalab al-ʿilm (journey in pursuit of knowledge). First, Islamic scholars used to journey to centres inside the Muslim realm. From the seventeenth century onwards, however, individuals began to travel to destinations in the non-Muslim world.11 As the character of the desired knowledge changed along with the travel destinations for several groups of people, in the nineteenth century “[. . .] a European stay (preferably with some education) became the sole criterion or credentials for the modern Muslim.”12 By referring to hadiths, ʿĀrif justifies studying in Europe as part of the riḥla, as a religious duty.13 Here, the way universal knowledge is conceived in his guide becomes clear. Rather than reducing the knowledge in Europe to ‘European knowledge,’ he chooses the concept of riḥla, which stresses the pursuit of knowledge without defining its specific contents. The Muslim character of the Ottoman Empire is contrasted with the Christian identity of the European states. ʿĀrif calls Europe a “group of modern crusaders” and cites examples of what he calls “Christian fanaticism.”14 In his perspective, Christianity is existent in Europe, even if unbelief grows, which might be useful for the (European) civilisation. Yet Muslims should not imitate it. To him the Europeans’ understanding of religion differs from that of the Muslims: This disparity is manifest in the various doctrines and the use of Christianity to justify political aims. Europe is a foreign place with regard to religion and morals. Yet, Europe’s dangers lose significance as long as the Muslim student preserves his own beliefs.15

11  See e.g. Ian Richard Netton, Seek Knowledge: Thought and Travel in the House of Islam (Richmond, Surrey: Routledge/Curzon, 1996), VII–XII; Sam I. Gellens, “The Search for Knowledge in Medieval Muslim Societies: A Comparative Approach,” in Muslim Travellers: Pilgrimage, Migration, and the Religious Imagination, eds. Dan Eickelman and James Piscatori (London/NY: Routledge, 1990), 50–65; Suraiya Faroqhi, The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It (London/NY: I.B. Tauris, 2004), 203–208. 12  Daniel Newman, “Myths and Realities in Muslim Alterist Discourse: Arab Travellers in Europe in the Age of the Nahda (19th c.),” Chronos 6 (2002), 32. 13  ʿĀrif, Studying in Paris, 14–15. ʿĀrif dedicates a chapter to further substantiate the journey’s religious justification by listing several hadiths which are connected to the pursuit of knowledge. This religious justification was common among Muslim travellers, see Newman, “Myths and Realities,” 18. 14  ʿĀrif, Studying in Paris, 10–11. 15  ʿĀrif, Studying in Paris, 5–7.

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Europe as a Place of Civilisation In the 1830s, the notion of civilisation found its way from the French into the Ottoman language. In the course of the nineteenth century, the term medeniyyet was recognised as the equivalent of civilisation. Its diverse meanings were connected to and partly coincided with the concept of ‘Western civilisation.’16 After 1880, there was a consensus that medeniyyet had to be achieved. Concepts of an Ottoman civilisation were developed whose elements would incorporate religion and morals as well as European scientific and technological achievements.17 Ideas about the universality of civilisation were contemplated, and thus detaching aspects from their European origin, the transfer of things European was justified.18 ʿĀrif stands firmly in the middle of these debates. Based on his ideal of a true civilisation (ḥaḳīḳī medeniyyet), he examines and criticises the present civilisation (medeniyyet-i ḥāżire) and recommends a specific Ottoman form. At first, ʿĀrif appears to advocate a universal concept of civilisation that can guarantee the happiness of humanity. Yet, this is only a starting point for his outline of a potential Ottoman civilisation. ʿĀrif criticises the form of civilisation prevailing in Europe and which was also taking root in the Ottoman Empire at that time. It is but a disguise for European strife for profit. His critique of (European) civilisation is simultaneously a critique of imperialism.19 According to him, the Ottoman Empire cannot achieve civilisation by adopting the European civilisation completely. He follows the critics of the Tanẓīmāt reforms (1839–1876), whose representatives were blamed for their orientation towards Europe without taking into account Ottoman peculiarities. Similar to the Young Ottomans, ʿĀrif pleads for adopting only those parts of civilisation connected to sciences and which might ennoble morals.20 Combined with Islam and its pursuit of justice the dangers of European civilisation can be avoided and superiority, strength and

16  Tahsin Görgün, “Medeniyet [Civilisation],” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Islam Ansiklopedisi [The Türkiye Diyanet Foundation’s Encyclopaedia of Islam], vol. 28, ed. Bekir Topaloğlu (Ankara: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 2003), 296–301. 17  Mustafa Serdar Palabıyık, “Nineteenth Century Ottoman Intellectuals and Their Perception of ‘Civilisation,’ ” accessed: May 15 2011. www.inter-disciplinary.net/ci/intellectuals/ int1/Palabiyik%20paper.pdf. 18  David Kushner, The Rise of Turkish Nationalism: 1876–1908 (London: Frank Cass, 1977), 100. 19  ʿĀrif, Studying in Paris, 11. After 1908, such an anti-imperialist position was a feature of the Young Turk ideology, Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, 302–303. 20  ʿĀrif, Studying in Paris, 4. Similar to the Japanese reform slogan “Japanese spirit, Western knowledge.”

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true civilisation can be gained. With his plea for civilisation, he does not intend to emulate Europe but rather to connect it with a former Islamic civilisation.21 Conclusion ʿĀrif’s plea for studying in Europe, in addition to his different forms of justification and critique, is a good example of how different and seemingly contradictory ideological trends were combined during this period in Ottoman history. The extent to which ʿĀrif’s study guide was received is unknown. There is no information on the number of copies printed or on other aspects of their circulation. To further complicate matters, the number of Ottoman students who studied in Paris around that time is difficult to determine. Yet, when we look into the vita of Ottoman intellectuals, politicians and scientists, many of them spent some time in Europe. Measuring the influence of their sojourn in Europe on their subsequent actions and thoughts is once more a difficult task. Many of the students already belonged to intellectual circles inside the Ottoman Empire before going to Europe. After the Young Turk revolution in 1908 ʿĀrif himself returned to Istanbul, where he practiced medicine and was a member of the city administration. In addition to his study guide, he translated two French works on medicine and wrote a book on surgery. ʿĀrif died in 1926. Today he is remembered more as a medical scientist than as a figure who was active in many political and intellectual fields—although mostly behind the scenes. Leyla von Mende

Further Reading

Agai, Bekim and Olcay Akyıldız and Caspar Hillebrand, eds. Venturing beyond Borders: Reflections on Genre, Function and Boundaries in Middle Eastern Travel Writing. Würzburg: Ergon, 2013. Fortna, Benjamin. Imperial Classroom: Islam, the State, and Education in the Late Ottoman Empire. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Hanioğlu, Şükrü. The Young Turks in Opposition. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Hanioğlu, Şükrü. Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902–1908. Oxford/ New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

21  ʿĀrif, Studying in Paris, 11–12.

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Source Text22

In the name of God, the most gracious and most merciful Paris Introduction When one says ‘Paris,’ what immediately comes to mind is that it is a home of knowledge and expertise, as well as a centre of amusement and folly. While the inhabitants of Paris may enquire about its amusement and folly, this treatise is written to give information about the ways of acquiring knowledge and expertise. Paris is a shining light of knowledge and expertise, and by the influence of the life-saving rays of its success a nation will achieve its desired aims, if it is wished. By augmenting human needs civilisation aspires to secure human happiness. That means we have to improve our personality and our features through knowledge, expertise and virtues that enable us to be like our fellow human beings. Civilisation, however, cannot be attained simply by following traditions. At this moment, true civilisation does not exist. We have to achieve that the present civilisation resembles it. In order to be able to elevate civilisation to a high position in accordance with our national religion and morals, we will require many specialists in the fields of theoretical and practical sciences. More precisely, when we compare civilisation to an arch of happiness which is built on the pillars of morals and the theoretical and practical sciences, the overall balance will certainly be disrupted if one of these pillars is deficient or weak. An increase in the number of beer halls, vaudevilles, places of amusement and the like is not a fundamental principle of civilisation. If the tree of happiness is planted with diligence, its boughs will branch out and remain forever. There are several reasons why we think that it is not possible at this moment to accept every condition we experience in Europe. Our objective should be to establish a foundation which suits our needs, depending on what we are able to bear, and which is consistent with our national and local requirements. Because of our national morals, the education we have received from our fathers and ancestors, the laws of our country, our origins, nationality, nutrition, way of life and many other similar reasons, it is self-evident that we 22   Introduction of NecmeddīnʿĀrif, Pārisde taḥṣīl: Pārisiñ mekātib-i ʿāliyyesinden ve proġrāmlarından uṣūl-i taḥṣīl ve maʿīşetinden bāḥis rehberdir [Studying in Paris: A Guide to the Higher Educational Institutions of Paris and Their Curricula, Study Methods and Living Expenses] (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-tawfīq, 1322 AH / 1904/1905 CE).

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cannot accept the present civilisation on a one-to-one basis. (What I mean by this is that often enough our nation, and those like it which have not yet achieved perfection, may favour bad aspects instead of good ones. We have to adopt those elements of civilisation that are connected to the theoretical and practical sciences and serve to purify our morals, leaving the bad aspects to their owners.) There are many families whose children will serve the public and the fatherland with zeal and patriotism in the future. These families can afford to send the children of the fatherland to Europe, and they have good intentions in doing this. But it is legitimate to think about how they will live in Europe, how much money is needed, how to learn the language, what level of education is required to be able to attend schools there, how good morals may be preserved and pursued and how to prevent the boasting of Europeanisation. These questions prevent the heads of families from accomplishing such good acts. As a result, the lack of men grows every day. We will now carefully and fairly focus on the issues of morals and education, commenting on them in turn. If the head of the family provides his child with good schooling, good manners and education, and if the child adopts this well and acquires a (conscious) love for modesty and excellent human qualities, the child will not always need advice, and he’ll become an object of pride. If, while seeking for perfection, the child is confronted with the sphere of civilisation, and whatever parts of the world of theoretical and practical knowledge, the head of the family should be content, since young men who preserve their existent morals are few in our fatherland. However, if the head of the family doubts the education he gave his son or is not sure whether it has been well absorbed, his mind will entertain many thoughts to the contrary. This will constantly bother the poor man. The morals which are part of religion are what the heads of families think about most. They fear that their child may go to Europe, lose his religious beliefs and become unbelieving. Whether unbelief is good or bad need not be discussed. In my humble opinion, the true laws of the outstanding religion of Islam are rooted in the memory of Muslims and one has to act according to its commands. As I will pursue my following writings from this perspective I hereby state my opinion on that supposition. Unfortunately, the following cannot be denied. I want to tell our fellow citizens who care about religion that, although knowledge, expertise and civilisation have advanced in the world to a certain degree, Christianity still exists. Of course, this religion has its opponents, but it is evident that it still exists. Allegedly, unbelief is increasing in Europe. Hence, unbelief is a good thing. But to say that we should follow them would not be right, because when we Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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talk of religion, although it is only a word, its meaning is different. Christians understand something different by religion; we again understand something different. Just as when God is mentioned and they at once think of the Prophet Jesus, we, on the contrary, comprehend the Almighty. In short, what they understand does not fit with what we understand. Therefore, when we encounter words with such different meanings, we first have to find out what they mean and what they relate to. Then we have to study them. In Europe unbelief, which means disrespect for Christianity, purportedly continues to grow. This unbelief, which starts by regarding the Prophet Jesus as God, is useful for true civilisation. God willing, everybody should be unbelieving in this way. That they are unbelieving and prefer to be so does not mean that we need to imitate them. Furthermore, the words of religion and of Christianity have different meanings. Let me prove this: There are people in Paris who are unbelieving, proud of their unbelief, and who moreover, in quite an impressive way, make useful and eloquent speeches against the priests, churches and the pious. There are for example [Georges] Clemenceau, Urban Guillet, Pierre Quillard, [Francis de] Pressensé, Henri Rochefort and others. They nonetheless harbour Christian thoughts because of the Armenian case. (You should note that I say Christian thoughts not religious thoughts). In writing about the Armenians, they say that they are one thing or another, but that at least they are Christians. That they use such phrases is known even to those who follow political events only superficially. And it is also known that especially ‘Christianity’ is used for the advancement of this case in defending and protecting them. Likewise, for diplomatic reasons they repel Muslims everywhere or take away their governments, goods and territories by violence. As their actions show, large and small European states have Christian power in order to do this. We are impassive against such attacks, but beyond being impassive, we act inadequately. This only further strengthens their material and immaterial influence. That is as if we were destroying the structure of the state ourselves. Compared to earlier forms, Islam demands the highest degree of justice. If we acted in accordance with these legal requirements, we would abandon those great persons who adopt the Europeans’ fame of being faithless and friends of humanity and who take pride in it. But religion alone is not enough. Resistance to its opponents is difficult because they are equipped with theoretical and practical knowledge and morals. As soon as we heard their shouting, without understanding we surrendered the weapons for defending ourselves. When we are confronted with our inability to preserve the honour and glory that our ancestors have handed down to us and which is required by the times we live in, we cannot escape being defeated in all discussions and disputes. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Knowledge and expertise are not enough. Indeed, I can even say that they are not close to enough. If they do not include morals, human happiness is impossible. If we compare theoretical and practical knowledge to a ship, then morals represent its steam. Just as it is nearly impossible for a ship without steam that is in danger to arrive at its destination, a vessel of theoretical and practical knowledge without morals cannot arrive at a safe port. Although this truth has already been revealed, for whatever reason it lay hidden for some time behind a curtain of blindness. Recently it has been revealed again. To find evidence of this, it is more than sufficient to read books and articles by Europeans on the matter. Instead of taking the neighbouring governments as examples and comparing our situation to theirs in a way that takes into account our origin as well as our geographical and regional position, we compare ourselves to the nations of England, Germany and France, countries which have no connection to us. For many years, these nations made the necessary sacrifices to establish the form of government they regarded as most suitable for the happiness of their countries. We have to consider that their constant transmission of knowledge and expertise, good manners and education from child to child has made their capacity to adopt civilisation very different from ours. For example, our courage and bravery and the extraordinary superiority of our military are necessary for our generation and those that will come later. Although education is important, one has to accept the presence of certain capacities. Why do we look afield? The hound puppies are being searched for everywhere. When we remark that in the zoos the young of the aforementioned animals are bought by customers before they have even left the womb, then we have also indicated the importance of capacities. The Europeans value theoretical and practical knowledge, and they worked to achieve them before we even knew what theoretical and practical knowledge were. Therefore their children were born with capacities and thus this result was achieved. Since everyone has the freedom of conscience and ideas, I pronounce myself in this manner in order to explain my thoughts, at least to some degree, to those who prefer unbelief. I hope to show them, in any case, that our material benefit and the well-being of our fatherland is based on Islam. It is not necessary to elaborate on this issue with scientific or rational arguments or to expound and discuss it. Hence, I content myself by only pointing out to them the matter of benefits. All the international newspapers that published the public’s thoughts and opinions during the last war with Greece wrote against us. With this war, we stirred their Christian fanaticism. In the Ottoman state, the Druzes and Yemenis rebel constantly, and of course, Ottoman soldiers are sent in response Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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to punish them, or more precisely, to kill them. The number of dead is counted in thousands. Still, no benefactor, guardian, servant of humanity or journalist has written about them. Although Muslims, further, were recently killed in Crete, it was regarded as normal. Did not the commander of the armada of the allied states, admiral Cannavaro, even say to our commodore: “We are civilised crusaders”? On the other hand, when the Armenians rebelled, blamed and insulted Muslims and then subsequently suffered retaliation—a rather fierce retaliation—the Christian fanaticism of the Europeans and Americans became obvious. They said that the Turks were barbarians and that the fundamental principle of Islam was nothing more than slaughtering Christians. If they were not ashamed to do so, and their political interests were at stake, they would not refrain from forming against us as crusaders. In truth, it is France who attacks Fez, marches to Lake Chad, kills the Muslim rulers and carries their heads through the streets. It is the English who remove the mahdī from his grave, take his head, cut up his hands and feet, pull out his nails and put them on the chain of a watch. They undertake shameful and detestable acts and nowhere else is it possible to see anything like it. Nothing is said, however, because they are Christians. The Europeans similarly go to China, wanting to settle there. The local people who have lived there for thousands of years try to expel them. Then the Europeans protest and they claim that the Chinese have killed their people. Although the number killed is actually limited, they use this as a false pretence for putting thousands of Chinese to death. The Europeans demonstrate their Christian civilisation by burning and drowning the Chinese. During this time, Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany, one of the largest and most important countries of Europe, ordered his soldiers to cut off the heads of all non-Christians. Such actions are considered civilising and humane necessities! This is how Europe’s group of modern crusaders, whose unbelief has been claimed, behave. Similar incidents can be found all over the world. They show us that justice and humanity are only empty words. To benefit from it, ­thousands of people are sacrificed. We should therefore be cautious when listening to the Europeans’ beautiful rhetoric. Even if their actions can produce positive outcomes among them, similar behaviour for us would be quite detrimental. It would be almost as if we were willingly stepping into a sea of annihilation. But if civilisation is established in Islam, the result will be different. Islamic law took root in many places in a short time. This resulted from real justice and not because one sought to exploit it for one’s own advantage. If we continue to adorn ourselves with knowledge and morals, which means with this essential and indivisible collection of laws, we will certainly maintain our superiority. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Let us therefore become Muslims in earnest by first purifying our morals. Let us study Islam. I absolutely claim that we still do not know the truth and supremacy of Islam. We have heard something, but we cannot know what it is. Everything stems from mere habit, which itself, is the result of ignorance. We have to study, even though studying alone is not enough. Let us act accordingly. Let us furthermore adopt the Prophetic hadiths, “Seek knowledge, even in China” and “Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave,” which Islam also commands. Since civilisation and knowledge are not in China let us go to the place where it may be found. Let us search for it and find it, for we have already learned that we should not lose hold of this thread later on. Let us work until the grave, following a sacred command, and let us see who can oppose us, our justice and our superiority. Let us show the results of our efforts to the whole world! When the Arabs laid the foundation for Islamic civilisation they followed the sacred command. Islam had purified their morals. They also gained knowledge by going to where it was located and immediately translated all the important books in Latin and ancient Greek into Arabic. In a very short time they gained this knowledge. Their libraries were full. Later they made their books available to the current European civilisation as vast resources. Let us follow this path which lies before us. We have seen that it will bear beautiful fruit. Let us not form thoughts based on conjectures and estimates. This situation is not new and it has already provided good results. Let us follow this course. Let us achieve our objective. When we have learned let us ease the way for our fellow citizens. Let us not keep knowledge to ourselves. From all the books let us first translate the most important ones and then those that are simply important. Let us further theoretical and practical knowledge and morals. Let us go to Europe, not in order to be caught by it, which means losing our morals. Instead, let us go in order to triumph. The relation we have to Europeans should be like our relation to fire. Let us benefit from their light and warmth, but let us not get too close so that we burn. Afterwards, if we find time, and when we are full of enough theoretical and practical knowledge, let us deal with things which please and satisfy our thoughts and bodies. But for now let us exert ourselves studying, let us work day and night, and let us be prosperous. Because the zeal of men can move mountains. Doctor Necmeddīn ʿĀrif Selected and translated by Leyla von Mende Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Helena Petrovna Blavatsky: Isis Unveiled— A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology (United States, 1877) Introduction Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) is widely considered to be the most famous occultist of modern times. Born in the Ukraine, she spent her early life shuttling between places because of her father’s army postings. Lengthy stays at her maternal grandparents’ home left a lasting influence on her, as her greatgrandfather’s library contained numerous books on alchemy, magic, and other occult sciences. By the time she was fifteen, the young Helena was steeped in Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, and Hermeticism, among other esoteric philosophies, which she synthesised to great effect in her magisterial books, Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888). Supplementing scientific theories about creation, matter, and energy with speculations about the origins of the cosmos drawn from ancient philosophies, these two books defined the fields of occultism, mysticism, and esotericism for the next century. Yet, despite her acclaim as the greatest occultist of her era, Blavatsky spent her life disavowing everything occultism stood for in the popular imagination. This was so despite, or perhaps because of, her legendary reputation as a psychic medium who had rare access to seemingly supernatural phenomena. An investigation into her assertions of clairvoyance and telekinesis was conducted by the Society of Psychical Research, and it resulted in a damning report by Richard Hodgson that blew the lid off her claims and stamped her forcefully with the label of fraud. Hodgson’s indictment damaged Blavatsky’s near-superhuman status in occult circles, but the severity of the charges also motivated her to refashion her identity as an occultist and re-emerge as a philosopher of history and religion, closer to the mystic Éliphas Lévi (1810–1875) than the mesmerist Svengali, the hypnotist from George du Maurier’s 1894 novel Trilby.1

1  Éliphas Lévi (born Alphonse Louis Constant) was one of the most influential occultists of his time. Expelled from the Roman Catholic seminary where he was studying for the priesthood, he steeped himself in the study and practice of ceremonial magic. He wrote a number of studies that included Le Dogme et ritual de la haute magie (1854–56), which was later trans-

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Recognising that occultism had to overturn its identification with the black arts to be meaningful in the modern era, Blavatsky sought to provide a corrective that would at once contextualise occultism’s history as well as the history of Christianity. Her most ambitious work, Isis Unveiled, is a masterful exposition of the intertwined histories of Christianity and occultism, conventionally seen as opposites but having a more intimate relationship than acknowledged by the Church. Blavatsky maintained that Christianity and occultism had a common origin in the older religions, whose absorption by Christianity took the form of traces on symbols and ritual practices like the cross and human sacrifice respectively, even as Christianity reinvented itself as an entirely new religion built on the scrap heap of discarded beliefs. A key point of her critique was that triumphalist narratives like Christianity consigned competing theories of the world to oblivion by denouncing them as heresies or blasphemies. These so-called heresies were, for her, lost or esoteric knowledge. The fact that they referred in equal measure to religious ideas both inside and outside Christianity allowed her to range across world religions in search of their esoteric core. Blavatsky was first and foremost a theorist of religion, and while her method may have been idiosyncratic, her conclusions gave the appearance of someone who had read widely in the sources that at once constituted religious traditions and were rejected as the basis of those traditions. In many instances the sources she claimed to have read were pronounced apocryphal by the Church; they were a repository of superseded religious heterodoxies, in conflict with the proto-orthodoxy (to use Bart Ehrman’s term) that was established by the fourth-century Nicene Creed as the guiding principle of official Christianity.2 Of course, it was never entirely clear whether Blavatsky consulted original sources or merely borrowed liberally from the work of others. Indeed, her critics had a lingering suspicion that she may have even invented the sources she quoted. But whether her reading was original, based on secondary sources, or even entirely fabricated, her goal was fairly straightforward: it was to find a hidden tradition of knowledge running as a common thread in all world religions, big or small, surviving as wholes or dispersed into fragments. The interpenetration of beliefs drawn from a wide range of philosophies—Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, Mithraism, Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism, and the cosmologies of the Egyptians, Hindus, and Buddhists—suggests that it is impossible to lated as “Transcendental Magic,” and Histoire de la magie (1860). His publications popularised the terms l’occultisme and l’ésotérisme. 2  Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scriptures and the Faiths We Never Knew (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

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determine where a religious philosophy began and where it ended. That is the single most important point of Isis Unveiled. While the book is bewilderingly opaque in its cosmological schemes and freely pilfered from various sources without due attribution, the effect is simple: through its depiction of a seemingly chaotic set of religious systems, the book illustrates how deeply interpenetrated were religious ideas from different traditions. Connecting Christianity and occultism is the history of magic, which Blavatsky resituated in the formation of religions. Blavatsky understood only too clearly that superstition and magic are place-holders for religious debates effaced from the historical record. Even her turn to magic was an effort to resurrect the early Christian mysteries which incorporated pagan, magical practices, and thus to recover a history that could be retrieved by no other means. She warned her detractors against condemning magic as exclusively sleight of hand or illusion, knowing how such an interpretation lost sight of magic’s cultural significance. Just as insidiously, in Blavatsky’s view, occultism had become conflated with the derogatory meanings of magic because of modernity’s willingness to abandon “the production of new terms to express that which was tacitly regarded as obsolete and exploded ‘superstition’ . . . residues of the Dark Ages and its preceding aeons of paganism.”3 The play of enchantment in modernity had fallen into an abyss, reflected in the lack of sufficient discriminations in language, so that only the theological reading of magic as a “breaking of the laws of Nature by man, God, or devil” survived. Blavatsky recognised the historical project that magic salvaged, a project in which invisibility, used as a running trope, is as much a challenge to established epistemologies as it is also a literal sign of absence. While repudiating magic as a spectacular show, she also turned to it as a sign of an effaced history, reading back into magic the fragments of discarded and forgotten religions. That lost religions are revived only through specious displays of magic proved, for her, the narrow limits within which their unrecorded history is made palpable. Not only did she reinvent herself after the debacle of the investigation by the Society of Psychical Research, but Blavatsky also re-presented magic as a deliberately deceptive practice so that she could prove a point: she self-consciously peeled off the layers of its dubious claims in order to reach its irreducible basis in a lost history, which could be retrieved in no other way than through magic.

3  H. P. Blavatsky, “Occultism Versus the Occult Arts,” in Collected Writings of H. P. Blavatsky: 1888, vol. 9 (Madras: Theosophical Publishing House, 1962), 250. First published in Lucifer, vol. 2, no. 9 (1888): 173–181.

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Blavatsky’s growing distance from what Simon During has termed “entertainment magic”4 underscored her running battle with British occultists, whom she found as disagreeable as the scientists they disdained. While elite occult circles in Britain remained obsessed with technologies of mind-body practices like mesmerism, telepathy, and telekinesis, Blavatsky had moved on in her interests—literally. Her lengthy sojourn in India transformed her perspective on the occult sciences. Summoning the spirits of the dead may have been a fashionable pastime in the salons of middle- and upper-class Britain, but Blavatsky understood that in India communications with the dead consigned the practitioner to pariah status because death, according to caste Hinduism, is a pollutant.5 A rethinking of spirit communications outside the technological apparatus of the séance galvanised her to seek other ways of reframing the mind-matter debate that did not end up reproducing the familiar narratives of Western spiritism. To mark off her occultism from those who relied on Western sources, she turned to Hinduism, and in the process critiqued Western occultism for being apolitical and without vision, and for remaining as obdurately mechanical and procedural as the sciences it contested. In this she was not alone, as other spiritual groups debated among themselves about approaches to the world beyond consciousness. To the skeptics, they were all the same, but spiritualists thought otherwise: those who favored concentration and trance disparaged the physical mediums that relied on theatrical props for their effect. Even the Order of the Golden Dawn began to see séances as “vulgar stunts” appealing primarily to the lower classes.6 Gauri Viswanathan

Further Reading

Besant, Annie. Esoteric Christianity, or the Lesser Mysteries. New York: John Lane, 1901. Blavatsky, Helena P. H. P. B. Speaks, 2 volumes. Madras: Theosophical Publishing House, 1951. 4  Simon During, Modern Enchantments: The Cultural Power of Secular Magic (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002). 5  H. P. Blavatsky, “Conversations on Occultism,” Collected Writings of H. P. Blavatsky: 1888, vol. 9 (Madras: Theosophical Publishing House, 1962), 108. First published in The Path, vol. 3, nos. 1–6 (1888): 17–21, 54–58, 94–96, 125–129, 160–163, and 187–192, respectively. 6  Brenda Maddox, Yeats’s Ghosts: The Secret Life of W. B. Yeats. (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), 11.

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Hammer, Olav and Mikael Rothstein, eds. Handbook of the Theosophical Current. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Hanegraaff, Wouter J. New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. Leiden and New York: Brill, 1996. Viswanathan, Gauri. “Secularism in the Framework of Heterodoxy.” Publication of the Modern Language Association 123:1 (March 2008): 466–476.



Source Text7

Let us adduce one more argument, if only for the sake of circumstantial evidence. In what countries have ‘divine miracles’ flourished most, been most frequent and most stupendous? Catholic Spain, and Pontifical Italy, beyond question. And which more than these two, has had access to ancient literature? Spain was famous for her libraries; the Moors were celebrated for their profound learning in alchemy and other sciences. The Vatican is the storehouse of an immense number of ancient manuscripts. During the long interval of nearly 1,500 years they have been accumulating, from trial after trial, books and manuscripts confiscated from their sentenced victims, to their own profit. The Catholics may plead that the books were generally committed to the flames; that the treatises of famous sorcerers and enchanters perished with their accursed authors. But the Vatican, if it could speak, could tell a different story. It knows too well of the existence of certain closets and rooms, access to which is had but by the very few. It knows that the entrances to these secret hiding-places are so cleverly concealed from sight in the carved frame-work and under the profuse ornamentation of the library-walls, that there have even been Popes who lived and died within the precincts of the palace without ever suspecting their existence. But these Popes were neither Sylvester II., Benedict IX., John XX., nor the VI. and VII. Gregory; nor yet the famous Borgia of toxicological memory. Neither were those who remained ignorant of the hidden lore friends of the sons of Loyola. Where, in the records of European Magic, can we find cleverer enchanters than in the mysterious solitudes of the cloister? Albert Magnus, the famous

7  Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology (New York: J. W. Bouton, 1877), 19–20, 22–26, 40–41, 73, 84–85, 87–89, and 99–100 (text from sixth edition 1891); Blavatsky’s extensive footnotes have been omitted here.

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Bishop and conjurer of Ratisbon, was never surpassed in his art. Roger Bacon was a monk, and Thomas Aquinas one of the most learned pupils of Albertus. Trithemius, Abbot of the Spanheim Benedictines, was the teacher, friend, and confidant of Cornelius Agrippa; and while the confederations of the Theosophists were scattered broadcast about Germany, where they first originated, assisting one another, and struggling for years for the acquirement of esoteric knowledge, any person who knew how to become the favored pupil of certain monks, might very soon be proficient in all the important branches of occult learning. This is all in history and cannot be easily denied. Magic, in all its aspects, was widely and nearly openly practiced by the clergy till the Reformation. And even he who was once called the “Father of the Reformation,” the famous John Reuchlin, author of the Mirific Word and friend of Pico di Mirandola, the teacher and instructor of Erasmus, Luther, and Melancthon [sic!], was a kabalist and occultist. [. . .] Why then roast the lay-magicians and consulters of books, and canonize the ecclesiastics? Simply because the mediæval as well as the modern phenomena, manifested through laymen, whether produced through occult knowledge or happening independently, upset the claims of both the Catholic and Protestant Churches to divine miracles. In the face of reiterated and unimpeachable evidence it became impossible for the former to maintain successfully the assertion that seemingly miraculous manifestations by the ‘good angels’ and God’s direct intervention could be produced exclusively by her chosen ministers and holy saints. Neither could the Protestant well maintain on the same ground that miracles had ended with the apostolic ages. For, whether of the same nature or not, the modern phenomena claimed close kinship with the biblical ones. The magnetists and healers of our century came into direct and open competition with the apostles. The Zouave Jacob, of France, had outrivalled the prophet Elijah in recalling to life persons who were seemingly dead; and Alexis, the somnambulist, mentioned by Mr. Wallace in his work, was, by his lucidity, putting to shame apostles, prophets, and the Sibyls of old. Since the burning of the last witch, the great Revolution of France, so elaborately prepared by the league of the secret societies and their clever emissaries, had blown over Europe and awakened terror in the bosom of the clergy. It had, like a destroying hurricane, swept away in its course those best allies of the Church, the Roman Catholic aristocracy. A sure foundation was now laid for the right of individual opinion. The world was freed from ecclesiastical tyranny by opening an unobstructed path to Napoleon the Great, who had given the deathblow to the Inquisition. This great slaughter-house of the Christian Church wherein she butchered, in

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the name of the Lamb, all the sheep arbitrarily declared scurvy—was in ruins, and she found herself left to her own responsibility and resources. So long as the phenomena had appeared only sporadically, she had always felt herself powerful enough to repress the consequences. Superstition and belief in the Devil were as strong as ever, and Science had not yet dared to publicly measure her forces with those of supernatural Religion. Meanwhile the enemy had slowly but surely gained ground. All at once it broke out with an unexpected violence. ‘Miracles’ began to appear in full daylight, and passed from their mystic seclusion into the domain of natural law, where the profane hand of Science was ready to strip off their sacerdotal mask. Still, for a time, the Church held her position, and with the powerful help of superstitious fear checked the progress of the intruding force. But, when in succession appeared mesmerists and somnambulists, reproducing the physical and mental phenomenon of ecstasy, hitherto believed to be the special gift of saints; when the passion for the turning tables had reached in France and elsewhere its climax of fury; when the psychography—alleged spiritual—from a simple curiosity had developed itself and settled into an unabated interest, and finally ebbed into religious mysticism; when the echoes aroused by the first raps of Rochester, crossing the oceans, spread until they were re-percussed from nearly every corner of the world—then, and only then, the Latin Church was fully awakened to a sense of danger. Wonder after wonder was reported to have occurred in the spiritual circles and the lecture-rooms of the mesmerists; the sick were healed, the blind made to see, the lame to walk, the deaf to hear. J. R. Newton in America, and Du Potet in France, were healing the multitude without the slightest claim to divine intervention. The great discovery of Mesmer, which reveals to the earnest inquirer the mechanism of nature, mastered, as if by magical power, organic and inorganic bodies. But this was not the worst. A more direful calamity for the Church occurred in the evocation from the upper and nether worlds of a multitude of “spirits,” whose private bearing and conversation gave the direct lie to the most cherished and profitable dogmas of the Church. These “spirits” claimed to be the identical entities, in a disembodied state, of fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters, friends and acquaintances of the persons viewing the weird phenomena. The Devil seemed to have no objective existence, and this struck at the very foundation upon which the chair of St. Peter rested. Not a spirit except the mocking mannikins of Planchette would confess to the most distant relationship with the Satanic majesty, or accredit him with the governorship of a single inch of territory. The clergy felt their prestige growing weaker every day, as they saw the people impatiently shaking off, in the broad daylight of truth, the dark veils with which they had been blindfolded for so many centuries. Then finally, Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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fortune, which previously had been on their side in the long-waged conflict between theology and science, deserted to their adversary. The help of the latter to the study of the occult side of nature was truly precious and timely, and science has unwittingly widened the once narrow path of the phenomena into a broad highway. Had not this conflict culminated at the nick of time, we might have seen reproduced on a miniature scale the disgraceful scenes of the ­episodes of Salem witchcraft and the Nuns of Loudun. As it was, the clergy were muzzled. But if science has unintentionally helped the progress of the occult phenomena, the latter have reciprocally aided science herself. Until the days when newly-reincarnated philosophy boldly claimed its place in the world, there had been but few scholars who had undertaken the difficult task of studying comparative theology. This science occupies a domain heretofore penetrated by few explorers. The necessity which it involved of being well acquainted with the dead languages, necessarily limited the number of students. Besides, there was less popular need for it so long as people could not replace the Christian orthodoxy by something more tangible. It is one of the most undeniable facts of psychology, that the average man can as little exist out of a religious element of some kind, as a fish out of the water. The voice of truth, “a voice stronger than the voice of the mightiest thunder,” speaks to the inner man in the nineteenth century of the Christian era, as it spoke in the corresponding century BC. It is a useless and unprofitable task to offer to humanity the choice between a future life and annihilation. The only chance that remains for those friends of human progress who seek to establish for the good of mankind a faith, henceforth stripped entirely of superstition and dogmatic fetters is to address them in the words of Joshua: “Choose ye this day whom you will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amontes, in whose land ye dwell.” “The science of religion,” wrote Max Müller in 1860, “is only just beginning. . . . During the last fifty years the authentic documents of the most important religions in the world have been recovered in a most unexpected and almost miraculous manner. We have now before us the Canonical books of Buddhism; the Zend-Avesta of Zoroaster is no longer a sealed book; and the hymns of the Rig-Veda have revealed a state of religions anterior to the first beginnings of that mythology which in Homer and Hesiod stands before us as a mouldering ruin.” In their insatiable desire to extend the dominion of blind faith, the early architects of Christian theology had been forced to conceal, as much as it was possible, the true sources of the same. To this end they are said to have burned or otherwise destroyed all the original manuscripts on the Kabala, magic, and Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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occult sciences upon which they could lay their hands. They ignorantly supposed that the most dangerous writings of this class had perished with the last Gnostic; but some day they may discover their mistake. Other authentic and as important documents will perhaps reappear in a “most unexpected and almost miraculous manner.” [. . .] Truly the fate of many a future generation hung on a gossamer thread, in the days of the third and fourth centuries. Had not the Emperor sent in 389 to Alexandria a rescript—which was forced from him by the Christians—for the destruction of every idol, our own century would never have had a Christian mythological Pantheon of its own. Never did the Neo-platonic school reach such a height of philosophy as when nearest its end. Uniting the mystic theosophy of old Egypt with the refined philosophy of the Greeks; nearer to the ancient Mysteries of Thebes and Memphis than they had been for centuries; versed in the science of soothsaying and divination, as in the art of the Therapeutists; friendly with the acutest men of the Jewish nation, who were deeply imbued with the Zoroastrian ideas, the Neo-platonists tended to amalgamate the old wisdom of the Oriental Kabala with the more refined conceptions of the Occidental Theosophists. Notwithstanding the treason of the Christians, who saw fit, for political reasons, after the days of Constantine, to repudiate their tutors, the influence of the new Platonic philosophy is conspicuous in the subsequent adoption of dogmas, the origin of which can be traced but too easily to that remarkable school. Though mutilated and disfigured, they still preserve a strong family likeness, which nothing can obliterate. But, if the knowledge of the occult powers of nature opens the spiritual sight of man, enlarges his intellectual faculties, and leads him unerringly to a profounder veneration for the Creator, on the other hand ignorance, dogmatic narrow-mindedness, and a childish fear of looking to the bottom of things, invariably leads to fetish-worship and superstition. When Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria, had openly embraced the cause of Isis, the Egyptian goddess, and had anthropomorphized her into Mary, the mother of God; and the trinitarian controversy had taken place; from that moment the Egyptian doctrine of the emanation of the creative God out of Emepht began to be tortured in a thousand ways, until the Councils had agreed upon the adoption of it as it now stands—the disfigured Ternary of the kabalistic Solomon and Philo! But as its origin was yet too evident, the Word was no longer called the ‘Heavenly man,’ the primal Adam Kadmon, but became the Logos—Christ, and was made as old as the ‘Ancient of the Ancient,’ his father. The concealed WISDOM became identical with its emanation, the Divine Thought, and made to be regarded coequal and coeternal with its first manifestation. [. . .] Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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We fancy that it would be hard to demonstrate to satisfaction that the visions of Catholic saints, are, in any one particular instance, better or more trustworthy than the average visions and prophecies of our modern ‘mediums.’ The visions of Andrew Jackson Davis—however our critics may sneer at them—are by long odds more philosophical and more compatible with modern science than the Augustinian speculations. Whenever the visions of Swedenborg, the greatest among the modem seers, run astray from philosophy and scientific truth, it is when they most run parallel with theology. Nor are these visions any more useless to either science or humanity than those of the great orthodox saints. In the life of St. Bernard it is narrated that as he was once in church, upon a Christmas eve, he prayed that the very hour in which Christ was born might be revealed to him; and when the “true and correct hour came, he saw the divine babe appear in his manger.” What a pity that the divine babe did not embrace so favorable an opportunity to fix the correct day and year of his death, and thereby reconcile the controversies of his putative historians. The Tischendorfs, Lardners, and Colensos, as well as many a Catholic divine, who have vainly squeezed the marrow out of historical records and their own brains, in the useless search, would at least have had something for which to thank the saint. [. . .] That the Neo-platonists were not always despised or accused of demonolatry is evidenced in the adoption by the Roman Church of the very rites and theurgy. The identical evocations and incantations of the Pagan and Jewish Kabalist, are now repeated by the Christian exorcist and the theurgy of Iamblichus was adopted word for word. “Distinct as were the Platonists and Pauline Christians of the earlier centuries,” writes Professor A. Wilder, “many of the more distinguished teachers of the new faith were deeply tinctured with the philosophical leaven. Synesius, the Bishop of Cyrene, was the disciple of Hypatia. St. Anthony reiterated the theurgy of Iamblichus. The Logos, or word of the Gospel according to John, was a Gnostic personification. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and others of the fathers drank deeply from the fountains of philosophy. The ascetic idea which carried away the Church was like that which was practiced by Plotinus . . . all through the middle ages there rose up men who accepted the interior doctrines which were promulgated by the renowned teacher of the Academy.” To substantiate our accusation that the Latin Church first despoiled the kabalists and theurgists of their magical rites and ceremonies, before hurling anathemas upon their devoted heads, we will now translate for the reader fragments from the forms of exorcism employed by kabalists and Christians. The identity in phraseology, may, perhaps, disclose one of the reasons why the Romish Church has always desired to keep the faithful in ignorance of the Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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meaning of her Latin prayers and ritual. Only those directly interested in the deception have had the opportunity to compare the rituals of the Church and the magicians. The best Latin scholars were, until a comparatively recent date, either churchmen, or dependent upon the Church. Common people could not read Latin, and even if they could, the reading of the books on magic was prohibited, under the penalty of anathema and excommunication. The cunning device of the confessional made it almost impossible to consult, even surreptitiously, what the priests call a grimoire (a devil’s scrawl), or Ritual of Magic. To make assurance doubly sure, the Church began destroying or concealing everything of the kind she could lay her hands upon. [. . .] It really seems too bad to strip Rome of all her symbols at once; but justice must be done to the despoiled hierophants. Long before the sign of the Cross was adopted as a Christian symbol, it was employed as a secret sign of recognition among neophytes and adepts. Says Levi: “The sign of the Cross adopted by the Christians does not belong exclusively to them. It is kabalistic, and represents the oppositions and quaternary equilibrium of the elements. We see by the occult verse of the Pater, to which we have called attention in another work, that there were originally two ways of making it, or, at least, two very different formulas to express its meaning—one reserved for priests and initiates; the other given to neophytes and the profane. Thus, for example, the initiate, carrying his hand to his forehead, said: To thee; then he added, belong; and continued, while carrying his hand to the breast—the kingdom; then, to the left shoulder—justice; to the right shoulder—and mercy. Then he joined the two hands, adding: throughout the generating cycles: ‘Tibi sunt Malchut et Geburah et Chassed per Æonas’—a sign of the Cross, absolutely and magnificently kabalistic, which the profanations of Gnosticism made the militant and official Church completely lose.” How fantastical, therefore, is the assertion of Father Ventura, that, while Augustine was a Manichean, a philosopher, ignorant of and refusing to humble himself before the sublimity of the “grand Christian revelation,” he knew nothing, understood naught of God, man, or universe; “ . . . he remained poor, small, obscure, sterile, and wrote nothing, did nothing really grand or useful.” But, hardly had he become a Christian “ . . . when his reasoning powers and intellect, enlightened at the luminary of faith, elevated him to the most sublime heights of philosophy and theology.” And his other proposition that Augustine’s genius, as a consequence, “developed itself in all its grandeur and prodigious fecundity . . . his intellect radiated with that immense splendor which, reflecting itself in his immortal writings, has never ceased for one moment during fourteen centuries to illuminate the Church and the world!”

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Whatever Augustine was as a Manichean, we leave Father Ventura to discover; but that his accession to Christianity established an everlasting enmity between theology and science is beyond doubt. While forced to confess that “the Gentiles had possibly something divine and true in their doctrines,” he, nevertheless, declared that for their superstition, idolatry, and pride, they had “to be detested, and, unless they improved, to be punished by divine judgment.” This furnishes the clew to the subsequent policy of the Christian Church, even to our day. If the Gentiles did not choose to come into the Church, all that was divine in their philosophy should go for naught, and the divine wrath of God should be visited upon their heads. What effect this produced is succinctly stated by Draper: “No one did more than this Father to bring science and religion into antagonism; it was mainly he who diverted the Bible from its true office—a guide to purity of life—and placed it in the perilous position of being the arbiter of human knowledge, an audacious tyranny over the mind of man. The example once set, there was no want of followers; the works of the Greek philosophers were stigmatized as profane; the transcendently glorious achievements of the Museum of Alexandria were hidden from sight by a cloud of ignorance, mysticism, and unintelligible jargon, out of which there too often flashed the destroying lightnings of ecclesiastical vengeance.” Augustine and Cyprian admit that Hermes and Hostanes believed in one true god; the first two maintaining, as well as the two Pagans, that he is invisible and incomprehensible, except spiritually. Moreover we invite any man of intelligence—provided he be not a religious fanatic—after reading fragments chosen at random from the works of Hermes and Augustine on the Deity, to decide which of the two gives a more philosophical definition of the ‘unseen Father.’ We have at least one writer of fame who is of our opinion. Draper calls the Augustinian productions a “rhapsodical conversation” with God; an “­incoherent dream.” Father Ventura depicts the saint as attitudinizing before an astonished world upon “the most sublime heights of philosophy.” But here steps in again the same unprejudiced critic, who passes the following remarks on this colossus of Patristic philosophy. “Was it for this preposterous scheme,” he asks, “this product of ignorance and audacity, that the Works of the Greek philosophers were to be given up? It was none too soon that the great critics who appeared at the Reformation, by comparing the works of these writers with one another, brought them to their proper level, and taught us to look upon them all with contempt.” For such men as Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Apollonius, and even Simon Magus, to be accused of having formed a pact with the Devil, whether

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the l­atter personage exist or not, is so absurd as to need but little refutation. If Simon Magus—the most problematical of all in an historical sense—ever existed otherwise than in the overheated fancy of Peter and the other apostles, he was evidently no worse than any of his adversaries. A difference in religious views, however great, is insufficient per se to send one person to heaven and the other to hell. Such uncharitable and peremptory doctrines might have been taught in the middle ages; but it is too late now for even the Church to put forward this traditional scarecrow. Research begins to suggest that which, if ever verified, will bring eternal disgrace on the Church of the Apostle Peter, whose very imposition of herself upon that disciple must be regarded as the most unverified and unverifiable of the assumptions of the Catholic clergy. [. . .] What we desire to prove is, that underlying every ancient popular religion was the same ancient wisdom-doctrine, one and identical, professed and practiced by the initiates of every country, who alone were aware of its existence and importance. To ascertain its origin, and the precise age in which it was matured, is now beyond human possibility. A single glance, however, is enough to assure one that it could not have attained the marvellous perfection in which we find it pictured to us in the relics of the various esoteric systems, except after a succession of ages. A philosophy so profound, a moral code so ennobling, and practical results so conclusive and so uniformly demonstrable is not the growth of a generation, or even a single epoch. Fact must have been piled upon fact, deduction upon deduction, science have begotten science, and myriads of the brightest human intellects have reflected upon the laws of nature, before this ancient doctrine had taken concrete shape. The proofs of this identity of fundamental doctrine in the old religions are found in the prevalence of a system of initiation; in the secret sacerdotal castes who had the guardianship of mystical words of power, and a public display of a phenomenal control over natural forces, indicating association with preterhuman beings. Every approach to the Mysteries of all these nations was guarded with the same jealous care, and in all, the penalty of death was inflicted upon initiates of any degree who divulged the secrets entrusted to them. We have seen that such was the case in the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, among the Chaldean Magi, and the Egyptian hierophants; while with the Hindus, from whom they were all derived, the same rule has prevailed from time immemorial. We are left in no doubt upon this point; for the Agrushada Parikshai says explicitly, “Every initiate, to whatever degree he may belong, who reveals the great sacred formula, must be put to death.” Naturally enough, this same extreme penalty was prescribed in all the multifarious sects and brotherhoods which at different periods have sprung from the ancient stock. We find it with the early Essenes, Gnostics, theurgic Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Neo-platonists, and mediæval philosophers; and in our day, even the Masons perpetuate the memory of the old obligations in the penalties of throat-cutting, dismemberment, and disemboweling, with which the candidate is threatened. As the Masonic ‘master’s word’ is communicated only at “low breath,” so the selfsame precaution is prescribed in the Chaldean Book of Numbers and the Jewish Mercaba. When initiated, the neophyte was led by an ancient to a secluded spot, and there the latter whispered in his ear the great secret. The Mason swears, under the most frightful penalties, that he will not communicate the secrets of any degree “to a brother of an inferior degree;” and the Agrushada Parikshai says: “Any initiate of the third degree who reveals before the prescribed time, to the initiates of the second degree, the superior truths, must be put to death.” Again, the Masonic apprentice consents to have his “tongue torn out by the roots” if he divulge anything to a profane; and in the Hindu books of initiation, the same Agrushada Parikshai, we find that any initiate of the first degree (the lowest) who betrays the secrets of his initiation, to members of other castes, for whom the science should be a closed book, must have “his tongue cut out,” and suffer other mutilations. As we proceed, we will point out the evidences of this identity of vows, formulas, rites, and doctrines, between the ancient faiths. We will also show that not only their memory is still preserved in India, but also that the Secret Association is still alive and as active as ever. That, after reading what we have to say, it may be inferred that the chief pontiff and hierophant, the Brahmâtma, is still accessible to those ‘who know,’ though perhaps recognized by another name; and that the ramifications of his influence extend throughout the world. But we will now return again to the early Christian period. As though he were not aware that there was any esoteric significance to the exoteric symbols, and that the Mysteries themselves were composed of two parts, the lesser at Agræ, and the higher ones at Eleusinia, Clemens Alexandrinus, with a rancorous bigotry that one might expect from a renegade Neo-platonist, but is astonished to find in this generally honest and learned Father, stigmatized the Mysteries as indecent and diabolical. Whatever were the rites enacted among the neophytes before they passed to a higher form of instruction; however misunderstood were the trials of Katharsis or purification, during which they were submitted to every kind of probation; and however much the immaterial or physical aspect might have led to calumny, it is but wicked prejudice which can compel a person to say that under this external meaning there was not a far deeper and spiritual significance. Selected by Gauri Viswanathan

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Ludwig Ankenbrand: Buddhism and the Modern Reform Efforts (Germany, 1911) Introduction One might associate some cultural phenomena—like having long hair and wearing sandals, practicing vegetarianism and naturopathy along with Asian religions and adopting Eastern knowledge—primarily with the Western counterculture of the 1960s and 70s. But the roots of the development of these alternative concepts and practices can be found more than one hundred years in the past. A remarkable nonconformist milieu existed in Europe already around 1900. People were experimenting with multiple deviances like non-Western religions and holistic worldviews, alternative diets, clothes, communal living etc. In Wilhelmine Germany, this was an essential component of the socalled Lebensreform movement. The heterogeneous nonconformist milieu, religiously and ideologically diverse, consisted of a number of individual free spirits, visionaries, radical reformers and prophets, of organised groups as associations and societies and last but not least of a broad interested public which sympathised with the new ideas, listened to lectures and bought books and magazines. Several mostly unknown people who lived for and lived off advocating these ideas, knowledge and lifestyles through writings and giving lectures played a major role in their popularisation. One of them was Ludwig Ankenbrand, the author of the article presented in this sourcebook. Ankenbrand was born into a family whose members were probably Freireligiöse (Religious Humanists) or Freidenker (Freethinkers) in the Bavarian city of Nürnberg in 1888. He was very interested in reading books and studying nature, but instead of graduating he left school to become a writer. He made a journey on foot to Warmbronn—a small village near Stuttgart—at the age of about 14 years, to meet his idol Christian Wagner.1 Wagner must have been impressed by this boy who wandered about 200 kilometers from his hometown to get to know him. They stayed friends until Wagner’s death. Ankenbrand began publishing his first books in 1906. He gained some attention with his writings about the so called ‘modern world view’ and animal 1  Christian Wagner (1835–1918) was a peasant who refused to slaughter his cattle, and a poet. He wrote simple but profound poetry about life, nature and reincarnation. He was heavily admired by a lot of contemporary poets like Hermann Hesse and later on by Kurt Tucholsky. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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welfare in the circles of Freethinkers and within the Lebensreform movement. He tried to merge Religious Humanism and animal welfare. Likewise, he considered all the other ‘progressive’ movements like Monism,2 Atheism, Naturopathy, Vegetarianism, Temperance and even Nudism to be of equal value and compatible. It was a constant feature of his personality that he adhered to multiple religious or cultural movements and practices at the same time. Since his was not an isolated case, this phenomenon has been called “multiple deviance.”3 Ankenbrand joined the German Vegetarian Association and started to write for its magazine called Vegetarische Warte (Vegetarian Vantage). He also started to give lectures, which turned out to be an important activity during his whole life. In Berlin he worked as an animal welfare campaigner and became active in the nature conservation movement while he was working for the Verein Naturschutzpark4 in Stuttgart. He married Lisbeth Symanzick, a vegetarian writer, in 1910. The couple went to Leipzig in 1911, where Ankenbrand worked as the chief editor of the vegetarian and reform magazine Gesundes Leben (Healthy Life) for the publisher Hugo Vollrath (1877–1943), who owned different publishing houses which covered the whole deviant spectrum like Theosophy, Buddhism, astrology and reform literature. In addition, Ankenbrand worked for other publishers and was continuously writing books and articles. Leipzig5 was the centre of the young German Buddhist movement at that time. The first European Buddhist congregation was founded around the indologist Karl Seidenstücker (1876–1936) here in 1903.6 Ankenbrand 2  ‘Monism’ refers to the world view of the ‘German Monist League,’ which was founded by the German anatomist and zoologist Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) in 1906. Haeckel was famous for popularizing Darwin’s theory of evolution in Germany. With his Monism, he attempted to establish a new ethic on the basis of evolutionary theory and to bring science and religion in accordance. In doing so, Monism was radically atheistic and opposed to Christianity. For Haeckel’s influence in the Middle East, see chapter 1.09. 3   Heinz Mürmel, “Buddhismus und Theosophie in Leipzig vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Buddhisten und Hindus im deutschsprachigen Raum, ed. Manfred Hutter (Frankfurt am Main: Lang 2001), 123–136, 132, fn. 45. Cf. Jörg Albrecht, “Ludwig Ankenbrand—ein ‘Multipler Devianter.’ Eine Falluntersuchung zur ‘Multiplen Devianz’ im Kontext der Alternativbewegungen vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg” (M.A. Thesis, Leipzig University, 2008). 4  The purpose of this association was to establish national parks in Germany following the U.S. American example. A part of the Lüneburg Heath became one of its first nature reserves. 5  The trade fair city Leipzig had a transregional importance as a railroad hub and as a publishing industry centre around 1900. It was also known for its openmindedness and hosted a plurality of alternative religions. Iris Edenheiser, Von Aposteln bis Zionisten. Religiöse Kultur im Leipzig des Kaiserreichs, ed. re.form Leipzig e.V. (Marburg: Diagonal, 2010). 6   Heinz Mürmel, “Der Beginn des institutionellen Buddhismus in Deutschland—Der Buddhistische Missionsverein in Deutschland (Sitz Leipzig),” in Buddhismus in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Bd. 11)—Erneuerungsbewegungen (Hamburg, 2006), 160. About Seidenstücker Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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converted publicly to Buddhism here. He and his wife became members of the German branch of the Mahabodhi Society, and he devoted a special issue of his magazine to Buddhism and wrote the article presented in this sourcebook to show his new affiliation. The article was published in the Buddhistische Warte (Buddhist Vantage). This magazine had been founded in 1907 by Seidenstücker as a successor to other Buddhist magazines which were published in Vollrath’s Theosophical Press. It was the official organ of the Mahabodhi Gesellschaft and the Buddhists could eventually emancipate themselves from Theosophy with this magazine. But it soon got into financial trouble without the support of Vollrath’s powerful publishing house. In the same year, Ankenbrand announced that a group of vegetarians was going to embark on a round-the-world trip on foot. The journey was presented as a serious expedition for studying reform societies, vegetarian unions, lodges of good Templars, animal welfare and the way of living of peoples and religions, notably these of Asia (like Buddhists, Parsees and Jains), which Ankenbrand supposed to live largely vegetarian.7 Ankenbrand wanted to meet leaders of progressive reform movements in order to report about their developments worldwide. The journey also had the purpose of proving that one could exist on every spot of the earth without consuming meat or alcohol and be able to cope with the hardest exertions nevertheless.8 He claimed to test different alternative diets like Kokovorismus9 and Mazdaznan.10 And the group planned see Ulrich Steinke, “Karl Bernhard Seidenstücker (1876–1936): Leben, Schaffen, Wirken” (M.A. Thesis, Tübingen University, 1989. Revised version online at: http://www.payer.de/ steinke/steink0.htm). 7  Anon. [Ludwig Ankenbrand] “Zu Fuß um die Welt,” Die Lebenskunst. Zeitschrift für persönliche Kultur, Rundschau auf dem Gebiete moderner Reformarbeit 16 (1911): 401. 8  Anon. [Ludwig Ankenbrand]: “Acht Weltreisende,” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten 262 (1911). The number of the travellers was later reduced to six. 9  ‘Kokovorismus’ (Cocovorism) was an alternative diet invented by August Engelhardt (1875–1919). Prophet August lived in seclusion on a lonely island of the Bismarck Archipelago (a part of colony German New Guinea at that time) in the South Seas. He called himself ‘coconut apostle’ and founded the The Order of the Sun. He claimed to live on nothing but on the holy fruit coconut and on sunlight to reach salvation and communion with God. But his few disciples had to struggle with a high rate of mortality. Dieter Klein, “Neuguinea als Deutsches Utopia: August Engelhardt und Sein Sonnenorden,” in Die Deutsche Südsee 1884–1914: Ein Handbuch, ed. Hermann Josef Hiery (Paderborn et al.: Schöningh 2001), 450–458. 10  Mazdaznan was a health-religion founded by Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha’nish (supposedly Otto Hanisch, 1844/1866–1936) in Chicago. Ha’nish claimed to hold the essential truth of the ancient Zoroastrianism. He promoted mainly a somatic culture with a special

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to walk naked wherever possible. Ankenbrand made different assertions in order to convince his readers to support the venture in various versions of this announcement. But he revealed the deeply religious motivation of his undertaking only in the German Buddhist press. He called it a “Buddhist pilgrimage around the world”11 and planned to spend time in Buddhist monasteries studying and practicing. Ankenbrand reported about his journey in various magazines. Most of them were part of the Lebensreform press, like the Vegetarische Warte or Die Lebenskunst (Art of Living). But he reached also a diverse readership as he managed to sign an agreement with a big pictorial magazine, called Nach Feierabend (After Work), which had more than one million subscribers at that time. The journey started in Taucha, a small town near Leipzig, in February of 1912. The group walked through Germany, crossed the Alps and visited for instance the famous Monte Verità commune. It spent some time on Capri (Italy) where the notorious German reformer and painter Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (1851–1913) resided. The group split, and Ankenbrand continued to travel with his wife through Egypt and Palestine. In Cairo, Ankenbrand sent his wife back to Germany and embarked straightaway to Ceylon. Ankenbrand arrived at the Island Hermitage, a small Buddhist monastery on the Ceylonese Polgasduwa Island in September 1913. This monastery was founded by the German monk Nyanatiloka (Anton Gueth, 1878–1957), the first German to have become a Bhikkhu, an ordained Buddhist monk.12 Ankenbrand took the opportunity to become an Upāsaka, a Buddhist layman. He lived on the island in one of the small simple huts until his wife arrived in Ceylon in February of 1914. They prepared the continuation of their journey to India and Tibet. They wanted to accompany Nyanatiloka who had the same destination, but for unknown reasons this did not happen.13 Nyanatiloka ­travelled vegetarian diet, breathing exercises and practices concerning digestion and bowel function. Johannes Graul, “Atemtechniken, Darmbäder, Vegetarismus—Erlösung nach Mazdaznan,” in Von Aposteln bis Zionisten. Religiöse Kultur im Leipzig des Kaiserreichs, ed. Iris Edenheiser et al. (Marburg: Diagonal, 2010), 170–176. Johannes Graul, “Die MazdaznanBewegung im Deutschen Kaiserreich. Eine Archivalienbasierte Spurensuche,” Religion– Staat–Gesellschaft 12 (2011): 369–386. 11  Ludwig Ankenbrand, “Eine buddhistische Wallfahrt Rund um die Welt,” Die Buddhistische Welt: Deutsche Monatsschrift für Buddhismus 5 (1911/12): 248. 12  Hellmuth Hecker, The Life of Nyānatiloka Thera: The Biography of a Western Buddhist Pioneer, ed. Bhikkhu Nyanatusita (Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 2008). 13  Ankenbrand co-published a small book about Buddhism for which he translated an English text into German around that time: “Das Fünfte Silam: Kumba-Jatakam (übersetzt

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alone, and his journey eventually ended in Sikkim. He returned to Ceylon just before the beginning of World War I. The German Buddhists were classified as ‘enemy aliens’ like all Germans and Austrians due to the fact that Ceylon was a British colony and interned as prisoners of war in prison camps in Ceylon. Later on they were shipped to Australia. The Ankenbrands were interned in camps for war prisoner families. Ankenbrand started and managed to run a school for the internees’ children there during the years of war. The couple was repatriated to Germany after the war. First they went to Nürnberg, then to Stuttgart, where they remained afterwards. Ankenbrand was forced to take up different jobs. He worked as a journalist and as an editor for different magazines and publishing houses. Most notably he was the chief editor for the pictorial magazine Stuttgarter Illustrierte. He could continue to provide ordinary readers with knowledge about Buddhism and India in general, for example with articles about Rabindranath Tagore, who visited Germany at that time, and Mahatma Gandhi with his struggle for independence. Ankenbrand was still active in the Bund für buddhistisches Leben (League for Buddhist Life) and was editing the Zeitschrift für Buddhismus (Magazine for Buddhism). He was teaching ethics and history of religions to the youth of the Religious Humanists until these organisations were proscribed in 1933. During World War II, the couple lived in Munich, where Ankenbrand was working for different naturopathy associations as an editor and librarian. They returned to Stuttgart after the war and Ankenbrand was heavily engaged in the process of the reestablishment of the Württembergian Religious Humanists and worked as a teacher for their youth again. He continued to write for Buddhist, animal welfare and other magazines and to give lectures about religion, especially Buddhism, while he lived still as a practicing Buddhist. He founded the Buddhist Congregation Stuttgart which shrank due to a decline in membership around 1960. He moved with his wife into a retirement home in 1961, still living vegetarian and claiming to be a Buddhist. Both died there in 1971 without having witnessed the revival of vegetarianism and Buddhism in Germany. Ludwig Ankenbrand is an interesting example of those individuals who had been involved in gathering knowledge about Eastern religions and transmitting it to the West. He is representative of other people who had pioneered this process without becoming famous or being remembered in hagiographies. von L. Ankenbrand). Das Alkoholverbot im Buddhismus (von Dr. Wolfgang Bohn),” in Bücher des Bundes für Buddhistisches Leben. Buddhistische Taschenbibliothek Nr. 5 (Trier: Verlag der “Zeitschrift für Buddhismus,” 1915).

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His case shows how this reception took place in nonconformist milieus which covered a variety of religious and cultural deviances.14 Ankenbrand played a special role in transmitting knowledge about Buddhism to a wider audience through mass media and as a teacher. He had the authority and plausibility of first-hand experience on account of his journey, although he reproduced colonial stereotypes as well as an idealised picture of Buddhism in the Western reception. Within the history of Buddhism in the West (respectively in Germany), he was part of a process of change in which the reception of Buddhism turned away from being based on reading literature towards religious practice, entailing serious consequences for individual life conduct. Jörg Albrecht

Further Reading

Baumann, Martin. Deutsche Buddhisten: Geschichte und Gemeinschaften. 2nd ed. Marburg: Diagonal, 1995. Hecker, Hellmuth and Bhikkhu Nyanatusita. The Life of Nyānatiloka Thera: The Biography of a Western Buddhist Pioneer. Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 2008. Hutter, Manfred, ed. Buddhisten und Hindus im Deutschsprachigen Raum. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2001. Prebish, Charles S. and Martin Baumann, eds. Westward Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Zotz, Volker. Auf den glückseligen Inseln: Buddhismus in der deutschen Kultur. Berlin: Theseus, 2000.



Source Text15

In Europe, the Aryan mind, which aims at the ideal, has for many centuries been held in bounds by spiritual Semitism—the Aryan mind, which has always given humanity the highest, most beautiful, and most refined. Yet, even though cruelly suppressed, a bright beam of sunlight did from time to time find its way 14  With a focus on the sixties and seventies see Colin Campbell, “The Cult, the Cultic Milieu and Secularization,” A Sociological Yearbook of Religion in Britain 5 (1972): 119–136. 15  The translation is based on: Ludwig Ankenbrand, “Der Buddhismus und die Modernen Reformbestrebungen” [Buddhism and the Modern Reform Efforts], Buddhistische Warte 3 (1911): 56–61.

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through, a silent coming to consciousness of human dignity flaring up. And the storm could no longer be contained since Giordano Bruno was the first in our Western cultural sphere to give up the personal God of the Hebrews and to preach the love of all life, to extend non-killing to the animal world and to proclaim ethical vegetarianism. Via Goethe, Lamarck, and Rousseau, our way leads up to modern natural science. Darwin taught the great interdependence of all life, or, rather, he gave the scientific reasons for it. And henceforth a time of research and investigation began, a real revolution in all areas of intellectual life. It was a time during which a religious revolution also appeared, free religious associations and the German Catholic movement16 sprang up, the vegetarian movement was initiated, and the first waves of teetotalism began to inundate our German fatherland, that time, during which Perner,17 Schopenhauer, and Wagner, albeit ridiculed at first, launched an animal welfare movement. I do not want to stretch my readers’ patience by a long discussion of the history of individual reform efforts in Germany and their development. It is enough, they are here and have witnessed a gigantic and most pleasant boom especially over the last two decades. We can do without listing them all here individually. We are much more interested in how the adherent of Buddha positions himself towards them. In this regard, the Exalted One’s tale of the man born blind and the elephant (Udāna VI, 4)18 immediately comes to my mind. Each movement believes to have found the right way itself and, instead of supporting each other mutually, the individual reform movements tend to be viewed as battle organisations. When we ask how this has come about, we have to admit that most of the modern reform efforts are based on entirely wrong premises. They were, however, necessary as pioneers of the simple, logically construed teachings of Buddha. Hundreds of them will not find in their individual efforts 16  The German Catholics (Deutschkatholiken) were formed in 1844 as a dissenting group within the Catholic Church. They broke free from many of the precepts of the Church (such as celibacy of priests), which ceased to recognised it. 17  Ignaz Perner (1796–1867), lawyer and founder of the first association for the protection of animals in Munich in 1841. 18  The story of the blind men and the elephant is a widely known South Asian tale, which describes problems with the nature of truth. In the Buddhist version in the Udāna (a small sub-part of the Pāli Canon), each of the blind men touches a different part of the elephant (like head, ears, trunk, etc.) and then they start to dispute violently about its nature. It is used to show how different religious (or philosophical) positions end up in constant quarrel about the truth, because they only have a particular piece of it instead of the knowing the whole thing.

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what they are seeking—Buddhism, however, dissolves their antagonism and shows them how to unite all reform efforts without contradicting nature, culture, or science. How simple is the teaching of suffering. Even science does not deny it, does not deny cause and consequence—but it wants to do away suffering by suffering. Vivisection has to be rejected already from this point of view, not to mention its cruelty. What outlandish eccentrics can we frequently encounter among our vegetarians and teetotalers—and how nicely accounted for is both by Buddha, who had animals neither tortured nor killed! Yes, there are people who profess Buddhism and, by haphazardly interpreting the teaching, follow neither vegetarianism nor teetotalism. There is, however, not a single word by the Exalted One which would permit the killing of an animal, neither is there one that allows partaking of meat, which means sharing in the guilt of an animal’s death. Only monks are allowed to eat meat if it is placed in their begging bowl without evil intent.—A layman who earns his own livelihood may not eat meat, as much as he may not drink alcohol, if he is to follow the Buddha teaching consistently (see the Dhammika-Sutta).19 Perhaps it was due to the times during which Buddha lived that this exception was granted—all of Buddha’s teachings, however, preach the right of life and ethical vegetarianism so loudly and clearly and our times are so advanced that no compromise is necessary; furthermore, Buddha erected no dogma for the monks here, so that in my opinion only the grossest misconstrual can manage to separate vegetarianism from Buddhism. It is equally far from certain that Buddha ate meat shortly before his death. Instead, his death through ‘boar meat’ will prove to be a mistranslation, and it is more likely that poisonous mushrooms led to the master’s death. Buddhism is not a religion in the sense of the Semitic religions of revelation familiar to us: it knows no God, thus needing no priests or intermediaries. Buddhism can therefore never be used as a state church to hold down a people; speaking the refuge vow20 and publicly declaring to be an adherent

19  In this sutta the Buddha was asked about the virtues of a layman. He answered by giving rules that are rather identical with the well-known Five Precepts. They include among others the prohibitions to kill, to hurt any creature, or to consume intoxicating drinks. 20  To take refuge to the three jewels, which are the Buddha, the dharma (the teachings of the Buddha), and the sangha (the community of ordained monks and nuns) is the way to declare oneself an adherent of Buddhism. This can happen in a formal ceremony and can involve a vow to observe the Five Precepts (see footnote 19 above).

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of the teaching thus necessitates leaving one’s Landeskirche.21 It is here that Buddhism links up with the modern freethought movement, which has in our country manifested itself in the Monistic League,22 the free thinker associations, and the German Catholic and the free religious associations. If these free thinkers are atheists and advocate leaving church, and if they, based on evolution theory, teach the relatedness of all being, the all-one, monism, then Buddhism goes one step further—it teaches living it. Each thinking man has to say to himself that it is not enough to merely teach that one is brother to all being—logic rather demands to cease torturing and killing other beings, be they man or animal. This means that Buddhism is from the outset opposed to war and executions as well as vivisection, ritual butchering, hunting, trapping, etc. and thus encompasses the peace, animal protection, and anti-vivisection movements. These are but a few examples. Time is ripe to unite all reform efforts under one roof. Adherents of the individual systems themselves are discontent because of their one-sidedness. This is where Buddhism comes in. Time is ripe for seizing it. It contains all progressive movements, be they the Freethought movement or natural healing, antivivisectionism or anti-vaccinationism, teetotalism, vegetarianism, or the peace movement. It teaches us logic. It gives us inner peace and demonstrates to us cessation of suffering. It does not lead us into contradiction with the results of science, especially modern natural science. It beautifies our life; for once we have realised the fact of suffering in the world, it teaches us how to overcome it. The Buddhist only sees the facts and acts by them. Neither is he an optimist, seeing everything through rosecoloured glasses, contrary to facts. Much less is he a pessimist, for he preaches salvation, self-salvation on Earth. This charge may instead be appropriate for large parts of Christianity with, for instance, its doctrine of predestination, its salvation through Christ and powerlessness of the individual and its cruelly eternal punishments of hell, conceived to be real. When the teaching of the Exalted One beautifies our own life, we will reflect the rays of this sunny teaching back onto our environment. Without hate we are united with what we do not love, but love connects us to all of life. This

21  The Landeskirchen are a special feature of the organisation of Protestant Christianity in German history. Formed as national churches of independent states, they were retained as regional churches after German unification in 1871. They marked a strong identification of church and state, and automatic membership of citizens was basically presumed. 22  See footnote 2, above.

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deep selfless love (mettā)23 can only be felt by one who has lived as a vegetarian for years and not harmed any life, not even an ant, a fly, or a worm. This is not the place to refute for the thousandth time old sayings which have been refuted long ago, such as: ‘Where will it end if we didn’t eat animals; they would multiply excessively.’ Without human intervention nature will miraculously keep its balance. This is amply proven by the realisation of the idea of nature parks, by the harmonic nature in the nature parks of America, Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. We Buddhists support establishing nature parks not just out of ethical feelings or to ameliorate the suffering of all, man and animal, but also out of a purely aesthetic consciousness. A word of Buddha says: “To live in a beautiful area, this is a high blessing,”24 and the beauty of nature, the preservation of the plant and animal world as well as that of the landscape for aesthetic reasons rings through the Buddhist scriptures in thousands of variations. Our Roman-Semitic culture is used up, Western caste thinking has been overcome, battle ships and cannons continue to lose respect, we seek and desire something new that can satisfy heart and mind equally; let us extend our brotherly hand to our brethren from ancient Aryan times. We can give to them a few nice accomplishments of culture, such as the mastery of electricity, trains and so on, but they will give our heart what it is in need of; they will show us how to unite the flowers standing separately to a beautiful garden, to a garden with saturated colours, fragrant, and full of beautiful harmony. You may laugh about my confidence—it will come like that, it must come like that. Even our enemies agree to this when they, contrary to the facts, speak about the ‘yellow peril!’25 May it come, the ‘yellow peril,’ we will receive it gladly, we help prepare it; may it come—it will find the ground well prepared. May it come and preach love, may it bring our hearts and our torn and shattered lands peace. We thankfully greet it as the greatest teaching brought forth by mankind, as the teaching of the most exalted human being, the greatest Aryan! 23   Mettā (loving-kindness) is one of the central virtues or perfections cultivated in Buddhist meditation. 24  The provenance of this quotation is unclear. 25  The ‘yellow peril’ discourse was an expression of growing Western anti-Asian resentments among the colonialist and imperialist powers of Europe and North America. It reflects a racist perception of Asian skin and was conditioned by fear of Asian mass-immigration and the rising power of Asian nations like China and Japan. Within the German context, German Emperor Wilhelm II was a prominent representative of this discourse. He had a famous image drawn that showed figures allegorizing the European nations on the one side, who had to unite to resist against a dark cloud, in which a Buddha represented the Asian threat to Western civilisations.

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The great majority of the West still opposes or misunderstands our little band—how much more must we work. And our work must begin where we can assume some degree of understanding for it, i.e. with the adherents of reform efforts. Do each of us his duty, and the teaching of the Exalted One will spread more quickly than many believe, it will take root and deepen and refine the life of our people. With sword in hand Christianity brought us the Cross—in yellow robes of peace, the teaching of the Exalted One shows us how to overcome the Cross! Now choose! And, I know it, dear friend, you want to overcome the Cross, and the suffering, not on the individual level, no, all the suffering and all the misery as a whole; so follow me in taking refuge in the Exalted One! Selected by Jörg Albrecht and translated by Jörg Albrecht and Hans Martin Krämer

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Rowland Williams: Christianity and Hinduism (England, 1856) Introduction Rowland Williams (1817–1870) is best known for his part in the controversies about the reception of biblical criticism and liberal theology in British Anglican theology in the mid-nineteenth century. In particular, the accusations of heresy he faced over his claims that historical criticism could be applied to the Biblical text in respect to his contribution to Essays and Reviews (1860), and his subsequent acquittal, are seen as landmark events.1 As one immediate impact, it made a scholar whose reputation has fared better, Frederick Denison Maurice (1805–1872), employable again in a university context.2 However, beyond this, Williams’ contribution to theology has been largely ignored, or relegated to a mere footnote in many historical surveys of the period. This is a matter lamented by a number of scholars who have sought to show that his contribution is of much greater value, and that he deserves a wider audience. The sidelining of Williams in theological history is, perhaps, not entirely surprising, however, as his work on biblical criticism was not strikingly original; he relied, in large part, upon his knowledge of the German critics who went before him, and, in his own day, others pushed the boundaries beyond where he had gone. Moreover, his theological tracts, inspired greatly by Coleridge, were very much of their time, although still replete with wisdom and learning and worth reading in their own right. His own career path as well, which took him to what was then the provincial backwater of the fairly newly established college at Lampeter, and subsequent parish ministry were not likely to push him into the forefront of attention. Nevertheless, the work he considered his magnum opus, the text we shall deal with here, Christianity and Hinduism (1856), was 1  See Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part II 1860–1901, 2nd edn. (London: SCM Press, 1972), where it is described as the “most momentous single judgement” (81); and, Gerald Parsons, “Reform, Revival and Realignment: The Experience of Victorian Anglicanism,” in Religion in Victorian Britain I: Traditions, ed. Gerald Parsons (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1988), 14–66, 40. 2  Paul Badham, “The Significance of Rowland Williams,” in The Welsh Journal of Religious History 1 (2006): 50–58.

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a strikingly original and groundbreaking work.3 The fact that it too has been largely forgotten and was of little impact in his own day, is, to use a much overused phrase but one utterly apt in this circumstance, because it was ahead of its time. Indeed, when its time came, which was, in mainstream theology, the following century, its style and attitude made it rather outmoded. It may be wondered then why it is being reproduced and commented on. The answer is simply that, while ahead of its time, Williams’ work nevertheless exemplifies related thinking of his age, and is one of the finest examples of nineteenth century liberal Christian discourse on the religious Other. What then of the text? Its title, Paraméswara-jnyána-góshthí: A Dialogue of the Knowledge of the Supreme Lord in which are Compared the Claims of Christianity and Hinduism, and Various Questions of Indian Religion and Literature Fairly Discussed, would never make it a household name; we will refer to it by the shorter title, which appears on its spine, Christianity and Hinduism. It was written for a prize, offered by John Muir of the British East India Company, for a work of apologetics between Christianity and Hinduism, and published anonymously, although the dates on the frontispiece (Cambridge 1847, Lampeter 1856) gave an immediate clue to its author. As the title suggests, it took the form of a dialogue in which three Europeans and three Hindus presented their views, and who we will meet in the text. It is worth mentioning that the younger Christian interlocutor, Blancombe, is generally held to represent Williams’ own views. Of the three Indians an Advaita Vedantin Brahmin called Vidyáchárya represents the most sophisticated opponent they face, and is the one we will see speaking in the extracts here. It may also be mentioned that the inclusion of a Nepalese Buddhist is because Buddhism is understood by Williams, like most scholars of his day, to be a form of Hinduism. The other voice we will meet is that of the narrator, who we are given no direct information about, nor are we told to whom he addresses this dialogue, but it appears he is an Indian, which may be surmised from information in the first and final extracts reproduced here. One of the most striking aspects of the text is the deep and sensitive knowledge Williams exhibits of the traditions they represent, which three of his successors at Lampeter, all scholars of Hinduism and Indian religions, regard as astounding in a book of this period.4 Indeed, the 3  In Williams’ own estimation it was “my chief work, and the one by which I should wish thoughtful critics to judge me,” see the “Letter to J. H. Rees,” 18/2/1858, in Ellen Williams, ed., The Life and Letters of Rowland Williams, volume I (London: Henry S. King and Co., 1874), 399, see also 306. 4  Badham, “The Significance of Rowland Williams,” 52. The scholars in question are Professors Terry Thomas, Cyril Williams and Gavin Flood. The same opinion has also come from the

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book’s erudition and discussion of such matters was rarely equaled until we reached the twentieth century, and worse representations of the Hindu traditions were certainly found then. We will turn now to discuss the book in its context. This will involve covering seven themes: the science of religion; biblical criticism; fulfilment theology; Logos theology; missionary apologetics; the theology of religions; and, colonialism and imperialism. While each is intimately interrelated, we will cover each as a separate sphere to assess Williams’ outstanding contribution, as well as the importance of this text as a representation of its time. First, the science of religion. What may strike many as a great weakness of this book today is that Williams wrote it without ever going to India, and, as far as we know, without ever speaking to a Hindu or Buddhist. In some ways, this makes his empathetic treatment all the more remarkable. However, it is something which would not have been seen as an issue in his day. Williams was contemporaneous with Max Müller, and like the so-called father of Religious Studies, studied other religions textually. As such, his work stands as a representative sample of the burgeoning science of religion, but possessing extraordinary depth of understanding, and arguably was unrivalled, in English, for its philosophical representation of the Hindu tradition amongst nineteenth century texts—a remarkable feat for a book initially drafted in the first half of that century. The fact that Williams was fluent in German, and also learnt Sanskrit to a high level, is no doubt the key factor in this.5 Second, biblical criticism, which may seem unrelated; however, as noted above, Williams’ lasting fame, such as it is, rests principally upon the fact that he insisted on unflinchingly applying the methods of historical criticism to Biblical texts. His intellectual integrity in this regard, insisting that faith and reason must be in accord, was a matter he carried over into his study of Sanskrit literature. He then carried it back over to his study of Biblical texts. If a true and fair comparison were to be made of Hinduism and Christianity, Williams averred, it meant that exactly the same standards of historical analysis and Hindu scholar Professor Frank Whaling, who was external examiner of my PhD thesis which explored, in part, Williams’ work, and who has later described it as “an extraordinary book”; see Frank Whaling, “A History of the Study of Religion with a Brief Reference to Rowland Williams,” The Welsh Journal of Religious History 1 (2006): 88–113, 91. 5  On this book’s position in the science of religion see, for instance, Gerald Parsons, “From Heresy to Acceptance? Rowland Williams and John William Colenso in Perspective,” The Welsh Journal of Religious History 1 (2006): 59–87, 80–1, where, speaking of his attempts to introduce a fair study of different religions, he says: “What Williams sought, through his writings, to pioneer at Lampeter, has now become commonplace and unremarkable” (81).

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criticism be applied to the texts of both traditions. As such, it was in large part through undertaking this work that Williams was led to believe that biblical criticism should not just be applied to the Old Testament texts, but also to the New Testament texts. Without him it would certainly have taken longer for university theology not only to take up, without fear of reprisal, the task of biblical criticism, free from confessional control. While little recognised in its own day or afterwards, this text has played a key part in the intellectual history of the modern English speaking world; although, it was not exempt from criticism, for the views expressed on biblical criticism, by Williams’ opponents.6 Third, fulfilment theology. As I have argued elsewhere, although long associated with John Nicol Farquhar (1861–1929), especially as exemplified in The Crown of Hinduism (1913), fulfilment theology has a much longer pedigree in British theology. Indeed, as far as we can make out, its genesis, as a particular thought form, goes back to Cambridge university in the 1840s out of which emerge the two earliest examples, Williams’ Christianity and Hinduism (originally 1847), and Maurice’s Religions of the World (first published 1847). Similar theological ideas were also found, though, in Max Müller and others; while it probably has roots back to the philosophy of Hegel, and earlier representations of it exist throughout Christian history, from the thought of the Jesuits in sixteenth century China, to the work of Justin Martyr in the second century CE. The principle idea of fulfilment theology, as an almost prototypical example of inclusivism, is that non-Christian religions are a form of preparation for Christianity, and just as the laws of the Old Testament were felt to be a pointer and guide to Christ for the Jews, so were the texts and traditions of, for instance, Hinduism, felt to do the same for Hindus. Williams’ work, therefore, does not exist in a vacuum, but is part of a larger discourse. However, in the context of British theological thought in the nineteenth century he can be seen as one of the forerunners of what, given the context of the British Empire, was a highly influential form of engagement and missionary apologetic. Indeed, in one form or another, fulfilment theology is still alive and well today. Moreover, as an early example it is remarkable that Williams’ work provides one of the most sophisticated accounts. Maurice’s text, by way of contrast, surveys many religious traditions, and decides that each has a single central principle which is fulfilled, at least potentially, in Christianity. Williams’ in-depth analysis of doctrines exceeds this, however, it is perhaps this very level of analysis which was its downfall, for while Maurice’s book was reprinted for decades, Williams’ fell into obscurity. 6  See Nigel Yates, “Rowland Williams and His Episcopal Critics: Hamilton, Ollivant and Thirwall,” The Journal of Welsh Religious History 1 (2006): 1–13, 5–7.

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Fourth, Logos theology, which is intimately connected with fulfilment theology. While various rationales could be given as to why pointers to Christianity could be found in the world’s religion, evangelical thinkers, for instance, looked to a memory of an early revelation, gradually lost since Babel. For nineteenthcentury liberals, however, the prologue of John’s Gospel was an inspiration; this spoke of Jesus as “the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (John 1:9, AV), referring also to him as the ‘Word,’ or ‘Logos,’ of God. Using biblical images about Jesus as the pre-existent Word of God, Logos theologians proposed that throughout history God “did not leave himself without witness” (Acts 14:17) but had sent prophets and been at work within all the world’s great religious traditions; the light that “lighteth every man.” While Christianity and Hinduism appears not to have had a great reception, it is nevertheless clear that some of Williams’ other works, such as Rational Godliness, were part of a strand that represented and expounded this point of view.7 Williams’ thought in this regard was not isolated, or indeed, without influence, however, the major influences for Logos theology in relation to nonChristian religions were probably the more popular, and often populist, works of Maurice and Müller. Fifth, missionary apologetics, which was the prime purpose of Williams’ work. This may also have been part of the reason for its failure to capitalise on its success. Christianity and Hinduism is a dense and deeply learned book which would, no doubt, have taken a great deal of time to ponder and reflect upon. As such, while its purpose was to appeal, as Muir’s prize stipulated, to learned Hindus, its very success made it unlikely to appeal to the very groups most likely to use it, missionaries; at this period there was a general feeling, perhaps not undeserved, that most missionaries were poorly educated men (there were a growing number of women as well, of course), and this erudite volume did not make easy reading.8 Contrariwise, we may postulate that scholars and students of Hinduism, especially in later periods would not have looked to a book on missionary apologetics for a guide to the subject. Nevertheless, Williams’ book, perhaps indicated by the task set by Muir, indicates that he came on the cusp of a change. The early British missionary adventure of the late eighteenth into the nineteenth century, like most Protestant mission of the time, took a fairly confrontational and hostile approach to the religions they faced. As the second half of the nineteenth century came on, however, 7  Rowland Williams, Rational Godliness: After the Mind of Christ and the Written Voices of His Church (London: Bell and Daldy, 1855). 8  See Allison Twells, The Civilizing Mission and the English Middle Class, 1792–1850 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 36–7, see especially note 46 on 233.

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this was changing, at least in the field, partly due to a recognition that the old attitude did not work, but also due to a growing knowledge and understanding of the systems of the religious Other. In the years and decades after Williams’ book was published we see, perhaps, the best representative of this, Monier Monier-Williams (1819–1899) advancing an appreciate understanding of other religions from within the folds of British evangelical circles.9 Williams’ work therefore represents a new stance towards encountering the religious Other, and so is representative of things to come. Sixth, the theology of religions, over which there is disagreement exactly when it began as a distinct area of thought, nevertheless, the changes in the nineteenth century of which Williams is a representative are part of the journey towards it. By moving from a dogmatic dismissal of the religious Other towards a reflective analysis of ideas and comparison based upon, as far as possible, fair and transparent criteria, we see something new in Williams. Indeed, he should also be seen as part of the history of Comparative Theology.10 Nevertheless, we must not forget that Williams’ book was a work of his age, and parts exemplify this. For instance, he clearly states that Christianity is a true religion and Hinduism a false one. For many later critics this would be too harsh, while, as noted above, later missionary apologetics found it unhelpful. Despite this, however, his attitude towards Hinduism is, I would argue, more appreciative than that of Farquhar, whose ideology is that Hinduism must die for any life to come from it. While Farquhar’s language is not as stark as Williams,’ his attitude is, arguably, less sympathetic. For later thinkers, then, Williams’ explicit fulfilment theology as well as his clear statement that Hinduism was false and Christianity true, would make this book flawed. However, if one takes these statements out, it is possible to see a Christian reading of Hinduism that is, at least in places, more appreciative of Hinduism than most works published well into the twentieth century, for instance he is prepared to speak of vac (vâch) (described below) as a prophecy contained within Hinduism, and his Logos theology allows him to see it as revelation. It is certainly interesting to note that instead of ending with the conversion of the Hindus, the book ends rather inconclusively with each going their own way, but pondering the questions raised. It is also surprising how well some of Williams’ ideas have stood the 9  Paul Hedges, “Post-Colonialism, Orientalism, and Understanding: Religious Studies and the Christian Missionary Imperative,” The Journal of Religious History 32:1 (2008): 55–75, 58–9. 10  Paul Hedges, “The Old and the New Comparative Theologies: Discourses on Religion, the Theology of Religions, Orientalism and the Boundaries of Traditions,” Religions 3:4 (2012): 1120–37.

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test of time compared to his contemporaries: Maurice, still read more widely as a theologian in his own right, is clearly naïve in his representation of every religion having a single guiding principle; while Müller’s work supposes that the future of religion is a single global religion which will encapsulate the best of every tradition, within a newly envisaged Christian framework; in contrast, while the fulfilment theology which Williams (along with Maurice and Müller) espoused has become a problematic category, his detailed discussions of the connections of vac with Logos and the Holy Spirit retain a certain resonance with some contemporary concerns, and may still contain ideas for intercultural dialogue between Christian and Hindu traditions, perhaps looking at ways Christianity can be expressed in Indian form; the depth of Williams’ treatment is found in few texts even today, while it is only in more recent times that pneumatology has generally become part of these discussions.11 Seventh, colonialism and imperialism mark the context of the work in various ways, both empirically and ideologically. While it has no explicit political concern, it is made possible by colonialism, specifically by money made by the British East Indian Company through Muir’s prize. It also works into the complex connection between mission and empire. However, against many Orientalist critics who paint a one-sided discourse of power relations, we see a much more complex interaction taking place in this text. As we have seen, Williams’ application of historical criticism to the Hindu texts led him to further extend his use of these in relation to his own Christian tradition; as such it may even be suggested that the effect of this book is more challenging to the coloniser than the colonised—certainly we have no indication that a single learned Hindu, to whom it was directed, ever read the text. Moreover, it also played a part, however small, in the same explosion of knowledge of the religious Other witnessed in this period, and so, played a part in the questioning of the West’s own religious and intellectual norms.12 Moreover, that Williams felt that he had to end this text with an inconclusive outcome may indicate, despite his belief in Christianity’s inherent superiority, that he realised he was pitted against a refined and sophisticated system of thought and belief which will not readily capitulate to Western power, influence, and faith. However, we must not downplay the explicit tones of superiority found in the text. Williams’ 11  See David Cheetham, “Inclusivisms: Honouring Faithfulness and Openness,” in Christian Approaches to Other Faiths, eds. Paul Hedges and Alan Race. SCM Core Textbook Series (London: SCM Press, 2008), 63–84, 74 and 75–6. 12  On assessing charges of Orientalism against such figures it is important to remember that they were thinkers of their own time and era, on this see Hedges, “Post-colonialism, Orientalism and Understanding,” 69–75.

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makes the declaration, put into Vidyáchárya’s mouth, that Christianity represents the religion of a higher people, something which was a commonplace thought in his day.13 It is unsurprising, and even at the time of the famous Edinburgh Missionary Conference in 1910 where the worldwide Protestant church was just starting to think that indigenous leadership was possible there were still many, sixty years after Williams was writing, who regarded the West as superior.14 Given Williams’ cultural context it is perhaps surprising that he was prepared to allow that aspects of Hindu thought and expression could be seen as ways to express the Gospel in an Indian context; in positions of cultural, even racial, hegemony it is unusual that any trace of the other’s culture, as a modifying feature of religion, is accepted in seeking to convert the other.15 In relation to these themes we can see that Christianity and Hinduism represents many strands within the complex web that exemplifies Western, specifically British, contact with the religious Other in the nineteenth century. Therefore, I would suggest this little known book, by a man generally acknowledged as one of the great Anglican theological minds of the nineteenth century, deserves to be known and contemplated more widely. Finally, I will briefly overview the portions of text selected. This consists of five sections from different parts of the text, mainly related by the concept of vac; vac is the concept of divine speech, which utters from the divine principle, Brahman, and is the source of creation and life, and a key component of Vedantic philosophy. The extracts begin with an introduction to the characters of the dialogue. In the second, Vidyáchárya is speaking of vac in the context of Hindu ideas of the nature of reality and cosmological conceptions. He introduces vac as a concept, and we see Blancombe respond with some amazement. In the third section, Blancombe is quite scathing of Hinduism, saying that despite his appreciation of the concept of vac Hinduism simply fails for him by not having a full enough conception of God. The fourth section, almost at the very end of the text, sees Blancombe summing up his critique of Hinduism. It is important, in coming to this section, to realise that major sections of the book outlining Williams’ assessment of the historicity of the Hindu scriptures and traditions as well as the Christian scriptures and traditions have now been covered. It is primarily on this basis that he is launching much of his critique of Hinduism as false and lacking ‘Divine authority,’ because he thinks the Hindu texts have succumbed to the assaults of historical criticism. 13  See Twells, The Civilizing Mission. 14  See chapter 3.11. 15  See Paul Hedges, Controversies in Interreligious Dialogue and the Theology of Religions (London: SCM Press, 2010), 105–108.

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Something he sees as being in contrast to Christianity, for while some historical issues can be found with the Hebrew Scriptures he feels the New Testament texts and apostolic tradition is laid on much more solid foundations. It must be remembered that this text predates Essays and Reviews. For those who saw Williams as a heretical figure for his advocacy of historical criticism, it should be realised that he believed Christianity had nothing to fear from truth or reason.16 It is also in this section that we see a clear indication of his fulfilment theology, which looks back to the early church fathers for precedence, and his speaking of the possibility of prophecy in Hinduism. The final section sees the narrator contemplating conversion. Paul Hedges

Further Reading

Badham, Paul. “The Significance of Rowland Williams.” The Welsh Journal of Religious History 1 (2006): 50–58. Flood, Gavin. An Introduction to Hinduism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Hedges, Paul. Preparation and Fulfilment: A History and Study of fulfilment Theology in Modern British Thought in the Indian Context. Bern, Frankfurt, Oxford and New York: Peter Lang, 2001. Hedges, Paul. “The Old and the New Comparative Theologies: Discourses on Religion, the Theology of Religions, Orientalism and the Boundaries of Traditions.” Religions 3:4 (2012): 1120–37. Parsons, Gerald. “From Heresy to Acceptance? Rowland Williams and John William Colenso in Perspective.” The Welsh Journal of Religious History 1 (2006): 59–87.

16  On this, see Badham, “The Significance of Rowland Williams,” 50–58, 55–6 and 58. Indeed, it is useful to note here Badham’s observation that: “In his own day Williams was repeatedly accused by Bishop Olivant of Llandaff of ‘undermining the faith’ of the Lampeter students. Williams’ response to this was robustly to point out that no student taught by himself at Lampeter had abandoned Christianity. By contrast a notoriously high proportion of ‘Lampeter Brethren’ from Olivant’s days as vice-principal had given up all allegiance to Christian faith and instead had founded a new religious movement of their own in which they practiced open marriages in a commune known as ‘The Abode of Love.’ (58, reference to D. T. W. Price, A History of St David’s University College Lampeter, volume I, (Cardiff, 1977), 65).

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Source Text17

You have often asked me to give you a fuller account of the conversation which I once heard at Conjeveram between two Englishmen and some learned Hindús, who disputed about the true knowledge of the Supreme Being. I am better prepared to do so now, from having written down, as far as my memory enabled me, the longer among the speeches, with the names of the speakers opposite them [. . .]. There were two natives of Great Britain, both of whom I imagine must have been priests; but one was much the more venerable of the two, and when he spoke, his language had a tone of calm authority. His name was said to be Mounatin. His companion, who was called Blancombe, treated him with great deference, and seemed glad to learn from him; but he himself, the younger I mean, was more skilful in arguing, and undertook the greater part of the dialogue. He seemed to agree, as far as possible, with his opponents, as if he were in search of some common ground upon which they might meet. It happened luckily, or as I now think, by some divine ordinance, that among those who took part in the discussion were two of the wisest men who could easily be found in India. One was a Dandi18 of the Brahmanical caste, and of the greatest reputation for sanctity and learning, called Vidyáchárya. He had never in all his life done injury to anything that breathed, though some Englishmen once tried to persuade him that in the water he drank were swarms of animate beings; this however Vidyáchárya denied to be true, and said the appearance was an illusion. He had been married, and had educated his children at Benares, but was then a Vairági,19 or rather, as I think, a Sanyási, having entered upon that advanced stage when he practised little besides religious 17  Rowland Williams, Paraméswara-jnyána-góshthí: A Dialogue of the Knowledge of the Supreme Lord in which are Compared the Claims of Christianity and Hinduism, and Various Questions of Indian Religion and Literature Fairly Discussed (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell and Co, 1856); extracts from 1–3, 100–101, 215–216, 552–556, 559. Original notes have been omitted from this text, which were mostly references to discussions elsewhere in the book on particular concepts. 18  The term dandi technically refers to someone who carries a staff (dand) that was a symbol of a Hindu renouncer (also known as sadhu or sanyasi). Given the variety of Hindu orders of holy men in the diversity of the traditions across India it can be used variously—a brief discussion of this is found in W. Crooke, “Sannyāsī,” in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. XI, ed. James Hastings (1920), 192–3. 19  This term may refer to a particular class of Hindu renouncers who are devoted to Vishnu, however, from the context of the text further on, it bcomes clear that he is a devotee of Shiva, so that it may simply refer to a type of renouncer, from the root vairāgya, meaning renunciation or indifference, and here Williams’ distinction from a Sanyási is obscure.

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contemplation [. . .]. This other was a Guru, or teacher of great dignity, who presided over a Matha, or a kind of College, somewhere in the neighbourhood, contacting a vast number of disciples. His name was Sadánanda, and he also enjoyed a high reputation, though for learning rather than for the devotion which was ascribed to Vidyáchárya [. . .]. Together with these, although I somewhat wondered to find him in their company, was a conductor of the worship of Buddha, who had come all the way from Nepaul, partly, as he said, to confer with his brethren in Ceylon [Sri Lanka] about the differences in their sacred books; but partly, as I suspect, to mediate, or re-arrange, matters in some religious uneasiness of a half political kind, with a dispute about the genuineness of certain relics, which had sprung up in the island [. . .]. But I have forgotten to mention one other person, who occasionally took part in the dialogue. This was an European, named Wolff, but not an Englishman, though he had been employed by your Government to make some inquiry into the causes of cholera. [. . .] [Vidyáchárya speaking (about the nature of reality)] “Have you still, my friend, to apprehend that the same appearance, which to men from their ignorance is illusion, is also on the side which more nearly resembles substantial reality, that which the Rig-Veda calls Vách, namely, the speech of the primeval Spirit, the eternal yet transitory daughter of Brahmá. “I uphold,” she says, “both, the sun and the ocean, the firmament and fire, and both day and night. Me the gods render universally present everywhere, and pervade of all beings. Even I declare this self, who is worshipped by gods and men; I make strong whom I choose; I make him Brahmá, holy and wise. For Rudra I bend the bow, to slay the demon foe of Brahmá; for the people I make war; and I pervade heaven and earth [. . .]. Originating all beings, I pass like the breeze; I am above this heaven; beyond this earth; and what is the great one, that am I.” This same Vách, many wise men say, should be understood by Sachi, the wife of Indra; for her name too signifies speech. Yet speech, we have seen, is nothing without thought. Hence it cannot be wrong to say, with our religious books, that, before any of these worlds, or sky, or aught above it, before day and night, and before death or immortality, the same Vách was sustained unshaken within the primeval Spirit, who was alone, breathing without breath. Besides Him nothing was yet, which since has been. First in his mind then was formed desire, which the wise recognise by the intellect in their hearts, as the link of being where as yet is nothing. This sustained within Brahm, therefore, (Swadhá) becoming Vách, the daughter of Brahmá, presents herself throughout all worlds as Máyá; so that whatever is seen anywhere in creation is the voice of the creating God, and His voice is the thought of the eternal Spirit. The appearance of all creatures is the voice of the Creator, and that again the volition of the Eternal.” Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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While Vidyáchárya was uttering the last three or four sentences, Blancombe appeared to be listening most attentively, and yet to be half lost in wonder; for he exclaimed to himself unconsciously, yet half aloud so that I could hear him, “How wonderful! Wonderful alike in its resemblance, and in that, resembling so nearly, it still differs so much!” [. . .] [Blancombe speaking] “By such thoughts, I conceive, we are led on more and more to a lively apprehension of the personality of God. However grand all that Vedánta speculation may sound, about abstract thought, and joy, we, being led on to a conception of the Deity as one who justifies Himself to the affections, are led to conceive of Him as one whom we can trust; and such a one is a living agent, or what is commonly termed a Being with personality. Observe then how far I am obliged to break away from my venerable friend the A’chárya (a term for a lineage teacher, applied herein to Vidyáchárya). All that he has said about Vách, as the voice of God creating, and about Máyá, as being the representation of the Divine thought by nature, appearing to me not only grand but credible, so far as it traces the visible world justly to creative Mind. But when he speaks of Brahm becoming Brahmá, I don’t understand how mere potentiality could ever become person, except so far as his theogony is a lively picture of the progress of the human mind in speculation. We may, in our attempts to grope backwards towards a beginning, figure to ourselves a time when God had not yet created; when, therefore, it may be said, the Creator was not; and yet the relative conception of our flesh-bound minds are apt to form of a Deity in such predicament, is that of something potential, or capable of thereafter coming forth. But then to think for a moment that the Deity must have been in that way, because our conception may be so speculatively fashioned, is to me an astonishing childishness, put out in a guise of wisdom. Even the representation of Brahmn, or mere spirit, as the object of worship, does not appear to satisfy the conditions which our heart and mind require. For mere spirit, if you take away from it personality, or ruling unity of consciousness, becomes as truly a mere power or agency, as fire, or steam, or electricity, though it may be a more wonderful agency than any one of them. Yet it is still just as little a ruling agent as they are. How then can we pray to it? We have lost the Father, the Governor, and the Judge, all of which attributes characterized our God, and we have got instead a dumb abstraction, only better than an idol, so far as the picture of the mind may be somewhat higher than those of the senses.” [. . .] [Blancombe speaking] “But fifthly, I must add that all the above triple argument should strike you more strongly, if you compare it with the miserable bewilderment of your own system, both as regards its want of any attestation of Divine authority, and its inherent barrenness of any power to save the soul Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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from evil. We have seen its history as an external warrant of immutable infallibility break down. It has no Divine authority, except such as parts of it may by their partial truth persuade the conscience to admit. You acknowledge its weakness as a moral instrument, by your despair of improving men of low caste, or of teaching them even idolatry. But that fancied wisdom in which you look down upon the ignorant, without effort to teach them, leaves your own souls barren, with the sensuous richness of the popular faith stript away, and with cold abstractions instead. For whatever comfort your metaphysical subtlety may derive from “blending all opposites into a higher unity,” or “identifying thought with being,” such imaginations hardly touch the realities of life; and we who live and die amidst many possibilities of suffering, though with aspirations to something better, need each man a deliverance for his own soul. To many, if not to yourself, I know that something more personal and lifelike than all that dreary revolution of Siva and Brahmá is requisite, not only for mental comfort, but to restore, or bring out the capacities of, their moral being. They cannot be themselves, until they know something more of God. For how can they act with firmness which comes of faith, while they doubt whether they are doing His will, or even if He has a will? Or whence are true contrition, or even a sense of answerableness, and such virtues as righteousness and truthtelling, to derive permanent motives, if we are only parts of one infinite activity, and our thought of self-consciousness an illusion? Not but that any of your metaphysical speculations, so far as they are probable or innocent, might stand very well with Christianity, which is not hostile to any kind of truth. If it is wise to call nature or the world “a sustained manifestation of the Divine thinking,” rather than the handiwork of God, nothing in the New Testament forbids our doing so, provided you do not confound the creature with the Creator, in such a way as to support idolatry or sensualism. Such a confusion would be exactly what we lament to find here prevailing. Again your parable or history, of Vách coming forth from Brahmá, is not opposed to Christianity, but might rather prepare you for apprehending what we read in St John, that the Word was with God, and was God, and that through the Word all things were born, and without it nothing began to be. If indeed Vách means only a process reflected from human action, we need not dispute about her; for our belief is, not that God should be lowered by imagination to the standard of man, but that He shews us the very truth of His Being, so as to raise, or restore, man to the likeness of God. But if Vách means, that out of the will of Eternal Spirit goes forth, by whatever ineffable utterance, and remaining undivided, Wisdom creating, and preserving, and quickening, then I should hope you need only to see much wisdom embodied in the life of our Son of Man, in order to approach very nearly to our doctrine of the SON shewing the FATHER. With submission Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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at least to wiser people, I do not think it a great tampering with mixture of distinct systems, than the early Church doctors permitted themselves in setting forth the life of Christ after the phrase of Plato, if I say your Vách appears a prophecy, or expression, of the everliving Word of God. At least, what you said about thought or reason as going before speech, and coming forth in deed, may help you to understand why we conclude the Word of the Eternal to have been from of old, though manifested once in Jesus in flesh and time. Whatever you believe of incarnations, though such as you mention are but poor expressions of the allholy and everblessed Spirit, may also illustrate to you our doctrine of the One Infinite and Eternal Spirit becoming unveiled to the eyes of our mind, by taking body in the sacred form of Jesus our Lord. But whatever things you retain out of your old superstition, must either stand in the light of clear reason, or in virtue of their being reconciled with the faith of Christ, which has Divine warrants, rather than from such claims to authority or soundness as we have seen utterly fail. But I have spoken of things which your religion does not heal; nay which it directly supports; rites in some cases idolatrous, in others obscene; unworthy thoughts of the moral character of Deity, and unreasonable distinctions between men; with various forms of social ignorance and vice. That it spares, and even cherishes such things, is at best weakness; and weakness to such an extent in religion is falsehood. But just where your older superstitions have failed, we trust the faith of Christ would prevail to heal. It would come with such attestations of Divine authority as you have failed to shew, though your attempt implies that they are desirable. It would teach you the righteous Governor, yet not vindictive; and of the everlasting Friend, yet not weak, but yet engaged in a perpetual war of Providence in behalf of our souls and of His own laws, against whatever evils would ruin the one, by breaking the other. It would give you definite hope, and personal responsibility, as motives to action. It would quicken your regard for truth, in deed, and in belief. Such teaching, as we give to the young, and to girls, in our schools, would then seem to you a duty. And just as now your superstitions, being false, are morally weak, so the Gospel of Christ, being strong to save every soul of man by which its good news is welcomed, would put forth in good works the easiest and most certain proof of its being Divine. “But my arrows were shot before; and this was a summary, which it is no use lengthening. I feel now, more than ever, the hopelessness of disputing men into religion. For we have to deal with living beings, whose freewill must be persuaded; and that only God can do, or their prayer must concur in doing. If I could only persuade you to join me in prayer for the truth, our battle would be half won, and it would be one of those happy victories, in which there is ­neither

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victor nor vanquished, but one helps to save a soul, and the other is saved. So far, however, as argument can avail, it has been shewn clearly that Hindúism has neither Divine authority from external history, nor internal power of healing men from evil; whereas God has given every persuasive of wonderful signs, and of inherent truth, and of quickening power, to make us embrace the good news, that all mankind may come through the faith of the Son, in the life of the spirit, to the love of the Father. The practical question now lies with yourselves, though the result in the hands of the Searcher of hearts.” “You know, I have never pretended,” here Vidyáchárya answered meekly, “to be able to compete with you in discussion. Nor would I deny that your religion, as that of a superior people, may be in some respects better than ours. But yet it is a hard thing to give up what we have always regarded as truth, especially conveyed to us as it is in all our books of sacred inspiration.” “Not hard, I should hope,” replied Blancombe, “if you only lay it down for a higher and more perfect truth. We do not ask you to lay down the less, without offering you a far greater. Nor is this plea of inspiration altogether open to you; for we have seen it negative by the numerous contradictions in the books you call sacred. We found this too, without even venturing on the ground of comparison with the science of modern times; for the books are signally inconsistent with themselves, in the different objects of worship which they propound, and in all their ideas. All that weight, therefore, which you justly attach to Divine authority in religion, has fallen away from your Sástras, and should lead you over to the faith which can only truly claim it.” “Do you then,” rejoined the A’chárya, “require an absolute renunciation of the authority of our entire system, and allow us to retain only what agrees with your faith?” “For ourselves we require nothing,” answered Blancombe, “but such seems to be the requirement of truth, which you would confess to have the most binding authority in religion. Such therefore must be the will of God, and your way to happiness.” [. . .] What became of the speakers in the Dialogue I never happened to hear, for I soon changed my abode. But I have myself married a wife, who was brought up in the schools of the missionaries. She is more decidedly a Christian than I yet am able to be myself, and she sometimes reads to me the words of Christ, which seem very wholesome. We intend our children, if possible, to have the benefit of the same schooling as their mother had; and I often doubt, (perhaps you can advise me,) whether I ought not to take the more decided step of receiving your sacraments, and owning myself as a follower of Christ, the Son of God, and Saviour of Mankind. Selected and annotated by Paul Hedges

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Section 2 Religion, Culture and Power

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Introduction to Section 2

Religion and the State

The following section comprises texts by authors who strove to define the role of religion for their states and societies during the heyday of European imperialism, when political and economic challenges reached a novel urgency; these texts also came to shape the emerging national movements in their respective regions. For these movements, religion had become a crucial issue as it touched upon the reassertion and the restructuring of what was often regarded as central for the success of a thriving nation. The responses to this situation sometimes included a streamlining of religious traditions and institutions under the impact of missionary Christianity and modern science (see also s­ ections I and III), but also a justification of social and political reforms along religious lines. They were equally shaped by the administrative and legal changes in the established framework of religious pluralism, which had been brought about by imperial governments and constitutional movements in the Middle East and in East Asia, under the impact of European hegemony and presence as well as in reaction to it, since the middle of the nineteenth century.

Cultural and National Redefinitions of Religion

Doctrines, practices and institutions which were now connected with the core of national culture, gained a specifically religious status in the face of the challenge of missionary Christianity and its protectors. For Confucianism in China, the reform of which was propagated in 1898 by Kang Youwei (1858– 1927), the most prominent Chinese constitutional monarchist of the late nineteenth century, this was in many ways an innovation (chapter 2.01—Roetz). When he experienced the quarrels of the imperial government with foreign nations about Christian missionary activities, he concluded that religious issues were in fact a national affair of highest significance, and that religion in China therefore had to be brought firmly under the control of a reformed Confucian national organisation, cleansed of popular superstitions and modelled after the Christian churches. His reinterpretation of Confucianism as a ‘national religion,’ which in its reshaped form would lead to the moral uplift of the Chinese and would thus serve the country’s self-assertion, remained highly controversial at his time. A similar attempt to reinstate a reformed Shintoism as a truly national religion and to disentangle it from its Buddhist accretions Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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had already been made in Japan at the beginning of the Meiji reforms around 1870 (chapter 2.02—Krämer). The critique of Christian doctrine and the attempt at a reassertion of religious superiority which can equally be found in Kang Youwei’s memorandum was put forward with even more vigour by prominent representatives of both Buddhism in Japan (chapter 2.02—Krämer) and Hinduism in India (chapter 2.05—Killingley). The Buddhist monk Shimaji Mokurai (1838–1911), in his petition to the emperor (1872), reacted against the attempt by the Japanese government to establish Shintoism as a state religion. He pointed out that it was of no avail to cultivate polytheism at a time when this kind of belief had been for a long time refuted and discarded in other parts of the world under the influence of Christianity and other monotheist religions. He was also among the first to call for a clear distinction between state and politics. By his arguments and terminological efforts, Shimaji contributed substantially to a shift of imperial policy, which finally came to declare State Shinto a non-religious practice to be shared by all, ensuring freedom of belief for all religions, newly defined as such (text 2.02—Krämer). At the same time, he issued a strong warning against the influence of Christianity and made his case for Buddhism as the only viable religious alternative to monotheism, which was so skilfully propagated in the East by the Christian missions. It was only few years later that the Vedic scholar and holy man Dayānanda Sarasvatī (1825–1883) founded his own society for religious and social reform, the Ārya Samāj (1875), in India. Reacting against missionary denunciation of Hinduism as superstition, he wrote his treatise The Light of Truth (1875, last edition 1884), which included a highly critical account of Christianity while calling, at the same time, for a thorough reform of Hindu beliefs and practices. His reference to India as the cradle of civilisation and to its early rule over all other nations clearly shows the nationalist implications of his critique (­chapter 2.05—Killingley). Among prominent Muslim intellectuals in different Asian regions, Islam was increasingly seen as the basic constituent of state and society. In the struggle for independence in British India, this claim served the demand for a separate Muslim nation shaped by the historical and cultural influence of Islam. When Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938) delivered his famous Presidential Address to the All-India Muslim League in 1930, calling for the establishment of a separate Muslim political federation within India (chapter 2.04—Syed), religion had for quite some time been on its way for both Hindus and Muslims to become the most powerful vehicle of organised politics. Remarkably enough, Iqbal stressed the non-religious and, at the same time, non-national character

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of such a Muslim state based on Muslim social order and solidarity. It would safeguard the internal balance of power within India and would contribute to bringing Islam itself into closer contact both “with its own original spirit and with the spirit of modern times” (chapter 2.04—Syed). Among Muslim reformists in the Middle East, Islam equally became central to their emerging political ideology and to their endeavours for a reform of traditional Muslim culture, as can be seen in the programmatic introduction written by the Lebanese Muslim scholar and intellectual Rashīd Riḍā (1865–1935) to the first volume of his famous reformist journal al-Manār (The Lighthouse, founded 1898/99 in Cairo, chapter 2.06—Reichmuth). At the same time, attempts to merge Socialism with Muslim popular culture could be observed in the early stage of Muslim nationalism in Indonesia, as can be seen in the text written by Omar Said Tjokroaminoto (1882–1934), one of the early nationalist leaders (chapter 2.03—Makin). Tjokroaminoto’s approach prefigured the ideological blend of Islam, nationalism and Marxism which was later embraced by notable Indonesian leaders, most prominently by Sukarno, the first president of independent Indonesia. A cultural identification with religion also prevailed among some of the early Zionists like Aḥad haAm (1856–1927), who, despite his thoroughly secular outlook, refused to accept the European separation of religion and politics, in a line of argument remarkably similar to that of Muhammad Iqbal for Muslims in India. First in Odessa and later in Palestine, he concentrated his writing efforts on arguing against the assimilation of Jews and on creating a new type of Jewish national consciousness and pride, designed to overcome the humiliating experience of diaspora life (chapter 2.9—Munz). A similar position was expressed by the radical German nationalist Paul de Lagarde (1827–1891), professor of Oriental languages, who was an outspoken critic of the beliefs, values and structures of the Christian churches. In his efforts to create a ‘National Religion’ for Germany, which was to be based on comparative religious studies, he nevertheless strongly identified German culture with Christianity and strove to work out a truly Germanised and more befitting heroic version of it (chapter 2.10—Hollender & Stünkel). A close identification of religion, nation and culture also prevailed among Turkish nationalists after the First World War, which even allowed them to declare the religion of the Alevites as an authentic expression of ancient Turkic culture and thus to include it into the cultural canon of Turkish national identity and, at the same time, forestalling earlier attempts by Christian missionaries to present the Alevites as a remnant of Anatolian Christianity and as a promising target of their missionary activities (chapter 2.08—Dressler).

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Religion, Cultural and Political Reassertion

During a period of evident political and economic weakness vis-à-vis the European imperial powers, and also in response to their increasing cultural hegemony, prominent government officials as well as intellectuals and religious dignitaries in widely diverging regions (Middle East, Southeast Asia, China, Japan) came out to call for a reform of religious learning and organisation in order to strengthen the cultural and political autonomy of their countries. This trend pervades the texts found in the chapters concerning Kang Youwei (2.01), Shimaji Mokurai (2.02), Dayānanda Sarasvatī (2.05), but also that of Moḥammad Ḥoseyn Na‌ʾīnī (2.07). Religious reform is conceived in all these diverse reformist texts as a basis for cultural as well as political reassertion vis-à-vis the European powers. Political discussion about the introduction of parliaments and constitutions, and the propagation of novel political ideologies like socialism and communism, often referred to common religious grounds and convictions shared by one’s own people. Intellectuals as well as religious scholars attempted to link constitutionalism and socialism to local religious norms and practices and to harmonise political ideology and religious values (see already for text 2.03— Tjokoraminoto above). This went along with a growing political activism, which since the late nineteenth century also spread to the circles of religious learning and scholarship of different religious communities, whether Buddhist, Hindu, or Muslim—which can be noted, e.g., for the authors of source texts from chapters 2.02 (Shimaji), 2.05 (Dayānanda), 2.06 (Riḍā) and 2.07 (Naʿīnī). The commitment of Muslim religious scholars to the new form of constitutional government was particularly significant in the case of the Iranian constitutional revolution of 1906–1911, which was steered by a highly diverse coalition of merchants, Shiite scholars, religious dissidents as well as by liberal and socialist intellectuals. They all formed and legitimised a popular movement against the rule of the Qajar shahs which was regarded by many contemporaries as highly tyrannical and which at the same time was seen as not granting sufficient protection vis-à-vis the political and economic encroachment of the European powers. In this situation, a constitutional monarchy seemed to provide a renewed and more solid base for political sovereignty as well as for the protection of the economic interests and political stakes of the Iranians. Moḥammad Ḥoseyn Na‌ʾīnī (1860–1936), author of the most influential religious treatise on constitutional government in Iran (chapter 2.07) which was written at the height of the constitutional struggle in 1909, attempted to provide religious legitimacy for a constitutional form of government based on consultation. He also condemned the despotic rule of the shahs as having no Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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base in Islam, and strongly criticised the religious despotism which went along with it and which he considered worse than the political one. Stressing justice as the base of any government, he declared the achievement of freedom and equality as noble aims, which even the Prophet strove to realise. The prevention of tyranny, however, looms largest among his goals. Apart from his use of Islamic sources, influences from Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Alfieri, whome Na‌ʾīnī came to know via the writings of Arab authors of the nineteenth century, can also be noticed in his arguments, thus testifying to the composite character of the emerging political thought in the Middle East before the First World War.

Critique of Traditional Religious Mentalities

It was not only in Iran that political as well as religious reformism often went along with sharp attacks against the local religious traditions and mentalities which were regarded as responsible for the loss of wealth and power, and as props for unbridled despotic rule. The brandishing of popular superstitions and of discarded religious attitudes is a key motive in the texts written by Kang Youwei for China (chapter 2.01—Roetz), Shimaji Mokurai for Japan (chapter 2.02—Krämer) and also Dayānanda Sarasvatī (chapter 2.05— Killingley), who directed a scathing critique against the traditional caste system in India. For these authors, long established religious traditions in themselves could not provide a safe ground for cultural identity and socio-political power any more but had to be readjusted and reformed in order to serve their functions under novel conditions in the future. This critique comes out with particular vigour in Rashīd Riḍā’s ‘wake-up call,’ which he addressed not only to the Muslims but also to the people of the East in general (chapter 2.06— Reichmuth). Muslim fatalism and authoritarianism, backed by established, but in his view thoroughly perverted, theological traditions, were the main targets of his complaints about the social and cultural failures of Muslim societies. A major remedy for this desperate state of backwardness was seen by most of these reformists in a renewal of education, both in its content and its institutions (see section 1 for more details). Whereas in East Asia, the specific European form of partnership between state and religion was presented by the Chinese and Japanese voices as a basis for the political and economic success of the European countries (chapters 2.01—Roetz, 2.02—Krämer), the critique of Paul de Lagarde, the radical German nationalist, was directed against the Judeo-Christian tradition which he accused of fomenting a culture of weakness and of a lack of true national feelings (chapter 2.10—Hollender & Stünkel), Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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which in his view was not able to provide adequate self-assurance and strength to the newly emerging and expanding national society in Germany. The cultural revaluation of non-Christian religions (in the German example even of Christianity itself), the calls for religious reforms, and the critique of the deficiencies of the local and popular religious mentalities formed a substantial part of the engagement of local scholars and intellectuals with the challenges posed by European political and economic hegemony, to which Asian states and societies were increasingly exposed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The comparison testifies to the common character of these challenges and to the parallel responses to them that can be observed in different parts of the world. Stefan Reichmuth

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2.01

Kang Youwei: Report to the Throne, with a Petition for Fixing through Consultation a Law Concerning Religious Cases [. . .] (China, 1898) Introduction In the decades after the opium wars and the subsequent incursion of Western imperialism, China underwent one of the deepest crises of its history. In the terminology of modern Chinese historians, it turned into a ‘semi-feudal and semi-colonial’ state that de facto lost its independence and became the plaything of foreign powers. A series of humiliating military defeats led to a loss of sovereignty over the Chinese territory by ever-new concessions to the Western states, Russia and even Japan, which China considered to be its daughter country. By and large, China’s ruling elite recognised that the old days of the Empire had gone and the traditional statecraft had to be reconsidered. The late Qing era (1644–1911) marks the begin of the long lasting modern Chinese discourse how the country should best be run under the new global competitive conditions in order to regain its status. It became soon apparent that the Western supremacy was not simply due to unrivaled technical, above all military skills, and that in order to counter the new invaders it would not be sufficient to import technology. A fundamental reform not only of the society and the political structures, but of the Chinese mentality was needed. Enlightened thinking, scientific spirit and national consciousness had to be developed, with religious renewal as a decisive factor. The military and economic intrusion of the European imperialists had gone together with a new spreading of the Christian mission that previously had been under punishment. The right to free propagation of Christianity throughout the empire was stipulated in the treatise of Tianjin forced upon China by England, France, Russia and the United States in 1858 after the second Opium War. The Westerners whom the Chinese outside the treaty ports and the foreign concessions would meet were most likely soldiers or missionaries running not only parishes but also hospitals and schools. Not unlike the Jesuits some centuries ago, what the missionaries had to preach to the Chinese was not simply the Gospel but the message that the advancement of the Western civilisation was due to the spiritual power of its Christian faith. Moreover, the tendency Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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of the missionaries and their political protectors to make a state affair with grave consequences out of any tension with the Chinese local authorities contributed to see ‘the Western church and state as coalesced forces.’1 It was obviously this identification of Western state power and Christianity that gave rise to the idea among Chinese intellectuals that religion of the Western type might play a role also in their own strategies to take their country forward. Religion became a central topic in the discourse how to build a strong Chinese nation that dominated the last decades of the Qing dynasty. It became an important tool in the imagination of political writers at the turn to the 20th century for ‘renewing the people’ (xin min), and something that could be manufactured by a corresponding policy. One of the key figures of the late Qing national movement was the constitutional monarchist Kang Youwei (1958–1927).2 Kang was a Confucian scholar who had received the traditional education in the Classics and achieved a jinshi (doctoral) degree in the imperial examinations. Next to his Confucian training, he devoted himself extensively to ‘Western learning’ with a special interest in missionary literature.3 He became an ardent protagonist of constitutional change and handed in several memorials to the throne. In 1898 he was the architect of a series of renovative measures known as the ‘Hundred Days Reform.’ The reform was crushed. Kang had to flee to Japan to escape his execution and spend fourteen years in exile. Meanwhile, the Qing dynasty fell and the Republic of China was established. Under republican conditions, Kang turned into a conservative. Still, his attempt to revive the once progressive spirit of Confucianism and to reconcile it with the new times of change remains a milestone in China’s opening towards modernity. The reform package of 1898 entailed institutional measures like the reorganisation of the imperial examinations and the setting up of a modern education 1  Ya-pei Kuo, “Before the Term: ‘Religion’ as China’s cultural other,” Comparativ: Zeitschrift für Global­geschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 20 (2010), 98–114. Cf. also Ya-pei Kuo, “The Second Encounter between Christianity and Confucianism—Conception of ‘Religion’ in 19th Century China,” IIAS Newsletter 54, Summer 2010, www.iias.asia/files/IIAS_ NL54_2223.pdf. 2  For Kang Youwei’s life and work cf. the study of Hsiao Kung-chuan, A Modern China and a New World: Kang Youwei, Reformer and Utopian, 1858–1927, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975. Kang’s role in the 1898 reforms is discussed in Young-Tsu Wong, “Revisionism Reconsidered: Kang Youwei and the Reform Movement of 1898,” The Journal of Asian Studies 51/3 (1992), 513–544. 3  Ya-pei Kuo, “Vacillating between the Secular and the Religious—Image of Christianity and the Semantics of Jiao,” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Philadelphia, PA, USA, March 25–28, 2010.

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system, the promotion of the economic development and the modernisation of the military. However, like many members of the progressive elite, Kang was convinced that the true weakness of China did not merely lie in its outdated governmental structures but in the mental misguidedness and backwardness of its people. He therefore strove for a doctrinal and organisational remolding of Confucianism with the aim to make it the unitary orientation of a reformed China and completely replace the superstitious beliefs of the Chinese masses. Already in a memorandum of 1895, shortly after China’s defeat in the First SinoJapanese War which triggered a new wave of nationalist sentiments and a campaign for political change, Kang complained about the spreading of the foreign ‘evil teaching’ (xiejiao) of Christianity which was ‘seducing’ the Chinese and eventually would lead to a ‘barbarisation’ of China. He proposed to establish the cult of Confucius as the only cult in the empire and abolish all ‘illicit temples’ (yinsi), the places of worship of the Chinese folk religions, in order to give ‘guidance to the stupid people.’4 He took up the idea again in the Memorandum to the Throne of 1898 translated in this chapter. He submitted it to the emperor together with his book Kongzi gaizhi kao (An Investigation of Confucius as a System Reformer) that embedded his political program in a challenging new exegesis of the Confucian canon. He claimed to regain the original forwardlooking and messianic spirit of Confucius which had been distorted and lost under the grip of a conservative orthodoxy. In the words of his famed student Liang Qichao (1873–1929), he became the “Martin Luther of Confucianism.”5 In his memorial, Kang highlights the political nature of the religious quarrels that accompanied the advance of the Christian mission. As he points out, religious issues are in fact national issues. On the one hand, this is because they can easily be exploited for the strategic interests of the colonial states. On the other hand, they concern the spirit of a nation. According to Kang, in order to survive the onslaught of the Western powers, it is mandatory for China to change its religious landscape. This would imply a thorough reform of the education systems with a fundamental reorganisation of the traditional examinations, the setting up of a national church after the successful Western model, initiated by the state yet separate from the government in order to disentangle 4  Kang Youwei, “Shang Qingdi dier shu” [Second Petition to the Qing Emperor] (May 5, 1895), in Kang Youwei quanji (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1990) 74–102. 5  Joseph A. Levenson, Confucian China and its Modern Fate (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press), 1958, 83. Cf. also Wei Leong Tay, “Kang Youwei, the Martin Luther of Confucianism, and his Vision of Confucian Modernity and Nation,” in Haneda Masashi, ed. Secularization, Religion and the State (Tokyo: The University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy, 2010), 97–109.

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it from religious conflicts, and the establishment of a cult of Confucius that reaches the common people. The Chinese sage is not only to replace the god of Christianity but also the gods of the Chinese folk religions: all ‘illicit temples’ should be abolished and converted into Confucius temples. There is a second version of the memorial which was for long regarded as the original one, where Kang also proposes to introduce a new time reckoning after Confucius in China and to turn part of the ‘illicit temples’ into schools.6 The second version differs considerably from the one translated here. It is more than only a revision of the text from 1989 made in the final phase of the Qing dynasty. In the later text, Kang lays more emphasis on the role of the common people. Like in Christianity, there should no longer be any royal prerogative in venerating the highest being, Heaven. Thus Kang underlines the truly national importance of a unitary religion. The aim remains to build up a strong China by the reorganisation and reformation of Confucianism. Although the second version of the memorial is not an original document of the 1898 reforms, as has long been assumed, it is certainly an authentic expression of Kang’s later development and of the political atmosphere immediately before the downfall of the empire. Kang Youwei’s proposal stirred a movement for making Confucianism the state religion of China. Despite initial governmental support even in the early years of the Republic of China, the movement failed, and Confucianism soon became the epitome of China’s overcome old feudal culture. The idea has survived, however—it even has a contemporary reverberation among some nationalist Confucians of the People’s Republic, where Kang Xiaoguang is trying to take up the project of his namesake again.7 Kang Youwei is eager to copy the Christian model to the details in order to establish a Confucian organisational and spiritual counterpart on eye level with the West. In doing so, he also sparked the still enduring discussion whether or not Confucianism itself is a ‘religion’ in the conventional sense. It is 6  “Qing zun Kong sheng wei guojiao li jiaobu jiaohui yi Kongzi ji nian er fei yinsi zhe.” The Text was published in 1911 by Kang in his Wuxu zougao, but was not the original memorial, as Huang Zhangjian has shown Kang Youwei Wuxu zhen zouyi (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan lishi yuyan yanjiusuo, 1974). Vincent Goossaert’s translation of the title is “Memorial Requesting that Confucius Be Worshiped as [the Founder] of the National Religion, that a Ministry of Religion and a Church Be Established, that Years Be Counted from the Birth of Confucius, and that Improper Temples Be Suppressed.” See Goossaert, “1898: The Beginning of the End for Chinese Religion?,” Journal of Asian Studies 65 (2006): 313. 7  See Kang Xiaoguang, “Confucianization: A Future in the Tradition,” Social Research 27/2 (2006) 77–120, and Monika Gänßbauer, Confucianism and Social Issues in China—The Academician Kang Xiaoguang (Bochum/Freiburg: projektverlag, 2011).

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noteworthy that Kang in both version of his memorial avoids to use the expression zongjiao, the modern translation for ‘religion’ introduced in Japan and becoming popular in China at the turn of the century, which for him seems to be of no avail. His common term for Christianity and Confucianism is jiao, ‘teachings.’ All ‘teachings’ are basically ethical systems that aim at “causing people to avoid evil and to do good and nothing more.”8 But there is an important distinction: Despite the model character which Kang attributes to it in his memorial, Christianity represents a different type of teaching for him than Confucianism—an evolutionary early teaching of the otherworldly ‘divine way’ (shen dao), while Confucianism is the more advanced and thus superior teaching of the ‘human way’ (ren dao).9 What he has in mind, then, when he advocates to turn Confucianism into a guojiao, translated here as ‘national religion,’ is to give it the effective form, the function and status which in his view Christianity has in the West in order to ensure the moral uplift of the Chinese for the sake of the country, irrespective of a content in terms of supernatural beliefs. In other words: he aims at a state-sponsored official church rather than a ‘religion’ in the conventional sense. His take on religion appears to be ‘secular,’ ‘functionalistic,’ and ‘expedient,’10 and it comes as no surprise that his project has been characterised as contradictory and a “wild hybridization of Confucian fundamentalism and Christianity.”11 However, what the notion of ‘religion’ means in the first place is a notoriously disputed question also in the West. The Chinese discussions at the turn from the Empire to the Republic mirror its ambiguity rather than demonstrating a lack of understanding of the essence of a well-defined concept. ‘Religion’ has been an evolving notion ­subject to all kind of historical dynamics not only in China. Nation building might be one. Heiner Roetz

8  Kang Youwei, Yidali youji (Travels to Italy, 1904), quoted in Chen Xiyuan (Chen Hsi-yuan), “ ‘Zongjiao’—yige zhongguo jindai wenhua shi sheng de guanjianci” [Religion—a key term in China’s modern cultural history], Xinwenxue (New Literature) 13/4 (2002), 54. and Chen Hsi-yuan, “Confucianism Encounters Religion: The Formation of Religious Discourse and the Confucian Movement in Modern China,” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1999). 9  Chen Xiyuan, “ ‘Zongjiao,’ ” 54. 10  On the rhetoric of defining Confucianism as ‘a religion’: Chen Yong, “A hermeneutic reading of the controversy on Confucian religiosity and its significance to the understanding of Chinese tradition and modernity” (PhD diss., Vanderbilt University, 2005), 84 and 85; similarly Kuo, “Vacillating,” 22. 11  Goossaert, “1898: The Beginning of the End,” 313.

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Further Reading

Chen, Hsi-yuan. Confucian Encounters with ‘Religion’: Rejections, Appropriations, and Transformations. London: Routledge, 2007. Goossaert, Vincent. “1898: The Beginning of the End for Chinese Religion?” Journal of Asian Studies 65 (2), 2006, 307–336. Goossaert, Vincent and David A. Palmer. The Religious Question in Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Kuo Ya-pei. “ ‘Christian Civilization’ and the Confucian Church: The Origin of Secularist Politics in Modern China.” Past and Present 218 (2013): 235–264. Nedostup, Rebecca. Superstitious Regimes: Religion and the Politics of Chinese Modernity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard,University Press, 2009. Yang, Mayfair Mei-hui, ed. Chinese Religiosities: Afflictions of Modernity and State Formation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.



Source Text12

The leading official of the Ministry of Public Works, Kang Youwei, humbly presents a petition for fixing through consultation a law concerning religious cases ( jiao an),13 for correcting the examination system, and for increasing the number of Confucius temples in all counties, at the same time forwarding the respectfully written work An Investigation of Confucius as a System Reformer to be read by the Emperor, in order to honor the Sage (Confucius), to protect the Great Teaching and to blight further evil. Reverentially, he asks for the attention of the emperor. 12   Qing shangding jiaoan falü, lizheng keju wenti, ting tianxia xiangyi zengshe wenmian, bing cheng ‘Kongzi gaizhi kao’ jincheng yulan, yi zun sheng shi er bao dajiao, jue huo meng zhe [Report to the throne, with a petition for fixing through consultation a law concerning religious cases, for correcting the examination system, and for increasing the number of Confucius temples in all counties, at the same time forwarding the respectfully written work An Investigation of Confucius as a System Reformer to be Read by the Emperor, in Order to Honor the Sage and to Protect the Great Teaching], in Kang Youwei quanji (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin chubanshe, 2007), 92–94. The translators thank Peng Guoxiang for many helpful suggestions. 13  The Chinese term jiao, originally ‘teaching,’ began to oscillate between ‘teaching’ and ‘religion’ after missionaries used it to present the Christian doctrine. This makes jiao difficult to render. We will have to switch between ‘teaching’ and ‘religion’ in our translation. For Kang Youwei, the difference is secondary. His focus is on the traditonal Confucian teaching, effectively reorganised by borrowing from Christian religion.

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According to my humble opinion, the Western countries have used military power to pave the way for trade and for spreading their religion ( jiao). They highly esteem their religion, and they are bold in spreading it. At the beginning, they intend to change [the minds of] the people of other countries by means of religion, in order to afterwards occupy the other countries under the pretext of fighting for the religion. When formerly the treaties were made, we have not fixed a law of religion ( jiao lü) together with them, and this is the reason why the whole country is in fear of the evil of religious cases. Since the first year of the Tongzhi era (1861), the eminent officials of our resurging country are well known in China and abroad. During the Guizhou incident, the French enforced the dismissal of the military official Tian Xingshu.14 During the Zhenjiang incident, the French sailed up the Yangzi by their military vessels, and during the Tianjin incident, a French general enforced the dismissal of the prefect of Tianjin.15 The court got into anxiety and dismay, but thanks to the spiritual power of our ancestors and a timely happy coincidence France was defeated by Germany.16 Zeng Guofan17 could handle the matter perfunctorily, but he was openly criticised throughout the empire. The recent Jiaozhou incident led to continuous loss of territory, with impacts on Lüshun the Dalian Bay, the Guangzhou Bay, Weihaiwei and Jiulong, not to speak of further incidents which have led to the loss of territory.18 Any religious case leads to such losses. The churches ( jiao tang)19 of those Westerners stand everywhere, and they can provoke quarrel at any time. This is disastrous for both sides, and interior as well as exterior conflicts can occur each day. This leads to inextricable entanglements, and those countries frequently come with their military vessels backed by their state power. A single spark can cause a prairie fire, and even though the Emperor and the high officials do their best, we will still lose territory, and the whole country will be shocked. After that, they wait for a new opportunity and use pretexts in order to set us under pressure. It is hard 14  Tian Xingshu had ordered the execution of five Christians in 1862, among them a French missionary. The five were canonised by Pope John Paul II in 2000. 15  In 1870, churches and the French consulate in Tianjin were attacked after rumors that a Christian orphanage ordered the kidnapping of Chinese children. Several dozens of Christians were killed. 16  Referring to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. 17  One of the most influential officials of the Qing government and among other things responsible for the suppression of the Taiping rebellion. 18   Jiaotang, a church as a building, in contrast to jiaohui, the church as an organisation. 19  In 1897, Germany took the murder of two German missionaries as a pretext to occupy the Jiaozhou Bay in Shandong. The incident was exploited also by the other imperialist powers to enlarge their spheres of influence in China.

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to say whether our whole existence will be at stake some day. Recently I have heard that the prefect of Shandong, when he took office, had to pay his respect to a priest ( jiao shi) first. If believers ( jiao min) [of Christianity] are seen in a prefecture or a county, they are feared like tigers. If only one converts to that religion when in a lawsuit, injustice can be turned into justice. Crooks often protect themselves by leaning on [Christianity] and tyrannise their villages. The uneducated people in their ignorance increasingly follow the trend, and more and more are compelled [to become believers]. In Dongguan county in Guangdong province, in one night half of the town became followers [of Christianity]. The more [the Christians] are feared and the more we fawn upon them, the more [Chinese] will convert. And the more bad people will convert, the more religious cases we will have. Such has been the situation for fifty years now, and it would be strange to look up to heaven and bind one’s hands and be without any means in the end to properly deal with the consequences. The stupid subject Kang Youwei has long been worrying about this and has intensively deliberated to find a way out of these difficulties. I am of the opinion that in order to protect the [Confucian] teaching ( jiao) and officially deal with the religious cases a [political] reform is necessary. And the way towards political reform is only in establishing a church ( jiaohui) and in setting up a law of religion. When formerly the peace treaties were signed, we were under the constraint of the military defeat and could not help to put religion under protection for them (the Westerners). However, as far as the measures for protecting their religion are concerned, there have never been fixed regulations concerning severity, complicatedness and degree. We always listen to what the [Westerners] do after a religious case has occurred. So in a small case they enforce the dismissal of a prefect and raise claims to exorbitant compensations. And in a bigger case, like in the case of Jiaozhou, it comes up to limitless surrender of territory. Thus the situation gets worse and worse. All of this is due to the fact that there is no fixed law to settle these issues. For governing a country, there should be laws for everything, in negotiations between states, everything should be done by treaties, and for joint [Chinese/Western] investigations there should be a public authority. How can it be that of all things it is in such dangerous issues where the very existence is at stake and which happen every day and month we hand ourselves over to the demands of those, without any fixed rule? Recently, there has again been a report of an incident in Guangdong. No matter how we treat this case, easily or severely, it will be absolutely improper. But if there would be fixed law, we could put a stop to their excuses and avoid much loss of territory and payment. Then we would not need to worry about the extinction of the country just because of one case.

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However, to decide a law is beyond the capability of our state. Obviously, its power is already weakened to such an extent that those [foreign countries] can become rampant. As soon as our country establishes relations with them, they take advantage of their [military] power while we negotiate with them. How could we put such laws into practice then? If we look at the mission of the Western countries [in China], then it turns out that they all have churches ( jiaotang). Founded since the Jiaqing era (1796–1820), they can now be found in all parts of the country. Those [missionaries] who have come to China have all been sent by their churches, and not by their states, which only take over their protection. In their churches ( jiaohui), there are leading personnel (zongli), members of commissions and consultants. They roughly resemble the principals of the examination officials, the education officials, and the leaders of the masters and students in our rites ministry, with the slight difference that in their church one listens to the recommendations of the believers. If we now wish to set up a law, then we first must neutralise their national power, only then can we evade their coercion. The best solution is to get directly into contact with their churches, establish a church ourselves as a counterpart, and then negotiate with them, enter into a peace agreement and stipulate a religious law. I therefore think that to protect the [Confucian] teaching and officially deal with the religious cases presupposes a political reform. Our country is entirely under [the influence] of Confucius’ teaching. What depends on the establishment of a church then? The destruction of the statue of Confucius20 is really a deplorable incident, and if we do not bring the masses together and discuss with them, we cannot regain strength. According to my humble opinion, ever since the time of our various sages, the revered early sage Confucius has absolutely surpassed the hereditary nobility of previous times. He is treated with great honor. If the emperor is wise enough and deliberates timely, then he lets the head of the Kong clan establish a church, and lets all who are ready to take up responsibility, from the high nobility over the scholars to the common people, become its members. The head of the Kong clan shall become the leader, and the scholars and ordinary members of the church shall publicly elect someone with high scholarship and virtuous conduct for supervisor, and some who are next virtuous and educated to be coordinators. All provinces, prefectures and counties shall employ recommended educated and virtuous scholars as local supervisors and coordinators. Their names will

20  In 1898, German troops occupied the city of Jimo and damaged a statue of Confucius in the local temple.

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be registered by the head of the Kong clan, and the head of the Kong clan21 will pass them to the court. The more members there will be, the more money can be raised. It is up to the head of the Kong clan and the executives of the church to select scholars of excellent erudition and knowledge of China and the foreign countries as delegates, and let also the chief supervisors of the other religion delegate persons, so that they together set up a treaty between the two religions and fix a regulation for both. If a believer is killed or a church (­libaitang) is damaged, then, according to the severity of the guilt, the death penalty or a fine is inflicted, both based on a fixed law. If those attack our religion, then the same penal law applies to them. If a religious incident happens, there should be joint hearings, as it is done [already] in the concession of Shanghai. The Catholic religion (tianzhu jiao) disposes of a strong self-protection, and it is improper to hand its protection over to the French state. This [religion] has its own independent leadership by the pope ( jiao huang), by whom everything is supervised and decided. The pope doesn’t have soldiers and military vessels, and it is easy to negotiate with him. It is appropriate that the head of the Kong clan sends some people as constant representatives to his country who stipulate treaties and laws directly with the pope and find some more suitable formulations [than hitherto]. As soon as the religious law is fixed, religious cases get a fixed form. In smaller cases, we need not to worry about overreaction, and in larger cases [we can avoid the] evil of having to surrender territory under pretexts. This would be of considerable help in our struggle for existence. The name of the church should be chosen after the example of the church ministry ( jiaobu) of the foreign states. Its relationship to the Ministry of Rites should be like the relationship of the Military Office to the Grand Secretariat and the relationship of the Foreign Ministry to the Vassal Office. Although we have to listen to what the people bring up (i.e. to public opinion) to a certain extent, everything will be governed by the head of the Kong clan. It resembles the Official Publication Bureau being lead by high officials. Which reservations and doubts should there be? Yet, there is a reason for the insult China has suffered by the foreign countries. Although our China nominally honors Confucius, it does not love him. In the illicit cults (yin si), all kinds of gods and spirits are venerated. When scholars and common people leave the village schools and receive their qualification to take part in the civil service examinations, they no longer recite the classics of Confucius and they no longer venerate his statue. Before the Kang Xi era (1662–1722), men and women were allowed to enter the (Confucius) temple and pray respectfully. However, the censor Wu Pei in his ignorance asked to 21  The descendants of Confucius (Kongzi—Master Kong).

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forbid this. Afterwards, except for the incense ritual when taking office and the offering of vegetables ritual22 when passing the examination, there was no opportunity for a single honorary offering for Confucius. In this way, the common people are driven to give up Confucius and make sacrifices to the illicit spirits (yin gui). The cult of Wenchang,23 who is seen now as a god and now as a human spirit, was taken up in the register of offerings, with the same ritual as for Confucius. The officials responsible for education ( jiaoguan) teach the scholars, but they do not reach the common people. There are Confucius temples (wenmiao) in urban areas, but not in the villages, and never more than one. By contrast, the churches of those are to be found everywhere, and every seventh day, princes and subjects, men and women pray on their knees and recite the bible. Even if their teaching ( jiao) is superficial, its practice is tightly organised. And even if our teaching is subtle, its practice is loosely organised. As far as the teaching method is concerned, since Zhu Xi (1130–1200) elucidated the principles (yili) [of the Confucian classics] and made known and elucidated the Four Books,24 the authorities of the Yuan and Ming dynasties respected his interpretation, and the scholars were examined in the meaning of the Four Books. The original purpose was that the scholars of the world should daily recite Confucius’ words and spread and elucidate the great way. In the course of time [the system] gradually deteriorated. In the annual qualifying examinations25 the only consideration is to prevent fraud. What matters in the examinations are the formalities of the Eight-Legged Essay.26 [. . .] The candidates intrigue against each other, destruct the meaning [of the texts], evade difficulties and quibble in their responses. As to the province and metropolitan examinations, in particular in the important official event of selecting the officials, it is not necessary to articulate the meaning of the classics. It is sufficient to mimic melodies (the baguwen-style) and stick to fixed formats, which is called ‘speaking for he sage.’ This resembles a play singing [ready-made] songs. It is not allowed to use books from the time after the Qin and Han dynasties, and even less to use records of the present dynasty or from abroad. People who have nothing to offer are selected as officials, while scholars with profound 22  A ritual mentioned in the Confucian classic Liji, cf. Wang Meng’ou, Liji jinzhu jinyi (Taipei: Shangwu, 1977), 209. James Legge, “The Li Ki,” in Max Müller, ed., The Sacred Books of the East, vol. 27 (Oxford University Press, 1885), 261. 23  A popular deity in charge of success in examinations and worshipped by scholars. 24  The four Confucian classics Daxue (Great Learning), Zhongyong (Doctrine of the Mean), Lunyu (Analects) and the Book of Mengzi. 25  The xiucai degree is roughly equivalent to a Bachelor’s degree. 26   Baguwen, a restrictive writing format to be mastered for the civil service examinations.

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knowledge will not necessarily pass the examinations. The great court examination is of utmost importance, but if one only proves to know empty formula, one gets the highest degree and becomes a leading official. Provided one has always been submissive, one can make a career and even become a minister and get in charge of the examinations. Some for better become a prefect or provincial governor and for worse are appointed as academic leader or teacher. All of them, therefore, insult the words of Confucius and are [only] good at being players and historians (parroters). Moreover, there is no alternative to the examination program with its narrow and highly standardised subjects, where [mastering the meaning of the classics] is hard to achieve while passing the examination is easy (?),27 where income is low, and going up the career ladder takes a lot of time. By this, a great flock of examination candidates is spurred. They let their bodies hunger, their physical condition is degraded, and their feeling of shame is ruined. No situation can be worse than this! How can it be achieved under such conditions that they take up responsibility for the Great Teaching and the Way of Confucius, elucidate the principles [of the classics], cultivate humanity, beautify the customs, make achievements and political improvements and glorify the state? So the scholars of the world of today know the regulations while not knowing the Classics, they know power while not knowing the cultivation of the teaching, they know profit while not knowing rightness, know publicity while not knowing privacy, dare to violate the law and commit crimes but dare not to promote public interests and uphold justice. Serving their superiors they know how to salute, to kowtow and observe taboos, they seem to be respectful and cautious, but [in reality] facilitate their inside selfishness and whitewash. With friends they have social activities and friendly exchanges and invite each other for banquets, but actually have vicious and light-minded ideas inside. To their subordinates, they are harsh and merciless without clemency and amiability. The problem exists in particular in urban areas and in officialdom. Correspondingly, although there are 400 million people in China who have [nominally] subscribed to the teaching of Confucius, there are few who understand to take responsibility for the affairs of the state. If there are some who advocate public lectures to educate the common people, they are sneered at and criticised to be pedantic and hypocritical, or they are attacked for gathering people. This attack will not stop until in the end they stop teaching and become as greedy and shameless as those attackers. Loyalty and love cool down unless they are polished, and learning and moral action degenerate unless they are stimulated. They are never touched by the crisis of the state, 27  A part of the sentence appears to be corrupt.

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but are eager to safeguard the private profit of a recommendation for an office. Those who still have a conscience look at the palace and sigh, unable to take the initiative and face the dangers, but they would like to repay the grace of your majesty and protect the state. So bad are our morals, and so heartless have the people become. If there are no scholars who have the courage to remonstrate in normal days, then there will be no officials who have the honor and courage to die for loyalty in times of need. Then, once the situation changes, whom could your majesty count on? Mengzi says, “If in the court one does not confess to the Dao and in the offices one does not confess to the rules, if superiors have no civility and inferiors have no learning, then rebellious people will rise, and the day that the state is lost is not far away.”28 The Westerners call our country a country without religion and degrade us to barbarians. Therefore the ambassadors which they sent to China during the recent years all had been in Africa before. They are presumptuous and overbearing and treat us like barbarians. This certainly results from the powerlessness of our country. And the reason for the powerlessness of the country, for the stupidity of the people and for the depravity of the morals is that the teaching of the sage (sheng jiao) has degenerated into the examination system and the Four Books have degenerated into the Eight-Legged Essay. Therefore, the decay of the country is due to the fact that we do not have a religion ( jiao), and that we do not have a religion is due to the eight-legged essay [system]. Therefore, the Eight-Legged Essay is the foremost [reason] for the loss of the state and the teaching. Since Heaven has created the people, it has selected a ruler for them in order to bring them together into a society, because hey have a physical existence, and it has honored the teachers in order to educate them, because they have a heart.29 The ruler governs the masses by regulations and principles, and the teacher educates the hearts of the people by the principles [of Confucianism]. But political orders can only form the external behavior, while influence by education reaches the inner part [of man]. Therefore, the vicissitudes of a state depend on whether the teaching flourishes or not. If the teaching flourishes, then the morals are refined, and the ruler can govern without effort. If not, then the morals decay, and the state will follow. This rule works anytime and everywhere. The Han official Jia Yi said: “The [roles of] ruler and minister 28   Mengzi 4B1, Harvard-Yenching Sinological Index Series. A Concordance to Meng Tzu (Taipei: Chengwen, 1973). Mengzi (ca. 370–290 BC) is regarded as the ‘second sage’ of the Confucian school after Confucius. 29  Alluding to Shujing, Taishi, Gu Jiegang, Shangshu tongjian (Beijing: Shumu wenxian chubanshe, 1982), 10.

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and higher and lower levels have not been established by heaven, but by the sages.”30 The sage of China is in fact Confucius. When Confucius wrote the Chunqiu, the rebellious officials became afraid.31 He wrote the six classics, and their meaning was revealed.32 He ensured that everybody knew the guiding principles of the relation between ruler and minister, father and son, and that the families knew humaneness and mutuality and the way of loyalty and love. Otherwise, the people become careless, and disorderly. They cause harm to their heart and confuse their nature, they become brutal, cruel and ignorant Even if there are penal laws and an administration, how could one bring them into effect? Therefore, if in the people of 400 million that live in China today father and son love each other, husband and wife care for each other, the ruler is respected and the superiors are loved and one finds pleasure in encouraging efforts, then there will be no aggressions from hostile foreign countries, the emperor can rule in tranquility and without effort with just a few old high ministers who let their gown hang down [i.e. are with ease]. This is nothing that can be achieved by laws and orders, but something due to the deep influence of the Great Teaching of Confucius (Kongzi da jiao) on the human hearts, and the emperor can enjoy the result sitting at ease. However, if the Great Teaching degenerates, then the guiding principles and cardinal virtues will be lost, and the way of ruler and minister will dissolve. With whom together will your majesty then rule the country? At present, the cession of territory is too frequent, and the people’s hearts are already slightly alienated from the ruler. If there will be any more religious cases and turmoil, how will your majesty be able to suppress and pacify them with two or three officials? I humbly opine that today our country cannot be consolidated without bringing together people’s hearts and encouraging loyalty. But if we do not honor Confucius, then we will be without any means to bring together people’s hearts and encourage loyalty. This is the foundation of political reform. According to my studies, Confucius worked on the six classics and accomplished the achievements of previous sages. He became the greatest master of the teaching of China and a luminous sage king. The institutions and principles of China originate from him. Therefore, Mengzi calls the composition 30  Paraphrasing Jia Yi, Xinshu 17, Rao Dongyuan, Xinyi Xinshu duben (Taipei: Sanmin, 1996), 123. 31  Quoting Mengzi 3B9. The Chunqiu is the chronicle of Confucius’s home state Lu and one of the Confucian canonical writings. 32  According to the orthodox Confucian understanding, Confucius is the transmitter and editor of the ‘six classics.’ Since Kang wants to present Confucius as the founder of a religion, he departs from this view and makes him the author of the canonical texts.

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of the Chunqiu by Confucius a “matter of the Son of Heaven,”33 and Dong Zhongshu as a pure Confucian of the Han dynasty calls him a “new king” of the “reformation of the system.”34 This is the unanimous tradition of Zhou and Han times. If in later times Confucius was worshiped, then with the rites and music reserved for the Son of Heaven. In the Tang and Song dynasties, he was honored with the name “King of the promulgation of culture.” Following the point of view of Mengzi and Dong Zhongshu, I have compiled opinions from the Zhou and Han, and accomplished a book An Investigation of Confucius as a System Reformer which I respectfully present to your majesty for reference. I humbly hope that your majesty will dedicate yourself to its study, continue the Confucian heritage and elucidate the Confucian way. I most respectfully ask the Emperor to conduct a supervision ceremony at the National School (guozijian), in order to have the Office of Rites discuss decrees and regulations for the honoring of Confucius, and in particular to issue an edict that all illicit temples (yin si) in the Empire should be turned into Confucius temples, to prompt that all scholars and normal people, men and women, are allowed to pray to Confucius on their knees and sacrifice ( jisi) to him, to prompt that scholars selected by the Confucius-church (Kong jiaohui) serve as ritual experts (priests?) in the Confucius temples of all municipalities and counties, that they are responsible for lectures in order to propagate Confucius’ way of loyalty and love, humaneness and righteousness day and night, and that those among the teaching scholars of high moral practice and illuminated are rewarded with honorable official positions. The most urgent thing to begin with in order to solve the problem from the bottom is a correction of the examination system and a reform of the annual qualifying examinations. The Four-Books-Style [essay] should have as its main topic the spreading and elucidating of the Great Dao, and this Dao should be verified by bringing together historical material from later epochs and of all countries of the world. It has to be ensured that in learning the present and the old, China and the outer world are combined. Then the Four-Books-Style can be brought into effect like it was by the Han and Song scholars who passed the examination. The abolishment of the bagu-system is not possible without an edict by the Emperor in order to make sure that the news goes through the whole Empire. Once this system is changed, the scholars and the people 33   Mengzi 3B9. 34  Referring to Chunqiu fanlu 1, 2 and 23, Lai Yanyuan, Chunqiu fanlu jinzhu jinyi (Taipei: Shangwu, 1984), 11, 19 and 175. Dong Zhongshu (179–104 BC), the supposed author of the Chunqiu fanlu, is an important source of inspiration for Kang Youwei’s utopian Confucianism.

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will immediately follow the trend, and outstanding persons will emerge generation by generation accordingly. There is no faster way than this to “make the country flourish by a single word,” as Confucius said.35 Given the sagacity of the Emperor, why should one be afraid of changing the system? In all my stupidity and clearly aware of my presumptuousness, I do not dare to conceal the dangers that my heart tells me. I humbly request that the emperor makes a decision by his wise heart and orders the prime minister and the officials of the provinces to discuss measures with the head of the Kong family. Moreover, I request that the Emperor issues an imperial edict that the examination system be immediately reformed. Do not let yourself be moved by vain words and be misled by outdated theories. All under Heaven will be extremely fortunate! I humbly ask the Emperor to consider [my proposal] and give an instruction. This is my sincere memorial. Selected by Heiner Roetz, translated by Heiner Roetz and Yitao Quan

35   Lunyu 13.15, Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series. A Concordance to the Analects, (Taipei: Chengwen, 1972).

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2.02

Shimaji Mokurai: Petition in Criticism of the Three Articles of Instruction (Japan, 1872) Introduction The revolutionary storm that swept Japan in the years after 1867 dramatically altered political institutions, social relationships, and cultural formations— including religion. Indeed, the Meiji Revolution of 1867/68 was supported ideologically by a group brandishing themselves ‘Restoration Shintoists,’ members of which were bent on creating a pure form of Shinto, the indigenous form of religion which had for many centuries only existed in combinatory practices inseparable from Buddhism. In April 1868, the young Meiji Government issued a decree to do just that: disentangle Shinto from Buddhism. The ensuing anti-Buddhist iconoclastic movement deeply shocked Buddhist institutions and was the first occasion prompting serious inner-Buddhist discussions of reform. The government continued a radical and improvised religious policy for a few more years. In February 1870, it promulgated a ‘Great Teaching,’ and in April 1872, in a reversal of its former policy to favour Shinto alone, it set up a Ministry of Doctrine, which immediately announced a set of ‘Three Articles of Instruction’ spelling out the ‘Great Teaching.’ Shinto and Buddhist priests as well as other talented preachers were to spread this message, which emphasised worship of the indigenous deities (kami), conventional (Confucian) morality, and reverence of the Emperor, around the country. New bureaucratic ranks for this ‘teaching personnel’ were introduced, and existing temples and shrines were rearranged hierarchically as ‘teaching institutes.’ It was in this political situation that Shimaji Mokurai,1 a Buddhist priest from the True Pure Land School (Jōdo shinshū),2 wrote his petition to the 1  Scholarship on Shimaji in Western languages is scarce; see the Further Reading list at the end of this introduction. In Japanese, the following two works have recently considerably advanced our knowledge of Shimaji: Murakami Mamoru, Shimaji Mokurai den: Ken o taishita itan no hijiri [A Biography of Shimaji Mokurai: A Non-Conformist Saint Holding a Sword in His Hands]. (Tokyo: Minerva Shobō, 2011); Yamaguchi Teruomi, Shimaji Mokurai: Seikyō bunri o motarashita sōryo [Shimaji Mokurai: The Cleric Who Effected the Separation of Politics and Religion] (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppan, 2013). 2  The True Pure Land School occupies a somewhat special position in the story of modern Japanese Buddhism. Not only was it institutionally well equipped to deal with the challenges of modernity, its traditional distance from Shinto (where other schools had advocated Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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g­ overnment entitled “Criticism of the Three Articles of Instruction.” Shimaji was born in 1838 to a priest of the True Pure Land Sect in Yamaguchi in Western Japan. He first became politically active in 1866, when a regional government, inspired by Shintoist ideologues, issued a ban on fire funerals, thereby threatening the livelihood of Buddhist priests. After protesting this step in writing, Shimaji teamed up with fellow sectarians to reform the institutions of his sect, first at the regional level, in 1868 also at its national centre in Kyoto. These efforts at countering the iconoclastic anti-Buddhist movement culminated in his successful attempt to have a Ministry of Doctrine installed, which Shimaji hoped would result in a more Buddhism-friendly policy by the central government. Through all these activities, he had become well-known as a reformer in True Pure Land circles and was thus chosen as one of five priests to go on a study tour of religions in Europe in 1872. This tour was closely modelled on the Iwakura Mission, which had set out for the United States in 1871, journeying on to Europe, and, after making brief stops in a number of African and other Asian countries, not returning to Japan until almost two years after it had departed from there.3 The Iwakura Mission, consisting of 48 proper members and 60 students, was notable for its highly ranked members, including a number of active ministers of state. The study tour organised by the True Pure Land Sect, in contrast, left Japan in March 1872 and travelled only to Europe (although Shimaji, on his return voyage, also made stops in the Middle East and India). Its purpose was to survey religious life in Europe, ostensibly to collect ideas on how to deal with the new political situation in Japan. It was in December 1872, while in Paris, that Shimaji penned his “Petition in Criticism of the Three Articles of Instruction,” taking aim at the government’s religious policy overall, i.e. the institutions of the ‘Great Teaching’ campaign, not just the three articles in the narrow sense. Outwardly, the text was a letter of appeal to the Japanese government or, more precisely, the Japanese Emperor. The text was, however, published in a newspaper in early 1873 and thereby c­ ombinatory practices) and its strong focus on the worship of only Amida Buddha made it easier for representatives of the school to claim the membership of their creed in the category of religion as it was discussed in the nineteenth century. Indeed, True Pure Land priests are represented out of proportion among the prominent Buddhist reformers of late nineteenth-century Japan. 3  The official report of the Iwakura Mission is available in complete English translation: Kume Kunitake, A True Account of the Ambassador Extraordinary & Plenipotentiary’s Journey of Observation Through the United States of America and Europe (Chiba: Japan Documents, 2002).

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gained some prominence. Its significance is also due to the fact that Shimaji had close ties with politicians from his birthplace Yamaguchi, who dominated the early Meiji-period government, such as Kido Takayoshi or Itō Hirobumi, both of whom were also members of the Iwakura Mission and in fact met with Shimaji while in Paris. Shimaji’s text marks the first clear articulation of the principle of separation of state (or politics) and religion in Japan and was followed by a number of similar petitions Shimaji drafted. The movement, led by Shimaji, to change the course of the religious policy pursued by the government was successful in that in 1875 the government permitted Shimaji’s sect to withdraw from the ‘Great Teaching’ campaign and later dismantled the whole campaign and its institutions. From the late 1870s onwards, the Japanese state left its period of trial and error when it began to endorse quite a different religious policy. Shinto, having just been broadly identified as a religion in its own right for the first time around 1870, was now regarded as non-religious. This legal construction, later known under the name of State Shinto, allowed the Japanese government to uphold the freedom of religious belief (which attained constitutional status in 1889/90), while at the same time demanding from all the Emperor’s subjects to participate in certain rites.4 Especially in the first half of the twentieth century, this policy came to have serious consequences for the social reality of other religions in Japan, most prominently Christianity, Buddhism, and the new religious movements. Ironically, Shimaji’s 1872 text can be said to have contributed to the development of State Shinto in that he was the first to forcefully argue against treating Shinto as a religion. In doing so, Shimaji was in fact also among the first Japanese to try to define religion. There had been no category of ‘religion’ in Japanese before the middle of the nineteenth century, and the need to think within such a category only arose after Japan’s contact with Western powers, first in the diplomatic context. A translation term for ‘religion’ was only slowly settled upon by the late 1870s, with Shimaji’s texts making for important contributions to this process. Just like contemporary authors without a religious background,5 Shimaji attempted to define religion vis-à-vis politics. Indeed, it took almost another generation until religion, as an abstract entity, became a salient factor in other 4  For an overview of the history of State Shinto see Helen Hardacre, Shintō and the State, 1868–1988 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). 5  Most importantly, these were the authors of the Meirokusha (Meiji Six Society), a society advocating Western-style learning. On their discussions of religion, see: Douglas Howland, “Translating Liberty in Nineteenth-Century Japan,” Journal of the History of Ideas 62 (2001): 161–181.

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discourses (theology, education, religious studies), too. In the early 1870s, however, not even an agreed upon term for ‘religion’ existed, which is why Shimaji uses five different terms in the brief text translated here alone for rendering ‘religion.’6 Shimaji’s approach and terminology heavily relied on the experience of his stay in Europe and, more specifically, on Christian precedents (which he viewed as an imminent danger to Japanese society and polity).7 More specifically, Shimaji took to a close reading of Ernest Renan’s Vie de Jesus, and discussed the history and doctrine of Christianity with several Catholic priests in Paris as well as Emil Gustav Lisco, a prominent liberal Protestant preacher, in Berlin. Yet, despite these influences, Shimaji’s stance was more that of an appropriation than of a wholesale import of European ideas. One major reason for this is that Shimaji could draw upon older figures of thought well established in the Japanese Buddhist tradition. The most important of these was the rhetoric motif of ōbō buppō sōi, the interdependence of royal law and Buddha-Dharma. In common use both by members of the political elite as well as leading representatives of the Buddhist establishment in medieval Japan, this concept expressed a political ideology according to which rulers were to protect Buddhist priests and temples, while Buddhist institutions were to support the state and its institutions. A similar logic of two separate spheres that resemble the religious and the political was articulated by a rhetoric particularly popular in the True Pure Land Sect since the eighteenth century. This was the ideal of shinzoku nitai, the two truths of the transcendent and the secular, referring to the sect’s teaching of salvation through Amida, the Buddha of the Pure Land, and the worldly order, respectively.8 Shimaji implicitly drew on such established dichotomies when formulating his novel vision of the configuration of religion and politics in modern Japan. Shimaji’s activities had a direct impact on national policy in the 1870s. Although he ceased to be a figure of political importance afterwards, he remained crucial to the inner-Buddhist reform movement of the last decades of the nineteenth century. Between 1868 and 1905, Shimaji was active in his sect’s main temple in Kyoto, ever striving to integrate Buddhist institutions into the modern nation state and to render Buddhist learning compatible with 6  The different original words are therefore indicated in the translation below. 7  On the role Christianity played in shaping Japanese intellectuals’ decision for State Shinto see Cemil Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought (New York: Columbia University Press 2007), 27–28. 8  See Minor L. Rogers and Ann T. Rogers, “The Honganji: Guardian of the State (1868–1945),” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 17, 1 (1990): 3–28.

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Western forms of knowledge. A major area of activities was education, where he attained to both the reform of theological education for priests and to general education, especially secondary education for girls. Shimaji was thus one of the prominent members of the Buddhist reform movement that embraced all of modern Asia9 and that in Japan later included Kiyozawa Manshi (also of the True Pure Land sect), Ōuchi Seiran (Sōtō Zen), Shaku Sōen, and Suzuki Daisetsu (both Rinzai Zen), among others. Hans Martin Krämer

Further Reading

Fujii, Takeshi. “Nationalism and Japanese Buddhism in the Late Tokugawa Period and Early Meiji.” In Religion and National Identity in the Japanese Context, edited by Klaus Antoni et al., 107–117. Münster: Lit, 2002. Horiguchi, Ryōichi. “Léon de Rosny et les premières missions bouddhiques japonaises en Occident.” Cipango: cahiers d’études japonaises 4 (1995): 121–139. Ketelaar, James. Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and Its Persecution. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Kodama, Shiki. “Shimaji Mokurai (1838–1911).” In Shapers of Japanese Buddhism, edited by Yusen Kashiwahara and Koyu Sonoda, 207–218. Tokyo: Kōsei Publishing, 1994. Krämer, Hans Martin. Shimaji Mokurai and the Reconception of Religion and the Secular in Modern Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2015.



Source Text10

Your servant Shimaji Mokurai, who is currently vacationing abroad, humbly addresses Your Majesty. Recently, the court has newly installed a Ministry of Doctrine. It is with grateful tears that I receive Your august thoughts on how to guide the people. Yet, within this ministerial ordinance there is something that 9  See the texts by Ouyang Jingwu (1.02), Shaku Sōen (3.03), Gendun Chopel (1.04), and Chaophraya Thiphakorawong (1.05) in the present volume. 10  This translation is based on: Shimaji Mokurai, “Sanjō kyōsoku hihan kenpaku sho,” in Nihon kindai shisō taikei, vol. 5: Shūkyō to kokka eds. Yasumaru Yoshio and Miyachi Masato (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1988), 234–243, which is in turn based on the text as given in Futaba Kenkō and Fukushima Kanryū, eds. Shimaji Mokurai zenshū, vol. 1 (Kyoto: Honganji shuppanbu, 1973), 15–26.

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I find extraordinarily incomprehensible. I am fortunate to live in an enlightened age and be able to travel for thousands of miles. I wish to repay Your imperial favour with my petty and unworthy thoughts. Unworthy as I am, I have long been in religion (kyōmon), so I will fully concentrate on the question of religion (kyōhō). On reflection, our country has long abandoned moral cultivation (kyōka). For this reason, the foreign teaching [i.e., Christianity] is daily making inroads. In our current times, when administering teachings (kyō), we cannot do without deep reflection and careful foresight. If we pursue only temporary solutions and frequently change our course, we might end up not being able to teach the people at all. This thought drives me to tears and makes me mad. If Your Imperial Majesty deigned to lend me Your ears just briefly, even my death would no longer concern me. The difference between politics (sei) and religion (kyō) should never be obscured. Politics is a human affair and governs only outward forms. Moreover, it separates countries from each other. Religion, however, is the work of the divine and governs the heart. Moreover, it runs through many countries. In politics, one will therefore in no way be mindful of others but entirely strive for profit to the self. Not so in religion: One never thinks of the self but first and foremost desires to benefit the other. As for politics separating countries from each other, what is deemed right in a republic is wrong in a monarchy. The policies adopted by autocratic governments are rejected by constitutional governments. Depending on the foundations on which countries are established, their policies are as irreconcilable as ice and charcoal. Is it not true that religion, by contrast, traverses many countries and is taken up by many people? How is it possible that, although the form of government of each country is different, their religion (kyōhō) is the same? Religion speaks of non-­ discrimination11 and great mercy12 (Buddha), of love for God and love for humans (Jesus). That is to say, it consists of making conscientiousness and altruism13 the fundament, giving to others what one desires for oneself, and not bestowing on others what one does not desire. Taken to the extreme of self-sacrifice, it fulfils the desires of others by disposing of one’s own fortunes and ruining oneself. We call this the teaching (kyō) of humaneness and mercy. How could people not adhere to it? (There can definitely be no religion (kyō) without this humaneness and love.) If politics were to emulate this, one could not maintain a country for even a single day. I have not yet heard of 11   Byōdō, skr. sama. 12   Daihi, skr. mahā-karuṇā. 13   Chūjo, a term already found in Confucius’s Analects (Lunyu).

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a ­government that would break up its own country and gladly give it to an enemy country. Instead, politics obeys human nature and gives humans what they desire. If humans merely fulfil their desires, they come to have the hearts of lions and wolves. Laws are employed in order to control this. Laws, however, suppress only private ambitions, not the public ambitions of a whole country. Not only do they not suppress them, but instead they even fuel [public ambitions], thereby hoping for resulting wealth and strength. If each country were to be like this [completely], it would necessarily come to war and plunder. Therefore, one establishes a system of public law and concludes international treaties based on publicly acknowledged and generally accepted principles. Yet, even if one governs their outward forms, one does not yet govern their hearts; if one suppresses the shoots, one has not yet stopped the root. Here, only religion (kyōhō) can come to the rescue: It controls their hearts and stops their root and thus drives the lions and wolves from their hearts. In this way, with religion (kyō) one makes people good, with politics one makes people invest effort. If one can achieve harmony between the two, one has the so-called mutual dependence of politics and religion and the ideal balance between form and content.14 Only then can a nation [truly] become a nation and a human [truly] become human. Then wealth, strength, and civilisation also come into being. That both Japan and China have traditionally erred in [the relationship between] politics and religion seems to me to stem from their having frequently confused the two. In the old days, the Europeans had erred [here] as well, and their culture was enormously backward. In recent times, however, they have come to see this and have now reached great results. I wish this for our country as well. However, it looks as if that which is decreed by the ministerial ordinance15 runs counter to this. Please let me briefly explain this to you. The first of the Three Articles of Instruction reads: “Revere the gods and love the country etc.” When it says “revere the gods,” this is religion (kyō), while “love the country” is politics. Is this not a confusion of politics and religion? Religion is that which all countries and all people should embrace. The people in this world are equals, but their characters differ. This is because no one likes evil. One should love life and hate death, loathe labour and wish for pleasure: Is there anyone in the world who would disagree? Yet to wish that others may live on after one has died and to desire to let others indulge in pleasure while one labours: This is the general principle of all religions (kyō). For this reason, Buddha announces: “The great mercy that does not discriminate saves all 14   Bunshitsu hinpin, another term from the Analects. 15  Shimaji here refers to Three Articles of Instruction (see the introduction).

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beings.” Students of Buddhism should embrace this notion thoroughly. Even the Christians, far removed from the true way, still speak of love for God and love for man, and the mutual love of its followers creates a feeling of community across distances and universal brotherhood. Is there such a thing as a religion (kyō) which is restricted to one country or a few people and which does not allow spreading to others? It is clear that love for one’s country cannot be [a matter of] religion (kyō). I have not yet been able to ascertain whether the expression “revere the gods” refers to the gods of only our country or to the god common to all countries.16 Please clarify which of the two it is. Should it refer to the deities of only our own country, then the earth, sun, and moon would be limited to our own country17 and it would not be able to reach others. Not even ancient Judaism in its most extreme tendencies claimed such a thing. These days, enlightenment progresses daily in our country, so that such a [parochial] view should no longer be held. Should, however, the meaning be the god common to all countries, then it would be the same as the so-called ‘Gott’ or ‘Dieu’ of the Occident. Yet how could it surpass Christianity in the degree of detail of its theories, its cleverness of teaching (kyō), and its ability to appeal to people? Not only would it not surpass Christianity, but it might even become the vanguard of Christianisation. In any case, God is God all the same, and only through the differences in expounding God is there Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. Yet, the degree with which a religion (kyō) can successfully spread depends on the depth and skill of its founder. His greatness is the source of people’s conviction. Now, if we take ‘gods’ to mean the gods of our country, who then has toiled for them in the olden days, who has founded the religion (kyō)? There is no founder of [such a] religion, no ancestor who established a sect (shū). Yet, [the Three Articles of Instruction] merely exhort us to revere the gods. In all likelihood, the people will not labour or suffer for something explained in this way. This is the reason that I am saying that promoting it with this reference to ‘god’ is the vanguard of Christianity. [Therefore,] I am afraid I really cannot fathom the gist of the high decision for recently having installed a Ministry of Doctrine: Is it in order to bend one’s knees before Jesus? Should the meaning, then, be to revere the so-called eight myriad gods, i.e. the gods of heaven and earth, fire, water, grasses and trees, then in Europe even the children would mock this, and there would be nothing more barbaric and uncivilised. [. . .] Magical spells, divinations, and customs of no use, which only confuse and harm people’s hearts, should equally be swept away once and for 16  In Japanese, the singular and the plural of nouns are not morphologically distinguished. 17  The implication here is that the sun, moon, and earth are worshipped as deities in Shinto.

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all. I believe that the tales of our country’s various gods are the first historical records of our country. They resemble those of other countries. The reason they are still worshipped today is that they have been fused with Buddhism. Had they never been fused, they would today be found only in historical texts. I deeply trust Your Majesty’s clear judgment on this. [. . .] The third of the Three Articles of Instruction reads: “Revere the king, follow the court.” With all due respect, I believe that ‘revering the king’ refers to the polity (kokutai), not to religion (kyō), and it goes without saying that ‘following the court’ is the principle of authoritarian rule, not the style of constitutional government. If Your Imperial Highness determines the polity, then who would not accept it? I am afraid to even articulate this. When it comes to government, there are necessarily sometimes gross errors in public opinion. As human reason is daily advancing, why should one use an outdated system of repression? It needs no elaboration that this is not something religion (kyō) can achieve. When modestly contemplating what the rationale for issuing the ministerial decree might have been, I suspect it might have been the fear of a disturbance of the national polity. If that is what one wishes to achieve by this, then not only will religion (kyō) have no effect, but one will also lose that which one wished to achieve. This is why I feel compelled to offer my humble views on the matter. Religion (kyō) certainly is the product of opportunity, not something that can be forced. If it does not appeal to the heart, how could one believe in it? If someone were forced to believe in a religion (kyō), he would certainly despise it. If that is so, how could Your Imperial Highness, unmoved throughout the ages in an incomparable way, be given relative importance by this? If you do not base this on religion, but let the politicians conduct entirely good government and thereby strictly maintain the polity, how could there be a light or an easy heart in this matter? I can hardly restrain my bloody tears. This is my view on managing the polity to which I hold fast and strong, having thought about it a thousand times and having gained knowledge about it in the European countries. I beg Your Imperial Highness to accept my views. [. . .] Lately I got hold of a European newspaper that said one could only marvel at the recent cultural progress of Japan. It also said that the government had adopted this and that policy and created a religion (shū) that it forced on the people, resulting in a tremendous upheaval. When I read this, I first thought this was the same as with the false reports of an alleged public recognition of Christianity. Now I know that the newspaper account was accurate. This will truly become an item of ridicule for the Europeans, for they believe religion (shūshi) is a divine act and not something that humans can construct. How could religion be determined and promulgated based upon institutional or legal decisions? For life and death are not for humans to know, heart and Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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thought are not for humans to rule. The sages and wise men of old stood between gods and humans because in their virtue they surpassed the masses and in their benevolence they had compassion for everyone. Had they not been such mediators [between divine and human], how could they have been at peace in life and death even though these cannot be known, and how could they have controlled heart and thought even though these cannot be ruled? Even today, after thousands and hundreds of years have passed, the founders of religions are revered and the heads of religions worshipped as they were in the beginning. Defending their succession viciously, not being moved by life and death, not yielding to hardships, returning to the battlefield and willingness to suffer for their cause like someone boiled in a cauldron: These being the reasons that religion (shūkyō) is religion (shūkyō), how can it be something people simply make up? Humans are humans; [religions] frequently arise when they borrow divine authority. [. . .] Well, then: If our country attempts to make Shinto its religion (shūshi), then whom will we call founder, whom can we place between gods and men? Not to mention that Shinto does not differentiate between high and low, good and evil; it goes to Izanami no mikoto18 as well as to Susanoo no mikoto;19 it worships the elder brother deity (Hikoho) as well as the younger brother deity (Hikohohodemi).20 Can religion (kyō) be such a thing? It goes without saying that newly fabricating a religion is a foolish idea. Should our country, however, attempt to make the people have no religion (shūshi), it would be something unheard of in the world and would draw laughter from everywhere. Whatever the age, whatever the time, the [common] people will surely be stupid. Controlling their hearts, soothing their emotions, what can this be based upon if not religion (shūshi)? Therefore, I have not heard of a single person in the countries of Europe and America who would have been without religion (shūshi). In Europe, they call a man without belief ‘homme sans religion.’ It means a man without religion (shūshi). As human knowledge is increasing daily, however, those who do not believe are numerous. Yet while 18  Izanami is a female creator deity in the ancient myths of Japan. 19  In the ancient myths, Susanoo is a son of Izanami no mikoto and the deity of, according to different variants of the myths, the storm, the sea, or the moon. According to the dominant variant of the Nihon shoki (Chronicles of Japan), Susanoo was an evil deity purposely interfering with the activities of his sister, Amaterasu no ōmikami, the ancestral deity of the Japanese imperial house. 20  Shimaji here makes reference to the myths surrounding the brothers Hoderi (here: Hikoho) and Hoori (here: Hikohohodemi), who plunge into an internecine struggle about a lost fishing hook.

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they ­themselves might not believe, they never slander religion. And not only do they not slander it, but they respect it inwardly even though outwardly they may laugh at it. One must call this the actions of insightful people. It goes without saying that religion (kyō) is thriving in England and America (in Russia, people are the most superstitious). And even though people in France treat religious affairs superficially, this does not compare to the extreme insolence by the arrogant people in our country. [. . .] When [Léon] Gambetta21 (a French politician) attempted to rob unruly priests of their allowances, [Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe] Thiers22 (the president of France) stopped him. The empress of Prussia23 unfailingly goes to church with all active ministers of state every Sunday, reads the Bible and sings church hymns; in this, she is not different from the common people (there is a separate large church for soldiers, where they form a line and pay respect every Sunday). I deeply feel that one can gain an insight into their political system from this. [. . .] When Mr. Mutsu [Munemitsu] (the prefect of Kanagawa) was in Germany a while ago, he debated religion with a university professor. When he said that he wished that [Japan] had no religion (shūshi), the professor aggressively refuted this. It is an opinion that runs through the whole world that one must not be without religion. Once Christianity has infiltrated a people, it is not easily removed. We can only protect against it while it has not yet arrived. Those who are fit for this task, however, are quite rare. Should Your [Majesty] really wish to protect us from it, there is no one to be employed but the Buddhists. It appears to me that Christianity does not infiltrate those who do not believe in gods, while it will without exception affect those who do believe in gods. This is because among all religions (kyō) that teach gods, Christianity is the most refined. Only Buddhism opposes Christianity, and since their teachings are as different as ice and charcoal, they will not match until eternity. Christianity teaches a lord of creation, but Buddhism attributes the myriad laws to the heart. Locating reward and punishment in someone else24 is not the truth; instead, demanding karmic retribution25 from one’s own heart leads the way to reason. When the 21  1838–1882, French Minister in the Government of National Defence in 1870–71, later Prime Minister. 22  1797–1877, French Head of State, 1871–1873. 23  Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Empress of Germany (since 1871) and Queen of Prussia (since 1861). 24  I.e. Jesus Christ. 25   Ōhō: rewards and punishments in accordance with previous moral action.

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foundations of religious teachings are already in conflict, how could they not view each other as enemies? The war between Protestantism and Catholicism in Europe greatly contributed to the retrogression of [European] culture. With the flourishing of culture, the two religions have achieved harmonious coexistence. These, however, are religions that flow from the same source; how should those that differ in the foundations of their teaching from the outset ever find peace? Therefore, if you wish to employ Christianity, you must give up Buddhism; if you wish to employ Buddhism, you must prevent Christianity from entering. If, however, we turn to either of the two only meekly, it will be of no avail. If we definitely confront the power of Christianity as an enemy, this will doubtlessly cause not a few complications. This is the reason that I worry greatly about our country. [. . .] Even three-year-old children know that the source of European enlightenment is not religion (kyō) but science, that it is not founded upon Christianity but on Greece and Rome. Ascribing [European civilisation] to the merits of religion (kyōhō) is just the product of the arbitrary will of missionaries. One must ponder this deeply. I explained the Buddhist principle of attributing the myriad laws to the heart to the French scholar [Léon de] Rosny.26 Rosny said: “What you explain is good. I ask you to build one [Buddhist] temple in Europe and thereby change the European way of life. I will gladly help you in this endeavour.” Although this was mere banter, when investigating the reason for this, one can say that there was nothing irrational in it. When it comes to the details and the advantages and disadvantages of Christianity, I will gladly be able to provide these. It is with great trepidation that I dare to venture forward with this, these being only my trifling thoughts brought forth before Your Majesty. My life is in Your hands. December [1872] Humbly offered by Your servant travelling abroad, the priest Mokurai Selected and translated by Hans Martin Krämer

26  1837–1914, chair of Japanese at the École spéciale des langues orientales since 1868. According to his travel notes, Shimaji met de Rosny 14 times between July 1872 and February 1873.

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Haji Omar Said Tjokroaminoto: Islam and Socialism (Indonesia, 1924/1963) Introduction Haji Omar Said (HOS) Tjokroaminoto (1882–1934), the author of Islam and Socialism, was a prominent Indonesian figure who played a leading role in the Indonesian nationalist movement of the early twentieth century. He was a leader of (the) Sarekat Islam/Islamic Association (SI)1—an organisation which served as a medium for those who held that Islamic religious sentiment and nationalist consciousness could be combined to voice their disappointment with the Dutch colonial rule in the archipelago. The SI attracted a significant number of followers, who envisaged the independence of the nation. This organisation was a transformation of (the) Sarekat Dagang Islam/Islamic Trade Association (SDI) founded by Samanhudi (1868–1956)2 in 1911 in Solo, 1  In both Indonesian and non-Indonesian languages, much has been devoted to the study of Tjokroaminoto and the SI. See, e.g. Amelz, HOS Tjokroaminoto Hidup dan Perjuangannya (Jakarta: Bulan Bintang, 1952); M. A. Gani, Cita Dasar dan Pola Perjuangan Syarikat Islam (Jakarta: Bulan Bintang, 1984); Timur Jaylani, “The Sarekat Islam Movement: Its Contribution to Indonesian Nationalism” (MA thes., McGill Unviersity, 1959); Bernard Dahm, History of Indonesia in the Twentieth Century (New York: Preager Publisher, 1971). For the biography of Tjokroaminto, see e.g. Anhar Gongong, HOS Tjokroaminoto (Jakarta: Depdikbud, 1985); M. Masyhur Amin, Saham HOS Tjokroaminoto dalam Kebangunan Islam dan Nasionalisme di Indonesia (Yogyakarta: Nur Cahaya, 1983); Donald Eugene Smith, ed., Religion and Politics, and Social Change in the Third World (New York: The Free Press, 1971), 109; HOS Tjokroaminoto, Tafsir Program-Asas dan Program Tandhim Partai Syarikat Islam Indonesia (Jakarta: LajnahTanfidziyah PSII, 1958), 30; Ensiklopedi Islam 5 (Jakarta: Ichtiar Baru van Hoeve, 1993), 108–110. 2  Haji Samanhudi was only concerned with economic endeavor, i.e. trading competition against the Chinese domination. It is not surprising that he gained less reputation than Tjokroaminoto, who was more skillful and charismatic in managing the organisation. For more on Samanhudi see, e.g. Denys Lombard and Claudine Salmon, “Islam and Chineseness,” Indonesia 57 (1993): 127; G. W. J. Drewess, “The Struggle Between Javanism and Islam as Illustrated by the Sĕratdĕrmagandul,” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 122 (1966): 315; Shiraishi Takashi, “The Disputes between Tjipto Mangoenkoesoemo and Soetatmo Soeriokoesoemo: Satria vs. Pandita,” Indonesia 32 (1981): 97; Ruth McVey and Comrade Semaun, “An Early Account of the Independence Movement” Indonesia 1 (1966): 54–55.

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Central Java. The SDI was aimed at increasing the self-esteem of the ’common’ Indonesians in confronting at least two challenges—the harsh competition in the batik industry particularly with Chinese traders and the Javanese noble class who merely supported the interests of the Dutch colonial regime.3 The SDI focused on its role in economy. However, thanks to Tjokroaminoto’s leadership of the organisation,4 its vision and scope of activities were broadened. Economy was not the only domain to which attention should be paid. In Tjokroaminoto’s hands, the SI was transformed into a mass organisation with social and religious dimensions, and political ambition. Thus, the figure of Tjokroaminoto cannot be detached from the history of the SI and vice versa. Whereas the SI can be regarded as the first mass movement which planted the seeds of nationalism in the hearts of common Indonesians, Tjokroaminoto, as its leader, merits credit for playing a vital role in this process by using Islamic religious sentiment in attracting the followers. It is true that the Budi Utomo/ Prime Philosophy (BU), founded by Dr. Sutomo in 1908, cultivated the sense of nationalism among Indonesians earlier than the SI did.5 However, the scope of membership and activities of the BU was limited to the elite circle of aristocratic educated Javanese people and local bureaucrats.6 Low-class people, whose number was large compared with the few educated people, were beyond the BU’s reach. After all, the BU was not initially aimed at becoming a nationalist mass movement or a political organisation at all. Rather, the BU’s activities focused on education and culture. It is therefore unsurprising that in the early years of its development the Dutch colonial government allowed room to this ‘elite’ forum to exercise its cultural programs. All in all, the BU deserves credit for inspiring other Indonesian leaders to found organisations 3  M. A. Gani, “Cita Dasar,” Mansur, Sejarah Sarekat islam dan Pendidikan Bangsa (Yogyakarta: Pustaka Pelajar, 2004), 10; Hasnul Arifin Melayu, “Islam and Politics in the Thought of Tjokroaminoto (1882–1934),” (MA thes., McGill University), 3; Latiful Khuluq, “Sarekat Islam: Its Rise, Peak and Fall,” Al-Jamiah, Journal of Islamic Studies 60 (1997): 252; Michael Charles Williams, Communism, Religion and Revolt (Ohio: Ohio University, 1990), 114–115. For more on the way in which the Dutch cooperated with the Javanese upper class in ruling people, see, e.g. George McTurner Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1952), 162. 4  Harry J. Benda, The Crescent and the Rising Sun, Indonesian Islam under the Japanese Occupation 1942–1945 (New York: W. van Hoeve, 1958), 42–43; Ahmad Syafiʾi Maarif, Islam dan Masalah Kenegaraan (Jakarta: LP3ES, 1985), 79–85; Melayu, “Islam and Politics.” 5  See e.g. Bernard H. M. Vlekke, Nusantara: A History of Indonesia (The Hague: W. van Hoeve Ltd., 1965), 348. 6  Alisa Zainuʾddin, A Short History of Indonesia (New York: Preager Publisher, 1970), 174–175; L. M. Sitorus, Sedjarah Pergerakan Kebangsaan Indonesia (Jakarta: n.p., n.d.), 10–11.

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for the indigenous Indonesian population, e.g. the Indische Partij/Indonesian Party (IP). Although the foundation of the SI was rooted in Islam/Islamic culture, the later development of the organisation yielded a more plural and complex feature. Not only did figures with nationalist ideology come to the scene of the organisation, communists also played a role in the SI’s record. Consequently, conflict among the SI’s leaders with different ideologies and backgrounds led to the birth of two major warring factions within the organisation—the red (communist) and the white (Islamic) SI.7 However, it should be borne in mind that, unlike nowadays Indonesia in which communism, due to its association with atheism, is condemned by both the government and society, early twentieth century witnessed communism and Islam going hand in hand in conveying the common feeling of discontent among the ‘colonialised’ Indonesians. Unsurprisingly, the blend of Marxism, nationalism, and Islam was often embraced by notable Indonesian leaders, with Sukarno, one of the founding fathers of Indonesia, as a prominent figure. It is true that Islamic religious sentiment was a vital factor in uniting Indonesians through creating a single shared identity.8 Islam, embraced by the majority of Indonesians, often played a key role in the country’s history of social movements. Faced with the mighty colonial regime, for example, believers articulated their discontent using the common religious language. Note, however, that religion is not the only driving force by which to unite, and divide, people. Ethnicity, class, education, and other (social) interests are elements that should not be disregarded in the process of politicisation. The history of the SI demonstrates the conflicting interests which led to the rise and 7  See e.g. G. M. Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963), 76; Donald Hindley, The Communist Party of Indonesia, 1951–1963 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964), 18. Semaun and Darsono, both communists, respectively served as commissioners and propagandists of the SI. The two called upon the members of the SI to struggle against Dutch colonial rule pursuing a non-cooperative strategy. However, Abdul Muis and Tjokroaminoto, the SI leaders with (an/a stronger) Islamic focus, became members of the Volksraad (People’s Council), showing that both used colonial instruments to achieve their goals. See e.g. Khuluq, “Sarekat Islam,” 256; Shiraisi, An Age in Motion, Popular Radicalism in Java, 1912–1926 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 108. During the later conflict, Muhammad Misbach, a communist and devout Muslim, and Darsono both dis­ approved of Tjokroaminoto’s financial use of the SI. On the other hand, the Islamic faction, e.g. Surjopranoto, Salim and Fachroedin, accused the communists of attempting to divide the SI from within. See Shiraishi, An Age in Motion, 226–227. 8  Donald Eugene Smith, ed., Religion, Politics, and Social Change in the Third World (New York: The Free Press, 1971), 109.

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fall of this mass movement. In the beginning, Islamic religious sentiment was laid as the foundation upon which the organisation was established. However, during the later development, when the organisation grew stronger with a larger, but less controllable membership and its more diverging interests, conflict was unavoidable. Returning to Tjokroaminoto, with a Javanese aristocratic background, he was educated in the Dutch school system. He graduated from Opleidingsschoolen van Inlandische Ambtenaren (Training School for Native Civil Servants, OSVIA)—a seven year course for upper class Indonesians who wanted to work in the colonial administration. He indeed served as a local administrator for a while. But he quit the job, and preferring a private job he took an engineering course at Burgerlijke Avondschool Afdeeling Wertuigkundige (Civil Evening School, BAS). After taking leadership of the SI, Tjokroaminoto again resigned from his position as an engineer in a sugar factory in Surabaya, turning his attention to the commercial company Setia Oesaha (the Faithful Effort), which became the major financial resource of the SI. Additionally, Tjokroaminoto was editor in chief of Oetoesan Hindia (Indonesian Herald)—a newspaper which voiced the aspiration of the SI’s activists. His talent in writing was shown in this stage of his career, as his pieces appeared not only in his own newspaper but also in others, e.g. Soeara Soerabaja (the Voice of Surabaya). Reading Tjokroaminoto’s text Islam and Socialism, one immediately notes the complexity of both the text and the audience. On the one hand, the author wanted to convince the Indonesian Muslim audience that ideas coming from Western schools of thought—such as nationalism, socialism, and other schools—can be accepted, arguing passionately that these thoughts do not oppose the essence of Islamic teachings. Tjokroaminoto explains his belief in two ways. Firstly, he recalls the history of early Islam, from which he draws the conclusion that the Prophet Muhammad taught the true spirit of socialism, and that the most essential form of socialism has indeed already been keenly practiced then. Moreover, the political system of early Islamic caliphate never abandoned socialism. Bearing in mind that Tjokroaminto was not a trained historian, his argument sounds unsurprisingly apologetic. Secondly, Tjokroaminoto returns to the prime two sources of Islam—the Quran and Sunna—and contends that both forms of religious source teach us better concepts of socialism and nationalism than what Western intellectuals have offered. Once again, Tjokroaminoto was not a trained Quranic exegete, Islamic jurist, or theologian. His interpretation of the sources is not based upon Islamic traditional sources.9 Interestingly, his understanding of Islam often 9  However, Tjokroaminto’s religious authority is often justified by his ancestral root. It is said that his great grandfather Kyai Bagus Kasan Basari was a well known religious leader Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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derives from Western works, particularly written in Dutch. Keep in mind that this practice is common among early Indonesian Muslim intellectuals, e.g. Sukarno (1901–1971), Agus Salim (1884–1954), M. Natsir (1908–1993), M. Roem (1908–1983), all evoking Islam but resting their understanding of the religion on Western sources and using a rationalistic approach. In a broad sense, the spirit of Pan-Islamism, i.e. the thoughts of Muḥammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905) and Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghāni (1838–1897), can be felt in Islam and Socialism. In fact, the presence of Pan-Islamism in the archipelago can be traced back to the late nineteenth century in West Sumatra.10 After that, this renewal spirit of Islam was developed in the context of the archipelago during the heyday of nationalism. Tjokroaminoto, to a certain extent, attempts to simplify the core of the Islamic religious system in the light of extracting the Islamic teachings for the sake of the pragmatic purpose that the Islamic umma (community) can grasp the religion easily and rationally. The work of Tjokroaminoto clearly addresses various themes ranging from the West and the East, Islam facing the modern world, Islam and politics and, the concept of a modern Islamic state. Additionally, Tjokroaminoto also attempts to empower the umma in the effort of liberating them from their own ignorance and from external control, namely the colonial regime. Nevertheless, Tjokroaminto, like any other Indonesian Muslim intellectuals at the time, was a keen reader of Ameer Ali’s The Spirit of Islam (1902), Muhammad Ali’s Muhammad, the Prophet (1924), and M. Mushir Hosain Kidwai’s “Islam and Socialism” (1912). Tjokroaminoto also admired the progress and advance of Western thoughts. Thus, Tjokroaminoto read Karl Marx’s Zur Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie and Das Kapital.11 In Islam and Socialism, references to all of these aforementioned works can be found. However, there is a process of contextualisation, involving a certain ‘hermeneutical process.’ in Ponorogo, East Java who founded the Pesantren (traditional Islamic boarding school) in Tegalsari. See e.g. Melayu, “Islam and Politics,” 10. Bear in mind that attributing certain ancestral pedigree was a common practice at the time. Sukarno was claimed to be the descendent of Pakubuwono, the Sultan of Surakarta. On another occasion, Sukarno also boasted his mixed blood nobility, the Javanese line from his father, traced back to Prince Diponegoro who revolted against the Dutch in 1825–1830, and the Balinese Brahmana line from his mother. See e.g. Solichin Salam, Bung Karno Putera Fajar (Jakarta: Gunung Agung, 1982), 16–18; Abu Hanifah, The Tales of Revolution (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1972), 62–63. 10  See, e.g. Deliar Noer, The Modernist Movement in Indonesia 1900–1942 (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1973), 38–66, and also chapters 1.10 and 2.06 in this volume. 11   See also Melayu, “Islam and Politics,” 16; M. Masyhur Amin, HOS Tjokroaminoto: Rekonstruksi Pemikiran dan Perjuangannya (Yogyakarta: Cokroaminoto University Press, 1995), 30. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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As a result, all of the above-mentioned works were understood within a new Indonesian context, in which the relation, and antagonism, between nationalism, socialism, and religion came into a new unique shape, which cannot be found anywhere else in the Muslim world. On the one hand, in Islam and Socialism Tjokroaminoto attempts to raise the self-confidence among the Indonesian Muslims urging them to be aware that the principles of socialism, and nationalism, can be discovered in both Islamic sources and history. On the other hand, the author also rejects those who undermine the power which Islamic sentiment can develop inspiring Muslims to progress, arguing that Islamic spirit can become a vital instrument in awakening the sense of nationalism in the path of the independence of the nation. It is not difficult to imagine that, as the text was written in 1923 or after, friction in the SI’s body—in which its leaders (be they communists, nationalists, and Islamists) competed against each other to implant their ideology and to play a greater role in the organisation—had already occurred. Tjokroaminto sought to call upon these conflicting leaders to unite the organisation under the banner of Islam and socialism. His message is clear that the two elements can stay together under one roof. Religion does not oppose communism. The latter is not the arch-enemy of the former, at least in the soil of Indonesia during the time of Tjokroaminoto.12 It is also clear that the author does not condemn any faction involved in the conflict, rather seeking the sympathy of all factions and summoning them to come together. Once again, Tjokroaminto’s message is obviously that Islamic tenets do not oppose socialism and ­communism—implying that those who struggle for the independence of Indonesia under the banner of communism can be friends and can therefore work with those who regard Islamic religious sentiment as their cardinal motivation. Accordingly, communists and ‘Islamists’ can go hand in hand in the effort of alleviating the fate of Indonesians. The supporters of the white and the red SI may be united and cooperate with each other.

12  Note that in the later period of Indonesia, particularly after the 1965 turmoil—see e.g. John Hughes, The End of Sukarno (London: Angus and Robertson, 1968)—the New Order of Suharto’s three decade regime banned communism. Anyone who was suspected to have had ties with communism was either arrested and then jailed or marginalised by both the governmental administration and the Indonesian society. Marxism and communism were associated with atheism, which was considered to be dangerous for the ‘religious Indonesian society.’ Indeed, the 1965 turmoil cast a deep impact upon the Indonesian society, in terms of the way the tragedy traumatised society and in terms of how society treated those who were suspected of being communists.

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Tjokroaminoto, his ideas, and the SI had great impact upon later Indonesian leaders. Some messages contained in the text that I have translated are echoed in many writings by later generations. Sukarno’s celebrated piece—in which he passionately argues that nationalism, Islam, and Marxism can be merged— owes thanks to Tjokroaminoto. Indeed, Sukarno openly acknowledges his gratitude to his teacher, whose excellent style in oratory he imitated.13 Moreover, Tjokroaminoto was regarded by many as a ‘true inspiring leader,’ described in many accounts of his contemporary as the ‘Messiah’ (ratu adil, Just King) who would lead the nation to independence and prosperity.14 Tjokroaminoto, however, died a decade before his student, Sukarno, declared the independence of Indonesia in 1945. In Sukarno’s era (1945–1965), in which communism, socialism, and Marxism were still welcome in the Indonesian political domain, the text Islam and Socialism therefore received attention from the Indonesian readership. However, during the era of Suharto (1965–1997), in which communism was banned, and Marxism and socialism were blackened by political and social propaganda, this work by Tjokroaminoto was almost forgotten. Al Makin

Further Reading

Hanifah, Abu. The Tales of Revolution. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1972. Jaylani, Timur. “The Sarekat Islam Movement: Its Contribution to Indonesian Nationalism.” MA thes., McGill University, 1959. Kahin, George McTurner. Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963. Khuluq, Latiful. “Sarekat Islam: Its Rise, Peak and Fall.” Al-Jamiah, Journal of Islamic Studies 60 (1997): 246–272. McVey, Ruth and Comrade Semaun. “An Early Account of the Independence Movement.” Indonesia 1 (1966). 13  See e.g. Cindy Adams, Sukarno: An Autobiography as told to Cindy Adams (New York: The Hobbs-Merril Company, 1965), 38. See also Soekarno, “Nasionalisme, Islamisme dan Marxisme,” first published in Suluh Indoensia Muda (1926), later published in Dibawah Bendera Revolusi (Jakarta: Gunung Agung, 1965) vol. 1; trans. by Karel H. Worouw and Peter D. Weldon, Nationalism, Islam and Marxism (Ithaca: Modern Indonesia Project, Southeast Asia Program Cornell University, 1984). 14  See e.g. A. P .E Korver, Sarekat Islam, Gerakan Ratu Adil?, trans. Grafitipers (Jakarta: Grafitipers, 1985).

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Melayu, Hasnul Arifin. “Islam and Politics in the Thought of Tjokroaminoto (1882– 1934).” MA thes., McGill University. Noer, Deliar. The Modernist Movement in Indonesia 1900–1942. Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1973. Shiraisi, Takashi. An Age in Motion, Popular Radicalism in Java, 1912–1926. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990. Soekarno. “Nasionalisme, Islamisme dan Marxisme.” In Nationalism, Islam and Marxism. Translated by Karel H. Worouw and Peter D. Weldon. Ithaca: Modern Indonesia Project, Southeast Asia Program Cornell University, 1984.



Source Text15

What is Socialism? The word ‘socialism,’ which derives from Latin ‘Socius,’ bears the same meaning as ‘Makker’ in Dutch, ‘teman-sahabat’ in Bahasa Indonesia, ‘kanca’ in Javanese, and ‘sahabat’ or ‘ashraf’ in Arabic. Thus, the school of ‘socialism’ has a noble dream and goal, which can be called het kameraadschappelijke (de kameraadschap)—friendship, comradeship, brotherhood, or acquaintance. Socialism holds in high regard ‘friendship’ and ‘comradeship,’ which serve as bond in societal relationships. Thus, socialism is the opposite of ‘individualism,’ which maintains the interest of ‘individuals.’ Socialism promotes its way of life with the slogan of ‘one for all, and all for one’—a way of life which shows us that all of us shoulder responsibility together on the ground of common benefit. Individualism, on the other hand, holds that ‘each individual seeks its own interest.’ If we read some works on socialism penned by Western writers, like the Dutchman Prof. Quack, who tells us about a number of proponents of socialism from various periods of time, including their thoughts and rules, we will know a number of different ideas of socialism. Yet one thing is shared by the proponents of socialism, that is they aim to protect the interest of society, whose rights and duties are above those of individual or certain group of people. 15  Haji Omar Said Tjokroaminoto, “Islam dan Sosialisme,” originally written in Mataram (Yogyakarta), November 1924; the text is from: Ahmad Notosoetardjo, ed., Lembaga Penggali dan Penghimpun Sedjarah Revolusi Indonesia, Endang dan Pemuda (Djakarta 1963).

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Although early socialist movements since then were triggered by the forgotten values in a society, not necessarily inspired by philosophical ideals (­wijsgeerige idealen), they (often) were also awakened by a certain deep religious consciousness. When religious values and consciousness in many levels of society—including the grass root level—become weak, social movements slowly grow with the foundation of materialism (stoffelijke dingen); this situation particularly occurred in the Western countries. In this vein, socialist movements mushroomed; various socialist movements, like grains of sand on the beach, were founded; each has its own foundation and principles. Despite this, given various versions of socialist movements, these movements shared a common goal, which is to put social theories into practice, that often differ from what is practiced in contemporary societies in the countries known as civilised societies, in which absolute freedom is given to individuals to compete against each other in politics, economical production and its distribution, and to own tools of production. In addition, social theories were formulated to achieve the goal to improve the fate of numerous poor individuals—which can be elevated in accordance with human standard—by means of fighting against the causes of poverty. These theories are also aimed at fighting against the current wrong relationship among individuals, related to economy, social justice, and religious issues. These theories are accompanied by the need of change or revolution, and paths related to it, which are not always accompanied by violence or force. Although these theories agree with each other on the main cause of the destruction of a society, each offers different views on many other issues. Having said that, the main difference between ‘socialism’ as a ‘lesson’ about society and the ‘school of socialism’ as ‘a movement’ whose goal is to establish an ideal society should be borne in mind. Before proceeding to ‘socialism,’ we should know the differences between ‘socialism’ and ‘communism.’ According to common view, communism refers to a kind of association (­verzamelnaam), whereas socialism refers to a broader association (soortnaam). Communism is a system which in its essence opposes individual ownership, and to achieve this there is an effort to create the rule of communio bonorum, according to which goods should be owned collectively (goederen gemeenschap). The principle of communio bonorum is always related to communism, and the system of communio (collective ownership) characterises any forms of communism. Socialism is an important part of communism.

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In this sense, socialism or collectivism refers to an economic system whose program covers the following two main goals: 1. 2.

Ownership of production tools should become the right of a society. That economic system should be based on the interest of society; in other words, society should decide which goods should be produced and how they are distributed. Only of how to use the goods each individual have their own way.

To gain the true intention of the above statement, the two following points should be kept in mind. Firstly, if we categorise socialism as an economic system, it does not necessarily mean that socialism has no religious and philosophical roots. On the contrary, each form of socialism is based upon certain values of philosophy and religion; thus socialism which Muslims should practice is the one which is based on the principles of Islam, an issue which we will deal with more clearly later. The kind of socialism we aim for is the one which supports our goals to seek salvation in the world and hereafter. Secondly, if we say that socialism is an economic system as explained above, it is clear that socialism is only a system. In fact, there are four major systems which are associated with socialism. All of these harbor two agendas which are mentioned above. However, each proposes a different system of ideal government. The four systems are A) Social democracy (socialism based on knowledge, ‘weisenschappelijke socialisme Marxisme,’ that is Marx’s teaching) which proposes that the government should be elected by people democratically. According to this system, an ideal society (gemeenschap) does not refer to political democracy, but to social democracy, involving political participation (politieke orde). However, the role of the state is decreased by economical order (economische orde). What plays a more important role is a society (gemeenschap) which comprises economical relations, which may be better called a gigantic industrial plant. B) Anarchism which proposes that society does not consist of individuals who live in a society, but of unions of workers who guard their own autonomy, rule themselves, and are not responsible to society. The division of groups is based on municipality or economical interest (division of labour). Syndicates in France (proponents of revolutionary movement) support this anarchism. They demand that these unions (vakvereniging) should own the tools of production. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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C) State socialism (staatsocialisme) which proposes that society should be [organised as] a political state, as we know today. In fact, this system does not seem to embrace socialism entirely, as it maintains only the second rule (society rules economy), but ignoring the first rule (the tools of production have to be owned by society). D) Agricultural socialism (akkersocialisme), a kind of state socialism, which suggests that society has to be organised in a modern fashion. This system does not embrace socialism entirely, as the proponents of agricultural socialism view that only land is to be owned by society. As mentioned above, the seed of the socialist movement is not merely driven by philosophical ideals. However, religious sentiment also plays a role in nurturing the movement. Socialism bases itself on knowledge (wetenschap); scientific socialism which is Marx’s teaching also has a philosophical foundation. This basis is called ‘historical materialism.’ According to P. J. Troelstra this idea is born from the philosophical teachings of Hegel, who explains an ideal structure of society in detail (Het historisch materialsime is ontstaan uit de konsekwent toepassing van een onderdeel der philsophie van Hegel bij de verklaring van maatschappelijke ­instellingen en verschijnseien/Historical materialism has been drawn from basic understandings of Hegel’s philosophy on social institutions and phenomena). This short piece is not the right place to explain each of these four socialist movements [in detail], which are inspired by Western ideas and are performed in the Western way. Nor is this work a sufficient place to elucidate what ‘Bolshevism’ and ‘communism,’ supported by the proponents in Russia and other countries, refer to. However, our main goal in this book is to spell out socialism which is in accordance with our religion (Islam) and which we therefore perform as commanded by the religion of Islam. A brief introduction can be presented as follows. The dream of socialism in Islam, which cannot be said to have been influenced by Western ideas, has been harbored for thirteen centuries. We do not argue here that since the early time Islam has promoted the system of socialism like that of today. However, the principles of socialism have been known in Islamic society since the time of the Prophet Muhammad. These principles have been applied more easily than the same principles have been in Europe at any time. In the following explanation we demonstrate the truth of our remark. In this vein, we can explain two forms of socialism, which are known to Islamic society: Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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State socialism, be it a form that is controlled by a central government or another form that is governed on municipal level/by a decentralised system (gedecentraliseerde gemeente). Agricultural socialism. The first form of socialism is of importance in our discussion. If a government adopts socialism, all production and industry should be organised in a socialist manner. In this kind of government land and its products should be organised like a [single] huge industry, in case that land-socialism and state socialism are the choice. This kind of socialism has been performed in Islam. Since under the Prophet Muhammad the administration has been organised in a socialist way as all lands were owned by the government. This policy continued until Islam spread in other countries later. Moghul kings in India also adopted this land policy, which their descendants continued. At that time, mines and its products belonged to the state. If anyone found something precious buried in the soil, he has to give it to the state who owned the land and anything that it contained.

In India under Muslim rule, the government rented land to the people with undetermined costs. Thus, the revenue of the government also depended on the products from the land—a system which has been in practice under the control of the descendants of Moghul kings until now. Note that the economic source of almost all Muslim countries depends on land cultivation. As explained earlier, under Muslim rule, land was owned by the state which also organised it [its distribution/cultivation] in a socialist manner. However, the tools of production should be given to the people. Note that our Prophet performed not merely this form of socialism, but the way in which he administered the government was also in a socialist manner. The proponents of socialism nowadays want to achieve democratic socialism. They strive to establish a government with representatives on the levels of [municipality]. However, this kind of government and its representatives rather feature a democratic system, not a socialist system. Under socialist rule the people should have their own voice directly in the affairs of government. In this vein, Muslim countries have achieved the highest form of socialism. (The) people realised that the authority to establish rules does not lie in the hands of cabinets or parliaments, nor does it lie in the hands of a political party which represents a certain group of people or a certain class. Every rule made in the Islamic society is made by God, who makes all rules, which stand above all rules. Rules in a Muslim society are not man-made, nor made by mere institution that represents the interests of those who are in power. All human affairs as a whole belong to every individual, not only exclusively to a certain individual or a group; all those who Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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vote and who are voted have the right to change the rule for the sake of the interest of their group, party and class. Today, however, all efforts to make laws are in the hands of representatives or commissions. The government which applies this system of representative democracy must accommodate political parties, which, however, does not [necessarily] lead to the idea of socialism. Formulating rules via referendum is closer to the values of socialism than producing rules within a representative democracy. The latter [ideally] should accommodate the aspirations of all individuals, regardless of their class and party. In interpreting the rules of God, Islam gives rights to all individuals—be they men or women. In fact, an old poor woman may have a better judgment over the matter of Islamic rules than that of a caliph; and in this vein the caliph should take the majority’s opinion. The government, as the one which is responsible to apply the laws, should be composed of those whose wisdom is acknowledged and whose abilities are sufficient to do so. Despite of this, the government, and the representatives are chosen only for the purpose of applying the laws. The heads of the government are appointed for the purpose of helping the people in need— to help them, to attend to their interests, and to apply the rule of God based on the people’s wish. Too much bureaucracy in a government is dangerous; but Muslims (within an ideal Islamic system) can avoid it. Their government is not based on departmental division, nor is it based on portfolio (ministerial offices). The heads of a Muslim government, unlike the ministers in the current Western governments, cannot distance themselves from the people. Muslim leaders have to pay attention to the aspiration of the people in performing their daily tasks related to social and political affairs. They, unlike the leaders in the current democratic system who only listen to the aspiration of the voice of the majority in parliament, cannot ignore the demands of the people in every matter. In a true democracy, authority in the government and in making any rules should be returned to the people. In regard to military affairs, today many Western countries still employ armies who are paid; in the Islamic system as practiced in the past, however, matters related to military, as well as those related to civil government, were organised in the spirit of [patriotic] nationalism. Islamic states had civil armies (volksleger) who were able to participate in wars to guard the honor of and protect their county, like heroes of the civil army in Tripoli who fought in wars, also in Turkey led by Ghazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha.16 Thus, the Islamic state relies on the people’s energy. 16  Indonesian intellectuals during the early twentieth centuries–Tjokroaminoto in this regard was no exception–were familiar with the accounts of the heroic struggle of Umar

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No Muslim soldier, no Muslim civil servant receives salary. However, the civil servants and their family, like (the) elderly and children, become the government’s responsibility, e.g. their children are accepted in state schools. Brave soldiers and generals, who survive widows and children, deserve rewards from the government. However, civil soldiers who can afford their own needs, e.g. foods and clothes, in wars do not receive help from the government.17 In short, the system of government and military in Islamic states is perfectly in line with socialism. However, this kind of socialism is not similar to industrial socialism, according to which the advance of industry in the West happens under materialist civilisation. Despite the differences between Islamic and materialist socialism, the Prophet Muhammad paid attention to the matters related to labour, industry and capital. Islam forbids usury (riba/woeker) and Islam therefore opposes capitalism. Sucking the sweat of labours, eating the production of others, not giving rights to others who produce the goods—all of these issues are condemned by Marx who calls them ‘surplus value’—are also cursed by the religion of Islam, which therefore labels them as practices of usury. Thus, it is clear that Islam opposes capitalism, annihilating it from its roots, and eliminating it in any forms—values which become the basis of Marxism. Whereas Marxism condemns these practices as surplus value, Islam curses them as usury. With the law of zakat (‘almsgiving’), Islam calls upon the rich to donate a certain amount of wealth to the poor. At the time of the Prophet, land was given freely to the labourers, as explained earlier, and during the later time of Islamic states land was owned by the states. In pre-Islamic times, small industries were cultivated by the poor or slaves, but the profits went to the masters, who were mostly cruel to the labourers. Before Islam came, industrial workers were viewed as inferior by the aristocratic class, and the slaves who worked as labourers were treated like animals by their masters. The Prophet Muhammad then elevated the working class and labour [generally]. Although he was a descendant of Arab aristocracy, Muhammad ran a business before Mukhtar (1862–1931) against the Italian colonialisation of Libya and the secularisation effort made by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938). However, the accounts of both figures presented above are not aimed at giving historical description, but rather justifying the writer’s opinion. 17  In this vein, Tjokroaminoto recalls the early Medinan government under the Prophet Muhammad and the four guided caliphs, Abū Bakr, ʿUmar b. Khaṭṭāb, ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān and Ali, i.e. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib. The writer idealises the early period of Islam, regarding the early Muslim societies, still holding Islamic dogma and laws, as ideal societies. As shown in the text above, Tjokroaminoto assumed that Muslim soldiers waged wars (jihad) without receiving salary from the government.

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performing the mission of prophethood until the end of his life. As a prophet, he also became a ‘king worldly and spiritually in all over Arabian and Islamic world.’ Despite of this status, he sewed his own clothes and shoes. A main step taken to achieve industrial socialism is indicated by the fact that the Prophet elevated the position of slaves, who were then freed. Slaves were given their rights, which were impossible to gain before. These slaves became partners in working; they also became heads of military or [leaders] in other professions; and some were admitted as members of family.18 Before Islam, these slaves were treated like animals. In this way, slaves became close associates who enjoy what their master enjoyed and earned. Indeed, the steps taken by the Prophet in improving the working class have no equal to any effort in the world particularly in the field of economy. The working class of the twentieth century today, which has become the symbol of progress in the welfare of Europe which maintains material advance—including some contracted labourers coming from the colonised world—has actually been treated worse than labourers who were called slaves in the period of Islamic socialism. In fact, true socialism which the Prophet taught is noble, particularly the way in which socialism was practiced daily, and is simpler than the way of Western socialism or semi-Western socialism that prevails today. Socialism in the time of the Prophet was based on the advance of moral character and ethics of the people. As far as our belief is concerned, any form of socialism will not achieve its dream except with the advance of morals and ethics of the people. Every desire that aims only at achieving material goals, which leads to ingratitude towards God, will never result in peace and true socialism. Both socialism and peace demand as prerequisite good moral character and ethics, which are inherent in us in the East, particularly in those who embrace Islam. The Muslim community is capable to build true socialism. Although at the moment Muslim communities, like other Eastern nations, have declined in terms of worldly matters, they still bear good character, on which to found socialism. What happened both in the Islamic world and outside it, such as in Greece, in the past ten years, particularly after the Turkish revolution,19 did not demolish the brotherhood of the Islamic world, which is 18  Tjokroaminoto perhaps refers to the cases of Bilāl ibn Rabāḥ al-Ḥabashī and Salmān al-Fārisī, non-Arab slaves (mawlā) who converted to Islam and became companions of the Prophet Muhammad. Bilāl was Ethiopian, whereas Salmān was Persian. According to early Islamic accounts, the two figures were treated badly by the Qurayshite leaders, the opponents of the Prophet. Both then became members of the Prophet’s family. 19  What the writer means is perhaps that the collapse of the Ottoman caliphate, under which the Muslim world had been ruled, did not necessarily destroy the brotherhood

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an important element of building socialism. Having the same goal and having been therefore united by it is the most important foundation of socialism. If our belief in God grows stronger, so does the unity among Muslims; with 300 million Muslims who live in many parts of the world, it is possible to build a socialist system which can help them to advance. Some Westerners assume that under Islamic law it is impossible to apply another constitution. But whoever knows that the idea of socialism, and of democracy are deeply rooted within Islam knows that such a view must be taken out of blindness towards Islam. Some Western writers who take Turkey and Persia as examples claim that constitutionalism is not known to Islam. But these writers ignore the bloodshed and conflicts in their own countries before achieving constitutionalism, which is in itself still far from being perfect until today (sadness, problems, and troubles are not all solved). In terms of character building and teaching of values in society, the religion of Islam cannot be compared to other religions. But beware of materialism, which is a mere desire to obtain mere material things, or physical matters. All Muslims and Islamic world should be shielded from the danger of this school of thought by way of strengthening unity and spiritual character. Keep in mind that the physical form can be destroyed by another bigger physical form. Physical stuff can be destroyed, but spirit is not. The human body can be destroyed, but spirit and soul of a society cannot be ruined. A dream cannot be annihilated by bayonet, bullet, or bomb. Physical advance based on train, telegram, ship, airplane can be destroyed . . . But association, unity, and high spirit based on virtuous character and integrity cannot be ruined. Islam cannot be defeated by anything, nor can Muslims who hold the essence of Islam. Islam is a tool to advance human achievement, which is known as humanity. If Muslims are defeated by materialism, do not blame Islam, but the people who do not understand Islam. Only Islam can achieve physical and spiritual perfection. Islam can guide human spirit and human affairs in politics, government, the military, justice, and economy. Selected and translated by Al Makin

among Muslims. In fact, after the transformation of Turkey into republic, there is not a single political authority over the Muslim world anymore. Tjokroaminoto seems to argue that, despite that, Muslims around the world still retain brotherhood and unity among them.

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Muhammad Iqbal: Presidential Address to the 25th Annual Session of the All-India Muslim League at Allahabad (India, 1930) Introduction The first three decades of the twentieth century witnessed revival and reassertion of various concepts of identities amongst Hindus and Muslims in British India. Religious identities existed at a social and economic level but had not yet sought expression in the political parlance. The political organisations were dominated by the ‘liberals’ who were struggling to unite the Hindus and Muslims against the colonial invective of ‘Divide and Rule’ that had created distrust and confusion to the benefit of the British Imperialists. The Lucknow Pact (1916) brought the two main political parties of Hindus and Muslims—the All India National Congress and the All India Muslim League—on a common platform to demand Dominion Status for India. This session was convened by Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Muḥammad ʿAlī Jinnāḥ, 1876–1948). This achievement was hailed by both communities and Jinnah earned the title of ‘The Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity.’ The end of the First World War, however, turned this tide of ‘unity’ into a mass movement commonly known as the Khilafat1 Movement—an attempt to save the institution of Ottoman Caliphate. The Indian Muslims were neither under the religious tutelage of the Ottoman caliph nor were they going to achieve any significant political benefits even if the Caliphate would survive. It was nothing more than an emotional outburst against the policies of the Allies who had appropriated the Middle Eastern territories of the Ottoman Empire. Nonetheless, the Khilafat Movement had tremendous impact on the paradigms of Indian politics. Mahatma Gandhi’s (1869–1948) arrival from South Africa in 1915 changed the whole spectrum of the Hindu-Muslim question. He championed the cause of Khilafat, even though it was a purely Muslim concern, and introduced religious idiom into politics. During this movement, Muslims invited Hindu leaders to mosques to address the religious congregations and Muslim leaders paid homage to the Hindu deities in temples and many enthusiasts named their children by c­ ombining 1  Arabic, khilāfa.

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­ opular Hindu and Muslim names.2 This movement continued until 1924 when p Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) abolished the institution of Caliphate and established the Turkish Republic. However, it bequeathed two legacies that were to shape the future dimensions of Indian politics. Firstly, religion emerged as the most powerful vehicle of organised politics; and secondly, it exposed the transient state of Hindu-Muslim unity. The next five years displayed the reverse side of Hindu-Muslim relations. Hindu-Muslim riots took place over such issues as playing music before the mosques during the prayer times and slaughtering cows on special religious occasions. Moreover, organised groups from both sides attempted to convert and reconvert Hindus and Muslims to their respective faiths. Most of these developments were explained in the light of the differences between Islam and Hinduism and hence their respective followers. But these differences had a long history and there is hardly any evidence that these two communities fought over these issues during their history of many centuries. Was it the result of the ‘divide and rule’ policies of the British whose imperial interests could not be served if these two communities jointly struggled against their presence in South Asia? Or was it because of the newly-acquired consciousness of their respective identities which were deemed mutually exclusive? Or still, was it under the spell of the idea of ‘nationalism’ that the lines were drawn between ‘us’ and ‘they?’ These were some of the questions that sought answers from thinkers and leaders of Hindus and Muslims. The British decided to settle ‘the communal’ problem. They termed the Hindu-Muslim issues as the ‘communal’ without taking into consideration the ground realities.3 While the British were searching for a viable formula that could keep their subjects united, the Indian leaders and thinkers were reflecting over the concept of nationalism. What should be the basis of Indian nationalism: Ethnicity, language, history, geography, or religion? None of these had the potential of giving Indian peoples one identity. For many Hindu leaders, it was Indian civilisation before the arrival of Islam that could be used as the binding force.4 That would indeed exclude the Muslims. What would be their fate in an independent India? Would they be looked upon as equal citizens despite their history which had become an irritant to many Indian nationalists? Was it 2  Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilisation in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 70–71. 3  For details, see Ainslie Embree, Utopias in Conflict: Religion and Nationalism in Modern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). 4  Peter van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).

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­ ossible to think of a concept of nationalism that would transcend the boundp aries of religion and would confine history only to the past? Moreover, the Muslims were a minority comprising not more than twelve percent of the total population of India and this factor was further complicated because they were scattered all over India except the eastern and western flanks of the sub-continent. It was during this period of uncertainty and confusion that Muhammad Iqbal (Muḥammad Iqbāl, 1877–1938) delivered the following address to the annual session of the All India Muslim League at Allahabad.5 It is a long lecture containing details of India’s constitutional problems, relations between the Centre and the Provinces, the status of autonomous States, and the British attempts at granting some political rights to the Indians. We have chosen only those parts that discuss the idea of Muslim nationalism in India. Muhammad Iqbal is considered one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. He wrote in Urdu, Persian, and English. It would be relevant to introduce his academic and political background before we present his views on Muslim nationalism. He was born on November 9, 1877 in Sialkot (Punjab) in British India to a lower middle class and religious family. He graduated from Scotch Mission College in 1895. During this period, he also received lessons in a mosque school from Syed Mir Hassan (1844–1929), his Arabic teacher at the College. In his later years, Iqbal acknowledged that Hassan had introduced him to the spirit of the Aligarh Movement which advocated modern education and critical appreciation of religion and history.6 In order to pursue higher studies, Iqbal moved to Lahore where he received a Master of Philosophy in 1899 with distinction. As a student of philosophy, Iqbal came under the spell of his teacher, Sir Thomas Arnold who is reported to have inspired him to seek further education in Europe. Before his advent to Europe, he started teaching Arabic and philosophy at the Oriental College and the Government College. It was during this period that Iqbal started participating in assemblies of poets. His early poetry was confined mostly to Nature, homage to India, and love for the weak and the marginalised. He travelled to England in 1905 to study at Cambridge University. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts, he studied law and in 1906, he was called to the bar from Lincoln’s Inn. On the advice of his teacher, he came to Germany and received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from 5  For a detailed study of the All India Muslim League, see Rafique Afzal, A History of the All India Muslim League: 1906–1947 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2014). 6  Western education in general and Missionary institutions in particular played a leading role during this period. See, Hayden J. A. Bellenoit, Missionary Education and Empire in Late Colonial India: 1860–1920 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007).

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Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich in 1908. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on The Development of Metaphysics in Persia under the super­vision of Professor Friedrich Hommel. During his stay in Germany, especially at Heidelberg, he learned German and was profoundly influenced by Goethe, Heine, Hegel, and Nietzsche. Iqbal’s exposure to Islamic philosophy as well as the Western thought placed him in a unique position to blend the classical Islamic theory of state with modern philosophy of the West. Like all Muslim leaders in South Asia, Iqbal was a strong advocate of Indian nationalism. His studies in Europe, however, changed his ideas. In addition to writing poetry and practicing law, he found time to participate in political affairs also. In 1926, he was elected as a member of the Punjab Legislative Assembly. He participated in debates and discussions and came to the conclusion that the European idea of nationalism was nothing more than a tool to divide humanity on the basis of language and ethnicity without any regard to higher aspects of culture and religion. In 1930, he was elected as the President of All India Muslim League. After his election, he delivered a speech that became a source of inspiration for those Muslim leaders who were struggling to find a way out of the Indian political morass. In this lecture, he explains the cultural dimensions of South Asian Islam which he visualises as an endangered asset unless it seeks a territory to survive and develop. It needs to be mentioned that he did not include the Muslim majority area on the eastern side of India, i.e., today’s Bangladesh in this lecture. However, in a letter addressed to Jinnah, he wrote on June 21, 1937: A separate federation of Muslim Provinces, reformed on the lines I have suggested above, is the only course by which we can secure a peaceful India and save Muslims from the domination of Non-Muslims. Why should not the Muslims of North-West India and Bengal be considered as nations entitled to self-determination just as other nations in India and outside India are.7 In addition to the academic value of this address, many Pakistani historians and leaders of the Pakistan movement consider it as the foundation stone of the idea of Pakistan. Aslam Syed

7  G. Allana, Pakistan Movement: Historical Documents (Karachi: Karachi University Press, 1969), 131–133.

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Further Reading

Hamid, Abdul. Muslim Separatism in India: A Brief Survey, 1858–1947. Lahore: Oxford University Press, 1967. Malik, Hafeez, ed. Iqbal: Poet-Philosopher of Pakistan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1971. Metcalf, Barbara and Thomas Metcalf. A Concise History of Modern India. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Revised edition. Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. Islamic Philosophy from its Origin to the Present. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. Sevea, Iqbal Singh. The Political Philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal: Islam and Nationalism in Late Colonial India. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.



Source Text8

It cannot be denied that Islam, regarded as an ethical ideal plus a certain kind of polity—by which expression I mean a social structure regulated by a legal system and animated by a specific ethical ideal—has been the chief formative factor in the life-history of the Muslims of India. It has furnished those basic emotions and loyalties which gradually unify scattered individuals and groups, and finally transform them into a well-defined people, possessing a moral consciousness of their own. Indeed it is not an exaggeration to say that India is perhaps the only country in the world where Islam, as a people-­building force, has worked at its best. In India, as elsewhere, the structure of Islam as a society is almost entirely due to the working of Islam as a culture inspired by a specific ethical ideal. What I mean to say is that Muslim society, with its remarkable homogeneity and inner unity, has grown to be what it is, under the pressure of the laws and institutions associated with the culture of Islam [. . .] The ideas set free by European political thinking, however, are now rapidly changing the outlook of the present generation of Muslims both in India and outside India. Our younger men, inspired by these ideas, are anxious to see them as living forces in their own countries, without any critical appreciation of the facts which have determined their evolution in Europe. In Europe Christianity was understood to be a purely monastic order which gradually developed into a vast church organization. The protest of Luther was directed against this church organization, not against any system of polity of a secular nature, for 8  Latif Ahmed Sherwani, ed., Speeches, Writings, and Statements of Iqbal (Lahore: Iqbal Academy, 1977 [1944], 2nd edition), 3–26.

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the obvious reason that there was no such polity associated with Christianity. And Luther was perfectly justified in rising in revolt against this organization; though, I think, he did not realize that in the peculiar conditions which obtained in Europe, his revolt would eventually mean the complete displacement of [the] universal ethics of Jesus by the growth of a plurality of national and hence narrower systems of ethics. Thus the upshot of the intellectual movement initiated by such men as Rousseau and Luther was the break-up of the one into [the] mutually illadjusted many, the transformation of a human into a national outlook, requiring a more realistic foundation, such as the notion of country, and finding expression through varying systems of polity evolved on national lines, i.e. on lines which recognize territory as the only principle of political solidarity. If you begin with the conception of religion as complete other-worldliness, then what has happened to Christianity in Europe is perfectly natural. The universal ethics of Jesus is displaced by national systems of ethics and polity. The conclusion to which Europe is consequently driven is that religion is a private affair of the individual and has nothing to do with what is called man’s temporal life. Islam does not bifurcate the unity of man into an irreconcilable duality of spirit and matter. In Islam God and the universe, spirit and matter, Church and State, are organic to each other. Man is not the citizen of a profane world to be renounced in the interest of a world of spirit situated elsewhere. To Islam, matter is spirit realizing itself in space and time. Europe uncritically accepted the duality of spirit and matter, probably from Manichaean thought. Her best thinkers are realizing this initial mistake today, but her statesmen are indirectly forcing the world to accept it as an unquestionable dogma. It is, then, this mistaken separation of spiritual and temporal which has largely influenced European religious and political thought and has resulted practically in the total exclusion of Christianity from the life of European States. The result is a set of mutually ill-adjusted States dominated by interests not human but national. And these mutually ill-adjusted States, after trampling over the moral and religious convictions of Christianity, are today feeling the need of a federated Europe, i.e. the need of a unity which the Christian church organization originally gave them, but which, instead of reconstructing it in the light of Christ’s vision of human brotherhood, they considered fit to destroy under the inspiration of Luther [. . .]. I do not know what will be the final fate of the national idea in the world of Islam. Whether Islam will assimilate and transform it, as it has before assimilated and transformed many ideas expressive of a different spirit, or allow a radical transformation of its own structure by the force of this idea, is hard to predict. Professor Wensinck of Leiden (Holland) wrote to me the other day: Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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“It seems to me that Islam is entering upon a crisis through which Christianity has been passing for more than a century. The great difficulty is how to save the foundations of religion when many antiquated notions have to be given up. It seems to me scarcely possible to state what the outcome will be for Christianity, still less what it will be for Islam.” At the present moment the national idea is racializing the outlook of Muslims, and thus materially counteracting the humanizing work of Islam. And the growth of racial consciousness may mean the growth of standards different [from] and even opposed to the standards of Islam [. . .]. What, then, is the problem and its implications? Is religion a private affair? Would you like to see Islam as a moral and political ideal, meeting the same fate in the world of Islam as Christianity has already met in Europe? Is it possible to retain Islam as an ethical ideal and to reject it as a polity, in favor of national politics in which [the] religious attitude is not permitted to play any part? This question becomes of special importance in India, where the Muslims happen to be a minority [. . .]. The religious ideal of Islam, therefore, is organically related to the social order which it has created. The rejection of the one will eventually involve the rejection of the other. Therefore the construction of a polity on national lines, if it means a displacement of the Islamic principle of solidarity, is simply unthinkable to a Muslim. This is a matter which at the present moment directly concerns the Muslims of India. “Man,” says Renan “is enslaved neither by his race, nor by his religion, nor by the course of rivers, nor by the direction of mountain ranges. A great aggregation of men, sane of mind and warm of heart, creates a moral consciousness which is called a nation.” Such a formation is quite possible, though it involves the long and arduous process of practically remaking men and furnishing them with [a] fresh emotional equipment. It might have been a fact in India if the teaching of Kabir and the Divine Faith of Akbar had seized the imagination of the masses of this country. Experience, however, shows that the various caste units and religious units in India have shown no inclination to sink their respective individualities in a larger whole. Each group is intensely jealous of its collective existence. The formation of the kind of moral consciousness which constitutes the essence of a nation in Renan’s sense demands a price which the peoples of India are not prepared to pay [. . .]. India is Asia in miniature. Part of her people have [has] cultural affinities with nations of the east, and part with nations in the middle and west of Asia. If an effective principle of cooperation is discovered in India, it will bring peace and mutual goodwill to this ancient land . . . And as far as I have been able to read the Muslim mind, I have no hesitation in declaring that if the principle Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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that the Indian Muslim is entitled to full and free development on the lines of his own culture and tradition in his own Indian home-lands is recognized as the basis of a permanent communal settlement, he will be ready to stake his all for the freedom of India [. . .]. The units of Indian society are not territorial as in European countries. India is a continent of human groups belonging to different races, speaking different languages, and professing different religions. Their behavior is not at all determined by a common race-consciousness. Even the Hindus do not form a homogeneous group. The principle of European democracy cannot be applied to India without recognizing the fact of communal groups. The Muslim demand for the creation of a Muslim India within India is, therefore, perfectly justified [. . .] Personally I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State. Selfgovernment within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India [. . .] nor should the Hindus fear that the creation of autonomous Muslim states will mean the introduction of a kind of religious rule in such states. I have already indicated to you the meaning of the word religion, as applied to Islam. The truth is that Islam is not a Church. It is a State conceived as a contractual organism long before Rousseau ever thought of such a thing, and animated by an ethical ideal which regards man not as an earth-rooted creature, defined by this or that portion of the earth, but as a spiritual being understood in terms of a social mechanism, and possessing rights and duties as a living factor in that mechanism [. . .] therefore demand the formation of a consolidated Muslim State in the best interests of India and Islam. For India, it means security and peace resulting from an internal balance of power; for Islam, an opportunity to rid itself of the stamp that Arabian Imperialism was forced to give it, to mobilize its law, its education, its culture, and to bring them into closer contact with its own original spirit and with the spirit of modern times. One lesson I have learnt from the history of Muslims. At critical moments in their history it is Islam that has saved Muslims and not vice versa. If today you focus your vision on Islam and seek inspiration from the ever-vitalizing idea embodied in it, you will be only reassembling your scattered forces, regaining your lost integrity, and thereby saving yourself from total destruction. Selected by Aslam Syed

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Dayānanda Sarasvatī: The Light of Truth (India, 1884) Introduction Dayānanda Sarasvatī (1825–1883) came from a region remote from the centres of British power. He was a wandering holy man, steeped in Sanskrit literature but with little knowledge of English. Nevertheless, his writings show an awareness of the political situation of India, and of the criticisms of Hindu society made by missionaries and by Indian social reformers. He had a distinctive programme for reform which was at the same time an affirmation of the greatness of India. The Encounter of India with European Ideas British rule in India originated with the East India Company, founded in 1600, which established trading stations, mainly on the coast. During the late seventeenth century the Company expanded its territories, becoming a military and political as well as a commercial power; and in the eighteenth century it became the effective ruler of Bengal and other parts of northern India, nominally as an agent of the declining Mughal empire. Calcutta (now Kolkata), a town that had grown around British power, became the colonial capital of India, inhabited not only by the Company’s employees but by independent entrepreneurs, both Indian and foreign, together with the professional, commercial, clerical and manual workers who depended on them for employment. From 1773 the Company came increasingly under the control of the British Parliament; in 1858 it was wound up and the government of British India was transferred to the Crown. During the same period, most of India came gradually under British rule, either directly or in the form of ‘princely states,’ bound by treaties. A few enclaves remained under Portuguese, French, Dutch or Danish rule. The Company traditionally opposed interference with Indian society and religious institutions, fearing that this would lead to unrest. This policy was contested in the early nineteenth century, both in Parliament and among the Company’s employees in India. Opposition to it came from two main sources: Christian missionaries and their sympathisers, and Utilitarians of the school of Jeremy Bentham and James Mill—the latter an influential member of the Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Company’s London staff, and author of a History of British India, which was scathing about Indian culture. The Company excluded missionaries from its territory until 1813, when the ban was rescinded by Parliament; at the same time, men who shared the missionaries’ aims, and others with Utilitarian ideas, were rising in the ranks of the colonial government. Though there had been Christian missionaries in India before, both Protestant and Catholic, a new phase of Protestant activity began in 1793, when the Baptist Missionary Society was founded. One of its founders, William Carey, arrived in Bengal later that year; he evaded the Company’s ban by operating from the Danish enclave of Serampore, near Calcutta. Despite official hostility, the government came to depend on the missionaries for their educational work, their printing facilities and their knowledge of Bengali language and culture. The Christianity which Carey and other missionaries brought was based on a particular interpretation of the Bible, emphasizing original sin, from which people can only be saved by faith in the atoning sacrifice of Christ. While missionaries made few converts, they established schools which met a growing demand for education, especially providing the knowledge of English which was needed for the employment opportunities opened by the British presence.1 These schools were very effective in bringing European ideas and literature to India: not only Christian ideas, but also, as Bhandarkar points out (see Chapter 3.04 in this volume) scepticism and atheism. They also equipped Indians to participate with Europeans in the study of India’s history and literature. Such study had been a spare-time activity of some of the Company’s staff from the late eighteenth century; it was gradually professionalised in the missionary and government colleges founded during the nineteenth century; in 1857, universities were founded in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. Another missionary activity was printing,2 in English and in Indian languages, which revolutionised the distribution of knowledge. About a fifth of the people of India were Muslim. The Muslim population was unevenly distributed; in Bombay it was a fifth, but in Calcutta it was a much smaller proportion, as most Bengali Muslims were rural and poor.3 There was a much smaller number of indigenous Christians, mostly Catholics, and in the commercial centres of Calcutta and Bombay there were Jews, Parsis and Armenians. The great majority were Hindu, and the urban middle class that 1  Michael A. Laird, Missionaries and Education in Bengal, 1793–1837 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972). 2  Eli Daniel Potts, British Baptist Missionaries in India, 1793–1837 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 110–113. 3  Peter Hardy, The Muslims of British India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 2–11.

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grew with the British presence was overwhelmingly Hindu; for various reasons Muslims were under-represented in this class.4 The term Hinduism—which only became current around the end of the eighteenth century—includes an immense variety of beliefs and practices, which unlike Christianity, Judaism or Islam cannot be understood by reference to a single history.5 The challenge of Christianity spurred nineteenth-century Hindus to map out a true Hinduism which included the best and rejected what they found objectionable in their traditions. Buddhism, which originated in northern India, had disappeared centuries before in all but the border region adjoining Burma. However, in the course of the nineteenth century, fostered by European antiquarianism, an awareness of Buddhism became part of many Hindu intellectuals’ view of history. The first Indian of modern times to engage on equal terms with European thinkers was Rammohun Roy (1772–1833). Living in Calcutta, he wrote in Bengali, Sanskrit, English and Persian, and was familiar with European ideas as well as ancient Indian and Islamic traditions. He opposed both Hindus for their polytheism and idolatry, and Christians for their doctrines of the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, and the atonement.6 In 1828 he founded a society for religious and social reform, the Brāhmo Samāj (Theistic Society), promoting the rational worship of God without images and without mythology, which became a powerful force in nineteenth-century Calcutta. It was remodelled in 1843 by Debendranāth Tagore (1817–1905), and again in the 1860s by Keshub Chunder Sen (1838–1884), a charismatic speaker who travelled widely, carrying the message of religious and social reform to centres outside Bengal. While each of these leaders vehemently opposed many features of Hinduism, each also saw the Samāj as a defence against Christianity. Missionaries saw it as a threat, a deceptive half-way house between Hindu error and the true faith. Other societies flourished in Calcutta in the 1820s to 1840s, in which young men, some under twenty, talked and wrote about new ideas (women intellectuals did not flourish until later in the century). While they differed greatly among themselves, there was a general consensus around certain trends of thought. Indian, especially Hindu, culture was believed to be degenerate and in need of reform. Reform would be facilitated by a natural tendency to ­progress, 4  Judith M. Brown, Modern India: The Origins of an Asian Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 78–79; 119–120. 5  Gavin Flood, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003); Julius Lipner, Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (London: Routledge, 2010). 6  Dermot Killingley, Rammohun Roy in Hindu and Christian Tradition (Newcastle upon Tyne: Grevatt & Grevatt, 1993).

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which might sometimes be halted or reversed by degeneracy, but only for a time. Faith in progress was encouraged by the industrial revolution, by the interpretation of history that prevailed in England, and later by the ideas of evolution associated with the name of Darwin. Indian intellectuals often considered British rule providential, bringing the benefits of an advanced civilisation to a backward country. In the later nineteenth century, when the growing English-educated class set its sights on political power, and was allowed an increasing though limited role in municipalities, the civil service, the judiciary and even the provincial and All-India Legislative Councils, it was widely believed that these benefits would in time include a fully representative system of government. While Christian doctrines were rejected, particularly that of a unique divine incarnation, Jesus was revered as a moral teacher and man of God. While the Bible was not accepted as a unique revelation, the Protestant idea that holy scripture should be read and understood by all, together with the interest shown by European scholars in ancient Sanskrit texts, prompted attempts to make Hinduism what it had hitherto not been, a religion of a book. Dayānanda’s was the most thorough-going attempt. Hinduism does not lack texts, but they are many, and in various languages. The Veda, theoretically the foundation of all knowledge, was unknown except to the few Brahmins who could recite parts of it from memory; to read or write the Veda is traditionally considered sinful. Proposals for social reform can be grouped under two heads: women and caste. Those affecting women—for most of the nineteenth century discussed publicly only by men—included abolition of pre-puberty marriage of girls; abolition of polygyny; widow remarriage; and women’s education and social liberation. The topic of caste included inter-caste marriage; interdining and general relaxation of the rules of purity separating castes; and abolition of the privileges of high castes and oppression of low castes. To make sense of the complex of phenomena referred to as ‘caste,’ it was often discussed in terms of a theoretical division of society into four groups, called varṇas: Brahmin (brāhmaṇa, with priestly and intellectual functions), kṣatriya (kings and warriors), vaiśya (farmers and traders) and śūdra (labourers). These four categories are mentioned frequently in Sanskrit literature, but their application to the practicalities of caste is problematic. They constitute a closed set of four (sometimes with the addition of a ‘fifth’ (pañcama) group below the śūdras), which is known throughout India. Castes, on the other hand, are an open set of several hundreds, each of them known in a limited area, capable at any time of splitting or merging so that in principle they cannot be listed or counted. While varṇa is often invoked as an aid in understanding caste and in ranking

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the castes, the position of a given caste in the varṇa system is often ­disputed.7 The term ‘caste’ also referred to the rules of purity observed by the higher castes, which often required them to bathe after meeting people deemed polluting, including Europeans. Travel overseas was considered especially polluting, leading to ‘loss of caste.’ While these themes were part of the Christian critique of Hinduism, and were also part of utilitarian plans for education and legislation, they figured in a discourse of social reform which developed independently, in the Brāhmo Samāj and other societies and in wider Hindu circles;8 they were discussed in Indian languages as well as English. Social reformers found themselves opposed by those who claimed to uphold dharma. This Sanskrit term refers to right conduct of all kinds, covering public matters which are the concern of the ruler and the legal system, where it can be translated ‘law,’ interpersonal behaviour, where it can be translated ‘morality,’ and ritual matters such as purity. A key Sanskrit text on dharma is the Mānava-Dharmaśāstra or Laws of Manu,9 dating from the second or third century CE, and ascribed to Manu, ancestor of humankind and first king; but there are also earlier texts, and later ones including commentaries on Manu. All these texts claim the Veda as their ultimate authority; but the Veda is not a fixed canon but a heterogeneous collection, little known and in an archaic form of Sanskrit. Hindu pandits can differ widely in their interpretations of it. Underlying the reform agenda was the question of why India was degenerate, and why it had to be ruled by a foreign power. Rammohun had attributed degeneracy to polytheism and idolatry, as well as to excessive concern with ritual purity, and caste division. These accretions to true religion were found especially among Hindus; but they affected other peoples also, as exemplified by the Trinity and the Incarnation. Later reformers—including Dayānanda— tended to agree with Rammohun’s diagnosis of Hindu degeneracy, but to be more critical than he was of European society.

7  Dermot Killingley, “Varṇa and Caste in Hindu Apologetic,” Hindu Ritual and Society, eds. Dermot Killingley, Werner Menski and Shirley Firth (Newcastle upon Tyne: Grevatt & Grevatt, 1991), 9, 14–16. 8  Kenneth W Jones, Social and Religious Reform Movements in British India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Dermot Killingley, “Modernity, Reform and Revival,” The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003). 9  Patrick Olivelle, Manu’s Code of Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

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Dayānanda Sarasvatī Dayānanda Sarasvatī was born in 1825, in a Brahmin family in the Kathiawar peninsula in Gujarat, western India, and named Mūlśaṅkar. His father was an official of the small kingdom of Morvi, one of the ‘princely states’ indirectly ruled by the British, and far from the centres of British influence. His education was in Sanskrit; he knew little English. In the course of an itinerant and intellectually adventurous life, while remaining rooted in traditional ways of thought, he became acquainted with European ideas and the debates on religious and social reform which were raging in Calcutta and other large towns. He showed an early interest in religious matters, and a critical attitude to Hindu traditions. At the age of 21, to avoid a marriage that had been arranged for him, he began to live as a homeless wanderer, studying with traditional teachers. Little is known about his early life, but at some time he became a sannyāsī (renunciant), taking the monastic name Dayānanda Sarasvatī by which he is now known. From 1860 to 1863 he lived in Mathurā, south-east of Delhi, studying with a blind sannyāsī named Vīryānanda. According to tradition, it was from him that Dayānanda acquired his formidable knowledge of the Veda and of Sanskrit grammar; however, much of this knowledge must have been gained later. In Mathurā, a place of pilgrimage for worshippers of Krishna, he demonstrated his inclination for controversy by preaching against Vaishnavism, and also against Shaivism. Around the same time he began to meet and argue with Christian missionaries.10 A pivotal experience was his visit to Calcutta from December 1872 to April 1873; there, he met leading members of the Brāhmo Samāj.11 Hitherto, he had communicated his ideas orally in Sanskrit, in the form of lectures, and disputations with other pandits. Now, however, he followed the example of Bengali intellectuals by putting his ideas into print.12 To reach a wider audience he preached in large towns, which he had previously avoided; he wore ordinary Hindu clothes, rather than a sannyāsī’s loincloth; and he taught not in Sanskrit but in the vernacular. Since his work was in north India, he used not his mother tongue, Gujarati, but Hindi, with the help of Hindi-speaking pandits. Impressed by the Brāhmo Samāj and its associated institutions, he set up his own society for religious and social reform, the Ārya Samāj, in Bombay in 1875. 10  J. T. F. Jordens, Dayānanda Sarasvatī: His Life and Ideas (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978), 72; 168–170; Noel A. Salmond, Hindu Iconoclasts: Rammohun Roy, Dayananda Sarasvati, and Nineteenth-Century Polemics against Idolatry (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2004). 11  Jordens, Dayānanda Sarasvatī, 75–94. 12  Jordens, Dayānanda Sarasvatī, 97.

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One feature of Brāhmoism which he did not accept was its rejection of the exclusive authority of the Veda, and acceptance of the scriptures of the world.13 His first printed book was Satyārtha Prakāśa (The Light of Truth), in Hindi, first published in Varanasi in 1875. His ideas continued to develop, and he published a much-revised edition in 1884, which completely replaced the first version.14 The three extracts below are taken from the revised edition, which represents a comprehensive account of his ideas and has been continuously in print.15 The Ārya Samāj became a powerful religious and political force, particularly in the Punjab.16 It remains influential across the world, having centres in many countries where Punjabi Hindus have settled. The Satyārtha Prakāśa is its main authority; Dayānanda’s prescriptions for ritual, based on the Veda and avoiding the use of images, are widely followed, even by people who are not members of the Samāj. His revolutionary social programme, however, has remained largely unimplemented. Dayānanda’s acquaintance with European thought, though limited by his lack of English, is apparent in the Satyārtha Prakāśa. He was aware of European indology, and made use of European printed editions of Sanskrit texts; in his travels through northern India he met some European Sanskritists. However, he considered their knowledge inferior17—with some justification, in view of his own vast learning. He explicitly rejected the view, common among his European contemporaries, that the people called Ārya who composed the Veda had invaded north-west India from Iran. This view was based on the affinity of Sanskrit with the other Indo-European languages, and especially with the Iranian languages; it depended also on the assumption, now abandoned, that the geographical movement of a language necessitates the movement of a large number of people. However, Dayānanda does not address the linguistic evidence; he quotes as his authority a verse of the Ṛg-Veda on the distinction

13  Jordens, Dayānanda Sarasvatī, 91; Dayānanda Sarasvatī, Light of Truth: An English Translation of the Satyarth Prakash, trans. Durga Prasad (Delhi: Jan Gyan Prakashan, 1972 (1902)), 374–375. 14  Jordens, Dayānanda Sarasvatī, 310 note 1. 15  Dayānanda Sarasvatī, Satyārtha Prakāśa [The Light of Truth] (Allahabad: Vedic Yantralay, 1884). 16  Kenneth W. Jones, Arya Dharm: Hindu Consciousness in 19th Century Punjab (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976). 17  Dayānanda Sarasvatī, Satyārtha-prakāśaḥ (Sonipat: Ramlal Kapur Trust, 1972 (1884)), 271–272; Dayānanda Sarasvatī, Light of Truth, 1972, 412.

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between Āryas and dasyus (their enemies), and argues that there is no record of an Āryan invasion in Sanskrit literature.18 Some of the missionaries whom Dayānanda encountered were scholars of the Sanskrit tradition; others were totally hostile to it. Missionary denunciation of Hinduism as superstition, polytheism and idolatry spurred Dayānanda to present a strictly monotheistic and rational doctrine. We may also see missionary influence in his critical attitude to Hindu social traditions. However, polytheism and idolatry, and Hindu social practices, had already been opposed by other Hindu thinkers whose approaches were very different.19 In the series of critiques of religious traditions, both Hindu and non-Hindu, which forms over a third of Satyārtha Prakāśa, his account of Christianity is the most bitterly negative.20 He shows, at great length, the absurdity of a literal understanding of the Bible. More cogent is the underlying argument that a text linked to particular times, places, persons and events, as the Bible is, cannot be the eternal word of the omnipresent God21—unlike the Vedic texts, which “contain nobody’s history.”22 He also argues that the doctrines of eternal salvation and eternal punishment are unjust, since finite actions cannot deserve an infinite recompense;23 only the Hindu doctrine of karma, operating in infinite time, can satisfy his view of justice. Above all, the anthropomorphism of the Bible’s presentation of God, and the doctrine of the Trinity,24 enable him to turn the charges of polytheism and idolatry back against the Christians. On the other hand, Dayānanda’s insistence on the inerrancy and authority of the Veda, and on the duty to study it, is modelled on the Protestant missionaries’ view of the Bible.25 His account of Islam is less bitter, but on similar lines. He treats Buddhism only briefly, relying on refutations taken from Sanskrit texts. Rammohun Roy and other social reformers had held that evils such as child marriage, polygyny and caste division were causally connected with polytheism and idolatry; Dayānanda’s condemnation of idolatry also pointed to its social ill-effects.26 He opposed pre-puberty marriage, and also arranged 18  Dayānanda Sarasvatī, Satyārtha-prakāśaḥ, 332–333; Dayānanda Sarasvatī, Light of Truth, 220. 19  Salmond, Hindu Iconoclasts, 2004. 20  Dayānanda Sarasvatī, Satyārtha-prakāśaḥ, 719–813; Dayānanda Sarasvatī, Light of Truth, 460–505; Jordens, His Life and Ideas, 267–268. 21  Jordens, His Life and Ideas, 267. 22  Dayānanda Sarasvatī, Satyārtha-prakāśaḥ, 301; Dayānanda Sarasvatī, Light of Truth, 199. 23  Dayānanda Sarasvatī, Satyārtha-prakāśaḥ, 780; Dayānanda Sarasvatī, Light of Truth, 488. 24  Dayānanda Sarasvatī, Satyārtha-prakāśaḥ, 792; Dayānanda Sarasvatī, Light of Truth, 494. 25  Jordens, Dayānanda Sarasvatī, 273. 26  Dayānanda Sarasvatī, Satyārtha-prakāśaḥ, 469–472; Dayānanda Sarasvatī, Light of Truth, 310–311; Salmond, Hindu Iconoclasts, 81–84. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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marriage; like many of the social reformers he advocated education for girls, though not as extensive as for boys. Unlike them, he used the inerrant authority of the Veda as his main argument; humanitarian arguments are secondary. His solution to the caste problem exemplifies his method. He argued that since only the four varṇas had Vedic authority, these and not the hundreds of castes should be the true division of society. Further, varṇa status should not be hereditary but depend on individual knowledge and conduct; this was the rule in ancient times, and neglect of it had led to decline. He was able to cite justification for this from the Veda, and from other texts. Indeed, it appears to have been the most ancient understanding of the varṇas, though most of the dharma literature assumes them to be hereditary. Dayānanda argues that membership of the varṇas by merit is not only authorised by the Vedas, but will lead to order and happiness. His revolutionary proposal has not been put into practice. However, it was made also by the Bengali Bankim Chandra Chatterji (1838–1894), though he generally found Dayānanda’s ideas retrograde.27 It was taken up by influential writers such as Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), B. G. Tilak (1856–1920) and S. Radhakrishnan (1888–1975), and is widely accepted, at least in theory.28 While Dayānanda was not a politician, and does not tell us how his reforms are to be implemented, his account of the original state of the world, in which India ruled all other nations, shows a clear nationalistic motive. Unlike the English-educated social reformers who thought British rule was ordained by Providence to provide what India lacked, he argued that India was the cradle of civilisation, and needed no outside agency to reverse the decline which she had suffered through neglect of her own resources. The discoveries of modern science—of which he had only a rudimentary knowledge—were all in the Veda, as were technological achievements such as firearms, the steam engine and the electric telegraph. Such claims are common today, not only within the Ārya Samāj. The first extract from Dayānanda shows his view of the place of India in world history, reversing the view that India needed the help of Europe. The reasons it gives for India’s decline point towards the remedies which will be offered in the other two extracts: the reform of marriage, and the reform of caste. Dermot Killingley

27  Killingley, “Varṇa and Caste,” 25–27. 28  Killingley, “Varṇa and Caste,” 28–31. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Further Reading

Jones, Kenneth W. Arya Dharm: Hindu Consciousness in 19th Century Punjab. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. Jones, Kenneth W. Social and Religious Reform Movements in British India. In New Cambridge History of India, III, 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Killingley, Dermot. “Modernity, Reform and Revival.” In The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism. Edited by Gavin Flood. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Lipner, Julius. Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. London: Routledge, 2010. Llewellyn, J. E. The Arya Samaj as a Fundamentalist Movement: A Study in Comparative Fundamentalism. Delhi: Manohar, 1993. Salmond, Noel A. Hindu Iconoclasts: Rammohun Roy, Dayananda Sarasvati, and Nineteenth-Century Polemics against Idolatry. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2004.



Source Text29



The Ancient Greatness of India and the Reasons for its Decline [From Chapter 11] I will now both criticise and extol the beliefs of the Ārya people, who are the inhabitants of the country of Āryāvarta.30 Āryāvarta is a country that has no equal in the whole world. That is why it was called the Golden Land:31 this land produced gold and other jewellery. For this reason the Ārya people inhabited this country at the beginning of creation. As we have already said in our

29  Dayānanda Sarasvatī, Satyārtha-prakāśaḥ [The Light of Truth] (1884). The original is written in Hindi with quotations in Sanskrit. Presented here is the beginning of Chapter 11 and part of Chapter 4. The translation is based on the 1972 edition published at Sonipat: Ramlal Kapur Trust. 30   Ārya is the Sanskrit word by which the people who composed the Vedas in north-west India referred to themselves. It is also used in the literature of dharma to refer to those who are entitled to perform Vedic rituals. Dayānanda applied this name to his ideal society, avoiding ‘Hindu’ which included many things he disapproved of, and could be derogatory (Jordens, Dayānanda Sarasvatī, 90). The region of India north of the Vindhya mountains is called Āryāvarta (Manu 2.22); but Dayānanda identifies Āryāvarta with India as a whole. 31  ‘Golden land’ (suvarṇa-bhūmi) is a name given in the Rāmāyaṇa and other Sanskrit texts to a land beyond the sea to the east, famous as a source of wealth, especially perfumes and spices. Dayānanda, however, takes it as referring to India.

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account of creation, Ārya is the name of the superior people, while people who are not Ārya are called dasyu.32 Every country in the world praises this country. They love to hear about a stone called the ‘Persian stone,’33 but that is a misrepresentation: the true Persian stone is the country of Āryāvarta, since whatever is foreign and base like iron, becomes golden or rich by contact with it. From someone born in this country, of superior birth, all the people of the world should learn their various ways of life (Manu [2.20]).34 In the first period, from the time of creation till five thousand years ago,35 the Āryas were universal emperors, having sole kingship over the whole world. Other countries had local, petty rulers. For down to the time of the Kauravas and Pāṇḍavas, every king and people in the world was under their kingdom and government. For the above verse of Manu says that all people in the world, Brahmins, kṣatriyas, vaiśyas, śūdras, dasyus, barbarians (mleccha) and the rest, should learn and study their proper way of life from the Brahmins, that is the learned, sprung from this land of Āryāvarta. Until the coronation of the great king Yudhiṣṭhira and the Mahābhārata war,36 all kings were subject to their rule. Listen. Bhagadatta of China, Babhruvāhan of America, Biḍālākṣa—meaning the one with eyes like a cat’s—of the land of Europe, a Greek who was called Yūnān, Śalya and others of Iran, all these kings 32   Dasyu is the term used in the Vedic hymns for the enemies whom the Āryans conquered. In later texts it is a general term for hostile foreign peoples. 33  ‘Persian stone’ (pārsamaṇi, literally ‘Persian jewel’) is what is known in European alchemy as the philosopher’s stone, which turns base metals into gold. Dayānanda denies that it is Persian, claiming it, if only metaphorically, for India. 34  Dayānanda quotes Manu 2.20 in the original, as he does with all Sanskrit quotations, and paraphrases it at the end of the following paragraph. 35  Dayānanda accepts the traditional cyclic chronology, outlined in Manu 1.68–73. ‘Creation’ refers to the beginning of the present cosmic cycle; the process repeats itself every 8,640,000 years. He places creation about 2,360 million years ago (Dayānanda, 1972a, 335; 1972b, 221; Jordens, His Life and Ideas, 254). ‘Five thousand years ago’ refers to the great war described in the Mahābhārata, in which the Pāṇḍavas defeated their cousins the Kauravas, establishing Yudhiṣṭhira as king. This war marks the beginning of the fourth and worst age of the world, which was perfect at its creation but has progressively declined. 36  This again refers to the great war marking the beginning of the fourth age (see note 35). The text of the Mahābhārata is very variable, which enables Dayānananda to make these claims about foreign kings.

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took part in the coronation of Yudhiṣṭhira and the Mahābhārata war. When the family of Raghu37 were kings, Rāvaṇa38 was subject to them. When he went to war with Rāmacandra, Rāmacandra defeated him, destroyed his kingdom and gave it to his brother Vibhīṣaṇa. Āryan emperors ruled from King Svāyaṃbhuva39 to the Pāṇḍavas. After that, they quarrelled among themselves, fought and were destroyed. For in God’s creation the proud, the lawless and the ignorant do not rule for long. And it is like a natural law of our existence that when wealth far exceeds need, then laziness, unmanliness, envy, hatred, sensuousness and neglect increase. In this country they destroyed knowledge and education, and caused vices such as the use of meat and alcohol, child marriage, and licentiousness. [. . .] When most of the great scholars, kings and sages were defeated and died in the Mahābhārata war, knowledge declined and the dharma taught in the Veda ceased to be current. Mutual jealousy, hatred and pride took over, and the strong made themselves kings, so that the country of Āryāvarta was fragmented into kingdoms, to say nothing of what happened to other lands. When the Brahmins themselves lacked learning, it goes without saying that the kṣatriyas, vaiśyas and śūdras were ignorant. The tradition of reciting and understanding the Veda and other texts died out. The Brahmins studied only as much as they needed to live on, and did not teach even that much to the kṣatriyas and the rest. When the ignorant are given authority, dishonesty and lawlessness naturally increase. The Brahmins deliberated how to secure a living for themselves. They decided to teach the kṣatriyas and others that they were their gods, and that unless they worshipped them they would not reach heaven or salvation, but would fall into a terrible hell. [. . .] When the kṣatriyas and others, with blind eyes and full purses—blinded to knowledge and having plenty of wealth—became their disciples, these worldly people who were falsely called Brahmins were in clover. They let it be known that all the best things in this world belonged to the Brahmins. They abolished the qualities, conduct and character which had been the basis of the system of four varṇas, keeping only birth. They even began taking gifts from patrons at their deaths.40

37  Raghu was the ancestor of Rāma or Rāmacandra, the hero of the Rāmāyaṇa. 38  The demon king defeated by Rāma. 39  ‘Son of the Self-existent,’ a name of the mythical first king Manu. 40  Gifts to Brahmins are an important feature of Hindu death rituals, and were deplored by social reformers, who argued that charitable giving should be governed by need, not by inherited status.

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They did whatever they wanted. They called themselves gods on earth, claiming that only by serving them could anyone reach the world of the gods. We should ask them what world they think they will achieve. “You are so greedy you will go to a terrible hell, you will become worms, insects, moths!” Then they get very angry and say: “We will curse you, so you will be destroyed!” For it is written: “brahmadrohī vinaśyati” (Anyone who injures a Brahmin perishes). Well, it is true that someone who injures a righteous person who knows the whole Veda and God, and benefits the whole world, will indeed be destroyed. But those who are not Brahmins should not be given the name of Brahmins, and should not be served. Question: Then who are we? Answer: You are popes.41 Question: What does ‘pope’ mean? Answer: It’s a term in the Roman language. The word ‘pope’ means ‘great’ and ‘father,’ but nowadays a rogue, a cheat, someone who serves their own interest by robbing others, is called a ‘pope.’ Question: We are Brahmins, we are holy, because our fathers were Brahmins, our mothers were Brahmins, we are disciples of this or that holy man. Answer: That is true. But listen, brother! Having a Brahmin father or mother or being the disciple of some holy man can’t make you a Brahmin or make you holy. Being a Brahmin or being holy comes from having the highest qualities, conduct and character, and doing good to others. Listen to the sort of thing the Roman popes used to say to their disciples. “Tell us your sins, and we will forgive them. Unless you serve us and obey us, you can’t go to heaven. If you want to go to heaven, then however many rupees you deposit with us, that will be your portion in heaven.” When someone with blind eyes and a full purse heard this, and gave the Pope a sum of his choice in order to go to heaven, the Pope would stand in front of the images of Jesus and Mary and write a voucher on these lines: O Lord Jesus Christ! Such-and-such a man has deposited a hundred thousand rupees with us in thy name, against his arrival in heaven. When he comes to heaven, please provide in thy father’s kingdom of heaven a garden, park and house worth twenty-five thousand rupees, carriages, 41  The comparison of Brahmins to popes had already been made by the Bengali Christian Krishna Mohan Banerjea in 1851 (Killingley, 1991, 21). Dayānanda presents a version of the common Protestant view of the late medieval practice of selling indulgences, which was among the targets of the Reformation. He must have learnt it from Protestant missionaries, who regarded popery as a form of idolatry little better than Hinduism.

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retinue and servants worth twenty-five thousand rupees, food, drink and clothing worth twenty-five thousand rupees, and hospitality for his friends, brothers, relatives and others worth twenty-five thousand rupees. Then the pope would sign the voucher, place it in his hand and say: “Tell your family to put this voucher under your head in your grave when you die. Then when you arrive there the angels will come, and you will receive all these things as they are written in the voucher.” Now do you see how the popes got a monopoly of heaven? The popes’ game worked in Europe so long as ignorance flourished there. But now, with the rise of knowledge, the popes’ racket is not so effective, though it is not eradicated. Here in the country of Āryāvarta, popes have come in their thousands and spread their tricks. They do not let the king and the people learn knowledge, or associate with the good; all they want is to lead people astray night and day. But remember that whoever practises fraud, deception and suchlike wickedness should be called a ‘pope,’ while those who are righteous and learned and beneficent are the true Brahmins and holy men. Marriage [From Chapter 4] Question: What time of marriage and form of marriage are correct? Answer: The best age for marriage is from sixteen to twenty-four years for a girl, and from twenty-five to forty-eight years for a man. Of these, marriage of a sixteen-year-old to a twenty-four-year-old is the least good; marriage of an eighteen- or twenty-year-old woman to a thirty- or thirty-five-year-old man is in between; and marriage of a twenty-four-year-old woman to a forty-eightyear-old man is the best.42 A country in which this superior form of marriage, and chastity43 and attention to learning, prevail, is happy; a country in which

42  These figures reflect several of Dayānanda’s views on the proper form of marriage and on gender roles. The bride must have reached puberty, contrary to the common practice especially among the higher castes. The bridegroom must be older than the bride, and preferably should have completed a longer period of education than is expected for women (see note 33). The range of ages for brides is much narrower than for bridegrooms, reflecting a concern for childbearing. A difference in age of even as much as twenty-four years is not considered a disadvantage. 43  ‘Chastity’ translates brahmacarya, which is the rule of life followed by a male Ārya studying the Veda while living with a teacher, after which he marries and becomes a householder. Sexual abstinence is one of the most important features of this rule, and Dayānanda uses the word in this sense.

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chastity and learning are neglected, and child marriage or unsuitable marriages occur, sinks into misery. For if marriage, preceded by chastity and the acquisition of learning, prospers, everything prospers, and if it declines everything deteriorates. [. . .] Question: Should marriage depend on the mother and father, or should it depend on the boy and girl? Answer: It is best for marriage to depend on the boy and girl. If the parents ever consider arranging a marriage, even then it should not be without the consent of the boy and girl. For marriage that results from mutual consent produces much less friction, and yields the best offspring. In a marriage without consent there is always trouble. It is the bridegroom and the girl who are most concerned in a marriage, not the parents. For where there is mutual consent, they are happy, and where there is conflict they are unhappy. [. . .] Varṇa [ from Chapter 4] Question: If someone’s mother and father are Brahmins, is he or she a Brahmin? And if someone’s mother and father belong to another varṇa, can the offspring be Brahmins? Answer: Yes, many have been, are, and will be. Thus, in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad the sage Jābāla, of unknown family, and in the Mahābhārata Viśvāmitra, a kṣatriya, and the sage Mātaṅga, of an untouchable family, became Brahmins.44 Even now, anyone who has excellent learning deserves to be a Brahmin, and a fool deserves to be a śūdra. And that is how it will be in future too. Question: But how can a body, which was made from ovum45 and sperm, change itself to fit a different varṇa? Answer: It is not the union of ovum and sperm that makes a Brahmin body. On the contrary:

44  Satyakāma Jābāla is named after his mother, Jabālā, who did not know who his father was (Chāndogya Upaniṣad 4.4). ‘Untouchable’ translates caṇḍāla, which is often used in dharma texts as an example of an unclean caste, below the level of śūdra: what is now known as a Dalit caste. Viśvāmitra, a king, and Mātaṅga, a caṇḍāla, became brahmins through asceticism. 45  ‘Ovum’ is a free translation; Dayānanda follows traditional Indian embryology by referring to rajas ‘menstrual fluid.’

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By solitary recitation of the Veda, by muttered recitation,46 fire-offerings, knowledge of the three Vedas,47 offerings, sons, the great daily rituals, and sacrifices, this body is made Brahmanic. (Manu [2.28])48 By studying and teaching, by discussing and promoting discussions, by performing various offerings, by studying and teaching the whole Veda with its meaning and pronunciation, by performing the full moon and other offerings as already prescribed,49 by raising offspring according to dharma, by the previously prescribed daily offerings50 to Brahman, to the gods, to the ancestors, beings and guests, by sacrifices such as the Agniṣṭoma,51 cultivation of the company of the learned, speaking the truth, helping others, studying crafts and sciences, avoiding evil conduct and maintaining good conduct, this body is made into a Brahmin. Don’t you believe this verse? We do. 46  Dayānanda here reads japahomais, but the text in Manu is vratair homais “by vows, fire-offerings . . .” In the earlier occurrence (see note 20) he has the usual reading vratair homais, and interprets it as “by keeping rules such as chastity and speaking the truth.” 47  The three collections called Ṛg-Veda, Sāma-Veda and Yajur-Veda, based on the ritual functions of three different classes of priests. The whole body of Vedic texts can be referred to as either ‘the Vedas’ or ‘the Veda.’ 48  Dayānanda refers to an earlier passage (Dayānanda 1972a: 72 ln. 24–p. 73 ln. 8; 1972b: 51) where he quotes the same verse. Since that passage is not included in the present selection, I have omitted his cross-reference. The passage which follows the verse is Dayānanda’s interpretation of it; it exemplifies his tendency to find utilitarian rather than supernatural meanings in ritual prescriptions, and to supplement them or even replace them with nonritual duties. 49  Rituals to be performed at the full moon and new moon are described extensively in the Veda. 50  These are five daily duties described in Manu and other dharma literature. In his previous interpretation of this verse (note 20), Dayānanda calls them “service to Brahman, the learned, the ancestors, animals and guests,” which reflects his theology more clearly. Since he does not recognise the gods of the Veda, explaining them as aspects or epithets of the one God, he explains the first duty as studying and teaching the Veda, the second as service of the learned (women as well as men), the third (usually understood as offerings to the dead) as service of parents and other elders, the fourth as putting out food for animals and the infirm, and the fifth as service of learned and righteous guests (Dayānanda, 1972a, 142–150; 1972b, 95–100). 51   Agniṣṭoma is one of the elaborate rituals taught in the Veda, involving a team of specialist priests and a geometrically designed sacred ground. Dayānanda understands the real purpose of such rituals to be the inculcation of geometry and other sciences.

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Then why do you think that varṇa results from the union of ovum and sperm? We’re not alone in thinking so; we believe it on the tradition of many people. Do you reject tradition? Answer: No, but we reject your wrong interpretation. Question: What is your reason for thinking our interpretation is wrong and yours is right? Answer: This is the reason: you think what is current for five or six generations is eternal, while we believe in the Veda and the tradition handed down from the creation to the present. Look, we can see that a man can be good and his son bad, or a son good and his father bad, or both can be good or bad. This is where you people go wrong. Look at what the great Manu says: The path by which his fathers have gone, the path by which his grandfathers have gone: that is the path he should go by, the path of the good; no harm will come to him. (Manu [4.178]) One should follow the path one’s father and grandfathers followed, but it must be ‘of the good’: if one’s father or grandfather is bad, one should not follow their path. Because no harm will come to those who follow the path of the righteous. Do you believe that or not? Yes, yes, we do. Look, the words of the Veda proclaimed by God are eternal, and anything contrary to them can’t be eternal. Shouldn’t everyone believe that? They certainly should. If anyone doesn’t believe it, ask them whether someone whose father is poor, but the son is rich, should throw away his riches out of respect for his father’s poverty? Or if someone’s father is blind, should the son put out his own eyes? Or if someone’s father is wicked, should the son be wicked too? No indeed. Everyone certainly should follow those who do good, and avoid those who do evil. Ask anyone who believes that varṇa results from the union of ovum and sperm, and not from qualities and conduct, why they don’t think someone who has left his varṇa and joined a low or untouchable caste, or become a Christian or Muslim, is a Brahmin. They will say straight away that he has ceased to act as a Brahmin, so he is not a Brahmin. It follows that someone who follows the superior practices of Brahmins should be counted a Brahmin, and a low-born person who has the qualities, conduct and character of a higher varṇa should be counted in the higher varṇa, while if someone who was in a higher varṇa does low actions, he should definitely be counted in a low varṇa. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Question: His mouth was the Brahmin, his arms were made the kṣatriya, His thighs were the vaiśya, the śūdra was born from his feet. (Yajur-veda 31.11)52 This means that the Brahmins were produced from God’s mouth, the kṣatriyas from his arms, the vaiśyas from his thighs and the śūdras from his feet. So, as the mouth cannot become the arms, the arms cannot become the mouth, and so on, in the same way a Brahmin cannot become a kṣatriya, a kṣatriya cannot become a Brahmin, and so on. Answer: The meaning you give to this verse is not correct, because the context shows that ‘he’ refers to God who is formless and omnipresent. Being formless, he cannot have parts such as a mouth, and if he had he could not be omnipresent. Any being that is not omnipresent cannot be the omniscient, omnipotent creator, sustainer and destroyer53 of the world, who assigns good and evil to living beings, and is free from birth and death, with all his other attributes. Therefore the meaning of the verse is that in the omnipresent God’s creation, the one who is pre-eminent54 like the mouth is the Brahmin; the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa says the arms are strength and valour, so the one who excels in those is the kṣatriya; the thigh is the part below the hip and above the knee, and the one who travels to all countries for all sorts of articles, ­coming

52  This verse, which also occurs as Ṛg-Veda 10.90.12, is often referred to in the dharma literature as the foundation of the varṇa system. It describes a mythical primeval man (puruṣa) from whom the four varṇas originated. The four parts of the body symbolise both their functions (speech; fighting; fertility; service and liability to pollution) and their relative status from the highest to the lowest. Dayānanda argues that the myth must be interpreted symbolically, rejecting his interlocutor’s view that the four varṇas have different physical origins. 53  Although Dayānanda follows Western and Brāhmo thinkers in emphasizing creation, he follows Hindu tradition in seeing God as related to the world not only as its creator but as its sustainer and destroyer. This triple relation is expressed in the definition of Brahman as “that from which beings are born, in which they live, and into which they go at death” (Taittirīya Upaniṣad 3.1.1), and mythologically in the triad of Brahmā the creator, Viṣṇu the preserver and Śiva the destroyer. For Dayānanda, these three functions all belong to the one God. 54  The word mukhya means both ‘of the mouth or face (mukha)’ and ‘pre-eminent, chief, principal.’

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and going by the strength of his thighs, is the vaiśya;55 and the one who is like the foot, the lowest part, with qualities such as stupidity, is the śūdra. This verse is explained in this way elsewhere in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa: “Because they are pre-eminent they were created from the mouth.”56 This interpretation is coherent. It means that as the mouth is the best part of the body, the Brahmin is called the best of humankind, as having perfect knowledge and excellent qualities, conduct and character. Since God, being formless, has no mouth or other parts, to be born from his mouth is as impossible as the marriage of a barren woman’s son.57 Besides, if the Brahmins were produced from the mouth and so on, they would each have to be shaped like their origin. Brahmins’ bodies would all have to be concave, as the mouth is; a kṣatriya’s body would have to be shaped like an arm, a vaiśya’s like a thigh, and a śūdra’s like a foot, which is not so. And what if someone says to you that those born from the mouth are called Brahmins, and so on, but you are not because you were born from the womb like everybody else, so you claim to be called a Brahmin without having been born from the mouth? Thus your interpretation is wrong, and ours is right. Other texts tell us the same, such as: A śūdra becomes a Brahmin and a Brahmin becomes a śūdra; similarly someone born from a kṣatriya or a vaiśya. (Manu [10.65])58 Someone born in a śūdra family who has the same qualities, conduct and character as a Brahmin, kṣatriya or vaiśya, becomes a Brahmin, kṣatriya or vaiśya. Similarly, someone born in a Brahmin, kṣatriya or vaiśya family whose qualities, conduct and character are like a śūdra’s, becomes a śūdra; and someone born in a kṣatriya or vaiśya family who is equal to a Brahmin or śūdra, becomes

55  Traditionally, the vaiśya has the two functions of keeping cattle and trading. Dayānanda singles out the latter, and emphasises overseas trade; he vehemently opposed the view that sea travel is polluting. 56  This quotation has been traced to Taittirīya Saṃhitā 7.1.1.4 (Dayānanda, 1972b, 158n), with some verbal differences, not the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa. Dayānanda habitually quotes from his vast memory, sometimes inaccurately. 57  In Sanskrit literature, the son of a barren woman is a stock example of a logical impossibility. 58  The meaning of this verse is obscure, but the context (Manu 10.64), as well as the views of Sanskrit commentators, shows that it refers to the varṇa status of the seventh generation of descendants from a union of people of different varṇas. Dayānanda, who bases varṇa on merit rather than heredity, takes it more literally, as authorising individual mobility.

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a Brahmin or śūdra. Thus each man or woman should be counted in whichever of the four varṇas he or she matches. By practice of dharma, each lower varṇa reaches the higher varṇa in the round of births. By neglect of dharma, each higher varṇa reaches the lower varṇa in the round of births.59 (Sūtras of Āpastamba [2.5.11.10–11]) Women as well as men should be understood to have the qualities of their varṇa. It follows that in this way each varṇa, by having the appropriate qualities, conduct and character, will retain its purity. Thus no one in a Brahmin family will be like a kṣatriya, vaiśya or śūdra; and kṣatriya, vaiśya and śūdra families will similarly be pure. There will be no mixture of varṇas, and therefore no varṇa will be censured or inappropriate. Question: If an only son or daughter is transferred to another varṇa, who will care for the parents? Their line will be cut off. What arrangements are there for this? Answer: There will be no loss of care, and the line will not be cut off. In exchange for their own son or daughter, another of appropriate varṇa will be provided by a council of scholars and rulers.60 Thus there will be no disorder. Varṇa status according to qualities and conduct should be decided by examination, at the age of sixteen for girls and twenty-five for men.61 Marriage should be on this basis—a Brahmin to a Brahmin woman, a kṣatriya to a kṣatriya woman, a vaiśya to a vaiśya woman and a śūdra to a śūdra woman. In this way they will have the activities of their own varṇa, and mutual love. Selected and translated by Dermot Killingley 59  Traditionally this means that a person is reborn in a higher or lower varṇa, but Dayānanda has his own interpretation, which seems to ignore the last phrase ( jāti-parivṛttau ‘in the round of births’). 60  This, and the proposal for an examination in the next paragraph, suggests faith in the kind of bureaucratic control of society which was envisaged by some of the British in India, influenced by Utilitarianism. 61  While Dayānanda advocated education for women, he gave it a shorter duration than for men.

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Rashīd Riḍā: Introduction to the First Annual Volume of al-Manār (Egypt, 1909)* Introduction The Journal al-Manār (The Lighthouse) was founded in 1898 in Egypt by Rashīd Riḍā (1865–1935),1 a Muslim scholar and writer from Lebanon who had settled in Cairo one year before and had become a close affiliate of Muḥammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905), the most prominent reformist thinker in Egypt in his time.2 Riḍā, himself from a highly respected family of religious notables in Qalamūn (near Tripolis), had been trained at one of the earliest reformed Islamic schools in Lebanon, the National School (al-madrasa al-waṭaniyya, founded in 1879). Its founder, Ḥusayn al-Jisr (1845–1909)3 was by then known for his cautious attempts to harmonise Islamic teaching with the modern natural sciences. After the closure of his school by the government in 1882 he had founded a local newspaper in Tripoli, where he also discussed issues of educational and communal advancement. Riḍā was thus fully exposed in his home region to the early beginnings of reformist teaching and writing. His own activities in Egypt were to lead him far beyond the rather conservative positions of his teacher who had a communal and, at the same time, largely Ottoman orientation.

* I want to express my gratitude to Rainer Brunner for his critical reading of a draft of this article. 1  Among the large number of articles and monographs discussing the life and the activities of Rashīd Riḍā only the following can be mentioned here: Werner Ende, “Rashīd Riḍā,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2008, Print; Brill Online, 2012, Online); Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 222–244; Eliezer Tauber, “Rashīd Riḍā as Pan-Arabist before World War I,” Muslim World, 79 (1989), 102–112; Umar Ryad, Islamic Reformism and Christianity: A Critical Reading of the Works of Muhammad Rashid Rida and His Associates (1898–1935) (Leiden et al.: E. J. Brill, 2009), using material from Riḍā‘s personal papers preserved by his family, and also updating bibliographical information. 2  See chapter 1.10 in this volume, with further bibliographical information. 3   See Johannes Ebert, Religion und Reform in der arabischen Provinz. Ḥusayn al-Ǧisr aṭ-Ṭarābulusī (1845–1909)–Ein islamischer Gelehrter zwischen Tradition und Reform, (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 1991); for his later dispute with Riḍā, 83–84, 158–161.

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The idea of a journal calling for a restitution of Muslim unity and strength by educational and religious reform, which Riḍā initiated soon after his move to Egypt, was modelled after the earliest journal in this field, al-ʿUrwa al-wuthqā (The Strongest Bond) published by Muḥammad ʿAbduh during the days of his exile in Paris (1884), in cooperation with Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī (1839–1897), the leading Pan-Islamic activist of this time.4 ʿAbduh himself was won over by Riḍā to contribute substantially to al-Manār until his demise in 1905. The new Arabic journal published important works by ʿAbduh, including his contributions to Quranic exegesis which went into the Quranic Commentary presented in small portions in the journal. It thus developed into the leading international mouthpiece of Islamic reformism before and after the First World War. As it spoke to all Muslim communities affected by European imperial and cultural expansion it gained a wide range of interested readers in the Arabic-speaking regions and beyond, from as far as Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia. Al-Manār came to fill a special place in the expanding landscape of newspapers and journals published in Egypt at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. Its beginnings fell into a period when British rule had been consolidated in Egypt and when, at the same time, the first stirrings of nationalist opposition, often expressed with strong Islamic sentiments, could be felt.5 In the early years Riḍā maintained close relations with the Ottoman opposition movement against the ruling sultan Abdülhamid II, even if the introduction of the journal stresses the Ottoman and Hamidian loyalties of its author. He had already become a foundation member of the Jamʿiyyat al-shūrā al-ʿuthmāniyya (Ottoman Consultative Society), which had been initiated in Cairo in 1897 by Syrian Muslim Arabs and Young Turks from Istanbul. It called for Islamic unity embodied in Ottoman unity under the 4  For al-Afghānī and his cooperation with Muḥammad ʿAbduh see e.g. Hourani, Arabic Thought, 102–134, Nikkie Keddie, Sayyid Jamāl ad-Dīn ʿal-Afghānī: A Political Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972); for a different, more ‘secular’ interpretation of their relationship and activities, Elie Keddourie, Afghani and ʿAbduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in modern Islam (London: 1966). 5  For al-Manār, the development of its content, and the context of the press in Egypt around 1900, see especially: Jaques Jomier, “al-Manār,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition; Charles C. Adams, Islam and Modernism in Egypt (Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press, 1933), 180– 204; Malcolm Kerr, Islamic Reform: The Political and Legal Theories of Muḥammad ʿAbduh and Rashīd Riḍā (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 1962); P. J. Vatikiotis, The History of Modern Egypt from Muhammad Ali to Mubarak (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991), 179–215; Stéphane Dudoignon, Komatsu Hisao and Kosugi Yasushi, eds., “Al-Manār in a changing Islamic world,” in Intellectuals in the Modern Islamic World: Transmission, Transformation, Communication, Part I. (London, New York: Routledge, 2006), 1–158.

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Ottoman caliph, at the same time criticizing the autocratic rule of the sultan and denouncing European imperialism.6 These allegiances were to fall victim to the growing estrangement between the Young Turks and their Arab partners after 1910. Riḍā himself, who visited Istanbul in 1910, was strongly disappointed by the lack of support of the Young Turks for his Islamic educational endeavours, and from then on turned to Pan-Arabism in his political activities. The introduction to al-Manār, which is presented in the following, addresses the whole of the people of the ‘East.’ Even if the Muslims are the major intended target group and Islamic topics and perspectives dominate the content of the journal, it clearly seeks to draw attention to a common destiny of all the ‘Eastern’ peoples who have been facing the loss of their political and cultural autonomy due to European imperial expansion. But it is not the imperialist challenge as such which lies at the centre of the author’s wake-up call to his fellow Easterners. He rather urges them to take account of the new age into which mankind has entered by the domestication of the forces of nature and by the new means of transport and communication, which have speeded up the exchange of messages and brought the different parts of the world into much closer connection. This was achieved by “the wakeful brother” of the Easterners in the West who explored the earth and the cosmos and subjected steam and electricity to his service. His almost effortless command of the forces of war and destruction was also a product of science and its practical application, which have made the present times an “age of knowledge and practice” (ʿaṣr al-ʿilm wa-l-ʿamal). The text strongly urges its Eastern addressees to rise from their “dark night of ignorance” to the “sun of knowledge” which has now come to shine. “He who knows and acts will rule, and he who is ignorant and idle will perish.” In his call for an active acceptance of modern science and its practical applications, Riḍā marshals the time-honoured notion of ʿilm, the central term for religious learning as well as general ‘knowledge’ and ‘science’ in the Islamic learned tradition, for a normative legitimation of the natural sciences. According to him the latter had played only a marginal role in the older canon of knowledge, having remained instead largely speculative and contradictory due to the lack of inquiry and experiment. 6  Hasan Kayalı, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918 (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 1997), 46; Feroz Ahmad, The Young Turks: The Comittee of Union and Progress in Turkish Politics, 1908–14 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969); M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902–1908 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, The Young Turks in Opposition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

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Riḍā even quotes a famous saying attributed to the Prophet which stresses the necessity to act according to one’s knowledge: “He who practices what he knows will be entrusted by God with knowledge of what he does not know.”7 The established hermeneutical context of this tradition was the call for a behaviour according to the learned religious and ethical norms, and the divine grants of ‘inner’ knowledge which might result from this. By applying it to the modern natural sciences and their empirical bases, Riḍā gives them an equally meritorious position and tries to make them acceptable for the diverse and sometimes quite conservative Muslim learned milieus which belonged to his readership. He presents the Prophetical saying as an Eastern maxim which, however, came to full fruition only in the West, whereas the Easterners have ignored it. This appropriation of the modern sciences for Islamic learning and education is one of the major topics which thread the journal, and Riḍā refers to “people who have been guided by religious teachings as well as by the studies of the wonders of the universe,”8 as his main supporters at whose instance he founded al-Manār. He shares with them the ambition “to work for their people and tho serve their community,” and his “Lighthouse” is designed to assist them in their pursuit of the path of progress (al-taraqqī). The list of the aims of the journal which Riḍā presents in his introduction can be read as a program of Islamic reformism which retained its significance throughout the twentieth century. They include general issues of culture and civilisation, like the call for the education of girls and boys, the quest for sciences and arts, and the modernisation of the scientific literature and of the teaching methods. The emulation of the ‘civilised nations’ (al-umam al-mutamaddina) in useful endeavours, and the general quest for economic advancement and commercial success are equally called for. The Ottomans in particular are reminded of the modern financial companies which have been at the centre of most of the progressive achievements in Europe. The second part of the list of aims touches more on strictly religious topics. It involves a thorough critique of the alien elements which, according to Riḍā, have mixed with the creed of the Muslim community and which have led the Muslims to passivity. This is why they now present determinism as true monotheism; renunciation of practical works as trust in God; ignorance as piety, mental disturbance and silly views as sainthood; subservience as humility; and 7  A widely known but technically ‘weak’ Prophetical Tradition of disputed authenticity, quoted among others by Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) in his Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn [Revival of the Religious Sciences] (Cairo: Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1346/1927–8), I, 63; a major reference work of Rashīd Riḍā. 8  A combination of interests that also shows the influence of al-Ghazālī and his Iḥyāʾ.

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the blind imitation of anything old as science and belief. Together with the first set of more general educational reforms, the struggle against perceived religious deficiencies comes out as part of a struggle for an active faith based on science and critical sense, which will lead to a practical and successful life of both individual and society. Decay and deviation are branded as ‘spiritual diseases’ (amrāḍ rūḥiyya), for which the author aims to present both diagnosis and ways of treatment.9 At the same time Riḍā declares to hold fast to religion as the foundation of happiness and the basis of civilisation which is ruined by unbelief. The Islamic sharia and its supreme justice and wisdom are defended against those who regard it as a thick veil and barrier blocking the way to civilisation. This apologetic endeavour was also to remain with the journal throughout its existence. Riḍā sees the remedy against Eastern apathy and decay in a careful observation of the ‘Divine habits’ (sunnat Allāh)—that is, God’s constant ways of dealing with the world; a central concept of the Ashʿarite school of Islamic theology, and also common in Ghazālī’s writings.10 This has to be combined with an activism which keeps itself in accordance with the natural laws. Here we see another aspect of Riḍā’s attempt to fuse theological notions with those of the modern natural sciences, leading to a particular view of human progress which he further explains later in his journal.11 According to him, it also belongs to God’s habits (sunna) to grant progress to the nations (umam) until they reach their perfection, if no other accidental prohibiting factors affect them, as happened to the Eastern countries. If these factors are identified and removed, progress will be possible to them as to any other civilised nation. A final but essential point of the cultural program of al-Manār is the promotion of the Arabic language and its merits. This is achieved in a style that is at the same time refined, with frequent uses of rhymed prose, and clear in its argument, including discussions of religious and scientific issues as well as of important international and local events, and of the situation of the Muslim communities in the world. Literary criticism and the critical review of relevant

9  For this ‘medical’ presentation of theological and ethical issues the author seems again to be strongly indebted to al-Ghazālī’s Iḥyāʾ which follows a similar strategy; see al-Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, I, 4–5. 10  See for God’s habit (ʿāda, sunna) in the Ashʿarite school and in al-Ghazālī’s theology esp. Frank Griffel, Al-Ghazālī’s Philosophical Theology (Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press, 2009), passim, c.f. the index entry “habit (ʿāda, sunna),” 397. See also Johann Büssow’s chapter on Muḥammad ʿAbduh in this volume (1.10). 11  Already in the first volume of al-Manār, e.g. I, 31ff.; 343; 585–592.

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books are also part of the agenda, and Riḍā calls on authors from different countries to contribute to the journal. Al-Manār survived the political changes brought about by the First World War. These included the end of the Ottoman Empire, the foundation of the Turkish Republic and the abolition of the Ottoman caliphate, as well as the revolution in Egypt and its formal independence as a constitutional monarchy. Rashīd Riḍā’s political positions which he expressed in his journal, underwent significant changes in this process, leading him to a reformulation of the theory of the caliphate,12 to a participation in different international Muslim congresses,13 and to an increasing support for the newly established kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Al-Manār also continued its juridical discussions and statements and its inter-religious controversies.14 The international outreach of the journal remained considerable, and it contributed substantially to the development of Islamic reformism in different parts of the world in the post-war period.15 As political and religious life became much more polarised in Egypt and the Middle East under the new conditions, al-Manār continued to exert great influence upon the rising trend of political Islam, especially among the members of the Muslim Brotherhood which had been founded in 1928. After Riḍā’s demise in 1935, the Journal survived for five more years, due to the support of the Muslim Brothers. Until now it has remained a major source of inspiration and departure for cultural and political movements of quite diverse background and orientation. Stefan Reichmuth

12  Henri Laoust, Le califat dans la doctrine de Rashīd Riḍā (Beirut, 1938); Malcolm Kerr, Islamic reform. The political and legal theories of Muḥammad ʿAbduh and Rashīd Riḍā (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 1962). 13  Martin Kramer, Islam Assembled. The Advent of the Muslim Congresses (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), mainly 27–31, 40ff., 87–88, 100–101, 110–119, 137–139, 142–148, 167. 14  Simon A. Wood, Christian criticisms, Islamic Proofs: Rashīd Riḍā’s modernist defence of Islam (University of Michigan: Oneworld, 2008); Umar Ryad, Islamic Reformism and Christianity. 15  See for this especially Stéphane Dudoignon, Komatsu Hisao, Kosugi Yasushi, eds., “Al-Manār in a changing Islamic world” in Intellectuals in the Modern Islamic World: Transmission, Transformation, Communication, Part I.

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Further Reading

Dudoignon, Stéphane; Komatsu Hisao and Kosugi Yasushi, eds. “Al-Manār in a Changing Islamic World.” In Intellectuals in the Modern Islamic World: Transmission, Transformation, Communication, Part I, 1–158. London and New York: Routledge 2006. Ende, Werner. “Rashīd Riḍā.” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Leiden: Brill, 1960–2008, Print; Brill Online, 2012. Kerr, Malcolm. Islamic Reform: The Political and Legal Theories of Muḥammad ʿAbduh and Rashīd Riḍā. Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 1962. Kramer, Martin. Islam Assembled: The Advent of the Muslim Congresses. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. Ryad, Umar. Islamic Reformism and Christianity: A Critical Reading of the Works of Muhammad Rashid Rida and His Associates (1898–1935). Leiden et al.: E. J. Brill, 2009.



Source Text16

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. Praise be to God, and Peace to His chosen servants. There is no other success for me than from God. In Him I trust, and to Him I turn in repentance. This is a voice exclaiming in clear Arabic language, a call of truth resounding in the ears of the speakers of Arabic as well as among all the people of the East. It calls from a near place, where it is heard by the Easterner and the Westerner, and it flies with the steam, so that the Turk and the Persian may receive it. It says: “O you Easterner, drugged with sleep and enjoying your sweet dreams! Enough, enough! You have passed the limit of rest with your sleep, and it has almost turned into swoon or sudden death. Wake up from your repose, and rub the sleep out of your eyes! Look at this new world! For the earth is not the same any more, and man has entered into another age where the larger world has become subject to him.” The inanimate beings [have come to] speak without tongues, and to write without pencils or fingers. Wild animals have been gathered with domestic ones. Vessels cross the plains and deserts. Signals travel across [the world]; they even fly in the air, racing the wind and matching the wing-bearing animals. Your wakeful brother took possession of the forces of nature. He joined water 16  Rashīd Riḍā, “Fātiḥat al-sana al-ūlā li-l-Manār,” al-Manār, 1 (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Manār, 1315–16/1898–99); al-Manār, 2nd ed. (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Manār, 1327/1909), 9–14.

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and fire and made them generate the steam. Making use of electricity and light he penetrated the mountains, explored the abysses of the oceans, and learnt to survey the air. The rays of his glance permeated solid matter, and the waves of his voice reached every distant place. He brought the remote parts of the earth close together and connected its regions. With his zeal even ascending to the vault of heaven, he came to know the stars and their orbits, and their matter and dimensions. Enough, enough! Rise from your slumber, and wake up from your rest! The dark night of ignorance went away, and the sun of knowledge has come to shine. Look at your wakeful brother and reflect on what he is doing! He crushes castles and fortresses and razes fortifications and temples while leaning back against his sofa and watching them with his telescope. He erects castles and walls and builds warships and towers without tiring a muscle or sweating his brow. For such enormous works he only needs to give a slight signal and to exert a gentle movement, because nature is subject to his hint, obedient to his [right] hand, and [so] he achieves anything he wants. Do not be frightened or terrified by what you hear and see! Realise that this is the age of knowledge and practice. He who knows and acts will rule, and he who is ignorant and idle will perish. “I only show you what I see, and I only guide you the right way.” [Quran 40:29]. The natural sciences in the times of your forefathers were diverse thoughts, contradictory opinions and incompatible sayings that did not originate from inquiry and practice, and practice was hardly based on them. Therefore, they were often criticised, and only few commended them. But in these days science is only what is verified by practice, or on which practice is built upon. But that which practice does not fully support is not taken into consideration. Practical action makes the sciences grow, and the sciences assist it. Proof of this comes from the noble Prophetic Tradition: “He who practices what he knows will be entrusted by God with knowledge of what he does not know.” A principle formulated in the East! The people of the West were guided to make use of its general message, while those in whose language it was [first] issued were careless and ignorant. Thus do not lose your time with imagination and brooding! Do not restrict your share of life to wishing and longing! Do not give ample space to the illusions of your mind! “It will not be in accordance with your desires nor the desires of the People of the Scripture.” [Quran 4:123] “He who does right does it for his own soul, and he who does wrong does it against it. Your Lord is no tyrant to His servants.” [Quran 41:46]. Therefore, strive for science and [its] practice, embrace them to your own satisfaction, and educate your offspring in accordance with them! The knot of bondage and silence was untied from my tongue, and my pen was set free Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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from the shackles of indifference and immobility, by the absorption of some of my brothers and your brothers in sleep, by the drowning of some of them in the sea of illusion, by the ignorance of the sick ones of their illness, and by the despair of their own cure which had befallen those who know. That is why I founded this journal, in response to the wishes of those who were alerted to reform these disorders, and in support of those who strove for their remedy. These were people who had been guided by religious teachings as well as by the study of the wonders of the universe, to their conviction that any despair of God’s spirit and of His mercy was in itself unbelief and deviation, and a sign of shame and punishment. They therefore loved to work for their people (umma) and to serve their community (milla).17 The journal is meant to become a link between them and the people, which through their guidance instils the spirit of lofty ambition into its individuals and revives the souls of those whose zeal has died off. It assists the leaders in their pursuit of the path of progress18 and erects a lighthouse in the obscure roads of doubtful and [still] unknown problems. Our first aim is to press for the education of girls and boys, not to disparage emirs and sultans; to encourage the quest for the sciences and arts, not to oppose the judges and the law. [This includes:]

• • • •

the reform of the scientific books and teaching methods; the encouragement to emulate the civilised nations (al-umam al-­ mutamaddina) in useful endeavours; the quest for earning and economy; the explanation of the alien elements that mixed with the creed of the people (umma), of the bad morals that corrupted most of their customs, 17  The Arabic notions umma ‘people’ and milla ‘community’ were originally used for communal entities sharing a common religion. Since the late nineteenth century they were increasingly used to capture the novel term denoting a political ‘nation,’ without, however, completely loosing their religious colouring. The use of the terms in this text conveys this ambiguity. The “civilised nations” (al-umam al-mutamaddina) below clearly denote the modern connotation of the term. Frederick M. Denny, “Umma,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition; and Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, s.v. “Ummah” by A. S. Dallal, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 18  The term taraqqin/al-taraqqī (rise) which is used here had by that time become a common loan translation for modernising ‘progress,’ not only in Arabic but also in Ottoman where the notion was by then already part of the name of the still clandestine Committee of Union and Progress (Ittiḥād ve-teraqqī cemʿiyyeti), founded in 1887, which finally came to power in 1908 and dominated Ottoman politics until the end of the empire (see fn. 7 above).

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of the deceitful doctrines that disguised seduction as guidance; of the false interpretations that made error appear as truth, so that determinism came to be [seen as] monotheism; the denial of secondary causes as [true] belief; renunciation of practical works as trust in God; knowledge of the truths as unbelief and atheism; injustice towards opposing doctrinal schools as religion; ignorance of the sciences and acceptance of superstitious stories as piety; mental disturbance and silly views as sainthood and illumination; subservience and baseness as humility; submission to humiliation and injustice as contentment and devotion; and the blind imitation of anything old as science and belief. [The journal] undertakes a diagnosis of these and similar spiritual diseases. It clarifies their causes and describes their treatment. It attempts as much as possible to reconcile the discordant hearts, to restore the interrupted relations, and to restore unanimity. It tries to convince the members of the divergent religious communities and schools that God prescribed religion for mutual love and affection, kindness and charity. And that mutual opposition, resentment, enmity and fighting lead to the destruction of the countries and put an end to the guidance of the religions. It urges to hold fast to religion, explaining that it is the foundation of happiness, and that unbelief is the ruin of civilisation (ʿumrān).19 It dispels the doubts about the Islamic sharia, and refutes the views of those who claim that it is a thick veil and a barrier between those who follow it and the true civilisation (al-madaniyya al-ṣaḥīḥa), because they ignore the marvellous wisdom and the just regulations which it contains. It also advises the activists that any attempt to leap is deception; that the [premature] quest for the goal at the beginning results from ignorance and deprivation; and that observation of the Divine habits, and action in accordance with the natural laws, are sufficient with God’s assistance for the achievement of any goals and wishes. It also reminds the Ottomans that financial companies are the source of civilisation, and the fountain of knowledge, and that it is them who are at the centre of progress (taqaddum)20 in Europe in the arts and industries, not kings 19  Here the term ʿumrān is used, which is central to the cyclical theory of the rise and decline of empires and civilisations as developed by Ibn Khaldūn (d. 808/1406). He also presents religion (dīn) as part of civilisation; see for this Franz Rosenthal, transl., Ibn Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History (New York: Pantheon Books, 1958), I, 50–55, 137–138, 319–326, 449. 20   Taqaddum (advancement), the second notion which came into use for ‘progress’ in Arabic. This call for economic autonomy strongly resembles the political and economic ideas of the Young Turks who were in the last period of the Ottoman Empire bent on establishing a ‘National Economy’ (millī iqtiṣād); see Erik J. Zürcher, The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building: From the Ottoman Empire to Atatürk’s Turkey (London and New York: Tauris, Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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and emirs, as they construct elementary and advanced schools, ­manufactories and factories, and equip ships and steamboats. Examples for this are to be seen in front of [the Ottomans], right under their eyes. [The journal] also promotes the merits of the Arabic language, adorning itself with its embellishments, capturing its wonders, and documenting its rarities, by gradual adjustment. It leaves nothing undone to spread useful knowledge about foreign policy news, and also to provide necessary explanation for important local events. In this it practises honest selection and balance, not inclined to any party, without taking sides in negligence or exaggeration, following the results of independent inquiry. But its general outlook is Ottoman and Hamidian, as it defends the Exalted State in truth and serves our lord, the Greatest Sultan, in sincerity. It avoids personal invectives as well as laudatory poems, but remains unflagging in its critical discussion of books of common interest which were published for the general public, with clear words and balanced criticism, accepting literary critique from everyone with praise and thanks, observing truth in whatever form it appears, and laying hold of wisdom wherever it can be found. This is what the soul had desired, and what I resolved to do after I had clarified my intentions and my heart. I am fully aware that I have set out for a momentous affair, and that I am about to shoulder a heavy burden, which might be too much even for a group of strong persons and which would require the formation of a committee or an association. But despite this I know that truth and pious deeds do find their supporters. The journal draws from the seas of their thought, it feeds for its well-meaning words on the fruits of their knowledge, and uses the ink of wisdom taken from their pens. For all these reasons I wavered for some time between courage and flinching and hope and despair, after I had conceived the topic and had decided to begin the work. Both tendencies acted and struggled within myself, until I finally opted for hope and courage. My hesitation was truly justified, because one of the great personalities of this region, on the credit of his own experience and suffering, had warned me that this effort was something which should be avoided, not desired. (As he saw it,) the large majority of the people have risen against each other; and inferior persons have usurped the rights of the meritorious. The ambition of their thought has come to focus on the critique of the local government, and on personal enmities, and their interest and attention does not reach beyond denunciation and denigration, except for funny jokes and love-stories. If they find a journal which criticises most of their opinions, censures their immoderateness and blames them for their shortcomings in 2010), 49, 71, 74, 150, 219–220, 238, 277; Zafer Toprak, Türkiyeʿde ʿMillî İktisatʿ (1908–1918) (Ankara: Yurt, 1982). Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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serving the civilisation of their homelands, for their active involvement in the destruction of their countries, as they are delivering them into the hands of the aliens who are bent on their colonisation, they will spit it out like the stone (of a fruit), and will not care in the least about it. But I have accustomed myself to be satisfied with the support of the noble and excellent ones. Yes, “the nobles are (always) few,”21 but our hope is that they are increasing, as required by the situation of the age, and by the direction into which the troubled conditions are dragging the people. Our help is with God, on Him one can trust. “And whosoever puts his trust in God, he will suffice him. God truly brings his command to pass. He has set a measure for everything.” (Quran 65:3). Selected and translated by Stefan Reichmuth

21   Inna l-kirāma qalīlun, “The noble ones are (always) few.” Quotation from a poem attributed to the pre-Islamic poet al-Samawʾal b. ʿĀdiyā (middle of the sixth c. CE), see Thomas Bauer, “al-Samawʾal b. ʿĀdiyā,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition.

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2.07

Moḥammad Ḥoseyn Na‌ʾīnī: Government from the Perspective of Islam (Iran, 1909) Introduction The movement known today as “Iran’s Constitutional Revolution”1—even though it cannot be called a revolution in the classical sense of a societal upheaval affecting all of the major power structures and supported by large numbers of citizens—begins well over a hundred years ago in December 1905. Moẓaffar al-Dīn Shāh (1853–1907), ascending to the throne in May 1896 after his father Nāṣer al-Dīn’s assassination on 1 May of the same year, is a ruler of the autocratic order just like his father had been, and the Constitution is s­ upposed to do no more than to place some sort of limits on his power. But most of the people involved in the Constitutional movement do not have a clear idea of what a constitution really is, nor do they comprehend what the implications of having a constitution actually might turn out to be—specifically, the implications that establishing the institution of parliament as a legislative body would have on Islamic law. Protagonists of the Constitutionalist movement in 1905 are merchants, clerics, religious dissidents, and socialists, and their goals are as diverse as may be expected from such a mixed crowd. Numerous clerics supported the Constitutional movement and several of them are even named among its prime movers. What their real motives were is up to debate among scholars even today. But the consensus appears to be that they did not support the movement because they favored a European style constitutional government but rather that they supported the movement as opponents of the existing regime, seeing it as a possibility for regime change since the government in power at the time was (in their own words): “based on tyranny, injustice and oppression.”2 1  See Vanessa Martin, Islam and Modernis: The Iranian Revolution of 1906 (London: Syracuse University Press, 1989); Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906–11, (New York: Columbia, 1996); Said Amir Arjomand, “Religion and Ideology in the Constitutional Revolution,” Iranian Studies 12 (1979): 283–291. 2  Abdul Hadi Hairi, “Why did the ʿulama⁡ʾ participate in the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905–1909?,” Die Welt des Islam 17 (1976/77): 128.

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© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004329003_025

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Mīrzā Moḥammad Ḥoseyn Gharawī Na‌ʾīnī (1860–1936)—the man who wrote the most detailed treatise on Constitutionalism—was born to a religious family from the city of Na⁠ʾīn in central Iran. After having completed his primary school training in Na⁠ʾin, he moved to Isfahan in 1877 to study the fundaments of jurisprudence (uṣūl al-fiqh), Islamic philosophy, and theology with Ḥajj Shaykh Moḥammad Bāqer Esfahānī (died 1885) and his son Shaykh Moḥammad Taqī Eṣfahānī (1846–1914). In 1885, Na‌ʾīnī starts out for the ‘thresholds’ (ʿatabāt), the Shiʿite holy sites, taking a short stop at Najaf before settling in Samarra as secretary to Mīrzā Moḥammad Ḥasan Shīrāzī (1814/15–1895).3 As they were closely working together, it may safely be assumed that Na‌ʾīnī took part in Shīrāzī’s campaign against Nāṣer al-Dīn Shāh’s sale of the tobacco concessions.4 Some evidence points to the fatwa on the subject that is ­commonly ascribed to Shīrāzī actually not being his own work, but Shīrāzī himself never denied authorship, either.5 In compliance with this fatwa, so many Iranians decided to stop smoking tobacco that the Shah had to revoke his sale of the tobacco monopoly to the British Imperial Tobacco Company. The Tobacco Régie thus became a forerunner to the Constitutionalist movement. After Shīrāzī’s death, Na‌ʾīnī spent some time in Kerbela, then returned to Najaf in 1898 where, in the meantime, Akhūnd Moḥammad Kāẓem Khorāsānī (1839–1911),6 whose student and assistant Na‌ʾīnī became, had risen to the movement’s top rank. After Moḥammad ʿAlī Shah, Moẓaffar al-Dīn Shāh’s successor, had suspended the constitution arguing that it was against the sharia, the Persian ulama resident in Iraq, lead by Khorāsānī, redoubled their efforts on behalf of the movement. They issued a fatwa declaring obedience to the Shah and paying taxes to his government to be un-Islamic, and ferociously attacked their opponent Shaykh Faẓlollāh Nūrī. Na‌ʾīnī assisted Khorāsānī in 3   The most inclusive study on Na‌ ʾīnī can be found in: Abdulhadi Hairi, Shiʿism and Constitutionalism in Iran: A Study of the Role Played by the Persian Residents of Iraq in Iranian Politics (Leiden: Brill, 1977), 109–151. See also Fereshteh Nouraie, “The Constitutional Ideas of a Shiʿite Mujtahid: Muhammad Husayn Naiʾni,” Iranian Studies 8 (1975): 234–247. 4  Regarding this point, see also Ann Lambton, “The Tobacco Régie: Prelude to Revolution,” Studia Islamica 22 (1965): 119–157; Nikki Keddie, Religion and Rebellion in Iran: The Tobacco Protest of 1891–92 (London: Routledge, 1966). 5  On this subject, see Werner Ende, “Der amtsmüde Ayatollah,” in Festschrift für Burkhard Kienast: zu seinem 70. Geburtstage dargebracht von Schülern, Freunden und Kollegen, ed. Gebgard J. Selz (Münster: Archiv für Orientforschung, 2003), 51–63. 6  Abdul-Hadi Hairi, “Ḵhūrasānī, Aḵhūnd Mulla Muḥammad Kāẓim,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2008, Print; Brill Online, 2012, Online).

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composing his fatwas and writings supporting the Constitutional movement.7 And in 1909 Na‌ʾīnī himself wrote the treatise Tanbīh al-umma wa-tanzīh almilla (Exhortation of the Faithful and Purification of the Nation), one of the major texts of modern Iranian intellectual history.8 The treatise was written in March 1909 after Moḥammad ʿAlī Shāh’s troops had attacked parliament but before the Constitutionalists took over Teheran. Although it has an Arabic title, the text itself is in Persian since it addressed itself at the Iranian middle classes. Right from the outset, it was very successful and widely read in Iran. The edition I am using in the following was published with his annotations by Āyatullāh Maḥmūd Ṭāleqānī (1914–1979) in the early 1950s in Iran; this edition, too, was widely read in the country and seen as a critique of the ruler in power at that time. This is in part due to Ṭāleqānī’s extensive commentaries in which Ṭāleqānī gave Na‌ʾīnī’s argumentation a slant of his own liking, bolstering it up with a revolutionary fervor that went far beyond Na‌ʾīnī’s original intentions. However, the fact remains that through Ṭāleqānī’s re-issuing, Na‌ʾīnī’s treatise was very much a part of the public debate in the 1950s and 1960s and remains so up to today since it contains Na‌ʾīnī’s vitriolic scorning of religious despotism. We owe the much quoted comment that religious despotism is worse than a political one since the religious one always contains the political to Na‌ʾīnī as well. When religious and political rulership become one, no option of criticizing the government remains. Na‌ʾīnī’s Exhortation of the Faithful contains his in-depth explanation of why he supports constitutional monarchy. He states that while it is true that it is a Western idea, it is in accordance with the Shi‛a, preferable to tyranny, and— specifically during of the Mahdi’s absence—the best form of government available. Still, just as others had done, Na‌ʾīnī argues that in order for a constitutional monarchy to be godly, it has as a matter of course to be ruled by sharia law. His book is a precise, systematic, and structured presentation of all arguments in favor of Constitutionalism. Na‌ʾīnī’s support for the Constitutional movement stemmed from his religious convictions: he sought justice and 7  These writings were collected in his “Book of Politics.” In 2006, Moḥsen Kadīvar published a re-issue of the book with his annotations as these texts contain several arguments against the current state doctrine of velayat-e faqih. Mollā Moḥsen Moḥammad Kāẓem Khorasānī, Sīyāsatnāme-ye Khorasānī [Khorasani’s Book of Politics], ed. Moḥsen Kadīvar (Tehran, 2006). 8  Regarding the treatise “Exhortation of the Faithful . . .,” see: Hairi, “Ḵhūrasānī,” 154–164. Mīrzā Moḥammad Ḥoseyn Na‌ʾīnī, Tanbīh al-umma wa-tanzīh al-milla [Exhortation of the Faithful and Purification of the Nation], edited with commentaries by Maḥmūd Ṭāleqānī (N.P.: n.d.), 4.

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feared that his silence in the face of ungodly behavior would lead to even worse ungodliness and injustice. He is, however, the only one among these supporters who in this context talks about not only justice but also about freedom and equality. Freedom and equality, so he maintains, are the two objectives the prophet strove to realise. Any just order should realise them, and tyrannical rule does not. Na‌ʾīnī makes use of numerous quotes from the famous Nahdj al-balāgha to prove that Imam Ali himself had been against tyranny, that tyrannical rule is bad, is against the spirit of Islam, and contrary to all that the prophet of Islam aimed to establish.9 Furthermore, Na‌ʾīnī argues, a tyrannical rule is marked by three types of injustice: 1. It is an usurpation of God’s rights and an injustice against him (ẓolm be sāḥat-e aqdas-e aḥadīyat). 2. It is an usurpation of the Imam’s authority and an injustice against the Imam (ẓolm be nāhīye-ye moqaddase-ye emāmat). 3. It is also an usurpation of the countries and an oppression of God’s ­servants (wa ham eghteṣāb-a reqāb wa belād wa ẓolm darbāre-ye ʿebād).10 In consequence, Na‌ʾīnī sees no contradiction between Islam and a constitutional system since Constitutionalism is opposed to despotism and only suffers from two of the three possible types of injustice. Thus, a constitutional system comes closest to the ideal Islamic state; it is not by a far shot the best possible system, but in any case the least harmful. This is why Na‌ʾīnī opposed the attempt of those among the clergy who were against the Constitutional movement to decry constitutional government as incompatible with sharia. After all, he argued, both Sunnite and Shiʿite theology accepted parliamentarism; so, since a number of jurists had already accepted parliamentary decisions, there is a real possibility of anchoring the constitutional system within the Shi‛a.11 He also countered the allegation that a constitution would be bidʿa— that is, an unlawful religious innovation—by stating that legislation could only be considered an innovation and thus un-Islamic if one were to argue that a non-Islamic regulation is a regulation of the sharia. If one does not establish a link between non-Islamic regulation and the sharia, then there are no grounds to look upon it as unlawful religious innovation.

9  Na‌ʾīnī, Exhortation, 4,18–27. 10  Na‌ʾīnī, Exhortation, 47. 11  Na‌ʾīnī, Exhortation, 15.

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There is yet another Islamic principle which makes Na‌ʾīnī favor parliamentarism: in his opinion, the people’s participation in elections prevents tyranny. It is the people’s right and duty as conferred to them by the Quranic principle of ‘commanding what is just and forbidding what is unjust’ (al-amr bi al-maʿrūf wa al-nahy ʿan al-munkar) to control and supervise the state’s affairs; he even goes so far as to name it the people’s God-appointed duty.12 Na‌ʾīnī’s thinking shows the influence of both Montesquieu’s and JeanJacques Rousseau’s philosophies whose ideas he was familiar with from the works of the Arab thinkers Rifāʿa al-Ṭaḥṭāwī (1801–1873) and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Kawākibī (1855–1902). Kawākibī’s writings can in parts be traced back to Vittorio Alfieris Della Tirannide (written in 1777). Na‌ʾīnī transfers these Western ideas into an Islamic context, producing thus a syncretistic approach that is at times slightly confused; nonetheless, his book was at the time the most inclusive overview of all arguments in favor of constitutionalism from an Islamic point of view. Even today, discussions of the book’s content stress that through his argumentation, he succeeded in establishing concepts such as elections, opposition to tyranny, and others as Islamic, thus offering a precedent for introducing further concepts into Islamic thought in our days. Na‌ʾīnī’s book was written as a reply to the anti-Constitutionalists, a group lead by Shaykh Faẓlollāh Nūrī (1842–1909).13 Nūrī was one of the clerics who at first were in favor of a constitution and turned against the idea when it became apparent to him—as it had to other dissenters—that the constitutional system did not make quite the perfect match with Islamic law their liberal nationalistic allies from the middle classes had assured them it would. Nūrī published a series of anti-movement propaganda leaflets called the rūznāme (in modern Persian, daily newspaper) between 20 June, 1907 and 16 September of the same year.14 Shaykh Faẓlollāh Nūrī calls the 1906/1904 constitution an unlawful innovation and instead promotes the idea of a mashrūṭe-ye mashrūʿe (literally: the constitution under Islamic law) or a neẓām-nāme-ye eslāmī (Islamic constitution), since Islamic law is perfect. His opinion is that the religion has been perfected, and that it is the Prophet who has put the

12  Na‌ʾīnī, Exhortation, 46. 13  Abdul Hadi Hairi, “Shaykh Fazl Allah Nūrī’s Refutation of the Idea of Constitutionalism,” Middle Eastern Studies 13 (1979): 327–339; Vanessa Martin, “The Anti-Constitutionalist Arguments of Shaikh Fazlallah Nūrī,” Middle Eastern Studies 22 (1986): 181–196. 14  Fazlollah Nūrī, Madjmūʿeʿī az rasāʾel, eʿlāmīye, maktūbāt va rūznāme-ye Shayḵh Shahīd Faẓlollāh Nūrī [Complete Collection of Faẓlullāh Nūrī’s treatises, communiqués, writings, and pamphlets], ed. Moḥammad Torkamān (Tehran, 1983).

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finishing touch to it. Thus whoever believes in the Prophet, cannot hold the belief that humans can make laws. What’s more, equality and freedom, the new constitution’s basic tenets, are to him principles that destroy the basis of divine law: If they want to instate Islamic law and found their constitution on Islamic principles as they claim, then why have they founded it on equality and freedom, principles which would destroy the bases of divine law? The basis of Islam is obedience not freedom, and the basis of its tenets is the dissimilarity of social groups, not their equality.15 Instead, Nūrī demands that in obedience to Islam, Muslims should treat as equal that which is being treated as equal in divine law and as unequal those groups which are differentiated from the first. By that, he means first of all apostates, his prime target being members of the Baha’i faith and next to them Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians, all of whom the constitution was going to give the same rights Muslims had. Vanessa Martin concludes that it was this very principle of equality that also upset other clerics most.16 Shaykh Nūrī did not go so far as to demand the clergy’s absolute rule. In his opinion, the Shah and the clergy should rule with shared authority for the duration of the Imam’s absence as they are the two pillars of Islam.17 Nūrī’s criticism lead to the addition of an amendment to the constitution stating that all bills introduced into parliament have to be in accordance with the principles of Twelver Shiʿa Islam, and that all proposals would have to pass the scrutiny of a jury of five theologians with the right to a partial or total refutal of each proposal. In the end, this amendment did nothing to lessen the anti-Constitutionalists’ distrust of the constitution, nor was this concession enough to appease Nūrī himself, so on July 31, 1909, the Constitutionalists had him executed, making him a martyr for the cause in the eyes of his followers. Today, one of Tehran’s biggest boulevards bears his name, and his arguments against parliamentarism, the principle of equality, popular sovereignty, and others can still be found in the debates of today’s Iran. The consensus on which this constitution was based was too weak to stand the test of time and from the outset was doomed to fail. Clerics who wanted to install a constitutional system in accordance with the sharia and Modernists who wanted a system modelled after European ideals could not come to an agreement, and their co-operation did not last. The Constitutional movement 15  Nūrī, Complete Collection, 59. 16  Martin, Arguments, 186. 17  Nūrī, Complete Collection, 67, 89–90. On this subject, see also: Martin, Arguments, 192–193.

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did not succeed in institutionalizing several of their fundamental demands such as the rights of the individual and a representational system. Blame for this failure must be attributed to both sides alike, and the Modernists ­created growing estrangement from the rest of society by indiscriminately refuting each and every objection stemming from a conservative point of view as ‘reactionary.’ Still, the Constitution was a real step forward in many aspects—philosophically, conceptually, and in terms of real political progress. Its pièce de résistance was that foreign loans and treaties with foreign nations henceforth had to be approved by Parliament and that ministers are to be accountable to it. It also was a synthesis of principles and concepts from both the West and Islam, which made it a remarkable model of an Islamic country’s constitution as it incorporated the traditional view of the function of Islam into political decision-making processes. It accommodated both the Imam’s leadership and the monarch’s authority, and in this regard, the new constitution remains comfortably within the scope of traditional Shiʿite state concepts. At the same time, it implicated two radical changes: for one thing, the Constitution stipulates a government and even assigns it certain powers. Secondly, the Iranian people are seen as a source of power and not to be at one with the ruler. In theory, ruler and people are both subject to the sharia’s authority, so that—in theory—the people have ceased to be subject to a monarch’s authority. Katajun Amirpur

Further Reading

Arjomand, Said Amir. “The ʿulama’s Traditionalist Opposition to Parliamentarism: 1907–1909.” Middle Eastern Studies 17 (1981): 174–190. Hairi, Abdul Hadi. “Why did the ‛ulamā’ Participate in the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905–1909.” Die Welt des Islam 17 (1976/77): 127–154. Hairi, Abdulhadi. Shiʿism and Constitutionalism in Iran: A Study of the Role Played by the Persian Residents of Iraq in Iranian Politics. Leiden: Brill, 1977. Keddie, Nikki. Religion and Rebellion in Iran: The Tobacco Protest of 1891–92. London: Routledge, 1966. Martin, Vanessa. “The Anti-Constitutionalist Arguments of Shaikh Fazlallah Nuri.” Middle Eastern Studies 22 (1986): 181–196. Nouraie, Fereshteh. “The Constitutional Ideas of a Shiʿite Mujtahid: Muhammad Husayn Naiʾni.” Iranian Studies 8 (1975): 234–247.

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Source Text18

Introduction: An Analysis of the Nature of Tyranny, Conditionality19 of the Government, Achieving a Constitution and a Consultative Assembly of the People, and an Explanation of the Meaning of Liberty and Equality Be aware of the notion that all sages of Islam and of the nations of the world agree that some form of polity and government is necessary for the constitution of the society and the life of humankind, whether it be personal or group rule, legitimate or illegitimate government, freely elected, hereditary, or dictatorially imposed. Also, it is necessarily true that the maintenance of the honor, independence, and nationality of every nation, be it in religious or national affairs, is contingent upon their own endeavors. Otherwise, their privileges, the honor of their religion, the integrity of their country, and the independence of their nation will be utterly destroyed, regardless of how wealthy, progressive, and civilized they may be. That is why the pure sharia (religious law) of Islam has designated the protection of the ‘essential constitution’ of Islam as the highest of duties, specifying Islamic government as a holy duty invested in the institution of the imāmat (Shi’i religious leadership). (A detailed explication of this issue is outside of the scope of this essay.) It is evident that all worldly affairs are contingent upon government, and that the protection of every nation’s honor and nationality is contingent upon self-rule, based upon two basic principles: 1. 2.

Protection of domestic order, education of the citizenry, ensuring that rights are allotted to the rightful, and deterring people from invading others’ rights—these are among the internal duties of government. Protection of the nation from foreign invasion, neutralizing the typical maneuvers in such cases, providing for a defensive force, and so on— these are what the experts in terminology call the ‘protection of the essential constitution’ of Islam.

18  Mīrzā Moḥammad Ḥoseyn Na⁠ʾīnī/Muḥammad Ḥusayn Na⁠ʾīnī, Tanbīh al-umma wa tanzīh al-milla ya ḥukūmat az naẓar-i islām [Exhortation of the Faithful and Purification of the Nation, or Government from the Perspective of Islam], 6th ed. (Tehran: Shirkat-i Sahami-i Intishar, 1960). First published in 1909. The translation and footnotes here are taken from: Mahmoud Sadri, transl., “Muhammad Husayn Na⁠ʾini: Government in the Islamic Perspective,” in Modernist Islam, 1840–1940, A Sourcebook, ed. Charles Kurzman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 117–125. 19  The term ‘conditionality’ (mashrūṭiyat) also was used to mean ‘constitutionalism.’

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The sharia canons concerning the upholding of these two holy duties are known as political and civilizational laws and are considered as the second subdivision of ‘practical reason.’20 This is why the greatest kings and emperors of Persia and Rome were adamant in choosing competent sages in theoretical and practical disciplines for the management of societal affairs. These sages realized the necessity and legitimacy of discharging such duties, and this realization persuaded them to accept such responsibilities, despite their abhorrence of tyrannical rule. One can even surmise that the reason for any government, any system of taxation, any organization of forces in society, whether initiated by divine prophets or by sages, was to uphold these principles and discharge such duties. The pure sharia too has endeavored to remedy the shortcomings [of government] and to stipulate its conditions and limitations. The nature of the ruler’s domination, in terms of the extent of the exclusiveness of its rule, can only be conceived of as one of two kinds: It is either ‘­possessive’ or ‘preservative.’ The possessive form of government is the case in which a prince considers the nation his personal property to dispose of as his whims and desires dictate. He treats the nation like a stable full of animals meant to satisfy his passions and wishes. He rewards or punishes people insofar as they aid or impede him in realizing his ends. He does not hesitate to imprison, banish, torture, or execute his opponents, tear them to pieces, and feed them to his hounds. Or to encourage his pack of wolves to spill their blood and plunder their property. He can separate any proprietor from his property, and give it to his entourage. He upholds or tramples people’s rights as he sees fit. He considers himself the sole possessor of the right to expropriate any holdings, to sell, rent, or give away any part of the nation or its rights, or to exact any taxes for his personal private use. His attempt to maintain order and to defend the nation is like that of a farmer toward his farm. If he wishes, he keeps it. If not, he gives it away to the obsequious bunch around him. On the slightest suggestion, he sells and mortgages national rights to finance his silly and hedonistic trips abroad.21 He doesn’t even hesitate to give himself leave for open sexual debauchery at the expense of his subjects, and still, he adorns himself with divine titles worthy of God. His courtiers help him identify his powers of tyranny, domination, 20  As distinct from ‘theoretical reason,’ in Islamic philosophy. The field of practical reason consists of three subdivisions: purification of the soul, management of society or politics, and home economics. 21  This jab is meant particularly for the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century shahs who sold exorbitant concessions to foreign corporations in order to finance lavish personal trips to Europe.

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­ assion, and anger with those of the nation. They help him to arrogate to himp self God’s attribute: “He cannot be questioned about what He does, but they will be questioned.” [Quran, 21:23] This form of government, because it is autocratic and arbitrary, is known as possessive, tyrannical, enslaving, imperious, and dictatorial. It is clear why each of these titles would be appropriate for such a form of government. The head of such a form of government is known as an absolute ruler, ‘owner of the yokes,’ dictator, and so on. The nation that is subject to such rule should be called servile, downtrodden, and oppressed. And insofar as they are alienated from their own resources and wealth, like little orphans, they may be called ‘children’ as well. And insofar as their use for their rulers is dike the use of crops for the farmer, they may be called ‘vegetative’! The degrees of dictatorship exerted by this form of government varies according to the personal attributes and rational faculties of the princes and their courtiers, as well as the degree of the awareness of nations of their rights and the rights of their rulers, and the degree of their devotion to monotheistic or polytheistic religions. (For this affects the leave they give to their rulers to lord over them as the sole arbiter and proprietor of their rights.) The most extreme form of tyranny is where the ruler declares himself God. Its power will be limited to the extent to which those subject to such a rule resist it. The rule is absolute if the citizens acquiesce to it, as happened under the rule of the pharaohs. And according to the old adage: “People follow the religion of their princes.” They in turn treat their subordinates as petty tyrants. The root of this sprawling, degenerate tree is none but the nation’s ignorance of its own rights and the rights of its rulers, and a general lack of responsibility, accountability, watchful deliberation, and checks and balances. The second form of government is that in which rule does not belong to an absolute arbiter. Government is based on discharging the aforementioned legitimate responsibilities. It is a limited form of government, and the ruler’s authority is rule-bound and conditional to the same extent. These two forms of government are distinct both in their true nature and in their effects. Because the former is, in all its manifestations, based on domination and possession, the nation is hostage to the whims of the leaders. National resources are at the mercy of the ruling group. They are not responsible to anyone for what they do, so whatever they refrain from doing deserves profuse thanks. If they killed someone but didn’t mutilate him and feed him to the hounds, they should be thanked. If they expropriated property but didn’t rape the women, they should be thanked. Everyone’s relationship with the ruler is that of a slave to his master–even lower than that! It is the relationship of the farm animal to the farmer. It is even lower than that: it is the relation of the crop Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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to the crop owner. Their only value is to sate the needs of their owner. They have no independent right to their own life and existence. In short, this relationship is like the relationship of creation to the Creator. On the other hand, the nature and essence of the latter form of government are stewardship, service, upholding domestic order, and protecting the nation. This form of government is committed to using the nation’s resources to meet the nation’s needs, not to satiate the passions of the rulers. Therefore, the authority of the government is limited to the above-mentioned matters, and its interference in its citizen’s affairs is conditional upon the necessity of reaching those [national] goals. The citizens are partners with government in the ownership of the nation’s powers and resources. Everyone has equal rights, and the administrators are all stewards, not owners. They are responsible to the nation, and the slightest infraction is punishable by law. And all citizens share the national right to question the authorities safely, and are safe in doing so. Nor does anyone protesting the government bear the yoke of servitude of the sovereign prince or his courtiers. This kind of government is called limited, just, conditional, responsible, and delegated. And it is evident why each of these designations would be appropriate for such a form of government. Those in charge of such a government are called protectors, guardians, just arbiters, and responsible and just rulers. The nation that is blessed by such a government is called pious, emancipated, gallant, and alive. (And again, it is evident why each of these designations apply to such a nation.) The nature of this government is analogous to loaning and delegating, and it can survive only in the absence of usurpation and violations of trust. That which protects this form of government and prevents it from degenerating into an absolute and arbitrary rule is none other than the principle of accountability, vigilance, and responsibility. The most exalted means of ensuring that a government will not betray the trust of the nation in any way, is, of course, having infallible rulers. This is the same principle that we Shiʿis consider as a principle of our religion. It is necessarily evident that anyone who partakes of the exalted status of an infallible leader will be innocent of base passions, blessed with wisdom, and endowed with many moral attributes (whose explanation falls beyond the scope of this essay). Due to divine protection, such a leader is immune even to the slightest oversight and neglect. In short, this is a status “whose true nature is incomprehensible for ordinary human beings.” However, given a lack of access to such divine leaders,22 seldom does it happen that the king is just and virtuous and happens to choose a perfectly wise and chaste supervisor of the affairs of the state, as happened in the case of 22  The last of the infallible Imams, according to Shiʿi theology, went into occultation in 874.

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Nushirvan (Khosrow, king of Iran, reigned 531–579)* and [his vizier] Buzarjumihr a long time ago. The level of vigilance, accountability, and responsibility and the partnership, equality, and honesty of the people and the government achieved under Nushirvan’s rule was an exception, not a rule, in history. It is indeed rarer than the rarest of jewels. It is impossible to expect it to happen with frequency in history. Thus in the absence of divine leadership and the exceedingly rare incidents of just kingship, nations may attempt a pale likeness of such a rule only under two conditions: First, by imposing the aforementioned limits so that the government will strictly refrain from interfering in affairs in which it has no right to interfere. Under these conditions, governmental powers are stipulated in degree and kind, and the freedoms and rights of all classes of the people are formally guaranteed, in accordance to the requirements of religion. Violating the trust of the nation on either side and in any form, whether by excess or penury, is punishable by permanent termination of the service and other penal measures applicable to betrayal of trust. Since the written document concerning political and civil affairs of the nation is analogous to ‘practical treatises’ (compendia of ritual duties issued by a religious scholar), in that it sets limits and the penalty for exceeding them, such a document is called the constitutional law or the constitution. There should be no doubt about its universal application, with no conditions, except in areas of conflict with religious laws. Other considerations concerning this issue, and the points that must be observed in order to maintain the integrity of the constitution will be mentioned later, God willing. Second, strengthening the principle of vigilance, accountability, and complete responsibility by appointing a supervisory assembly of the wise, the well-wishers of the nation, and the experts in internal and external affairs, so they can discharge their duties in preventing violation and wrongdoing. The people’s representatives are comprised of such individuals and their formal seat is called ‘the Assembly of National Consultation.’ True accountability and responsibility will preserve the limits on power and prevent the return of possessive government only if the executive branch is under the supervision of the legislative branch, and the legislative branch is responsible to every individual in the nation. Slackening either of these two responsibilities will lead to the deterioration of the limits on power and reversion of constitutional government to absolutism in the first case, and to oligarchic autocracy of the legislature in the second. The legitimacy of the supervision of the elected legislative assembly rests conclusively on the will of the nation’s selection, according to the principles of Sunni Islam, which relies on the contractual powers of the umma (the Muslim community). But according to Shi’i Islam, this legitimacy Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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rests in the principle of the supervision of the ‘the public representatives’ of the Hidden Imam during his occupation.23 Thus the legislature should either include some of the experts in religious law or be comprised of people who are given leave by such personages to adjudicate on their behalf. The correction and confirmation of the representative assembly’s decisions by the grand experts in religious law will suffice, as we shall, God willing, explain later. From what we have explained so far it is clear that the foundation of the first form of government [tyranny] is absolute power, possession of the nation, inequality of the citizens with the government, and irresponsibility of the leaders. And all of these stem from a disregard of the above two principles. All of the devastation and atrocities in Iran; all that has ruined religion, government, and the nation in that land, knowing no limits, is of this sort. “There is no need for explanation after exhibition!” The foundation of the second [constitutional] form of government, as you have learned, is limited to delegation in affairs beneficial to the nation. Contrary to the first form, this government is based on partnership, liberty, and rights, including the right to financial accountability and supervision of administrators. All these, as well, are the results of the application of the above two principles.24 These two principles and their corollaries were constituted by the founder of the religion. So long as they were protected, and Islamic government did not degenerate from the second to the first form, the pace of the expansion of Islam was mind-boggling. After Muʾawiyya (reigned 661–680) and the children of al-ʾAs came to power, and all the principles and corollaries of Islamic government were transformed into their diametrical opposites, the situation changed. Still, so long as other nations too were enslaved in tyrannies of their own, nothing much changed, and Islam continued to enjoy a measure of stability despite its tyrannical leaders. However, as soon as the other nations realized the natural foundations of progressive government, it was inevitable that they would prosper and that the Islamic nation would become their inferiors and, worse, be returned to the pre-Islamic savagery and ignorance, like 23  In Shiʿi Islam, the Hidden Imam had ‘specific representatives’ for the first seventy years of his occultation. Since that time, those knowledgeable in religion serve as his ‘public representatives.’ 24  In the first days of Islam, these two principles were applied so completely that the second caliph (ʿUmar ibn al-Khattāb, 634–644) was publically rebuked for wearing an extra garment, when everyone had received only one garment. He had to send for his son ʿAbdullāh to testify that his father’s second garment was his, and that he had willingly given it to his father. On another occasion, when he asked to be corrected if he erred, he was reminded by his audience that he could be straightened by the sword if he diverged from the straight path.

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animals, even plants, in the degree of their servitude. “Verily, God does not change the state of a people til they change themselves.” [Quran, 13:11] At any rate, since the basis of the former is fhralldom and of the latter liberty, the text of the holy Quran and traditions of the holy infallible ones have on several occasions likened the servitude of the tyrants to idolatry, the opposite of liberty. They have guided Muslims to free their necks from the yoke of wretchedness. For example, the Quran tells that the Pharaoh ruled over the children of Israel, although they did not worship him as the Egyptians did, and were tormented and imprisoned in Egypt and prevented from leaving for the holy land. In one verse [Quran 26:22] Moses, may peace be upon him, tells the Pharaoh, “You consider me indebted to your hospitality even though you have enslaved the Israelites?” In another blessed verse [Quran 23:47] the Pharaoh says, “whose people are our slaves.” In still another verse [Quran 7:127] he says, “and we shall subjugate them.” It is evident that the slavery of the Israelites is an expression of this subjugation. The noblest of all, the Prophet of Islam, greetings be to him and his pure progeny, has stated in the authentic and frequently quoted tradition: “When the children of al-ʿAs reach 30 in number, they shall turn the religion of God upside down and take the servants of God as their own servants.” [Hadith scholar Fakhr al-Dīn Turayhi, circa 1571–1674,] the author of Majma‌ʾ al-baḥrain (The Bahrain Collection), interpreted the word ‘servant’ as ‘slave.’ Similarly, [Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqub Firūzabādi, circa 1329–1414,] the author of Qāmūs (The Concordance), generalized the meaning of the word ‘servant’ in this context to ‘serfs’ and ‘subordinates.’ This generalization is further confirmed in the blessed verse [Quran 6:94]: “you have left behind your servants [upon death].” The prescient hadith of the Prophet of Islam concludes that once the number of the fruits of the evil tree of tyranny reach 30, they will alter God’s religion and take people as slaves. The Prophet designated this number of wrongdoers as a critical threshold at which they would begin to transform the form of Islamic government from stewardship to tyrannical possession. Ali, the commander of the faithful, to whom is due the highest of prayers and salutations, elaborated on the sufferings of the children of Israel at the hands of the Pharaoh and his people in a sermon: “The pharaohs took them as slaves.” He then expounded on the meaning of slavery: “Then they subjected them to the worst tortures and made them drink the poisonous cup drop by drop. They continued to languish in this state of abject ruin and defeated subjugation. They couldn’t find any way to refuse or defend themselves.” In the same sermon Ali explained the reign of the leaders of Iran and Rome over the children of Israel and Isma⁠ʾil (the Arabs). Although in these cases the domination was not connected to deification of the kings, as was the case in Egypt, Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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­ onetheless Ali treated it similarly: “In those days, kings of Iran and Rome were n their masters, banishing them from the lush arable lands around the Sea of Iraq toward arid areas of the inland.” In another sermon, after a few complaints of his blessed heart concerning the hypocrisy and rebellion of the inhabitants of Iraq, in which he warned them that as a result of this behavior they will be deprived of his leadership and become slaves of Umayyad rule [661–750], he said: “And they will find the Umayyads evil masters after me.” Ali used the word ‘master’ instead of ‘steward’ here. This is in agreement with scores of other traditions concerning the conversion of the form of government in early Islam. The prince of the oppressed, [Ali’s younger son] Husayn, equated obedience to the Umayyad leaders with abject slavery. In reply to the coarse and rude bunch of Kufans who had declared, “We have descended upon you by order of your cousin,” he replied: “I shall not give you my hand of allegiance as an inferior, nor shall I confess my allegiance to you as a slave. You have limited my options to two: death and servitude. And far be it from us to accept servitude. God has forbidden it to us, and to His Messenger, and to the faithful, and to the pure of heart, and to the proud souls, and to all those who prefer noble death to a life of servitude.” He echoed his father’s words: “How can a head bent before God be made to bend to any other?” Thus Husayn refused to acquiesce. In order to preserve his freedom and monotheism, he offered up his life, his property, and his family. He made this generous sacrifice for the liberation of the community of the faithful, to cleanse its body of the impurities of hedonistic passions. This is why all others in the history of Islam who have followed Husayn’s blessed precedent, who have made similar sacrifices, are called “resisters of injustice” and “heroes of freedom.” Truly, they are all grain pickers of this abundant harvest and dew drinkers of this vast ocean of resistance and freedom-seeking. Husayn, peace be upon him and all those who were martyred with him, addressed Hurr ibn Yazīd Riyahi [a Kufan military officer], after Ḥurr had defected from the enemy and stood [with Husayn], ready to be martyred in his blessed stirrups: “You are the free one, Hurr, as your mother named you (Ḥurr means ‘free’). You shall live as a free and heroic soul, in this world as well as the next.” Likewise, the verse [Quran 24:55] declares: “God has promised to make those of you who believe and do right, leaders in the land, as He had made those before them, and will establish their faith which He has chosen for them, and change their fear into security. They will worship Me and not associate any one with Me. But those who disbelieve after this will be reprobates.” This verse as well as the closing clauses of the “Promulgation” prayer (a prominent piece of the Shiʿi liturgy) refer to the return of his holiness the twelfth Imam, the awaited Messiah—may our lives be sacrificed for him. The acquiescence of the umma to tyrants is likened here to polytheism. As Husayn himself stated, Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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“I hold no allegiance to any tyrant of my time.” Also, interpretations of the blessed verse, “They consider their rabbis and monks as lords,” [Quran 9:31] hold that the verse refers to [Jews’ and Christians’] unquestioning obedience toward popes and their courtiers. Taqlīd (imitation) of religious leaders who pretend to present true religion is no different from obedience to political tyrants. Either one is a form of idolatry. The above verse that rebukes imitation of the ill-intentioned clergy and ambitious and hedonist hypocrites, also leads us to the same conclusion. The difference between the two forms of obedience is that political tyranny is based on naked force, while religious tyranny is based on deviousness and chicanery. The difference leads us to believe that, in truth, the former is based on the control of bodies while the latter stems from the control of hearts. This argument confirms the astuteness and accuracy of the argument of some of the experts of this science who divide tyranny into political and religious kinds. They consider them as interrelated and mutually protective of each other! It is also evident that uprooting this evil tree and liberation from this abject slavery—possible only through the needfulness and awakening of the nation—is relatively easy in the case of political tyranny and extremely difficult in the case of religious tyranny, thus complicating resistance to the former form of tyranny as well. The dismal condition of us Iranians is living testimony to the mutual support of these two forms of tyranny and slavery. The two are allied and mutually confederated. Thus the difficulty of getting rid of political tyranny is rooted in religious tyranny’s support of the political order. This will be, God willing, further explicated in the discussion of the methods of resisting the forces of absolutism. We can conclude that obedience to the autocratic orders of the rebellious tyrants of the umma and the bandits of the nation is not only an injustice to one’s own life and liberty, which are among the greatest endowments granted by God, holy be His names, to human beings. In addition, according to the explicit text of the worthy Quran and the traditions of the infallible ones, it is tantamount to idolatry, taking associates with God, for God only deserves the attributes of ultimate possession of the creation, and unquestionable authority in whatever He deems necessary. He alone can be free of responsibility in what He does. All of these are among His holy attributes. He who arrogates these attributes for himself and usurps this status is not only a tyrant and a usurper of the station of stewardship, but also, according to holy texts, a pretender to the divine mantle and a transgressor to His inviolate realm. Conversely, liberation from such an abject servitude not only releases the soul from its vegetative state and animal status into the realm of noble humanity; it also brings Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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one closer to monotheism and the worship of God and His true and exclusive names and attributes. That is why liberating the imprisoned and usurped nations from the yoke of slavery and abject servitude and leading them to their God-given rights and liberties has been among the most significant goals of the prophets, peace be upon them. Moses and his brother Aaron, peace be upon them and upon our Prophet, according to the text of the holy Quran, [20:47] addressed the Pharaoh thus: “So let the Israelites come with us and do not oppress them.” All they sought was to liberate the Israelites from slavery and torture, and take them to the holy land. They even guaranteed Pharaoh’s continued reign and authority in his own land (as has been emphasized in ʿAli’s] holy “sermon of disparagement” [of the devil]). Pharaoh’s refusal and his persecution of the Israelites led to the drowning of the Pharaoh and his troops and the liberation of the Israelites. In his holy “sermon of disparagement,” ʿAli, greetings to him, after the statements we have quoted above, argued that one of the advantages of the mission of the Prophet, peace be upon him, was liberation from the yokes [of the kings of Iran and Rome]. From the Prophet’s biography, one recognizes the equality of a nation’s people with their leaders in all laws and obligations and the great efforts of the Prophet, God’s greetings be upon him, to establish this principle, thus guaranteeing the well-being of the umma. Let us cite an example for each case. First, the principle of equality in property is evident in the incident in which [Muhammad’s step-]daughter Zaynab [died 629] came to Medina and offered an heirloom in order to purchase the freedom of her husband, Abūl-ʿĀsī [ibn al-Rabī,’ a non-Muslim who had been captured by the Muslims in battle]. When she approached with the heirloom, an ornament that she had inherited from her mother Khadīja [the Prophet’s wife, died 619], may peace be upon her, the Prophet wept and announced that he would free her husband without payment. Yet he was careful to ask whether all the Muslims would forego their share of the payment before he returned the heirloom [to Zaynab]. Second, the principle of equality in decrees is evident in the case in which [the Prophet] did not discriminate between his uncle ʿAbbas [ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, died 652], his cousin ʿĀqil [ibn Abī Ṭālib, died circa 670], and other prisoners of war, when they were brought in front of him. They were given no special privileges, even in the binding of their hands and arms. Third, the principle of equality in punishment is evident in [the Prophet’s] last sermon, when he asked all the faithful to exercise their right of just retribution if he has unfairly injured any of them. Someone claimed that [the Prophet’s] riding crop had accidentally touched his shoulder during of the campaigns. The Prophet of Islam bared his shoulder and asked the man to retaliate if he Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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wished. But the man was satisfied to kiss [the Prophet’s] shoulder. Also, the Prophet once said in public that if my only daughter Fatima ever commits a crime, her punishment would not differ in the slightest from the punishment of any other wrong-doer. It was for the revival of such a blessed tradition of leadership, and in order to abrogate the apostasy of discrimination in the distribution of favors, and to reverse the endowment of fiefs, and to uphold the principle of equality, that the commander of the faithful Ali encountered so many enmities and disturbances during his rule. Even senior disciples, such as ʿAbdullah [ibn] ʿAbbās [an early Islamic scholar, 619–686] and Malik Ashtar [a great warrior, died 658] and the others, had been used to the practice of giving and accepting favors and discriminating based on the closeness of association [with the Prophet]. They preferred earlier Muslims such as the “Emigrants” [who accompanied Muhammad to Medina in 622] and the warriors of the battle of Badr [in 624] over later Muslims and newly converted Muslims like Iranians. So they would ask for favors [from Ali] and would, in every case, hear harsh rebukes. The story of Ali’s refusal to provide for his needy brother from the treasury, his sharp rebuke of one of his daughters who wanted to borrow a necklace from the treasury for one night, and his refusal to allow his own son to borrow some honey from the public stock—which made even his enemy, Muʿāwiyya [who would soon found the Umayyad dynasty] weep and extol his virtue as a leader—and countless other similar stories are examples of the justice and equality in Islam that put all other proponents of these virtues to shame. All these endeavors served to preserve this central pillar of Islam and discharge the great responsibility of leadership in Islam. It was with a similar motivation, and in order to follow the glorious example of the praiseworthy prophets and their trusted stewards, that the godly jurisconsults and leaders of the Jaʿfarī [Shi’i] religion have resolved to free the faithful from the servitude of the tyrants in this auspicious age—which is, with God’s help, the age in which the enslavement and decline of the Muslims are being terminated. They have resolved as well that in accordance with the maxim, “He who can’t accomplish all should not abandon all,” they ought to convert the form of government from possessive back to delegative. While the possessive form has caused the ruin of Islamic societies and the decline of Islamic states, the delegative form will protect against most forms of corruption and prevent the dominion of the infidels over the country. In this path [the religious leaders] have engaged in a struggle needed to protect the essence of Islam. Recognition of the need for change, and the brave, sober, and earnest attempt to bring about the end of absolutism and to replace it with limited government, has clearly sparked a backlash. The religious form of absolutism, in conformity with its ancient Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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and ongoing duty to protect the evil tree of tyranny in the name of protecting religion, did its best to describe the life-sustaining principles of limited and responsible government in the most grotesque and reprehensible disguises— contrary to the Quran’s warning: “Do not mix the false with the true, and hide the truth knowingly.” [2:42] It portrayed the liberation of the nation from the clutches of unjust tyrants as illusory. (The reader of this essay knows such liberation to be the goal of all prophets and their just successors, and the origin of Islamic government, which was distorted by the evil tree of autocracy planted by the family of al-ʿĀs.) The proponents of religious despotism went farther and declared this struggle a denial of all moral limits and an attempt to spread apostasy. They even attributed the outward appearance of women in the West (allowed by Christianity in places such as Russia, France, or Britain) to the political change from absolutism to constitutionalism, though this is as irrelevant to constitutional government as could be. Further, they mischaracterized the principle of equality of rights and powers, which the reader has learned from this essay to have been the practice of the Prophet of Islam and his just successors, for which Ali was martyred, as was his son Husayn. They said that this principle will erase all differences between Muslims and non-Muslims in affairs such as inheritance, marriage, even penal law; and that it denies any difference between children and adults, sane and insane, healthy and sick, the free and coerced, the able and the disabled, and so forth, in terms of their rights and duties. All of these issues, which are farther from the quest for constitutionalism than the sky is from the earth, they attached to the essence of this noble endeavor. Because the salvation and prosperity of the nation, and the preservation of its essential rights, is contingent upon the limitation and responsibility of the government, they have mobilized to cloak this divine beneficence with ugliness. They do not realize that the sun cannot be covered over with mud, nor the Nile delta dammed with shovels. The Iranian nation—no matter how ignorant of the requirements of religion it is imagined to be, regardless of how unaware it may be of the evils of slavery and the advantages of liberty and equality—at least understands this much: Its sages and brave compatriots—be they clergymen, heroes, businessmen—would not have risen in order to achieve that which the proponents of religious despotism attribute to constitutionalism, but to attain freedom and equality. The leaders of the Jaʿfarī religion, too, had no motivation in authenticating this movement with such explicit edicts and orders, and in calling its enemies the enemies of the Imam of the age [the Hidden Imam], except to protect the essence of Islam and the integrity of the Islamic countries. This bunch of tyrants and oppressors of the umma, these depreciators of the shariʿa, know full well that spreading c­ orruption, anarchy, Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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and debauchery can only strengthen the position of irresponsible, absolutist autocrats. They have no other objective in mind but to help their masters by committing these heinous acts. They know very well what we mean when we say that these so-called clerics “do more harm to the downtrodden Shiʿis than the cursed troops of Yazid I circa 642–683] did to Husayn, peace be upon him”! They know how much we are hurt by their alliance with tyrants. They recognize that the blessed verse of the Quran [3:187] speaks of them: “And remember when God took a promise from the people of the Book, to make it known to humankind, and not keep back any part of it, they set aside [the pledge] and sold it away for a little gain; but how wretched the bargain that they made.” They must realize that in this world and in the Hereafter, nothing but scandal and damnation will result from their support of tyranny. This is God’s unchanging tradition, as stated in the Quran: “Such was God’s tradition among those before you, and you will not find any change in God’s tradition.” [33:62]. Selected by Katajun Amirpur

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George B. Nutting: Letter to the Missionary Herald (Turkey, 1860) and Baha Said Bey: Alevi Communities in Turkey— (Turkey, 1926) Introduction Today, Alevism is generally held to be a ‘heterodox’ and ‘syncretistic’ interpretation of Islam strongly influenced by pre-Islamic Turkish customs, and particular to Anatolia and some adjacent territories. The two texts from the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century that this chapter introduces give exemplary evidence to the formation of this particular knowledge about Turkish Alevism and point to the influence of modern discourses on religion and nationalism on it. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Western presence in Asia Minor increased considerably due to a combination of economic and political factors. Westerners who lived and travelled in the Anatolian and Eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire (such as missionaries, scientists, diplomats, and bourgeois adventurers), while often primarily interested in the Oriental Christians, inevitably also came into contact with the local Muslim population. The references we find in their writings about encounters with Kızılbaş-Alevi communities constitute the first modern records of these heterogeneous communities. For the first time an international discourse on the Kızılbaş-Alevis, if still rather rudimentary, began to take shape.1 Kızılbaş (Redhead) is the historical name by which the primarily Turkmen and Anatolian followers of the Safavi Sufi Order, whose charismatic leader Ismail established the Safavid Empire in 1501, and who is regarded as the founder of the Safavid dynasty (1501–1722) of Iran, were called. Over time the connection between the Anatolian followers of the Persian Shah, regarded by the former as their religious leader, severed. The communities in Turkey (roughly two thirds of which are Turkish and the rest mostly Kurdish speakers) that are today called Alevi are for the most part descendents of these 1  See Markus Dressler, Writing Religion: The Making of Turkish Alevi Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), chap. 1.

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Kızılbaş tribes, who had rebelled against Ottoman rule in the early sixteenth century and were ever since regarded by the Ottomans as politically unreliable. The mistrust was furthered by the Kızılbashes religious deviance from what the Ottomans, who turned more explicitly to Sunni Islam in the sixteenth century, understood to be correct religion. After disconnection from the Safavids in the course of the sixteenth century, some Kızılbaş tribes over time associated rather closely with the Bektashi Sufi brotherhood.2 Roughly since that time period the beliefs and practices of Bektashis and Kızılbaş began to merge to a considerable extent, although especially among the various Kızılbaş groups—who were organised through sacred lineages, some of which were cross-linked—strong socio-religious differences continued. Since the late nineteenth century the label ‘Alevi,’ which alludes to a relation (literal or metaphorical) with Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and fourth caliph Ali, became more prominent as self-signifier among the Kızılbaş groups. Such as the Shiites, the Kızılbaş-Alevis, too, give special reverence to the lineage of the prophet through Ali and Ali’s son Husayn. They share much of Shiite mythology, including memory of the Kerbela tragedy, where in 680 Husayn, son of Ali and according to Twelther-Shia doctrine the only legitimate Muslim leader of the time, is said to have been slain by the forces of the second Omayyad caliph Yezid (Arab. Yazīd)—it is therefore common among Shiites to curse the name of the latter; for Kızılbaş-Alevis in particular, the name Yezid represents Sunni fanaticism. The Kızılbaş-Alevis do not, however, believe in literal application of the Islamic law (sharia), and their rituals and beliefs in fact contain much that is not recognised by the legalist Islam of either the Sunni or the Shia legal tradition, but has been othered by Islamic apologetic discourse as heretical. Since the twentieth century, hegemonic scholarly discourse about Kızılbaş-Alevi difference from mainstream Islam has variously pointed to pre-Islamic Turkish, ‘heterodox’ or ‘popular’ Sufi, Christian, and various Iranian ‘influences.’3 Since the first writings about the Kızılbaş-Alevis by American missionaries in the 1850s, the thesis of the Kızılbaş—at that time not yet called ‘Alevi’— being proto-Christians, and/or descendents from ancient inhabitants of Anatolia (for example Armenian or Hittite) figures prominently in Western/ 2  The best study of the complex historical formation process of the Bektashi and Kızılbaş milieus and their intricate relations is Ayfer Karakaya Stump, “Subjects of the Sultan, Disciples of the Shah: Formation and Transformation of the Kizilbash/Alevi Communities in Ottoman Anatolia,” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2008). 3  A widely cited example of that scholarship is Irène Mélikoff, Hadji Bektac: Un mythe et ses avatars. Genése et évolution du soufisme populaire en Turquie (Leiden: Brill, 1998). For a critique of that scholarly tradition see Dressler, Writing Religion, esp. chap. 6.

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orientalist writings about them. Reflections on the religious and ethnic/racial origins of the Kızılbaş-Alevis, as well as groups seen as related to them such as the Bektashis, would remain a major point of interest for Western orientalists, missionaries, and diplomats in the late Ottoman period. To a certain extent, such origin speculations played into foreign political ambitions in the region. In the case of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), the most important Protestant American missionary organisation engaged in the Orient, this interest was motivated by the quest to re-evangelise the ‘bible lands,’ a vision that was often expressed within a millennial framework. Some ABCFM missionaries, as illustrated in the first source text below, did upon their initial encounters with Kızılbaş-Alevis get rather excited about the prospect of their conversion, which at times was imagined as a coming back to Christianity.4 The first source text is from the earliest stage of the American m ­ issionaries’ encounter with the Kızılbaş-Alevis, a time when the missionaries were still hopeful with regard to evangelising Muslims. It shows a strong tendency to comprehend Kızılbaş-Alevi religious characteristics through a Christian/ Protestant lens. The hope for the evangelisation of the Kızılbaş-Alevis was based on the formal Ottoman recognition, upon British and American pressure, of the (mostly) Armenian converts to Protestantism as a legitimate religious community (millet) in 1850, and on the reform edict Hatt-ı Hümayun (Imperial Edict) from 1856,5 which the missionaries interpreted in a way that suggested a general freedom for everyone to choose his/her religion. This, however, turned out to be a misinterpretation and the Ottomans soon made clear that they were not willing to tolerate Kızılbaş-Alevi conversion to Christianity, which they considered apostasy. After some initial confusion following the reform edict, the missionaries, too, recognised that the matter of the Kızılbashes’ relation to Islam, or, more precisely, the Ottoman perception of this relation, was of crucial importance for the possibility of converting them to Christianity. 4  The ABCFM was founded in Boston in 1810 by members of various Protestant churches. It sent its first missionaries to Western Anatolia in 1819. The real beginning of the establishment of ABCFM missions in Anatolia was in the early 1850s and at that time they also made first contacts with Kızılbaş-Alevi communities. See Hans-Lukas Kieser, Nearest East: American Millennialism and Mission to the Middle East (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010). 5  The edict was part of the Tanẓīmāt reforms, the Ottoman reform period between 1839 and 1871, that aimed at modernisation (qua centralisation and secularisation) of mainly the legal system and the bureaucratic apparatus, and made important concessions with regard to general citizen rights independent of religious creed. See Carter Vaughn Findley, “The Tanzimat,” in Cambridge History of Turkey, ed. Reşat Kasaba, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 11–38.

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Accordingly, the tone of the ABCFM missionary reports on the question of converting Kızılbaş-Alevis to Christianity would soon become much more pessimistic. Western interest in the Kızılbaş-Alevi communities, and theories about their affinity with Christianity were regarded with suspicion by the Ottomans, and contributed to the latter’s increased investment, which reached its peak under Sultan Abdülhamid II (ruled 1876–1909), in shepherding the KızılbaşAlevis into Sunni Islam. Ottoman interest in assimilating the Kızılbaş-Alevi communities continued through the last decade of the empire and into the formative period of the Turkish Republic, although the rhetoric of this assimilation politics changes from Islamisation to nationalisation/Turkification. In the final years of the empire, the Kızılbaş-Alevis and other groups differing from the Islamic mainstream became the target of the Turkish-Muslim nationalist movement, which aimed to integrate them into the fold of Turkish nationhood. Both processes of assimilation, into Islam and Turkish nationhood, respectively, were at least in part responses to the earlier Western interpretations of the Kızılbaş-Alevis (as Christians by blood and/or creed). The Turkish nationalist authors who would in the 1920s begin to write about the KızılbaşAlevis, such as Baha Said Bey (source text two), were aware of the earlier texts by Western observers, engaged with these texts, and attempted to counter those arguments that they saw as conflicting with the national interest of creating a homogeneous Turkish Muslim nation. Accordingly, the nationalist narrative would try to refute speculations and theories about the Kızılbaş-Alevis’ non-Muslim and non-Turkish features and origins. In this way the interaction of Western observers with various Kızılbaş-Alevi communities, and the texts that the former produced, constitute an important factor in the genealogy of the modern concept of Alevism and the process of the modern re-conceptualisation of the Kızılbaş as ‘Alevis’—a signifier that marked the groups under question as Turkish and Muslim, even if of the ‘heterodox’ kind. While the prospect of evangelisation appears as major motivation behind the ABCFM missionaries’ early engagement with the Kızılbaş-Alevis, and for this reason highlights those aspects of the Kızılbashes’ ‘religion’ that appear to show affinities with Christianity (source text one), the main motivation behind the Turkish nationalists’ interest in the Alevis, namely to make a case that the Kızılbaş-Alevis were ‘pure Turks,’ is clearly dictated by the needs of the nationalist project (source text two). The goals of the nationalists were to get a better understanding of the cultural and socio-religious peculiarities of the Kızılbaş-Alevis, which they recognised as a significant part of the heterogenous Anatolian population, and to inquire into their political loyalties as

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well as the possibility of their integration into the Turkish-Muslim national body. One might say that while the ‘politics’ of the missionaries was anchored in their proselytising quest, for which reason the first source text contains much description of the Kızılbashes’ religious practices and beliefs, the ‘mission’ of the nationalists was more narrowly political. The description of the Alevis’ ­difference in source text two therefore focuses on aspects that make it possible to claim their Turkishness and to point to the brotherhood of Turks beyond the differences of religious (Sunni versus Alevi) dogma. In other words, the missionaries emphasised the religious difference of the Kızılbashes from the Sunni Muslims which—they thought—would allow proselytising among them, while the nationalists, on the other hand, were interested in downplaying this religious difference, arguing instead that it was product of a secondary religionisation of Turkish traditions, highlighting instead the national bond of the Turks that they conceived of in terms of both race and culture. The two source texts presented here represent crucial points in the formation of the modern knowledge about Turkish Alevism, and reflect the impact of the very modern discourses of religion and nationalism—and their obsessions with origins, essences, and differences—in shaping that knowledge. The first text is from George B. Nutting, an ABCFM missionary stationed in the city of Urfa (in the predominantly Kurdish speaking Southeast of contemporary Turkey). ABCFM missionaries reported on regular basis about their work to the headquarter of the ABCFM in Boston, which published abridged versions of these reports in the monthly Missionary Herald. The text is a section of a report from Nutting’s visit in the summer of 1860 to the close-by town of Adıyaman in order to sort out possibilities of establishing a mission. Making his case for establishing a local missionary station he puts particular emphasis on the religious peculiarities of the Kızılbaş Kurds, who are presented as possibly very grateful objects of missionary work once the political obstacles would be removed. The report is interesting in the way it portrays the religion of the Kızılbashes (‘Kuzzelbash’) in relation to Christianity and Islam, trying to make the case for the legitimacy and feasibility of their conversion. It also shows in an exemplary way the translation of Christian/Protestant concepts of religion, conceived within the language of the modern (world) religion discourse as universal, into non-Christian context. The author of the second source text was Baha Said Bey (1882–1939), born and raised in the small town of Biga in the province of Çanakkale in Western Anatolia. As many other late Ottoman/early republican Turkish nationalist activists, he had received his formal education in secular military schools. He made a carreer in the army before working as school teacher and merchant.

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During the late Ottoman Young Turk regime, in the years of World War I, he was active in the Ottoman secret service and various nationalist intelligence organisations. In this context he began to do research on the Kızılbaş-Alevi communities.6 The main claim of the text with regard to the basic character of Alevism, which is here not yet clearly differentiated from Bektashism, is that it constituted a social and historical phenomenon that needed to be situated within Turkish history and culture. Pre-Islamic Turkish traditions and origins are his primary reference point for situating Alevism and its religious particularities. Secondarily, he also relates Alevism to Islam—not without emphasizing, however, the deviant and superstitious character of the Alevis’ interpretation of Islam. Established against alternative claims pointing to similarities with Christianity and/or ethnic affiliations with non-Turks, this knowledge of the Alevis as carriers of pre-Islamic Turkish traditions, and secondarily related to marginal interpretations of Islam is until today widely influential in both the Turkish public as well as traditional scholarship. Markus Dressler

Further Reading

Dressler, Markus. “Alevīs.” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Three. Leiden: Brill, 2008–, Print; Brill Online, 2016. Dressler, Markus. Writing Religion: The Making of Turkish Alevi Islam. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Karakaya-Stump, Ayfer. “The Emergence of the Kızılbaş in Western Thought: Missionary Accounts and Their Aftermath.” In Archaeology, Anthropology, and Heritage in the Balkans and Anatolia. The Life and Times of F. W. Hasluck, 1878–1920, vol. 1, edited by David Shankland. Istanbul, 2004, 329–353. Kieser, Hans-Lukas. Der verpasste Friede: Mission, Ethnie und Staat in den Ostprovinzen der Türkei 1839–1938. Zurich: Chronos, 2000.

6  For an uncritical overview of the life and work of Baha Said, and translations of his texts on the Alevis into modern Turkish, which, however, are not without mistake, see İsmail Görkem, Baha Said Bey: Türkiye’de Alevî-Bektaşî, Ahî ve Nusayrî Zümreleri (Ankara: Kitabevi, 2006). For a critical approach to Baha Said and other early Turkish nationalists’ conceptualisation of Alevism see Dressler (2013, esp. chap. 3).

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Source Text One7

Religious Views Who these Kuzzelbash are descendent from, it is difficult to say. There are traces among them of a Christian origin; at least they have many opinions and sayings which strikingly resemble various truths of revelation—such as the duty of humility, which is constantly inculcated in the songs and hymns which constitute their worship; the duty of forgiveness of injuries, however great, if the one committing the injury openly confesses it to the injured party, which I have been repeatedly assured, not only by themselves but by others also, is actually their practice, and by custom has all the force of law; so that if a man’s own son has been killed, the murderer cannot be punished if he comes and confesses his crime. They call Christ the Lion of God,8 and in one of their hymns [. . .] occurs a line in allusion to him, which seems also to point to the atonement: “We have drunk the Lion’s blood. We have entered the narrow way.” They say also that all nations shall at last embrace one faith, that the wolf and the lamb shall dwell together, and that from their remotest ancestors it has been handed down to them, that in the last times a Christian teacher shall come to instruct them in the true religion.9 Feeling after the Truth You have had accounts, at various times, from Mr. Dunmore,10 of individuals of this sect, in the region two or three days north of this and near Kharpoot [Harput], who had received the Gospel; and from the first of our visiting Adiaman [Adıyaman] I have been aware that there were Kuzzelbash in this vicinity dissatisfied with their own religion and feeling after the Gospel. Now I feel justified in reporting what I believe to be the truth, that this feeling of dissatisfaction with their present rites, and longing for the real truth of God, is very wide-spread in the villages of this district. I rejoice in being able to give you occasion to joy with us, and on our behalf, that God is wonderfully preparing his way among this interesting people, and that there are unmistakable

7  Mission to Central Turkey. Oorfa. “Letter from Mr. Nutting, July 30, 1860,” Missionary Herald 56 (1860, November, 345–347). 8  In Shia Islam the Lion of God is a common epithet for Imam Ali reflecting the latter’s closeness to God and his strength. 9  I am not aware of any other reference that would confirm such a Kızılbaş-Alevi expectation of a “Christian teacher coming.” 10  A reference to earlier reports by ABCFM missionaries on the Kızılbaş.

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indications, that his set time has come for us to preach the Gospel in all their villages [. . .] Forsaking their Teachers In three of the villages the people listened with interest, and expressions of approval and assent, to various portions of Scripture which we read and explained to them. And the chief, Ali Molah—in whose spacious black tent, seventy feet in length by twenty-five in width, we spent the night—informed us that they were waiting for the Gospel, and were convinced that the time long prophesied of was nearly arrived. He said, what I had before heard, that having become dissatisfied with their own religion and religious teachers, who are called Fathers, he himself, and about two hundred others, had demanded of their teachers that they bring forth their book, from which they professed to teach, and read openly from it and teach them to read it.11 On their refusal to do so, they had publicly renounced them, and now no longer consulted them or went near them at all; and they had bound themselves to each other by a solemn promise, not to drink any intoxicating drinks, (to which they had been formerly immoderately addicted,) to practice their public worship openly instead of secretly as before, admitting any person of any faith to behold it, and not to rob or murder. Religious Worship In the evening the men and women assembled for worship in the tent of the chief. Their worship consisted of hymns, accompanied by the tambour, to which they kept time by the motion of their hands and feet, as they moved slowly, in single file, around the central space. In the movements of their hand and feet they reminded me of the sect called Shakers. At the conclusion of their worship they kissed each other, both men and women, but in modest manner, and several of the men also kissed me on the hand or arm. Formerly they allowed no one of other sects to witness their worship, but now any one may do so who wishes. On Friday I visited the Dada [dede], Father, or religious teacher of these people. I found him a grey-bearded, but not venerable looking man, of medium 11  The ‘scripture’ here mentioned is a reference to the so-called Buyruk (‘Order(s)’), which go back to sixteenth-century texts sent by the Safavids to their Kızılbaş followers as a medium for religious instruction. They contain doctrinal information, as well as elaborations on Shia and Sufi narratives and concepts. The existing variety of buyruk manuscripts suggests that they were originally not seen as unalterable sacred canons, but rather used and transmitted in line with the needs of a mainly oral culture, and thus subject to alterations and additions. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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intelligence, and disposed more to complain of those who had deserted him and no longer brought him offerings of cattle, grain and wine, than to listen to the Gospel. I advised him to comply with the reasonable request of his people, and show them the book on which their religion was founded. He said they had a book, but that it was in the hands of his superior, he resides about twenty-five miles to the north. Hearing the Gospel From these places [villages in the area, MD] persons of this sect have at various times attended our meetings in Adiaman, have listened with attention, and in one case at least, have with tears expressed their earnest desire that this same Gospel might be preached in their village. Almost every day, from all quarters, we hear of this preparatory movement and awakening among them; and they say: “Only let the Sultan give us a firman [edict], as he has [to] the Protestants from the Armenians,12 that we shall not be molested for our religion, and we will obey him in everything else, paying all our taxes, and no longer rob and murder, as we have done. We would not fear the Mussulmans if it were lawful to fight, for we are stronger than they, and they could do nothing in the mountains, but the Gospel ties our hands and forbids us to use such weapons, and therefore we want a firman.” Though, according to the present laws of the empire, there is perfect liberty to preach to them, and perfect liberty for them to receive the Gospel,13 I have thought best to write for a special charter mentioning the Kuzzelbash by name, and as soon as it comes, there will be only the want of strength or of money to prevent our immediately commencing labor among them. The Moslems do not consider them as Moslems, and the only reason why they should oppose their evangelization is that now they have often opportunity to oppress them in various ways, in respect to taxes, &c., and they fear that when they become Protestants we shall inform the powers above them14 of their oppressions, and bring them to punishment, or prevent such wrongs. Selected and annotated by Markus Dressler

12  Reference to the Ottoman formal recognition of the Protestants as religious community in 1850. 13  This is a very optimistic reading of the Tanẓīmāt reform declarations, which were at that time interpreted by some missionaries as allowing for personal freedom to choose one’s religion. 14  That is, the European imperial powers, whose impact on Ottoman politics had increased considerably since the early nineteenth century. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Source Text Two15

I do not know whether there is anybody who would doubt that an inquiry into the formation of the religious groups of Turkey constitutes a fundamental and national duty for Turkish society. Within the boundaries of Republican Turkey16 are even communities that Christian groups unabashedly pretended to be of their own people converted to Islam. For example, when the Kargın, Avşar, Tahtacı, and Çepni17 Alevi constituted a considerable part of the population they generally tended to be accepted as Turkified groups of Orthodox Greeks. Also, the Alevis of Dersim, Kiğı, Tercan, Bayburt, Iğdır [East Anatolian Ottoman administrative districts] and so forth all were listed in supplements to Armenian population registers. Especially statistics of Protestant missionaries spread those [claims] following the armistice.18 The secret Pontus documents held at the American College at Merzifon19 prove that the way in which the Christian minorities successfully annoy Europe by labelling the Alevi populations Christian hybrids is a warning example that necessarily needs to be investigated. At that time I began to publish in order to denounce this claim as far as I could. But the baleful enemy [Sultan Mehmet] Reshad and an opportunistic journal gave—probably on request of the palace—a painful response to my writings. They more or less said: ‘The faithless offspring of the Turkish Hearth20 is now engaged in Kızılbaş propaganda’—and further more profane cursing and accusations of faithlessness! The following day censorship blocked my writings. Finally the point had come when in creating the foundations of the new Turkey all knowledge and all truth shone on the bayonets, and the

15  Baha Said, “Türkiye’de Alevî Zümreleri: Tekke Alevîliği—İçtimaî Alevîlik,” Türk Yurdu 4.21 (1926): 193–210. Baha Said published this text in 1926, but claims therein that it had been submitted for publication already in 1919, when it was rejected for political reasons. Within the text there are, however, many references to events that occurred after 1919. This indicates that the alleged earlier text was at least modified prior to its 1926 publication. 16  The Turkish Republic was founded in 1923. 17  Varies Kızılbaş-Alevi groups. 18  Reference to the Armistice of Moudros (1918), in which the Ottomans had to concede defeat in World War I and completely surrendered to the victorious allies. 19  One of the colleges established by ABCFM missionaries in Anatolia. 20   Türk Ocağı (Turkish Hearth) was the most important association of the pan-Turkist nationalist movement, founded in 1912 and close to the Committee of Union and Progress, the central political organ of the late Young Turk movement.

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Turkish people needed to respond to nonsense and absurdity not with reason, but with force—and this they did.21 Now we are finally by ourselves. I guess we can now strive for [better] knowing ourselves. The Turkish Hearth, which has protected at its bosom the blue banner22 of the Turkish homeland that is alive from the lands of the sun to the lands of the crescent, from Kamchatka to the origins of the Danube, will see the truth in its own light. Those eyes that wanted the Turkish Hearth to be happy are pleased, those bodies who wanted it to break down broke themselves, while the Hearth has blossomed. It was supposed to be like that anyhow, and that is how it became. Now, we are by ourselves. Among ourselves are people and regions that have made an oath to Ali and put their trust in him. We have to think of them, too. But in order to think [of them] we need to know [them]. Exactly there lays our purpose. Let us have our eyes wander over the map of our motherland and draw with our pointed pencil their mountain chains. The majority of the Oghuz Turks who live in these mountains are ‘friends of Ali.’ We are used to simply call them Redhead (Kızılbaş), and leave it like that. And then we despise them. It is these “friends” that I will talk about. I hope that I will neither offend friends nor foes. Let us simply learn about and know each other. For example, the Oghuz Turk Kızılbaş Sergeant Ali from the Çepni tribe should know that he is brother in soul and blood to the [Sunni] Oghuz Turk Sergeant Osman from the village of Alayunt in [the province of] Kütahya. The [Kızılbaş] Sergeant Hüseyin from the tribe of the Kargın Turkmens is brother in soul and blood of [the Sunni] Corporal Ömer from Biga. They are both Turkish, and lion cubs. When [the Sunni] Sergeants Osman and Ömer aim with their rifles at the point between the enemy’s eyebrows, [the Kızılbaş] Sergeants Ali and Hüseyin must not fire in the air following the motto ‘the enemy of Yezid is my friend . . .’ The nomad who stops by at the tent of a Kızılbaş should not be frightened as if he had [just] been ambushed by an enemy! The Kızılbaş who happens to 21  This is a reference to the Turkish Independence War, or Turkish-Greek War (1919–1921), through which the Ottomans, under the leadership of the Muslim nationalist movement lead by Mustafa Kemal, the later Atatürk, were able to reestablish control over the Muslim majority territories of Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. Following the defeat of the Greek forces in the West, and smaller amounts of Armenian and French units in Cilicia, the nationalists were able to renegotiate the Peace Treaty of Sèvres (1920), which had foreseen and legitimated the partition of the remaining Ottoman lands, reducing Ottoman sovereignty to parts of Western and Central Anatolia, and succeeded in getting the new political realities internationally recognised only three years later by the Lausanne Peace Treaty. 22  A Turkist symbol.

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come through [a Sunni Muslim] village should not be afraid as if he had fallen into the hands of Yezid! As in earlier times, today, too, there is no reason for that. But when non-Turkish converts to Islam, who had multiplied, administered Turkish provinces, they only enjoyed such discord and division. This is finally over. The new Turkey now, the Republican Turkey, will finally live with ‘Turkish Unity’ and finally the struggle between Alevi and Sunni has become a fairy tale buried together with the caliphs.23 I will now talk about my Kızılbaş friends. I will name freely their good and their bad sides. I will not beat around the bush. [. . .] The Turk, who loves his customs and his nationality, could not warm up for cosmopolitanism. The Arab international ideal could not unite with the national ideal of the Turk, and it never will. Therefore, when the most traditionalist and purest Turks, Turkmen, as well as Turkish nomads, and afterwards the most enlightened, intelligent, and enthusiastic Turks looked for a homestead where to taste the joy of freedom, they would turn to the Alevi lodges. For this is where the national freedom existed. [. . .] In Republican Turkey the Kızılbaş Alevis won the party. And to some degree this is also true for the Bektashi lodge. For the Alevis, the Sultanate of Yezid24 had been crushed and destroyed. But, unfortunately, while the official Alevism was happy about [that], it was also deprived of its ideal. It was still waiting for the return of the the hidden Twelfth Imam, the Mehdi.25 How despaired the poor Alevis would be if they were to learn that the decisive factor of this illusion is to be found in Jewish and Christian theories. The Jews are waiting for Jesus,26 the Christians are waiting for Jesus’ return from Heaven . . . And the Muslims? As can be seen, the misfortune of the Alevis begins with their aims . . . Therefore, the Alevis are grief stricken since they don’t know the secret of the

23  Turkish parliament formally abolished the caliphate in 1924. 24  A pejorative metaphor for the Sunni Muslim Ottoman caliphate. 25  In Islam, the Mehdi [Arab. Mahdī], ‘the guided one,’ is a messianic figure, according to apocalyptic traditions believed to come at the end of time and prepare the world for the final judgement. Belief in the coming of the Mehdi is a central tenet of the Shia faith in particular, figuring also prominently in the Kızılbaş-Alevi tradition. In the TwelverShia (or, Imamiyya) tradition, and also among Kızılbaş-Alevis, the Mehdi is equated with the twelfth Imam, believed to have disappeared at young age, and expected to return at the degreed time to punish the tyrants of the world and restore justice in preparation for the final hour. 26  Obviously, this is a misrepresentation since Jews do not wait for Jesus, but for the Messiah.

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mysterious Ali. But those who try to make them rely on Ali are struggling for a totally different idea and different purpose. Our poor Kızılbaş will have difficulties to understand this unfortunate truth. The most apparent aim of the founders of the Turkish Alevis was to protect the language, lineage, and blood of the Turk. And they actually succeeded in this. The Kızılbaş have remained totally Turkish. They did not even marry with non-Alevi Turks. They did not take second wives. They truly lived solidarity. They did not say ‘This belongs to me, it is my property.’ They said ‘Everything and everybody!’ They did not spoil their language. They stayed true to their traditions. They honored their sacred homestead [. . .] Their speech did not depart from the beauty of the Turkish language[. . .] The women did not veil. Since the Kızılbaş woman did not veil she has been accused of ‘whoredom.’ [. . .] The Alevis have conserved their Turkishness, their nationality, their language, and their pre-Islamic traditions in the form of religion [ . . . and this is how] they became atheists and heretics [in the eyes of the Ottomans, MD]. The senior officials of the [Ottoman] state came from the offspring of all the world’s nations such as the Romans, Croatians, Germans, Greeks, Armenians, Circassians, Georgians, Albanians and other similar ones. These have found bread at the shoulder and the sword of the Turk and still took pains to insult him. The Ottoman Sultans stem from such mixture of thousand and one kinds of milk and blood. They did not love Turkism, but ‘crone and throne.’ They forgot the Turkish bones that draw the boundaries of the lands which their forefathers had prepared for them . . . The language and the customs of the Turks have become a symbol of ignorance. This [has continued] for so many years that the poor Turks now are terribly ashamed of [even] hearing their proper name. The palaces that the Turkish nation has erected have now become the fortresses of their enslavement . . . Such as the Turks of today, the Turks of yesterday, and the Turks of the previous days knew the meaning of freedom and independence. [. . .] The Turks’ uprising for independence was sudden and heroic.27 Everything or nothing. Those who comprehended this sudden excitement of the Turks understood them . . . In such times the Turks rise and become exalted. In different times and forms the Turks have possessed a supreme strength and force, and a flexibility that was very powerful. [. . .]

27  Reference to the Turkish Independence War.

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Conclusion When studying the character of the Turkish Alevis, of the Kızılbaş and Bektashis, it is absolutely not correct to reduce them to Ali and the Imamiye [Twelver-Shia]. As will be elucidated in a separate article, this group is with regard to its ritual and the rules of its path the same and not different from the Oghuz tradition and the tent of the Shaman Turk. In order to be able to truly research this, it is necessary to research closely the formation period of the Turkish family. Documentation for the illumination of this formation will become possible by investigating the foundations of the nomad lives and families of the Boran and Yakut Turks, who live in the Baykal Valley. It will become obvious that the form and shape of a Shaman temple and a Bektashi lodge are the same . . . Therefore, instead of making research in the name of this or that philosophy or denomination when investigating the Alevi currents of Anatolia, it will be a more original and more successful research method to simply accept them as what they are. There are people who want to connect them at times with ideas from Mazdakism or Communism. It is possible that at some time, at some place they may have cherished such ideas. But neither Bektashism, nor Kızılbashism is like this. They constitute an institution that is solely built on the ‘national self’ and has been truly successful. . . . In conclusion, Bektashism was not and could not be a religious group. Bektashism has been founded and reigned . . . as wellspring of a ‘national culture.’ Selected and translated by Markus Dressler

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Aḥad haAm: Slavery within Freedom (Russia, 1891) Introduction The following selection is from an article called “Avdut b-ḥerut” (Slavery within Freedom) that was written by Aḥad haAm and published in 1891.1 It rejects the reproach that the Zionists, especially in Eastern Europe, are backward oriented compared to their Western European brethren, and, because of this backwardness, kept hold of the old concept of Judaism as a nation. The essay is a response to an article entitled, “Eternal Ideals,” which was printed in the Russian-Jewish monthly journal Voskhod (The Dawn, published in St. Petersburg) by Simon Dubnow (1860–1941).2 Dubnow was by then a regular contributer to the journal and later became known as one of the outstanding historians of Judaism, especially in Eastern Europe. The essay was first published in HaMelitz (The Intercessor), 2–4 Adar I 5651 (February 10–12, 1891), a Hebrew newspaper in St. Petersburg, which was widely read in maskilic (Jewish enlightened) circles. It was also included in the 1895 collection of Aḥad haAm’s essays published under the title ʿAl parashat derekhim (At the parting of ways). The author Aḥad haAm was a Russian-Jewish essayist who is considered to be the founder of cultural Zionism that focused on instilling ‘Love for Zion’ in all Jews. In his opinion all Jews should regard it as their first and paramount duty to spare no effort to the task of regaining the possibility of a normal and natural life for the Jewish people. He opposed the political current founded by Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) in the Zionist movement, which he considered to be impractical. Aḥad haAm was born as Asher Hirsch Ginzberg in August 1856 in Skivra, Kiev Province in Russia, into a Hasidic3 family as the son of a wealthy village 1  The transcription of the Hebrew terms—except personal names—is based on the rules of Frankfurter Judaistische Beiträge (FJB). 2  The article “Věčnye i ėfemernye idealy evrejstva” contains a review of two publications, the journal Kaveret of the Odessa circle of Ḥovevei Zion, and the French Jewish publication La Gerbe (see below). It was reprinted in Simon Dubnow, Kniga zhizni (Riga: 1934), vol. 1, chapter 26. 3  Hasidism is a Jewish-religious current, which emerged in Eastern Europe in the eighteenth century and propagated a demotic, internalised devoutness, in which the prayers played an important role. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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merchant. He received a traditional Jewish education in his early years before he started autodidactically to read the literature of the Haskala4 and to learn Russian and later also German, Latin and French. In 1873 he entered into a prearranged marriage—as was not unusual these days—and had three children. Ginzberg tried to qualify for academic studies while he worked in his father’s business, but due to his lack of secondary education and family obligations he remained self-taught. As a result of powerful rationalist tendencies in his studies he averted Hasidism, finally abandoned all religious faith and turned toward Haskala and its call for a break with most social and intellectual features of Jewish traditional life. However, during his several journeys to Odessa and Warsaw he became disillusioned by the weak efficacy of the Russian Haskala. At the end of the nineteenth century the Jewish population of the Russian Empire suffered from a lot of discriminations. They had, for example, to live in the so called Pale of Settlement (territory of present-day Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine and Belorussia), had to pay double taxes and their entry to higher education was limited. After the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, anti-Jewish riots broke out and the liberalisation period that had started in the 1860s, and which had granted the Jews some privileges, was reversed under the May Laws in 1882. New discriminatory laws were introduced which resulted in the expulsion of the Jews. In 1884 Ginzberg and his family settled in Odessa, which was an important centre of Hebrew literature and of Ḥibbat Zion,5 and remained there, with short intervals, until 1907. Asher Ginzberg became one of the members in the executive committee of the Ḥibbat Zion Odessa branch in 1884 as a supporter of the culturalist line. His view of Zionism was based upon the opinion that the young Jewish generation in Eastern Europe needed a new understanding of Jewishness because they were revolting against traditional Jewish life. They were not in the position—as the Jews in the West, where the Jewish minority had in large parts already achieved civil equality—to participate and benefit from the secular culture around them.

4  Jewish Enlightenment movement, which began in the late eighteenth century in Germany but soon spread to Eastern Europe as well, where its main language was Hebrew. 5  Ḥibbat Zion (Love of Zion) is considered as one of the forerunners of Zionism and was a widely spread movement mostly in Russia and Romania. Its prior aim was the return of the Jewish people to Eres Yisra⁠ʾel, but, because of the oppressing Russian policy in the late nineteenth century, it concentrated its efforts more to the cultural than to the political field.

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Ginzberg’s first important article “Lo ze haDerekh” (The wrong way; This is not the way) was published in 1889 and criticised the Ḥovevei Zion’s6 policy of immediate settlement in Palestine and suggested educational work instead as the foundation for a more dedicated settlement. This essay, written under the pen name Aḥad haAm, which is Hebrew for ‘One of the People,’ made its author famous and rushed him into an intensive literary activity. His articles, which were mostly published in the Russian-Hebrew newspaper HaMelitz, dealt with subjects connected to Judaism, the settlement of Eres Yisra‌ʾel, Ḥibbat Zion and often argued against political Zionism. Aḥad haAm accused Theodor Herzl and Max Nordau7 to devaluate the cultural work, which he saw as the foundation for the settlement in Palestine and as a protection against cultural stagnancy and assimilation, which isolated him in the Zionist world. Through the turning of many Russian Jewish leaders to ‘Western political Zionism’ the role of Aḥad haAm in Ḥibbat Zion was enhanced and, because of the decrease of financial support, the attention of the movement was shifted to less expensive projects like schools, libraries or periodicals. The Ḥovevei Zion worked more on the solid cultural substructure in Palestine at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century than ever before. In 1900 Aḥad haAm was seriously affected by a nervous disorder, but—after a short break—continued his public activities. He took part in the Ḥovevei Zion delegation to Baron de Rothschild8 in Paris, although his articles criticised the officials of Rothschild in Palestine because of their dictatorial attitude.9 He emphatically intervened against the Uganda Scheme10 in 1903, which he saw as a natural consequence of ignoring the Jewish cultural values in political Zionism.

6  Adherents of Ḥibbat Zion, literally ‘Lovers of Zion.’ 7  Max Nordau (1849–1923) was the co-founder of the World Zionist Organization and also a philosopher, writer, orator, and physician. Earlier in his career as a Zionist, Aḥad haAm had voiced opposition to Nordau’s concept of practical Zionism. 8  Baron Edmond James de Rothschild (1845–1934) was a French philanthropist and art collector, who patronised the first Jewish settlements in Palestine, after they faced a financial crisis at the beginning of the 1880s. 9  Especially the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) funded by Rothschild. 10  In 1903 Herzl was offered an area for Jewish settlement under the rule of the British in British East Africa near Nairobi (Kenya)—not Uganda, as it was misleadingly called later. Herzl did not dismiss this offer directly because of political reasons. The following rancorous debate at the sixth Zionist congress turned out to be unnecessary in the end because the British Foreign Office withdrew their offer due to the protest by the white settlers in Kenya.

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In 1908 Aḥad haAm relocated with his wife to London where he continued his public action. He played, for instance, a role in obtaining the Balfour Declaration, although he saw its limitation especially in the connection with the Arab question.11 In 1922 Aḥad haAm moved to Palestine and settled in Tel Aviv. There he managed to recreate a version of his old Odessa circle. He completed his fourvolume collection of essays, dictated several chapters of his memoirs and edited a six-volume collection of his letters. He was also active in raising funds for the support of Hebrew writers in Palestine, served from 1924 as a member of the municipal administration in Tel Aviv and was one of the directors of the university. In winter 1926 his state of health changed for the worse and he died on January 2, 1927. After a funeral procession that was joined by thousands of people, he was buried in Tel Aviv next to Max Nordau. Aḥad haAm wrote many articles and essays, but never succeeded in systemizing his teachings in a comprehensive work. Most of his articles were reactions to contemporary problems, written by a pragmatic thinker, deeply rooted in his aims but explicitly influenced in his argumentation by the varying circumstances and conditions. Aḥad HaAm’s reasons for refusing political Zionism, including the immediate settlement of Eres Yisra‌ʾel, lay probably in his general fear that the Zionist movement might lead into despair if it— like previous Jewish messianic movements—will not be successful immediately. He saw the political and economic problems in Palestine and seemed to have doubts about a Zionist solution in reality. At the same time Aḥad haAm advanced the view that Zionism could solve “the question of Judaism,” which means that it could create a new type of Jew, who would be full of pride of his Jewishness and full of a unique national Jewish consciousness, which had been lost in the years of Diaspora. In the essay reprinted here partially—“Slavery within Freedom”—Aḥad haAm argued against authors who opposed Zionism and propagated the assimilationists’ position that defines Judaism as a religious confession. Very popular in these texts against Zionism was the reference to French Jewry, which was often described as the embodiment of the right Jewish attitude, to show the backwardness of Eastern European Jews. Aḥad haAm, however, criticised that the French Jews insisted on the statement—despite the rise of anti-Semitism in France at the end of the nineteenth century—that the French society would accept the Jewish side if only they improved their behaviour. He raised the 11  The Balfour Declaration (dated from November 2nd, 1917) was a public statement by the British government to Zionist leaders, that complied with and supported Jewish aspiration to build a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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accusation that French Jewry put itself in a condition which Aḥad haAm called ‘slavery within freedom.’ For underlining his argumentation he referred to the recently published book, edited by Isidore Cahn: La Gerbe (1890).12 This book had been subject of a review by Simon Dubnow, together with a publication of the Odessa circle of Ḥovevei Zion, the journal Kaweret. Dubnow had compared the two publications and described the Russian Jewish nationalist publication as provincial and narrowly conceived, while the image of Judaism presented in the French La Gerbe was described as expansive and universalistic. In his answer Aḥad haAm sets out to counter this description with a critique of the French Jewish position. Mentioning anti-Semitism as a proof that assimilation is futile, he claimed the need for a sense of Jewish brotherhood, Jewish dignity and independence of mind. Freedom of spirit was, to Aḥad haAm, the freedom to define an own position towards Judaism, as opposed to the civil right of Jews in France13 that imply moral and intellectual slavery. He underlined that he preferred to live in Russia with its political and social oppressions for Jews, where he is able to maintain his spiritual freedom, rather than to live in France. In the following extract Aḥad haAm’s concept of presuming the existence of a national Jewish consciousness as a natural fact played an important role. On this premise—the natural acquirement of nationality—he created a characteristic analogy between the ‘individual ego’ and the ‘national ego,’ which allegorises the Jewish collective identity, including all individuals throughout history. The interconnection between the individual person and the nation is emotional, not one by free will but by a natural, biological impulse. This means that every individual tries to maintain the existence of its nation with the consequence that it has to consider the survival of the nation higher than his or her own survival. In denying this natural bond of Jewish national consciousness, Jews denied themselves and were living in ‘slavery within freedom,’ as well as in moral and spiritual sorrow. This essay of Aḥad haAm is an example for a reaction to face competition with Christianity and with internal Jewish assimilatory currents, which adopted the Christian view on Judaism as a religious denomination. It shows

12  Isidore Cahen, ed., La Gerbe. Études, Souvenirs, Lettres, Pensées. Publiés à l’occasion du Cinquantenaire du Recueil Hebdomadaire Les Archives Israélites-Politiques 1840–1890 (Paris: 1890). 13  The French Jews achieved full legal emancipation in the new legislation after the French Revolution in 1791 and maintained these rights in the Second Republic since 1848 and Third Republic, established after the Franco-German War in 1871. But nevertheless the 1880s and 1890s marked a period of rising anti-Semitism in France, which cumulated in the Dreyfus Affair in 1894, and challenged the mostly acculturated French Jews. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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the national endeavour of the Zionist movement, which saw no future in the Christian society for the concept of Judaism as a nation. Aḥad haAm’s solution for the survival of the Jewish people and its culture was the establishment of Jewish settlements in Palestine with the aim to revive spiritual creativity and thereby strengthen the Jewish identification with their heritage. He believed that by settling in their ancient country, the Jews would create a new Hebrew cultural renaissance. Aḥad HaAm saw the Holy Land and Hebrew language as an integral part, not only of Jewish religion but of Jewish historical and cultural heritage. He did not proclaim the vision of gathering the whole Jews in Eres Yisra‌ʾel as a goal because he was well aware of the fact that most of the Jews would continue to live in the Diaspora. Nevertheless, the Jewish state would serve—in his vision—as a spiritual centre and its independent society would establish a focus of emotional identification with Judaism and would therefore ensure the continued Jewish existence and unity in Eres Yisra‌ʾel and in the different Diasporas. The essay was soon translated into other languages as well and thus made available to Jews who did not read Hebrew, like most Western Jews but also many assimilated Russian Jews. In addition to a Russian translation (before 1889), a German translation (1889), an English translation (1917) and an Italian translation (1945) of the essay, translations of the collection At the Parting of Ways, including “Slavery within Freedom,” appeared in many languages (e.g. English 1905, German 1913 and 1923, Polish 1921, Italian 1927, Hungarian 1931 and 1940, French 1938, etc.). The essay was also included in the Selected Essays by Ahad Ha-ʿAm, translated by Leon Simon, published by the Jewish Publication Society of America in 1912, but removed from the selection in the later editions in the 1960s. The importance of the essay reprinted here partially for the discussion of Zionist ideas is proven not only by the early German translation (1889). It is also shown by the fact that Simon Dubnow, who in later years changed his stance and became a supporter of Jewish nationalism, referred to this very essay when he commented in 1905 on the irony that at a moment when different Eastern European nationalities were pursuing their revolutionary agenda under their own banners, the Jews preferred to align themselves under the Russian or Polish flag. Dubnow used the term ‘slavery’ for the Jewish subordination under Russian and Polish nationalism that did away with the recent pogroms as ‘counterrevolutionary’ and called his essay “Slavery in the Midst of Revolution.”14 Aḥad haAm had introduced the concept of Jewish ­nationalist 14  Simon Dubnow, “Uroki starshnykh dnei,” in Voskhod 47–48 (December 1905); cf. also Steven J. Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha‌ʾam and the Origins of Zionism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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freedom of thought and culture into the Zionist discourse. His demand to understand Judaism as a nation that can define itself by its culture, and not as a religious community that has no national identity, is an early forerunner of the attempts of twenty-first-century Israeli secular Jews to redefine Jewish tradition as part of a national culture that is not ‘owned’ by religious groups. In “Slavery within Freedom” Aḥad haAm described Judaism by claiming the name and the cultural heritage for the non-religious Jews, who, as he put it in his essay, should be free to embrace “that scientific heresy that bears the name of Darwin without any danger to their Judaism.”15 Modern Judaism, to him, was not a religion like Western religious confessions, but a national cultural enterprise. Valentina Munz

Further Reading

Ahad haAm. Äussere Freiheit und innere Knechtschaft: Eine zeitgemässe Betrachtung. Berlin: Achiasaf, 1889. Dubnow, Simon. “Simon Auto Bibliography.” In The man and his work, edited by Aaron Steinberg, and Simon Dubnow, 225–251. Paris: French Section of the World Jewish Congress, 1963. Weinberg, David H. Between Tradition and Modernity: Haim Zhitlowski, Simon Dubnow, Ahad Ha-Am and the Shaping of Modern Jewish Identity. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1996. Zipperstein, Steven J. Elusive Prophet. Ahad Ha‌ʾam and the Origins of Zionism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.



Source Text16

This [moral] slavery rises to the surface when authors in La Gerbe address intraJewish themes. They fight heroically for our religion when other faiths oppose it, being cognizant that France allows this, and that neither its government 15  See the source below. 16  Translated from: Aḥad haAm, “Avdut b-ḥerut,” Kol kitve Ahad haAm (Tel Aviv: 1965): 64–69. First published in HaMelitz, 2–4 Adar I 5651 [February 10–12, 1891] in response to an article entitled, “Věčnye i ėfemernye idealy evrejstva” [Eternal and Ephemeral Ideals of Judaism], which was printed in 1890 in the Russian journal, Voskhod [The Dawn] by Simon Dubnow. The footnotes have been partly added or enhanced by the editors of the text. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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nor its people are particularly concerned with such disputes. However, when it comes to French Jews’ relationships to their fellow Jews or to their ancestral land—an attitude that runs contrary to the extreme and zealous patriotism that currently prevails in France—then we observe their moral slavery, which strangles their souls and highlights their quandary. One writer from La Gerbe, the renowned philosopher Adolphe Franck,17 postulates that any Jew18 who enjoys the fruits of emancipation, irrespective of his country of residence (sans distinction de nationalité), is indebted first and foremost to the generation of the French Revolution. Thus he should regard France as his primary homeland and his native country second! And here this sage suddenly deems it his duty to add: “Jerusalem is merely the birthplace of Jewish faith and memory; it may have a place in worship, but each Jew himself is a son in his native land.” Indeed, this concept of ‘Jerusalem’ has already been overworked by our Western savants in every imaginable mode and manner. Another of our German brothers recently published a book which includes a scientific analysis of the biblical Book of Lamentations.19 As a scientific essay, it does not address issues of what is allowed or forbidden, but nevertheless the author felt compelled to deal at the end of his essay with a practical matter: is it permissible to recite Lamentations in synagogue nowadays? He affirms that it is permissible because Christians also read this text in church three days before Easter. “And if we be asked, ‘What is Zion to you and what are you to her?’ we shall serenely answer: ‘Zion is the inmost part of the inner conviction of the new nations.’ ”20 This response is not entirely comprehensible, even as formulated in its original German, but the author’s intention is quite clear, and therefore we may hold no  “Slavery within Freedom,” an essay written in the modern Hebrew of the late nineteenth century, reflects the individual approach, linguistic and rhetorical norms, and cultural milieu of its author, Aḥad haAm. This translation seeks to render the author’s ideas accurately and f­luently in twenty-first-century English, including stylistic and editorial adaptations when necessary. 17  Adolphe Franck, “Les Juifs et l’humanité,” La Gerbe. Études, Souvenirs, Lettres, Pensées. Publiés à l’occasion du Cinquantenaire du Recueil Hebdomadaire Les Archives IsraélitesPolitiques 1840–1890, ed. Isidore Cahen (Paris: 1890), 33–36. 18  In many instances, in place of the standard term Yehudy (Jew) Aḥad haAm uses the Hebrew phrase Ish Yisrae⁠ʾl literally ‘man of Israel’ or ‘Israelite.’ This word choice conveys the author’s emphasis on membership in the people of Israel, over and above geographic, national and individual distinctions. 19   Herman Heymann Steinthal, Zu Bibel und Religionsphilosophie: Vorträge und Abhandlungen (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1890). 20  Steinthal, Zu Bibel und Religionsphilosophie, 33.

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complaint against the above-mentioned French philosopher for holding the same view. One who reads the complete article in La Gerbe knows that its author will arrive at the conclusion that the people of Israel were charged with a ‘mission’ in Jerusalem; it has not yet been fulfilled, so for its sake they live and must stay alive till it has been achieved. At this juncture the reader will raise the big question: if the responsibility to express gratitude to France is so great in the eyes of this author, such that it is incumbent on every Jew to acknowledge France before his homeland, wouldn’t it follow that Jerusalem, the setting where we received our mission and the purpose of our existence, should come before France, which merely gave us external rights? I trust that the honorable philosopher who composed this essay could have caught the logical error in his statement—yet he wrote it nonetheless. Is that not moral slavery? In his acknowledgement of the good work of this journal21 at its jubilee celebration, another wise man who shoulders the entire burden of French Jewry and is actively involved with the needs of the Jewish community at large, mentions its role in strengthening the connection between the Jews of France and their fellow Jews in other lands.22 While writing, he probably realised that ‘France the Beautiful’ is afflicted to no small degree by anti-Semitism, so felt the need to justify the undeserved praise that escaped from his pen. As a Frenchman, he commends the growing bond between the Jewish community in France and Jewish communities abroad. He then tries to demonstrate that although the Jews in France are well known as great patriots who are devoted heart and soul to their homeland, this does not prohibit them from expressing compassion for the rest of their brothers who suffer manifold hardships in their countries of residence, or from rejoicing wherever their lot improves. I am confident that this fine gentleman, a staunch lover of his people, would remain loyal to the People of Israel even if he were deluged with evidence that French patriotism forbids him to love his fellow Jews beyond the borders of France. He would continue to care for them in the depths of his heart, even if they were all granted full rights and neither pity nor celebration for their providence were among his sentiments. He would always wish to have contact with them and to share in whatever befalls them. What can this self-justification and its catalysts be, if not moral slavery?

21  Franck, Les Archives Israelites. 22  Zadoc Kahn, “Mission des Archives appréciée par le Rabbinat,” in La Gerbe: Études, Souvenirs, Lettres, Pensées. Publiés à l’occasion du Cinquantenaire du Recueil Hebdomadaire Les Archives Israélites-Politiques 1840–1890, ed. Isidore Cahen (Paris: 1890), 13–15.

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This moral slavery is only part of the price that our Western brothers have paid for their emancipation. Another type, intellectual slavery, perhaps more onerous than the first, is cloaked beneath their political freedom, as is all too is evident in the volume that we are hereby examining. When they acquiesced to nullify the status of Israel as a people and to uphold Judaism exclusively as a religion for the sake of attaining their emancipation, our brothers took it upon themselves and their progeny to safeguard the religious unity of all Israel. But these ‘rights’ necessitated various adaptations and changes in religious practice, a sacrifice that has not been universally accepted. As a result, members of the ‘Jewish persuasion’ have branched off into different factions, effectively shattering religious solidarity and leaving nothing more than a theoretical link, namely a set of vague beliefs shared by all Israel. This connection, with its inherent weakness, has atrophied during recent generations, as will happen when a spiritual matter lacks the actualisation and reinforcement that practice offers. Recent scholarship has shaken the foundations of faith in general, and the faith of Israel is no exception, as an author in La Gerbe admits with a sigh: “the scientific heresy that bears the name Darwin” is steadily gaining strength23 and only noblesse oblige compels us to continue disputing it. What will become of these brothers of ours when all they have left is an instruction steeped in nothing more than theory (especially since its place in their hearts is already quite shaky)? Will they abandon Judaism altogether and become ordinary citizens? A small number have done so, but why don’t they take this action collectively? Why do most of them feel unable to do this? Where is the cord that binds them to Judaism and prevents them from going free? Could it be the instinctive national sentiment that they inherited from their ancestors, which is independent from faith and religious practice? Perish the thought! They sold that feeling over a century ago in exchange for their emancipation, even though they did not want the matter [of securing their emancipation] to depend on uprooting [their ties to the Jewish nation] from their hearts. This answer satisfies us, but not them. They have publicly renounced their Hebrew nationality and they lack the authority to retrieve it or to admit that it was never theirs to sell.24 On these grounds, how can they justify their stubborn attachment to the name ‘Israel,’ which provides neither honor nor material gain? Or, to put it dif23  Isidore Cahen, “Le Cinquantenaire des Archives Israélites,” La Gerbe: Études, Souvenirs, Lettres, Pensées. Publiés à l’occasion du Cinquantenaire du Recueil Hebdomadaire Les Archives Israélites-Politiques 1840–1890, ed. Isidore Cahen (Paris: 1890), 11. 24  It was not uncommon during the nineteenth century for the term ‘Hebrew’ to be used interchangeably with the term ‘Jewish,’ as it is in this sentence.

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ferently: which theoretical beliefs—that they no longer ascribe to, or that they may indeed maintain in their hearts—prompt them to hold fast to this special name, in contrast to other Deists? This question, which has long troubled our Western sages, led them during the past generation to invent a new and peculiar teaching that they ardently uphold to this very day: the notion known as ‘the mission of Israel among the nations.’ This theory, based on an antiquated belief which conflicts with the very foundations of contemporary scholarship, posits that each and every people is created for a specific purpose, its own divinely appointed ‘mission,’ whose completion is its responsibility. The Greeks, for example, were formed to exalt and perfect external beauty, and the Romans, in turn, to elevate and glorify physical power!25 This theory eliminates the need to seek further answers for our primary question. Rather, it asserts that Israel, as a people, has perished, but the religion of Israel lives and must continue to thrive, since Israel’s mission has not yet been achieved. Until absolute monotheism has triumphed throughout the world, Israel must necessarily remain alive, bound, suffering and struggling, for it was created “to know God and to bring that knowledge to the other [nations].”26 This position supports their cause: it promotes the case for Jewish unity without inflicting damage on the tenets of emancipation. If we are to fulfill our mission faithfully, would it not be incumbent upon us to serve God as ‘emissaries,’ dedicating our energies to spreading the ‘knowledge’ for whose sake we live? “Heaven forbid!” answer the ‘missionists.’ Their words speak for themselves: “it is not our role to hasten the end. God entrusted the truth with us, without directing us to spread it ourselves.”27 How then shall we ultimately fulfill our mission? Munk responds: “This mission is steadily ushered forward by progress in religious ideas.”28 According to proponents of the mission theory, our Holy Scriptures are the very grounding and cause of progress, and their presence operates in lieu of our direct actions. For this sole purpose, we must remain loyal to our standard to the end. In its essence, this ‘mission’ is not particularly demanding. There is no shame in viewing ourselves as ‘teacher’ to the rest of humanity, the ‘students,’ who slake their thirst by drinking from our seas until the end of time. Neither does 25  Solomon Munk, Palestine: Description Géographique, Historique et Archéologique (Paris: Firmin Didot frères, 1845), 99. 26  Munk and Cahen, “Le Cintquantenaire des Archives Israélites,” 7. 27  Cahen, “Le Cintquantenaire des Archives Israélites,” 12. 28  Munk and Cahen, “Le Cintquantenaire des Archives Israélites,” 7.

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this distinguished role demand significant exertion on our part, since Progress emerges from Scripture, which fights for our mission, while we look on with joy. It would be fine and well if the ‘students’ were similarly undemanding or if most of them were well behaved; however, at present they are impertinent at best, and many of them curse and taunt their ‘teacher’ continuously, until we tire from our very existence. So the question we must now pose is: must we continue living in dire straits if our presence will not bring our mission to fruition? Given that the Holy Scriptures are not about to be lost and religious progress is propelled forward without our intervention, we seem to be little more than a ‘memorial plaque’ on the road of Progress. Let us consider the Greeks, who, according to this doctrine, were created for the sake of Beauty. After their prolific production of beautiful works of art and beautiful books, lacking other tasks to accomplish, they descended from the stage of history despite the fact that their mission was left unfulfilled and remained as such for hundreds of years. Only during the Renaissance did their mission resume and progress, with the support of the expressions of beauty that the Greeks bequeathed to posterity. Why then does history not allow us to depart from its stage too, since, having created Holy Scriptures, we have done everything in our power to achieve our mission? A learned rabbi who is counted among our ‘missionist’ thinkers has devoted an article in La Gerbe to the theme “Why do we remain Jews?”29 He approaches this question from a different angle, namely that we cannot trade Judaism for any other religion since each of them includes some teaching that we could not accept. In theory Natural Religion could be satisfactory, but not before we examine its central premises. If we investigate them in a source such as Natural Religion by [Jules] Simon,30 we find three core precepts: creation, revelation, and reward and punishment, which are reminiscent of the three fundamental principles in Judaism that were articulated by Rabbi Joseph Albo31 over five hundred years ago in The Book of Principles. If Judaism is essentially another name for Natural Religion, there is no reason to make a substitution. There are many questions that I might pose to this well-educated rabbi. I could ask what he would say to the multitude of our fellow Jews who con29  Elie-Aristide Astruc, “Pourquoi nous restons Juifs,” La Gerbe: Études, Souvenirs, Lettres, Pensées. Publiés à l’occasion du Cinquantenaire du Recueil Hebdomadaire Les Archives Israélites-Politiques 1840–1890, ed. Isidore Cahen (Paris: 1890), 16–21. 30  Jules Simon, La religion naturelle (Paris: L. Hachette, 1873). 31  Joseph Albo was a Jewish philosopher in Christian Spain in the fifteenth century. His Sefer ha⁠ʾIqarym [Book of Principles] has become one of the most famous compositions of medieval Jewish thought.

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sider the religion of philosophers such as Simon archaic and far from ‘natural,’ yet who want to remain Jewish without being able to explain why. However I will not put this question to him because as a rabbi he only engages with ‘philosopher-believers.’ Likewise I could inquire whether he believes in his heart that Simon’s ‘Divine Revelation’ is truly synonymous with Albo’s ‘Torah from Sinai.’ Neither will I press him with this query because I am familiar with the well-established practice among religious philosophers of manipulating texts for the sake of reconciling contradictions. The one question that neither of us can avoid is this: if you deeply believe that Judaism and Natural Religion share the same basic principles, why don’t we adopt this new name if such a marginal change could eliminate our sorrows? Surely the name itself is not the key to our mission, so if taking a new one would enable us to promulgate Judaism’s knowledge of God more effectively, why don’t we replace the name ‘Jewish Religion’ with ‘Natural Religion’? Not only would we have the authority to act in this case, but making such a change would be our obligation, since it would facilitate the ‘mission’ for which we were created. Further discussion of this theory strikes me as superfluous, given how difficult it is to take it seriously in our time. We have no choice but to smile as our hearts ache at the sight of eminent men who, rather than lighting the obstacleladen path of their distraught people, are whiling away their time with sophistries. They are invested in convincing themselves and others to believe that this people has continuously borne the religious yoke of study and observance [torah and mitzvot] along with the iron yoke of hardship, torment and ridicule for millenia, all for the sake of imparting a particular philosophical instruction to others. It is with unflagging dedication that they embrace this notion, despite the fact that these teachings have been subject to exhaustive commentary and transmitted into every conceivable language, so anyone interested in learning from them can do so without an iota of assistance from us. What is more, we are now witnessing a significant diminution in the number of interested students and in our own knowledge base. Surprising though it may be that scholars such as Munk and the elder sages of our time have been able to believe in the mission of Israel as elucidated here, we should not lose sight of the fact that Munk was writing in the 1840s and the senior authors in La Gerbe were educated by the generation that accepted [being created with] an ultimate purpose [cause finale] as a scientific notion. It is a bigger challenge to grasp how the younger generation of scholars and writers can hold this surprising perspective, while admitting that “the scientific heresy that bears the name Darwin is steadily gaining strength.”32 In 32  Cahen, “Le Cinquantenaire des Archives Israélites,” 11.

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other words, science is moving in a direction that no longer accommodates ultimate missions or purposes. How are we to understand that these same men remaining convinced that peoples each have a mission, and Israel is endowed with this wondrous one in particular? The only plausible explanation is that they found no other way to solve the tension between Judaism and emancipation, as demonstrated by this three-fold argument: first, Israel is no longer authorised to be anything other than a religion; second, this heavenly bond has already become flimsy; and most importantly, in their hearts they feel that Jews they are and Jews they want to be. By necessity they seek refuge in an outmoded perspective because it is the only option that can reconcile these contradictory truths. Accordingly these writers share the scientific views that are held by their peers in every field except in regard to the ‘Jewish question,’ on which they maintain a position from fifty years ago, as if nothing has changed during this ‘jubilee’ period. This intellectual slavery is also an outcome of political freedom. If not for their liberation, our brothers would not deny Israel as a nation, nor would they have needed to ascend heavenward on a rickety old ladder to search for what could be found here on earth. Even if we assume that sages who were inclined to seek a ‘mission’ for their people—or more accurately, a goal that fits its spiritual character—would inevitably have arisen, they might have arrived at a different aim. It would not necessarily have been finer or more heartily accepted, but it might have been better suited to current thinking as well as the truths of logic and history. As an illustration, they might have claimed: For some two thousand years, our people has wandered among the nations without innovating anything meaningful or breaking new ground. Our role has been limited to being a middleman, trading goods that were made by others, be they material or spiritual. Throughout the Middle Ages, the only benefit that we brought to the world was through commerce, even in learning, where we brought wisdom from East to West. As Munk comments: “invention is not part of the mission of Israel.”33 So be it! Having assessed Israel’s qualifications, even if they are centreed on trade, common sense would lead us to use this basis in the process of determining Israel’s spiritual objective. Now that we have acquired culture in the West, let us transmit it in the East. If the work of ‘education’ pleases us, it would befit us to go to a location that clearly lacks ‘teachers’ and where we might find attentive ‘students.’ The truth is that if Western Jews were not slaves to their emancipation, the idea of dedicating their people to a mission or to spiritual ends would not have appeared, at least not before having reached the natural and tangible ‘mission’ 33  Adolphe Franck, ed., Dictionnaire des sciences philosophiques (Paris: L. Hachette, 1875).

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that is common to every living being: creating for itself the basic conditions that suit its character, enabling the development of its strengths and talents, and nurturing its unique potentials on a direct and natural course. Only after achieving these milestones would it have discovered its distinct role, perhaps as a ‘teacher’ to others, to bring a greater benefit to humanity in the spirit of modernity. If, at that stage, philosophers arose and declared this work to be the mission for which our people was created, I still could not subscribe to their belief, but neither would I quarrel with them over terminology alone. Alas, grass will cover my grave before that takes place. Now, while I am still alive, I may turn my gaze for a moment from the staggering levels of ignorance, degradation and poverty that surround me [here in Russia] and find solace by looking across the border where our brothers are professors, professionals, military officers and civil servants. As I behold this glory and grandeur, I see two-fold slavery within it, moral and intellectual; and I ask myself, am I jealous of my brothers’ emancipation? In all sincerity, my reply is: No! Not at all! Neither their privileges nor its price. I may not be emancipated, but at least I have not traded my soul for my rights. I can proclaim aloud—without restraint or excuses—that my kindred are all precious to me, wherever they live. I am allowed to remember Jerusalem any time, not only during worship, to read Lamentations in public or in private, to live without being asked, “What is Zion to you and what are you to her?” I need not raise my people toward Heaven, exalted above the other nations, to justify its existence. At least I know “why I remain a Jew,” or more to the point, I cannot even comprehend this question any more than I would understand being asked why I remain being my father’s son. I can speak my mind concerning the beliefs and opinions that I inherited from my ancestors without fear of a rupture in my bond with my people. I can even embrace “the scientific heresy that bears the name Darwin” without endangering my Judaism. In short, I am my own person. My thoughts and feelings are mine alone, and nothing compels me to hide or deny them, nor to censor them for others or myself. This is my spiritual freedom—mock me if you will—I would not exchange or trade it for all the rights in the world. 19 Shevat 5651 [January 28, 1891] Selected and annotated by Valentina Munz, translated by Susan L. Oren

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Paul de Lagarde: On the Relationship of the German State to Theology, Church and Religion— An Attempt at Orientation for Non-Theologians (Germany, 1873) Introduction The following chapter deals with the darker and foreshadowing aspects of religious globalisation in the nineteenth century, as it is basically about national ideology, which is likely to result in (hyper-) nationalism and racism. It also throws some light upon the role of ‘scientific’1 attitude within this process. The author of the text is a German scholar, born as Paul Anton Bötticher, who, after his adoption by his aunt Ernestine de Lagarde, later became notorious as Paul de Lagarde (1827–1891). Lagarde’s writings reflect the contact dimension of religious dynamics and the globalisation processes involved in a manifold way. He himself studied theology and oriental studies at the universities of Berlin and Halle. His teachers there were Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg and August Neander, although his main teacher was the orientalist and poet Friedrich Rückert, his fellow student the classical scholar in religious studies, (Friedrich) Max Müller.2 His career started slowly, which apparently embittered him and intensified his tendency to heap personal insult on those he criticised. Since 1869 he was professor for oriental languages at the University of Göttingen, published extensively, and mainly worked on a critical edition of the Septuagint, which remained unfinished. As an orientalist and biblical scholar, he presented himself as an expert on and a great promoter of the study of religious history, its dynamics, and its contact dimension: “In history, we only find the contact of religions, but never

1  Lagarde attached great importance to his scientific method and, accordingly, characterises himself as a ‘Wissenschaftler’ (scientist) in the sense of contemporary natural science. The English expression ‘scholar,’ therefore, does not convey the full meaning of Lagarde’s emphatic self-description as a ‘Wissenschaftler.’ 2  See chapter 3.10 by Arie Molendijk on Müller in this volume.

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the religions themselves.”3 This seemingly modern and reflected ‘scientific’ attitude towards religion, however, did not prevent, but rather propelled him to develop and defend political ideas which proved to be fatal in the course of the twentieth century, above all his vitriolic anti-Semitism. Lagarde’s work also reflects his reputation as one of the most prolific political thinkers of his time and as one of the typical critics of contemporary civilisation, which he considered not fit for the situation of global competition. Through his relating political ideas to scientific ideology, the impact of religious studies on politics and the public in general and vice versa became visible. His most successful publication, ‘Deutsche Schriften,’ a collection of articles written since 1853 and published in several editions after 1878 (fifth edition 1920),4 along with many selections and anthologies, became not only extremely influential for German nationalism and anti-Semitism, but also for leading intellectuals of the time, e.g. Ernest Renan, Thomas Carlyle, Paul Natorp, Ferdinand Tönnies, Ernst Troeltsch, Friedrich Naumann, and Christian Morgenstern. The pre-republican Thomas Mann even called Lagarde the praeceptor Germaniae. It is thus interesting and quite disturbing to notice that Lagarde was not so much supported by sinister conservative circles but rather by seemingly ‘liberal’ persons of the German ‘Bildungsbürgertum.’5 The essays in ‘Deutsche Schriften’ mainly deal with politics, education, and religion. Their interrelation frankly showed what Lagarde considered to be the hidden weaknesses of Bismarck’s Second Reich.6 Most of them are based upon the fundamental neglect of religion as a decisive part of existence. In a letter from February 1879 to the philosopher Paul Natorp Lagarde states: “Religion is to human life as metaphysics to the intellectual. It is immanent here and there although people do not suspect it.”7 Yet, for our general theme, Lagarde’s favorite concept of ‘National Religion’ is of special interest because to him it was likely to overcome the problems of both politics and education. “Religion is the awareness of the planned and 3  Paul de Lagarde, “Die königliche Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften in Göttingen betreffend,” in Paul de Lagarde: Erinnerungen aus seinem Leben zusammengestellt von Anna de Lagarde, (Leipzig: Wilhelm Heims, 1918), 177. 4  The present text of reference here is: Paul de Lagarde, Deutsche Schriften: Gesammtausgabe letzter Hand, 5. ed. (Göttingen: Dieterich’sche Universitäts-Buchhandlung Becker & Eidner, 1920). 5  Ulrich Sieg, Deutschlands Prophet: Paul de Lagarde und die Ursprünge des modernen Antisemitismus (München: Hanser 2007), 321. 6  Fritz Stern, Kulturpessimismus als politische Gefahr (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta 2005), 58. 7  Lagarde’s letter is quoted in: Stern, Kulturpessimismus, 88.

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purposeful education of the individual, the peoples and mankind.”8 The concept of National Religion combines both the model of the nation-state and the idea of mission. To Lagarde, both of them are expected of the German people as an answer to globalisation processes. The establishment of a National Religion appears as a reaction to a political situation which is considered to be threatening, that is the position of the newly founded German Empire as a new global player9 on the eternal battlefield, which is the world. So for him, it is both means and expression of the special mission of the German People.10 “We want recognition, education, and transfiguration of our own nature; but we do not want to be driven by a Russian coachman in a French rein and be whipped by a Jewish scourge.”11 For Lagarde, the political problem must be solved by solving a cultural problem, namely the lack of an adequate religion in Germany, which means a religion that is not contaminated with liberalism as—in his opinion—the leading religions of his time were. In his theory, the involvement of religion in the process of proper nation-building and its attribution to the survival of a nation are thus immense. Lagarde’s cultural pessimism and his political thinking are a religiously motivated answer to the deep impact of modernity. In correspondence with certain East Asian attitudes towards religion,12 Lagarde considers religion an important means for the increase of power (materially and spiritually)—albeit not by promoting the modernisation process of a nation but by recurring to each nation’s divine mission. The motivation for the attempt to establish a National Religion is its utilisation for the competition of nation states on the global stage. To Lagarde, religion is the fundamental basis of the development of a nation, rather of a people. But such a religion is no longer the matter of the clergy but of the scholars, for it is subject to a ‘Religious Science,’ of which Lagarde becomes the prophet. His general thesis concerning the phenomenon of religion, therefore, applies to himself as well: “Religion appears right there where human hearts are able to reckon a part of God’s life. God himself is not 8  Paul de Lagarde, “Die Religion der Zukunft,” in Deutsche Schriften, 257. 9  Lagarde, Die königliche Gesellschaft, 166. 10  Stern, Kulturpessimismus, 62. Paul de Lagarde, “Die nächsten Pflichten deutscher Politik,” in Deutsche Schriften, 423: “The Germans are a peaceful people, but they are convinced of their right to live themselves, that is: as Germans, and they are convinced, that they have a mission for all nations of the Earth: if one prevents them from living as Germans, if one prevents them from following their mission, then they have the right to use violence, as well as a father of a family has the right to drive disturbing elements away if he finds in his house elements that prevent his family from flourishing.” 11  Lagarde, “Die Religion der Zukunft,” 268. 12  See chapter 2.01 on Kang Youwei in this volume.

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revealed but some glance of his being illuminates someone, and it does so, because humans justly turn in that direction in which he can be grasped.”13 Lagarde claims to have turned in the right direction, developing a method that provides a way how God himself may be ‘grasped.’ Key to the National Religion is theology, but that is for Lagarde neither Protestant nor Catholic theology but, above all, a comparative study of all religions. According to him, this comparative study will show God’s work in history and provide the insight that will help to act accordingly to His will: “It is evident that due to the tasks mankind has to face, different aspects of the Ideal are realised, in prehistoric times different than in historical times, in Rome different than in Germany. A multiplicity of religions follows from that, which only can become a unity of Religion in the course of time, while humans realise that apart from the life they themselves have, all the other kinds of life are justified and therefore must be striven for. True monotheism is the organic unity of all religions; a monotheism which results from negation and reason as that of Judaism and modern education is idolatry.”14 Quite in accordance with the history of the development of religious studies, philology for Lagarde is the essential basis of this study.15 Just as theology shows the way to religion, comparative religious studies becomes the main instrument of salvation of the nation. As Lagarde considers himself to be primarily a scientist (‘Wissenschaftler’), to achieve his goal he hopes for help especially from his discipline, i.e. religious studies with the name theology. For him, the use of science in the field of theology leads—quite surprisingly—to a spiritual remodelling of Germany’s religions into one National Religion. So in Lagarde’s view, the rise of religious studies was not due to a critical standpoint towards myths of religious superiority, but quite the contrary, religious studies strengthen the myth of superiority; it is now being transformed from myth into science and from here into political practice which leads to colonisation and suppression of other religions: “What is not intolerant in the presumed sense that is no longer religion but a theory about divine matters and for the life of the Nation as venomous as hydrocyanic acid for the human organism.”16 The year 1873, when the following text was first published, brought a first global economic crisis which was especially distressing to the German enthusiasm about the realisation of national unity in 1871. In addition, the so-called 13  Paul de Lagarde, “Über die gegenwärtige Lage des deutschen Reichs, ein Bericht,” in Deutsche Schriften, 171. 14  Lagarde, “Die Religion der Zukunft,” 237. 15  Ibid., 239. 16  Paul de Lagarde, “Noch einmal zum Unterrichtsgesetze,” in Deutsche Schriften, 299.

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‘Kulturkampf ’ brought the new national state into conflict with the Catholic Church. With national unity having just been realised, Germany at the same time faced international threats which caused anxieties over competition. According to Lagarde, Germany was ill prepared for this competition, for it suffered from severe congenital defects. Analyzing this situation he concludes that a nation must be able to act internationally to survive and, accordingly, it needs the material and above all the spiritual power to accomplish its goals. By spiritual means, nationalism is thus transferred into hyper-nationalism of which Lagarde is a main representative. This kind of religiously motivated nationalism has a transnational and finally global effect. For him, the German people play a special metaphysical part in the salvation of all mankind,17 in full accordance with Emanuel Geibel’s (in)famous line Am deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen. But to Lagarde’s mind, the main birth defect of the German Empire was essentially related to globalisation phenomena. His ‘National Religion’ was directed against what he called the “Grey International” (die graue Internationale), namely political and economic liberalism, which represented globalisation and deprived the German people of its own unique character thus condemning it to disaster. ‘Germany,’ then, was a national project to be realised religiously and not economically as the representatives of the ‘Grey International’ would expect. For Lagarde, ‘National Religion’ provided the spiritual basis for internal and external colonisation, which is the global task of ‘New Nations.’18 To his mind, Germany’s territory of colonisation was not far away in overseas like that of most colonial powers, but close to its border in Southeastern Europe. In Lagarde’s writings, religion with its universal claim for everyone is transformed into a religion with a particular (national) task, which is afterwards politically expanded to the planet, thus nationally instrumentalising the universal impetus of religion. It is inwardly and outwardly missionary for, on the one hand, the German people must be converted, who then, on the other hand, perform the outward colonisation with their religion as metaphysical basis. To Lagarde, the idea of a world religion is the intellectual enemy: “World religion in singular and national religions in plural, these are the programmatic slogans of the two opponents.”19

17  Ulrich Sieg, Deutschlands Prophet: Paul de Lagarde und die Ursprünge des modernen Antisemitismus (München: Hanser, 2007), 293. 18  Ibid., 61. 19  Lagarde, “Die Religion der Zukunft,” 254.

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Lagarde developed his national ideas with special regard to Judaism. He always presents himself ostentatiously as a devote and vitriolic anti-Semite (with the one exception of Spinoza).20 Seemingly in contradiction to that, he expressed his admiration of the Jewish religion as a perfect ‘National Religion,’ that is a religion that fits perfectly with what he considers to be the prevailing character of a certain people. But this seeming compliment of his has severe consequences on the complimented. With their religion making them a real nation, the Jews in Lagarde’s opinion cannot be tolerated in a nation-state deserving this name, as they constitute a nation within a nation. Accordingly, Jews have to be either converted and assimilated or expelled, which is the option Lagarde himself favours: “Every Jew proves the weakness of our national life and the worthlessness of what we call Christian religion. Especially, if the last were what it is due to our books, every heart would fly towards it. I am very much imbued with the fact that we cannot tolerate a nation within the nation, but therefore I am also imbued with the fact that we do need a religion which could melt away this nation, which can melt it together with us.”21 Later on he became a main point of reference for Hitler (who read the Deutsche Schriften carefully)22 and was considered to be a ‘Prophet’ of National Socialism, his ideas being spread in form of collections of aphorisms or on postcards.23 National religion thus, for Lagarde, is the religion that fits the German character. The main task of the Germanic people is to combine nation and religion. Religion is (in a quite Protestant fashion, actually) not at all related to nature but is the personal relationship of the religious person with God, which only takes place socially, i.e. within human community,24 namely the (real) nation of a people. For Lagarde it was evident that concerning religion there is no place for tolerance. The mixture of confessions in Germany he regarded as both a theological farce and politically dangerous. In addition to that, Christianity of his 20  Paul de Lagarde, “Über die gegenwärtigen Aufgaben der deutschen Politik,” in Deutsche Schriften, 24. Compare Lagarde’s struggle against the main representatives of the Science of Judaism (see Elisabeth Hollender, “ ‘ Verachtung kann Unwissenheit nicht entschuldigen’—Die Verteidigung der Wissenschaft des Judentums gegen die Angriffe Paul de Lagardes 1884–1887,” in Frankfurter Judaistische Beiträge 30 (2003), 169–205). 21  Lagarde, “Über die gegenwärtigen Aufgaben,” 26. 22  Sieg, Deutschlands Prophet, 339–53. 23  Compare for example the collection of respective texts in a small volume in the series “Deutsche Reihe” of the Eugen Diederichs Verlag, ed. Georg Dost; Paul de Lagarde, Nationale Religion [National Religion] (Jena: Eugen Diederichs Verlag 1934). 24  Lagarde, “Die Religion der Zukunft,” 238.

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time, that is for him the “colourless and cowardly sentimental” Protestantism and universal Jesuitical Catholicism, is powerless and degenerated. Lagarde considered the “Jew Paul” to be the source of Christianity’s defects which, ­therefore, does not really fit with this character of the German people. There has to be a renewal of (Christian) religion but of quite a special kind: it has to be Germanised by the revival of certain ‘heroic’ rites. It is not ours to create a National Religion—religions never are created but always revealed—but to do everything suitable to open the path for National Religion and to make the nation sensible for the adaption of this religion, which—basically non-Protestant—cannot be the old one repaired if Germany shall be a New Country, which—basically non-­ Catholic—is solely for Germany if it is destined to be Germany’s soul, which—basically non-liberal—does not adapt the zeitgeist but makes the zeitgeist adapt it, if it is, what is its home abroad, a guarantee of eternal life in time, indestructible community of God’s children in the midst of hate and vanity, a life of communication with the Creator and Savior, Splendor of Kings and Ruler’s power against everything not being of divine lineage.25 Elisabeth Hollender and Knut Martin Stünkel

Further Reading

Burrow, John W. The Crisis of Reason: European Thought, 1848–1914. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000. Lougee, Robert W. Paul de Lagarde 1827–1891: A Study of Radical Conservatism in Germany. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962. Sieg, Ulrich. Deutschlands Prophet: Paul de Lagarde und die Ursprünge des modernen Antisemitismus. München: Hanser, 2007. Stern, Fritz. The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in The Rise of the Germanic Ideology. Berkeley: University of Califormia Press (1974).

25  Lagarde, “Über das Verhältnis des deutschen Staates zu Theologie, Kirche und Religion,” in Deutsche Schriften, 82–83.

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Source Text26

8 Now what about the question whether the state, while indifferently looking at historically existing religious communities, should not draw religion as such into its sphere of activity? From what has been stated above it should become clear that the state has to take care of religion provided that religion is something that the nation needs but that cannot be obtained by its members. That religion is needed by the nation as such, i.e. that a national religion is necessary for every nation, results from the following considerations. Nations do not emerge by means of physical conception, but by historical events: but historical events are subject to the activity of Providence, which assigns to them their aims and goals. Nations are thus divine institutions: they are created. If that is so, if they do not step into existence by the progression of nature or by chance, their creator has aimed at something through their creation, and this aim is their principle of life: the recognition of this aim a recognition of the divine will, which wants this aim to be accomplished: without it, the life of the nation and nation itself is unthinkable. To recognise the mission of one’s own nation means to bathe it in the well of eternal youth, to serve this mission permanently means to acquire higher purposes and along with it, higher life. This fact makes religion a necessity for every people. But things extend beyond this, not concerning matter, but concerning the development of matter. Nations can only be free if internal unity, that is the idea, makes members out of mere parts. Only members are allowed to move as they like, because as members they never separate from the whole and never do anything against the whole. He is not free who can do what he wants but he who can become what he should become. He is free who is able to follow his principle of life that is given to him by creation. He is free who recognises the idea God laid into him and enables and develops its full realisation. Everywhere the idea is the necessary condition! And whom does the idea stem from but God?

26  Paul de Lagarde, “Über das Verhältnis des deutschen Staates zu Theologie, Kirche und Religion (1873)” Deutsche Schriften (5. ed.), Gesammtausgabe letzter Hand (Göttingen: Dietrich’sche Universitäts-Buchhandlung Becker & Eidner, 1920), 72–77.

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Concerning the sequence of argumentation, after it has been shown that a nation cannot renounce religion, I should show that the single members of the nation are not able to evoke the national religion. I have to go much further: I do not only have to deny this ability to the individual German, but to the German state as well. Religion is never a result of human thinking, human longing, human action. Just because it unites, educates, leads, consolidates, it is conceptually of divine origin; otherwise it would have been an imagination of ill-advised fools, domineering zealots. The state can spread knowledge by its schools but it cannot make ideas evident. Only a genius brings ideas, only the religious genius religious ideas, and it is beyond the state to evoke genius. But there is one thing the state can do. It can prepare the path for religion. And it must. 9 Now I am up to the point where it can and must be stated what theology should be: the pathfinder of the German Religion. Theology is knowledge of religion as such, not as most think, knowledge about Protestantism or Catholicism. Religion is wherever the superhuman is present, it is even wherever non-human powers have influence on the minds of humans, where real powers have a real influence, that is, an influence causing those influenced to thoughts or acts which they would not have thought or performed without this influence. As this is true of religion, theology is thus present anywhere on earth, listening to the quiet prayers of the heart and realizing the improvement of those praying this way because it concludes that God has been present at this very place. Such theology has definitely to be part of universities, and the state has to establish chairs for it and its auxiliary sciences: for religion is a reality, and everything real is subject of science. By theology the scientist learns to know religion as such, and if he learns the laws according to which the religion presents itself, he does so by examining every religion he can obtain knowledge about. I shall deliberately elaborate on the second of these aspects first. What appears in every religion or in many of them must be a manifestation of religion as such, it cannot be a quality of a single religion. With reference to a point which will be most easily understandable: if many religions show a belief in miracles, then the miracle is not proof of the power and divinity of that religion in support of which the miracle is reported: it is rather a symptom that religious life has reached a certain level. To the theologian, every miracle of

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Buddhism proves against the evidential value of Christian miracles, for it goes without saying that documentary evidence of Buddhist miracles is neither better nor worse than that of the miracles of Christianity. By studying religions in this fashion, theology will teach the German people the laws under which religion lives and thus it will abolish the abominable confusion of the symptoms of a matter with the matter itself, which is a main reason for the disdain of religion and a main means for those who want to commit forgery in this area. Theology can thus teach to recognise clearly what is eternal and what is temporal about religions, what is matter and what is form and can, therefore, clarify the very substance of religion. It is not a philosophical, it is exclusively a historical discipline: it provides knowledge of religion in so far as it provides a history of religions. If my premonition is right, however, from the previous course of this blissful star theology can calculate the curve it will follow hereafter. For as freely God rules, He does nothing in vain, and he who has found Him in complexity, knows that now He will not be found in the simpler but rather in the even more complex. Furthermore, theology can clearly explain the substance of the different religions it has to deal with: it is completely impossible that the recognition of this substance will not be followed by the love of those who as teachers or as pupils devote themselves to its investigation. Coming along with this view there is a certain polytheism, the joyful acceptance of the fact hated by the orthodoxy of all religions that God has unbegrudgingly revealed himself to humans in all times and among all peoples: kind and sensitive souls will accept all these revelations, and they will be richer through this acceptance adding to their property than those who admit such a revelation at only one point of time and restrict their love to it. I do not wish to leave it unclear that along with the demand to establish university chairs for theology it will not be demanded from those intending to become clergymen of certain denominations to listen to the lectures of these new professors of theology. Apart from the fact that compulsion is always an extraordinary unpleasant thing, one would accomplish nothing at all or rather make the current unbearably bad situation even worse. To deal with the last point first, concerning the field of Protestantism, the impurity of convictions, after a century of mixing up scientific struggles and denominational fits, has grown to such a degree that it is impossible to find solid ground in this washing of dirty linen; and everyone who knows the affairs from real life feels the horror of multiplying and making even more impenetrable the mixture of great and small viewpoints we have to struggle with now, by adding Catholic views.

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To force Catholics, Protestants, Jews into listening to scientific lectures on theology means to explain to them that one wants to force them to abandon their religious viewpoint. There is a chasm between science and every historically developed religious community. Every religious community must believe itself to be in exclusive possession of truth, that is the whole truth; if it does not, it has a bad conscience and its servants will count for hypocrites even for those who are in no way able to justify this impression: these servants will be foul goods, which will be a dishonor and damage to the nation. Theology, as I understand it, at best considers the religion of each existing religious community as one of the many aspects of religion and as in need of addition—and that is: the correction—by all the others: this theology dares to criticise freely the development the prevailing religions have had and does not refrain from exposing the failures of this development by at the same time revealing the causes from which these failures resulted: it cannot be silent on all these things. It would be highly desirable for the future servants of Catholicism, of Protestantism, and of Judaism and in their own interest that they would listen to and heed such theology, but one who wishes this must be entirely aware that these persons will, in the degree that they will have adopted science, become unsuitable for service in their religious communities. At least the Protestant Church (provided one can consider it as still existing) is, by good-willed effort of government to care for the scientific education of its clergymen, brought to the point that it will soon cease to have any clergymen at all. [. . .] But the state can and should do more for the National Religion than to inform about religion. Every medical practitioner knows that it makes a difference if an illness seizes a powerful or a weak body: the result or at least the development of the prevailing illness depends generally on the robustness a body possesses. Analogously, every pedagogue knows that a healthy development is only given to the boy who lives in healthy domestic circumstances: that is, it is extraordinarily difficult to provide someone an insight in matters that are completely out of the range of his views, his life; that, if someone gets insight about matters beyond his horizon and not related to real life, these are achieved at the expense of his character. It repeatedly came to the understanding of missionaries that up to a certain level—most frequently, the fourteenth year of age was mentioned to me—negro boys develop very well and then completely come to a standstill. Accordingly, Jewish pupils are ahead of their German classmates only up to Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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eleventh grade; later on they fall back behind them as far as they had been ahead of them earlier. All these phenomena indicate that education—to use this expression now without definition—depends on the environment the educated-to-be lives in, that in certain circles education can neither be spread at all nor in a limited way. If we apply this on the present question, then the state must reflect that religion—as unpleasant it may be to the orthodox as well as to the liberal mind, it must still come out—does not flourish everywhere, that it needs a fitting atmosphere. It is therefore the task of the state, provided it cannot itself make religion come forth, to ask if it can at least prepare an atmosphere benevolently assisting the growth of religion stemming from different causes. This question has to be answered in the affirmative. Selected and translated by Knut Martin Stünkel

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Section 3 The Transformative Power of the Religious Marketplace

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Introduction to Section 3 As is the case with many other texts assembled in this volume, most of the contributions in this section were the direct or indirect result of an engagement with Christian missionary activity. They would never have been written had European and North American missionaries not set out (anew) for Africa and Asia in the nineteenth century. This was especially true for South, Southeast, and East Asia, whereas in West Asia the importance of Christianity grew less as a result of mission, but rather because of the wave of globalisation effected by the intensified international trade of the period. This new level of globalisation, however, also gave birth to new perceptions of other religions: The nineteenth century became the age in which, by looking outward, analogous challenges were identified by religious actors between Asia and Europe. Although few territories had been unaffected by the missionary penetration of earlier centuries, there was a new quality to this second missionary wave spreading over the globe in the nineteenth century. At the heart of the Christian mission in the era of colonialism and imperialism was the fact that Christianity itself had begun to lose its status as the unquestioned cultural backbone of society in the West. Just as it had been the Reformation that had, from the sixteenth century onwards, triggered the first missionary wave of Catholic orders such as the Jesuits, it was the fundamental questioning of religion by Enlightenment thinking and modern science that prompted the appearance of missionary activity as one form of inner renewal. The dynamic between inner reform and external efforts at spreading one’s own religion seems to be a modern one, specific of the modern age; indeed, in his influential book Transforming Mission, theologian David J. Bosch characterises this period as informed by the new ‘modern Enlightenment paradigm.’1 The missionaries of the nineteenth century, prototypically Protestants, reached out to Africa and Asia in a much more thorough way than their Catholic predecessors two or three centuries earlier, partially for the simple reason that their activities were now accompanied by the imperialist expansion of the polities of Europe and North America.2 When looking at the whole Eurasian continent, however, the nature of this imperialist challenge and the 1  David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll: Orbis: 1991), 262–345. 2  This missionary wave was by no means limited to Protestants, nor were Protestants the first new missionaries everywhere. In a number of locales such as Southeast Asia or the Middle East, the new mission, focusing on conversion and salvation of the individual and often

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responses by existing political entities exhibited an enormous diversity, as did the religious challenges posed by the missionaries in the respective historical contexts and the reactions to them. One fundamental difference was in the way that societies had traditionally dealt with religious plurality. Europe had of course had an earlier history of intense religious strife, albeit mostly innerChristian, and the secularism that began to permeate European societies in the 1800s was mostly an effect of the Protestant–Catholic division and the impact of modern science. A serious confrontation with non-European religions, as triggered first by missionaries, later by Orientalist scholars, was, however, by and large a new phenomenon of the nineteenth century. Within Europe, this confrontation had various consequences, which may, for the sake of convenience, be grouped in three categories. Most obviously, it resulted a) in Christian reassertions on a practical level, such as in the field of mission itself (see chapter 3.11—Auffarth & Döbler). Failures in the missionary enterprise or challenges posed openly to missionaries by members of other religions, such as the public debates between Buddhists and Protestants in Sri Lanka in 1873,3 instigated less the rethinking of one’s own position but rather a strengthening of missionary efforts. More subtly, missionary endeavors had consequences for Christian practices in Europe: New forms of devotion directed at the success of missionary work were introduced, and social welfare work undertaken by missionaries in Asia came to shape ideas about social order in the churches of France, Germany, and other European ­countries.4 In addition, lay people engaged in mission came to shape religion in the mission areas in a way that they had hardly been able to do in the past (see chapter 3.11).5 On a more theoretical level, a different kind of reassertion could occur, such as that from a newly gained ‘scientific’ point of view (see chapter 3.10— engaging in social services and welfare work, was represented by Catholics, with some continuity from before the nineteenth century. 3  See Donald S. Lopez Jr., Buddhism & Science: A Guide for the Perplexed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 2008), 39–42. 4  See Henrietta Harrison, “A Penny for the Little Chinese: The French Holy Childhood Association in China, 1843–1951,” American Historical Review 113 (2008): 72–92; and Rebekka Habermas, “Mission im 19. Jahrhundert: Globale Netze des Religiösen,” Historische Zeitschrift 287 (2008): 629–679. 5  Considering the example of the Salvation Army and the parallels between social work directed at ‘vagabonds’ in Europe and the cultural mission in, say, Africa, Sebastian Conrad has argued that rather than speak of simple feedbacks from the colonies to the metropoles, one should instead speak of “shared fields of action, characterised by imperial hierarchies and global structures,” see Sebastian Conrad, “Religion in Global History,” in Wege zur modernen Welt 1750–1870, eds. Jürgen Osterhammel et al. (München: C. H. Beck, 2014), 20–23.

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Molendijk). The discipline of religious studies, itself only gaining shape in the period to which this volume is devoted, was mainly a reaction to challenges posed by new scientific (i.e. philological and historical) approaches to religion. Yet, partially it was also a reaction to new uncertainties confronting European Christianity as a result of the encounter with religions that were seen to have a long-lasting textual tradition rivaling that of Judaism and Christianity both in age and complexity. Thus, the task at hand seemed to be to assert the inferiority of these non-European religions precisely by assiduous study of their central texts. At the same time, this meant that Christianity, too, would necessarily have to be subjected to the same standards of rigorous historical criticism. In other words: This kind of reassertion entailed a degree of reinterpretation because in the modern age, under the circumstances of a new religious plurality, Christianity could only be maintained by being put into new perspective. One concrete expression of this kind of reassertion, resorted to by apologetics of Christianity, theologians of mission, or pracitioners of religious studies, was the notion of fulfillment theology, popular in British Protestantism during the second half of the nineteenth century. Within this frame of thought, non-European religions were read as precedents to or instances of preparation for Christianity, the only fully developed form of religion (see chapter 1.14— Hedges). This view was similar to the evolutionary idea of religion, widespread in Christian writings on other religions around 1900, according to which Christianity (or a specific brand thereof) was the culmination of a historical progress, allowing for a positive evaluation of other religions only as ancestors of Christianity in the evolutionary ladder. This view informed, for instance, the original idea behind the World Parliament of Religions in 1893 as conceived by its chairman John Henry Barrows.6 An entirely different way to come to terms with the new challenge was b) to embrace the foreign religions, the most radical example being wholesale conversion. Of course, European Christians had converted to Islam in earlier centuries, but what made late nineteenth-century cases such as that of the Englishman Abdullah Quilliam (1856–1932; born William Henry Quilliam) different was that modern institutions and media were now used to make European societies thoroughly familiar with foreign creeds and to proselytise for them. Having converted to Islam in 1873, Quilliam founded the first mosque in England in 1889, followed by a Muslim college, a literary society, and a weekly

6  See Judith Snodgrass, Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and the Columban Exposition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press: 2003), 54–56.

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journal on Islam, which was to be published for fifteen years.7 Quite similarly, European Buddhists such as Ludwig Ankenbrand (see chapter 1.13—Albrecht) were not content with changing their private faith and conviction but founded societies and established journals for winning new converts to Buddhism. Furthermore, just as many Christians were not necessarily content with the increasingly secularist and laicistic mainstream in Europe, these converts to religions previously almost unknown frequently saw themselves connected to a host of other social and political concerns through their new worldview. The Buddhists are a case in point as their ties to movements such as pacifism, vegetarianism, teetotalism, etc. show (see also chapter 3.02—LoBreglio). The third major type of response to the first large-scale confrontation of Europeans with non-European religions was c) the creation of new forms of religiosity or even new religions. It was fuelled by the desire for an alternative form of spirituality, one which Christianity no longer seemed to be able to offer, but also drew upon a new understanding of religion within Europe, in the making since the late eighteenth century, that grasped a religious essence to be a universal attribute of mankind. The new creations it brought forth often reflected the spirit to improve upon Christianity, although the outcome might bear few resemblances with the original. The universalizing approach engaged religious contact with a focus on religious plurality itself. Given this plurality, a universal essence was proposed that underlay the various observable instances, and this essence was at the same time the true religion proper. Often this idea was connected with a topos of original purity, or, on the contrary, with the concept of a dynamic evolution. In the last consequence, this perspective led to the vision of a new religion, such as in the case of Theosophy (see chapters 1.12—Viswanathan and 3.08—Bretfeld & Zander), perhaps the most obvious example of this trend. Yet, a tendency to find behind a multitude of varying expressions one universal religion lay also behind other contemporary approaches to religious plurality such as those enunciated in some quarters within religious studies (see chapters 3.10—Molendijk and 2.10—Hollender & Stünkel). Indeed, we also find the universalizing impulse behind many of the new religions founded in this period in other regions of the world, such as Baha⁠ʾism (see chapter 3.06—Scharbrodt) or the many successful new religions of East Asia (see chapter 1.03—Müller-Lee). Partly an effect of the social instability prompted by Western imperialist incursions, many of these movements also reflect the impact of Christianity in one way or the other, being both modelled 7  Ron Geaves, Islam in Victorian Britain: The Life and Times of Abdullah Quilliam (New York: Kube, 2010).

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on the Western religion and at the same time consciously created to deflect it. A striking example of this was the Taiping movement in 1850s and 1860s China. Its founder Hong Xiuquan styled himself as the younger brother of Jesus and attempted to erect a Heavenly Kingdom upon Chinese soil. Its attractiveness in south-eastern China, however, is better explained in economic and social terms: The unsettling of the regional economy by the opium trade of the Western powers had created a potential for social revolution among the local population.8 Before the advent of Christianity, religious plurality had in East Asia traditionally been addressed mainly within a model of co-existence. The main world views (Confucianism, Buddhism, plus Daoism in China and Shinto in Japan) were only infrequently seen as conflicting with each other, and the exclusive allegiance of individuals to only one of them was usually not enforced. Instead, they were often seen as complementing each other, even though this mostly took place within an idealised hierarchy (often with Confucianism in the superior position). Christianity was not easily accommodated within this model as it demanded exlusive adherence. While East Asian Christianity today displays a number of characteristics that show it to be flexible towards the older creeds and world-views, discussions in the nineteenth century hardly allowed for this kind of flexibility, especially when missionaries were involved. With the Protestant missionaries’ emphasis on belief as the most important dimension of a true religion, Confucianism was easily discounted as a thisworldly secular teaching or moral philosophy. Buddhism, although seen as more commensurable, was also criticised for its lack of focus on belief. It was regarded as akin to Catholicism, i.e. full of superstition and elaborate rituals, but as offering little to the modern individual believer. Finally, the litmus test of being recognised as a full-blown religion yielded the harshest results in the case of Daoism and Shinto. The challenge of being seen as something less than a religion was taken up by all indigenous traditions of East Asia. It was most difficult for Confucianism to conform to the Christian model, so there was split in turn-of-the-century China and Korea between those attempting a religious renewal of Confucianism (see chapters 2.01—Roetz and 3.01—Eggert) and those who engaged in a conservative reassertion (see chapter 1.01—Roetz). Compared to the case of Confucianism, Buddhists were more successful in refashioning themselves after the perceived Christian model. East Asian Buddhists found a measure of acceptance in society and acknowledgement by state authorities in their attempts to prove that Buddhism was even better than Christianity in providing a moral basis for a sound society and that it was even 8  Jonathan Spence, God’s Chinese Son (New York: Norton, 1996).

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more ­compatible with modern science and civilisation (see chapters 1.02— Müller and 3.03—Findley). The same move may be said to have been visible in Buddhists from other regional contexts as well (see chapter 1.05—Trakulhun). The context of religious encounter was not entirely dissimilar in nineteenthcentury South Asia. Indeed, the entity we know as ‘Hinduism’ today largely came into being through the confrontation with Christian-backed notions of religion in the nineteenth century (see chapter 1.06—Brekke). In addition, several prominent Hindu reform movements sprang up since the first half of the nineteenth century, which were heavily influenced by Christianity, the first of which in 1828 was the monotheistic Brahmo Samaj. The more specifically Protestant influence was even more visible in the creation of the Arya Samaj with its rejection of practices such as idol worship now considered unbecoming of the modern age (see chapter 2.05—Killingley). Notwithstanding the obvious Christian influence, the reform movements saw themselves as pioneers in refuting Christianity (see chapter 3.04—Killingley), offering another parallel to the East Asian situation. Perhaps the most important characteristic setting apart the response in Hindu circles was the intimate connection between religious and social reform. While swadesh, i.e. home rule, was ultimately an important point on the agenda, there was an acute sense that before political goals could be achieved there stood the necessity for deep-reaching social reforms, especially concerning caste, education, and gender relations. This was to offer an important link to the—eventually successful—national movements within India of the early twentieth century, which combined a spiritual outlook with nationalism and ideas for social reform, such as those associated with the names Rabindranath Thakur (Tagore) and Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi. Patterns in the Middle Eastern world differed markedly from what has been described so far. Muslims around the Mediterranean had known Christians for centuries, and Christian minorities had been living among their midst in large parts of the Ottoman Empire. Locales such as the Balkans, Istanbul, Cairo, Tunis, or Aleppo had thus witnessed cultural exchange to some degree for a long time. Yet Christianity as such had never been seen as a religious challenge by Muslim rulers, administrators, or other elites. The challenge from the West, which first became acute in the Russian-Ottoman War of 1768–1774 and the 1798 French invasion of Egypt, was mainly seen in political or military terms, not religious ones. The initial response to this challenge was one of political reform: Both in Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, military and administration were reformed, natural sciences and medicine introduced, and a modern education system introduced.

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More than Christianity, it was secularism that became a motor of change in the religious field in the West Asian and North African Islamic world since the nineteenth century, and many political reformers from the Ottoman Empire, prominently in Egypt and Turkey, were to combine nationalism and secularism, although there were Islamists even among the Young Turks. Indeed, several of the prominent new trends in religion in the Middle East sought to lessen the importance of religion as a factor of social cohesion in favor of patriotism. This is clearly visible in the popularity of private societies such as Freemason lodges (see chapter 3.07—Büssow-Schmitz) or in the larger Nahḍa movement aimed at a renaissance of Arabic language and literature. More broadly speaking, everyone in the nineteenth-century Islamic world who wrote on religion also wrote on politics and vice versa: The most important tracts that grappled with situating Islam anew in the changing world were penned by people who also became prominent as political reformers, such as Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī (active in Persia, Egypt, Afghanistan, Turkey, and India) or the Egyptian Muḥammad ʿAbduh (see chapter 1.10—Büssow). Nonetheless, the increasing presence of a new brand of (mostly Protestant) Christian missionaries led to new developments not just in the conversion of Eastern Christians to Western Protestantism, such as in the case of Buṭrus al-Bustānī, but in Islam, as well. Reform groups, often viewing themselves as Muslims, but equally often rejected by mainstream Islam as heterodox, sprang up, such as, in Persia, the Baha⁠ʾi Faith (see chapter 3.06—Scharbrodt) or, in India, the Aḥmadiyya (see chapter 3.05—Korbel & Preckel). Even the modern making of the Alevite identity in the nineteenth century may be traced to the encounter of these Turkish groups with Christian missionaries (see chapter 2.08—Dressler). Self-assertion was perhaps the most dominant trend in the Islamic world, and it was also relevant for Judaism in Europe. Although of course in close contact with Islam and Christianity for centuries, the situation of—in some cases, relatively open—competition was mostly new for Judaism since the middle of the nineteenth century. Itself transformed by the intellectual and social forces of the modern age, Judaism came to be justified by European intellectual Jews in opposition to Christianity, and its attractiveness was highlighted by stressing its rigid monotheism and its contributions to European history and culture (see chapter 3.09—Hasselhoff & Stünkel). Since the middle of the nineteenth century, competition with other religious groups amounted to challenges to religions throughout Asia and Europe in moral and spiritual ways. This had the potential to affect individuals in their personal decisions (such as conversion) as well as whole religious groups,

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­ ossible reactions being spread across a broad spectrum reaching from the p spirited defence of one’s own tradition up to founding new religions. The kind and intensity of response was very much shaped by the degree to which the situation of religious plurality was novel. The following contributions will display the variety and breadth of responses in Europe, West, South, and East Asia along the lines sketched above. Hans Martin Krämer

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Pak Ŭnsik: On Renewing Confucianism (Korea, 1909)* Introduction The following appeal for “Renewing Confucianism” is one of the central documents of the struggles of Korean Confucianism around 1900 to hold its ground under the onslaught of Western ideas, religious as well as secular. Its author, Pak Ŭnsik (1859–1925), belonged to the crew of intellectuals of Korea’s so-called ‘enlightenment period’ (ca. 1880–1910) who were old enough to have received a thorough Confucian education at a time when the Confucian system of knowledge was still unquestioned, but who were young enough to feel both able and obliged to react to the rapid changes and enormous challenges of the times. He is thus one of the figures who can serve as a poignant example of the incisive epistemic and social re-configurations that were instigated by the pressures of Western expansion and incipient colonialism. While belonging, in educational lineage, to the so-called Hwasŏ school around the conservative scholar Yi Hangno (1792–1868) that harbored decisive anti-Western sentiments, he had been open-minded enough even as a young man to study for a year or more with disciples of Chŏng Yagyong (1762–1836) who is regarded as one of the most powerfully reform-oriented minds of the early nineteenth century. In the late 1890’s, Pak developed interest in ‘enlightenment’ thought, i.e. in the wave of new ideas that entered the country through the open ports and that were heatedly discussed by a small stratum of mostly urban intellectuals frantically searching for remedies for Korea’s economic and political woes and seeming backwardness. He became a member of the most active and ‘progressive’ group of such intellectuals, the Independence Club, in 1898, where he belonged not to the strongly Western-oriented faction whose mouthpiece was the newspaper The Independent, which was published in a purely Korean and an English language version, but to the more tradition oriented faction that was responsible for the Sino-Korean mixed-style newspaper Hwangsŏng sinmun (Capital News), to which he contributed. When the progressive newspaper Taehan maeil sinbo (Daily News of Great Korea) was * Work on this chapter was supported by the Academy of Korean Studies of the Republic of Korea (AKS-2009-MA-1001).

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founded in 1904, he became its managing editor. In the period of frantic intellectual activity between 1905, when the Russio-Japanese war had made Korea a Japanese protectorate, and 1910 when Korea became fully colonised, he was one of the central figures, active in a number of societies that aimed at national self-strengthening and aversion of Korea’s imminent colonial fate. One of these societies that he co-founded was the Sŏu hakhoe (West[-Korean] Friends’ Scholarly Association) (1906), which was composed of intellectuals living in Seoul but hailing from the north-western Provinces P’yŏngan and Hwanghae. In 1908 it merged with the similar, Northeast-based “North Korean Association for the Encouragement of Learning” and was since called Sŏbuk hakhoe (North-Western Scholarly Association). Its main aim was the propagation of education in order to foster a spirit of national resistance. The normal school that was founded for this purpose, offering one-year courses for elementary education, soon counted 63 branch institutions in Seoul, P’yŏngyang and all over the northern part of Korea.1 Another undertaking with the same aim in mind was the journal Sŏu (Western Friends), called “NorthWest Scholarly Association Monthly” (Sŏbuk hakhoe wŏlbo) after the merger. It served as a forum for the diffusion of the new educational ideas and of new knowledge such as social and political theory as well as for reconfigurations of tradition, and also for discussion of the issues of the times, until it closed down in early 1910. With a print run of about 1700 copies, it counted among the major media of the times (the major newspaper Hwangsŏng sinmun had only a print run of about 2500 copies),2 so it seems to have been comparatively influential. The March number of the year 1909 carried the essay “On Renewing Confucianism.” The essay must be seen in the context of a number of efforts going on at that time in Korea to search for and foster a spiritual foundation for the Korean nation, still in the hope of preserving the Korean state. Here as in other places of East Asia, the predominance of Western countries was explained through reference to the power of Christianity, at least as much as to technology, and more so than to social institutions—the latter posing perhaps the greatest threat to the largest stratum of the educated elite, the Confucian literati. (Protestant) Christianity itself grew by leaps and bounds after the Russio-Japanese war, 1  This school was first founded by Pak Ŭnsik under the name Sŏu sabŏm hakkyo (Normal School of the Western friends) in 1907, became Sŏbuk hyŏpsŏng hakkyo (West-North School of Cooperation) after the merger, and was later called Osŏng hakkyo (Five Star school). It survived colonial times and is regarded as the ‘ancestor institution’ of a middle and high school still existing in Seoul today. The branch schools presumably were regular schools. 2  See Han P’yŏngsu, “Pak Ŭnsik-ŭi Yugyo kusillon,” Sidae-wa ch’ŏrhak 2/1, 1991, 185–208, p. 191.

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especially after the Pentecostal movement, also called the ‘great revival,’ that started in a church in P’yŏngyang in early 1907. In 1906, the Tonghak movement re-modelled itself into a full religious organisation, adopted a more appropriate name, Ch’ŏndogyo, (Teaching of the Heavenly Way), and started a quite successful initiative for winning new followers. Buddhism had been reorganised by the Korean state (not yet under Japanese control) in 1902 so as to more closely resemble a state religion, and a movement to enhance its attractivity was underway. New religions were added to the scene: In 1909, a purely nationalistic religion called Taejonggyo was created, which revered the nation’s mythical founder, Tan’gun. This intense competition concerning spiritual leadership in which Confucians found themselves embroiled was exacerbated by the fact that Confucianism had lost its quasi-monopoly on education and higher learning with the abolishing of the traditional, Confucian-based examination system during the sweeping reforms of 1894, and had ever since been under heavy assault by Western-oriented reformers who blamed Confucianism for the country’s ‘backwardness’ and weakness.3 The religious complexity of the situation was intricately linked to the political complexities. Especially before the protectorate treaty, many Korean intellectuals regarded a close coalition with Japan, and modernisation according to the Japanese model, as the best strategy for Korea. This sentiment, which did not completely abate after 1905—it should not be forgotten that the Japanese victory over Russia offered the possibility of identifying with the ‘Asian’ power—was a good basis for efforts by Japanese politicians, who now dominated even inner Korean affairs, to gear the religious scene towards their interests. The founding of Ch’ŏndogyo was, in part, a result of a ‘defection’ of the pro-Japanese forces among Tonghak to the Ilchinhoe (Association of United Progress), which supported unification with Japan.4 Attempts to coopt Christians were not completely futile, either, and, most importantly for Pak Ŭnsik’s case, in 1907 a Confucian organisation with substantial Japanese backing, the Taedong hakhoe (Great Eastern Scholarly Association), was set up with the help of the erstwhile reformer and pro-Japanese official Yi Wanyong. This association also founded a school, centring on legal studies, and from 3  See Vipan Chandra, “The Korean Enlightenment: A Re-examination,” Korea Journal 22/5 (May 1982), 17, where he quotes from an 1895 essay by one of the radical reformers, Yun Ch’iho: “Behold Korea with her oppressed masses, her general poverty, treacherous and cruel officers, her dirt and filth, her degraded women, her blighted families, behold all this and judge for yourself what Confucianism has done for Korea.” 4  “Defection” is the word used for this event in Peter H. Lee et al., eds., Sourcebook of Korean Civilization (New York: 1996), 415.

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February 1908 onward it published a monthly journal, the Taedong hakhoe wŏlbo, which aimed at the combination of ‘old’ and ‘new’ learning—no different from the aims of Sŏbuk hakhoe wŏlbo and other magazines of the times.5 While it should not be taken for granted that the difference between ‘collaborators’ and ‘patriots’ appeared in the same light to contemporaries as to presentday hindsight, and although the vagueness of the dividing line between the two organisations is testified to by individuals who crossed the boundary,6 it is clear that the two competed for the better, more valid, more influential interpretation of the learned tradition for their times. In this atmosphere, Pak Ŭnsik published his essay “On Renewing Confucianism.” A sense of urgency thus permeates the text. The in-group of fellow Confucians of the same association had to be enticed to common action; the competing, but actually ideologically (though not politically) very similar group of pro-Japanese Confucians needed to be outdone in presenting a solution; and the out-group of people who were either below (in the educational sense) or beyond adhering to a Confucian tradition but sought salvation from the ills of the age elsewhere needed to be drawn into the Confucian fold. In comparison to these urgent needs, the solution that the text presents may appear astonishingly non-revolutionary, even if taking into account that the ‘intuitionist’ teachings of Wang Yangming had always counted as heterodox in Korea to the degree that Neo-Confucianism was by and large identified with the Zhu Xi school.7 Still, even during the times of most fervent ideological struggles between scholar-officials, there had been individuals like Chŏng 5  This is especially true for the earlier issues of Taedong hakhoe wŏlbo. The third issue (1908/04) even carried a “Discourse on Patriotism” (Aeguk sŏl), just like the first issue of Sŏu did (Aeguk non, by Pak Sŏnghŭm; 1906/12). However, Taedong hakhoe wŏlbo laid greater emphasis on natural sciences like chemistry and practical knowledge of modern social institutions like banks, as well as distinguishing itself from patriotic magazines of the times by literary works dedicated to the likes of Itō Hirobumi. 6  Yi Yongsik (examination passer of 1875) who had been chosen as head of Pak Ŭnsik’s Taedonggyo (see infra) at its inception in September 1909 was lured away as representative of Taedong hakhoe, now called Kongjagyo (Religion of Confucius), the next month. See Kŭm Changt’ae, Han’guk hyŏndae-ŭi yugyo munhwa [Modern Korean Confucianist Culture] (Sŏul: taehakkyo ch’ulp’anbu, 1999), p. 60. Earlier, Yi had been head of a learned association similar to Sŏbuk hakhoe, the Kiho hŭnghakhoe, which published the monthly Kiho hŭnghak wŏlbo. 7  Zhu Xi (1130–1200) was the last and most eminent in a series of Chinese scholars of the 12th century who reformulated Confucianism for the needs of the age. His interpretations of the classics became the standard for examinations in Korea as in China. From the sixteenth century onwards, Neo-Confucianism diversified greatly in China, while Korean literati mostly remained stalwart defenders of Zhu Xi orthodoxy.

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Chedu (1649–1736) who openly declared adherence to Wang Yangming’s school and still remained highly esteemed and politically active members of the aristocratic elite. In other words, this brand of Confucianism as an alternative moral and scholarly guide had been around, even if not officially accepted, for hundreds of years; how could it be expected now to present the solution to the pressing problems of the Confucian world falling apart? While the text itself presents a set of answers that highlight the potential of Wang Yangming’s teaching to serve as a more ‘religion’-like form of Confucianism, another aspect—on which the text remains silent—is Pak Ŭnsik’s assessment of the situation in the neighbouring countries, especially in Japan. In his understanding, the ‘heroes of the Meiji restoration’ were largely followers of Wang Yangming, whose teaching had thus proven its effectiveness in propping up modernisation efforts. Even if this heightened the plausibility of this proposal for those who shared these connotations, the fact remains that “On renewing Confucianism” is short on pragmatics. Although the publication of the text may have provided material for internal discussions among Confucian circles,8 for the taste of intellectuals eager to save their country it was probably far too unspecific concerning the question what to do next. Thus, the main significance of Pak’s proposal lies in its being the preamble and ideological guideline to his next decisive step, the founding of a Confucian religion which he undertook in August of the same year. In this instance, he had obviously looked to China for inspiration; even the name of his organisation, Taedonggyo (Teaching of the Great Unity) was taken over from the propagator of a Confucian religion in China, Kang Youwei.9 Pak’s own efforts at founding a Confucian religion did not meet with much success. His organisation, which was more reminiscent of a learned society than a religious community anyway, apparently fell apart when Pak left Korea after the annexation by Japan in 1910. Pak himself made the surprising move of entering the competing Taejonggyo shortly after his departure from Korea, while sojourning at the Manjurian home of one of the latter’s main 8  This claim, which was made by the compilers of Pak’s chronological biography contained in his Collected Works (vol. 3, pp. 298–299), is discussed and refuted in Han P’yŏngsu, “Pak Ŭnsik-ŭi Yugyo kusillon,” Sidae-wa ch’ŏrhak [Era and Philosophy] 2/1, (1991), 190, on the grounds that not much evidence is found in the magazines of the times, including Sŏbuk hakhoe wŏlbo where in the May 1909 issue a reaction of the ‘Confucian circles’ to the proposal is explicitly asked for by one member of the society, and an answer to one (negative) reader’s response published only in October of that year. 9  For details, see chapter 2.01.

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r­ epresentatives. Obviously, he found that now that Korea had lost its national sovereignty, more nation-centred spiritual resources had to be tapped in order to safe-guard what remained of Korea. In that spirit, he later turned his attention to historiography as a means of maintaining Korean cultural traditions. In the years to come, some more attempts were made by offspring of the scholar-official class at establishing Confucianism as a religion for Koreans. In 1913, Yi Sŭnghŭi (1847–1916),10 a man who had tried to do justice to his NeoConfucian ideals by taking part in armed uprisings against the colonial power and therefore had had to flee the country in 1908, set up a branch of the Beijing Association for Confucian Religion at his place in exile in Manchuria, but there are little traces of any continuation of the association after his death. In Korea itself, the politically rather uninterested country scholar Yi Pyŏnghŏn (1870–1940) made similar efforts to establish a Confucian religion along the lines set up by Kang Youwei and laid down his ideas in the 1919 manifesto Yugyo pogwŏllon (Returning to the Roots of Confucianism). However, his activities were regarded as efforts at self-promotion by many of his contemporaries, and he is all but forgotten nowadays. Although endeavours to organise Confucianism in a religion-like way have flared up in South Korea in the more recent past,11 the issue commands little attention of the general public. Pak Ŭnsik’s reform proposal is of some historical significance, not only because it is the best remembered of all the ill-fated attempts at reforming Confucianism, but because it illustrates so well some of the reasons of the general failure of all such movements of the 20th century. In all its brevity, it amply exemplifies the pressures that the Christian model of ‘religion,’ in its contemporaneous interpretation as a device of nation building, exerted on different traditions of structuring community around shared notions and practices. In order to safe-guard Confucianism from loss of significance and ultimate extinction, Pak Ŭnsik proposed a number of measures that clearly and closely reflected those aspects of Christianity that seemed to make the latter an efficient tool for creating a nation’s unified mind-set and winning out in the social-darwinian power struggle as which the encounter of cultures was widely imagined at the time. But more than Pak Ŭnsik himself may have realised, compliance with 10  Yi Sŭnghŭi was son of the eminent Neo-Confucian scholar Yi Chinsang (1818–1886) and had devoted his life to learning up to 1905 when Korea became a protectorate. 11  For example, a Society for the Study of Confucianism (Yugyo hakhoe), founded in 1981, declared the future of Confucianism to lie in ‘modernisation, religiosification, Koreanisation, and popularisation.’ Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, successor to the Confucian State Academy of dynastical times, ushered a proposal for institutionalisation of Confucianism in 1995.

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this Christian model went counter to the core of Confucianism, to the very order of knowledge that provided the social anchorage for this learning and its proponents. By posing as ‘religion,’ Confucianism lost its claim to offer alternative ideological foundations for a modern nation-state. Marion Eggert

Further Reading

Chung, Chai-sik. A Korean Confucian Encounter with the Modern World: Yi Hang-no and the West. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1995. Jang, Sukman. “The Formation of Antiritualism in Modern Korea: Modernity and Its Critique of Confucian Ritual.” Korea Journal 41:1 (Spring 2001): 93–113. Kim, Gi-seung. “Embracing and Overcoming of Social Darwinism by Confucian Intellectuals in the Early 20th Century Korea: The Cases of Park Eun-Sik (1859–1925), Jang Ji-Yeon (1864–1921), Lee Sang-Yong (1858–1931), Sin Chae-Ho (1880–1936), and Cho So-Ang (1887–1958).” International Journal of Korean History 2 (2001): 25–40. Lew, Young Ick. “Late Nineteenth-Century Korean Reformers’ Receptivity to Protestantism: The Cases of Six Leaders of the 1880s and 1890s Reform Movements.” Asia munhwa 4 (1988): 153–193. Miller, Owen and Vladimir Tikhonov, trans. Selected Writings of Han Yongun: From Social Darwinism to Socialism with a Buddhist Face. Kent, England: Global Oriental, 2007. Shin, Yong-ha. “Pak Un-sik’s Idea of National Salvation by Industry.” Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities 50 (December 1979): 17–53. Shin, Yong-ha. “The Life and Thought of Pak Un-sik.” Korea Journal 21:3 (March 1981): 21–30.



Source Text12

Within the cultured community (kyohwagye) of the East, Confucianism— upright and pure, encompassing and sophisticated—was handed down by 12  “Yugyo kusillon,” Sŏbuk hakhoe wŏlbo [North-West Scholarly Association Monthly] no. 10, (1909). An earlier full translation of this text, probably prepared by Shin Yongha, is to be found in Korea Journal 21/3 (March 1981). In many instances, however, it gives paraphrases rather than close translations. In contradistinction, the version offered here attempts to

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the ranks of the sages, it was explicated and clarified by many virtuous men, for thousands of years. Now why has this our Confucianism failed to achieve world-wide expansion of the kind India’s teachings of Shakyamuni or the West’s Christianity enjoyed? And why has it entered a period of dormancy of late, with almost no hope of being resurrected? As I am part of the Confucian community (yugyogye) of Great Korea, and as I, like my forefathers, have received the blessings of Confucianism all my life, now that Confucius’ teachings get further obscured and more endangered day by day, I feel great apprehension, if not outright fear. Therefore, I probed into the reasons for this state of affairs and found that the Confucian community has three major problems. In case we do not reform or renew it in regard to these three problems, not only will our Confucianism not be able to prosper, it will ultimately not evade utter extinction. As heaven will not let Our Culture (samun) come to harm, some hero of reform and renewal must certainly appear. But examining the present situation of the Confucian circles (yurim) in contemporary Korea, it is impossible to detect a person who possesses both the erudition and the energy necessary for such reform and renewal. Ah! When pain is sharp, wild words are uttered uncontrollably; in an extreme impasse, one has to mobilise one’s own powers. Rather would I violate my obligations towards my teachers and incur the wrath of the Confucian circles than witness the utter destruction of Our Confucian Way. Therefore, I dare to break taboos in noting these three problems and in offering my opinion on reform and renewal. What are the three major problems mentioned above? Firstly, the Confucian spirit sides completely with the rulers and lacks the spirit of reaching out to society at large. Secondly, we demonstrate no disposition to travel all countries and change the world [with our thought]; instead of seeking out the unenlightened, we stick to the ideology of letting the unenlightened call on us. Thirdly, Korean Confucian scholars do not pursue clear and simple teachings, but revere a broad and ramified kind of learning. To explicate the first problem: Given that Confucius taught about Great Justice and that Mencius declared the people to be most important, a spirit of reaching out to society was indeed present. But after Confucius died, his followers dispersed into different states, and some passed down only his minor words, others the major outline of his teachings. Mencius developed the idea of the importance of the people, while Xunzi stressed the authority of the remain close to the original diction in order to better enable readers to make their own discoveries. Especially, I have striven to consistently translate the terms kyo ‘teaching,’ hak ‘learning’ and chonggyo ‘religion,’ even if that results in somewhat clumsy phrasing.

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monarch. Mencius’ followers lived in the [politically less influential] region of Zou and Lu,13 so his tradition all but disappeared. Xunzi’s disciples broadly proliferated their master’s teaching from Zhao to Chu, and Li Si, one of his disciples, entered Qin and applied his techniques there. This happened to harmonise with the ideas of power-hungry Qin Shihuang, so Li Si provided him with the ideology of monarchical authority, and the technique of keeping the people ignorant was applied. In this time, from the Qin to the Han dynasty, those famous for their Confucian knowledge were all of the Xunzi school. When the first Emperor of the Han dynasty still lived in obscurity, he loathed the Confucian etiquette and urinated into the ceremonial cap, but after ascending to the imperial throne he could not but take up Confucian manners and civility in order to rule over the empire’s people high and low. Therefore, he established an ox sacrifice to Confucius and employed people like Lu Jia and Shu[sun] Tong.14 In no way did this result from deep knowledge and sincere veneration of Confucius’ virtues. From that time onwards, the monarchs professed concern for the Six Classics and took Confucian scholars as ministers, but this was out of love for Confucian ceremony and hierarchy; and their veneration for Confucius was just a veneration for his exalted position. If they had actually loved the virtues and truth of Confucius, they would not have failed to actually practice [self-] cultivation, regulation [of their families], order [of their states]15 and the bringing about of peace. Because the rulers treated the Confucians decently, Confucianism could maintain a stable and venerated position in East Asia for thousands of years, different from all other religions. Thus, the mind of Confucians came to rest completely with the rulers. Upright Confucians who safeguarded the Way would concentrate on teaching the ruler and setting right his mind; small-minded men who are ready to bend the Teaching and flatter the world would regard it as the best solution to misinterpret the classics in order to accord with the ruler’s mind. We never had a program to reach out to society at large, widen people’s knowledge and buttress the people’s rights (min’gwŏn). Therefore, when gaining the ruler’s acknowledgement, we have the honor of audience and office, but when we happen to be detested 13  Zou and Lu as well as the following Zhao, Chu and Qin were all Chinese kingdoms fighting for predominance or sheer survival during the Warring States Period. The kingdom of Qin won out, building up the first strong Chinese empire in 221 BCE. 14  Confucian scholars who greatly helped in basing the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) on Confucianism. 15  These are the basic duties of the Confucian sage, according to the ‘Great Learning’ (Daxue).

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by the government and estranged from the ruler, we suffer exclusion like the ‘forbidding of factions’ in the Eastern Han16 or legal persecution like during the Literati Purges17 of our country. If Confucianism had extended its power to society at large and had had a foundation in widening people’s knowledge and buttressing people’s rights, how would a few traitorous sages have been able to win over the ruler and succeed with their poisonous intrigues? Because the Confucian mind was always at the side of the ruler and did not extend to society at large, Confucianism could not develop globally. The fact that among the Confucian school Mencius’s teaching was not transmitted but Xunzi’s teachings reigned supreme is a great shortcoming that has wreaked enormous havoc on Our Culture as well as on the public. In the present, when people’s knowledge is gradually developing and people’s rights are being buttressed accordingly, if we do not reform and renew ourselves in regard to these problems, we will not only lack any development but will not even succeed in keeping our status quo. In this situation, it is out of the question that the Confucian gentlemen keep to their old ways and do not try to adapt. If we want to be true followers of Confucianism, to display the virtues of Our Culture and to contribute to public happiness, we have to reform, to elaborate the teachings of Mencius and to make plans for proliferating them into society. To explicate the second problem: Confucius’ “wish to change the world,”18 Shakyamuni’s universal ‘ferrying across’ of all sentient beings, Christ’s giving up of his life for the people are all united in their salvationism. Why, then, is it that our Confucianism has not attained a global development similar to Buddhism and Christianity? In the teaching of Shakyamuni, Mahayana and Hinayana are being united to one frame in which the philosophers and the fools can be similarly reached. The followers of Christianity have an even larger framework 16  Under Emperor Huan (r. 147–168 CE) of Later Han times, a group of—as historiography has it—upright officials around Chen Fan (n.d.–188 CE) and Li Ying (110–169 CE) who opposed the eunuch influence on the court was excluded from government. 17  A series of bloody purges of strongly ideologically oriented Confucian literati from court by entrenched power, more typical for the earlier part of the Chosŏn dynasty but still happening up to the eighteenth century. Traditionally, twelve such purges are counted between 1453 and 1722. 18  The phrase used here, sa yŏk ch’ŏnha (chin. si yi tianxia), goes back to the Lunyu (Analects of Confucius), book 18 (Weizi), chapter 6, which discusses Confucius’ potential to change the world. Though it has been used in earlier commentaries to the classics, it was especially en vogue at the end of the nineteenth century with intellectuals around Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao. One example is Kang’s disciple Chen Qianqiu speaking of Kang Youwei’s “wish to change the world,” quoted in Qian Mu, Zhongguo jin sanbai nian xueshu shi, 1937, rpt. Taiwan Shangshu yinshuguan, 1995, vol. 2 p. 704.

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of proselytizing and an even greater fervor for it; they travel ­everywhere over the five oceans and through the six continents to spread the gospel, without regard to their physical safety, even if they fall prey to the cannibals in the wilderness. If the earlier missionaries meet with failure, they are followed by others, until they reach the aim of spreading their religion. Only we followers of Confucianism don’t preach and practice Confucius’ idea of travelling all the countries in order to change the world; thus instead of seeking out the unenlightened, we stick to the ideology of letting the unenlightened call on us. Keeping our windows tightly closed like Yuan Xian,19 boring our knees through the wooden bench like Guan Ning,20 we sit and wait for those coming and wanting to learn to reward us with a salary, instead of making use of wooden bells to awaken the population. Thus we are not only unable to educate society at large, our own knowledge also falls behind, and we are utterly ignorant of the general atmosphere and the challenges of the times. How can we then display the merits of Our Culture and enhance the happiness of the people? This is also a great shortcoming. Now is a time when globally the schools of thought open up and humanity is in a state of competition. If we stay in our mountain caves like in olden times and do not step out of the door, the wide world will be occupied by others; where shall we then go to proliferate our Way? It is adequate to reform such unefficient measures and adopt progressive methods. Of old, Cho Hŏn (1544–1592) went to the taverns, the [Confucian primer] Kyemong yogyŏl (Essentials for dispelling darkness)21 in hand, and, addressing even ordinary travellers, enticed them to read it and explained it to them. Only if today’s Confucian scholars act with similar wholeheartedness and similarly efficient measures Our Culture can be maintained.22 To explicate the third problem: If we talk about the scope of our Way, it contains heaven and earth, and nothing, whether big or small, coarse or subtle, is not part of it. But there does exist a single way of entering into its study. In the Book of Changes, it is said “By means of the easy and the simple we grasp the 19  This goes back to a story in Hanshi waizhuan (second century BCE, ninth anecdote in j. 1) where Yuan Xian, a disciple of Confucius, is described as the image of the pure, completely detached man of learning, so principled as to have basically no intercourse with the world. 20  Guan Ning (158–241) was of such scholarly attitude that he parted ways with a friend who put aside his book to greet a high-ranking person passing by. The story that his knees bored through the wooden bench on which he would study is an embellishment of this attitude. 21  A didactic work prepared by the great Neo-Confucian philosopher Yi I (1536–1584). 22  The literal expression for ‘unefficient’ and ‘efficient’ measures is ‘dead’ and ‘alive’ measures, sabŏp and hwalpŏp.

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laws of the whole world.”23 Confucius said: “I provide an all-pervading unity.”24 Mencius said: “First set up the great things.”25 Master Cheng (Hao) said: “If one does not keep to something united, one will become verbose and without merit.”26 Master Fan said: “The Man of Learning must take pains to know the essentials; knowing the essentials is enough for having broad learning.”27 For knowing the basics is to know the essentials; knowing the essentials is that through which one can attain broad learning. If a literatus has no intention to grasp ‘fundamental scholarship,’28 we need not discuss it. But if the intention is there and he still is not able to find access, he will suffer from the difficulty, hate the complexity and finally give up. All the more in an age as today when the branches of the sciences get more varied and the business of daily life accelerates every day: If easy and simple, direct access is not provided for grasping ‘fundamental scholarship’ and people are asked to pursue widely dispersed and disconnected studies, the younger generation will suffer from the difficulty, hate the complexity and not be willing to even start with it. This is a severe problem for the Confucian community. Now for the last six hundred years, the tenets of earlier masters that the Confucian circles of our whole country has revered belonged to Zhu Xi’s learning. Anybody who set up a theory outside this frame would earn the name ‘traitor’ for his school. Because they would all be criticised as heretical, erroneous theories by ordinary Confucians, there is no brand of learning besides the Zhu Xi school. I also have hummed over Zhu Xi’s writings since I started my education as a child, have held Zhu Xi’s theories in single-minded esteem and feel blessed by receiving Zhu Xi’s gifts more than any among the Confucians 23  The last sentence of the first chapter of the Xicizhuan commentary on the Book of Changes. The translation is taken from Cary F. Baynes, trl., I Ching or Book of Changes: The Richard Wilhelm translation (New York: 1950), 287. 24  A slightly modified quote of Lunyu (Confucian Analects) 4, 15. James Legge, The Four Books, 166; renders the sentence “my doctrine is that of an all-pervading unity.” 25   Mengzi 11, 15; Legge, The Four Books, 885; renders: “Let a man first stand fast in (the supremacy of) the nobler part of his constitution.” 26  Quote from Lü Zuqian, comp., Jin si lu [Reflections on Things at Hand], chapter two: “Essentials of Learning.” 27  The saying by Fan Zuyu (1041–1098), which is quoted in an abbreviated form, is to be found among the commentaries to Lunyu 2, 2: “The Master said: In the Book of Poetry are three hundred pieces, but the design of them all may be embraced in one sentence,” Legge, The Four Books, 135. 28   Pollyŏng hangmun. In Chinese parlance of the same time, this is a two-word compound, ‘ability’ and ‘scholarship.’ Pak Ŭnsik, however, seems to use it as a modifier-noun phrase, with pollyŏng carrying the meaning of ‘concerning the fundamentals’ or ‘original nature.’

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since olden times. For Zhu Xi’s learning is strong like the earth and deep like the sea, there is nothing it does not encompass, it has rendered outstanding service to the Holy School and has been of enormous help to the students of later ages; how would I dare to question it, how would I dare to challenge it? But later scholars never reached Zhu Xi’s brightness and energy and devotion and could not come within eyeshot of his horizon, and the ages passed by without any substantial insights and accomplishments. So what can be done about this? Zhu Xi said: “The outer and inner, coarse and subtle [aspects of] all the phenomena will be attained, and then the complete essence and the great purpose of my heart will come to light.”29 When we as learners today propose to wait for the instance when the “outer and inner, coarse and subtle [aspects of] all the phenomena have all been attained” for being enlightened about the essence and purpose of the heart, then we must look at the limits of a life-span. Even struggling for a whole life-time, one will never be able to graduate [from this kind of learning]. But if there is no limit to the time of learning, when will one be able to put things into practice? This is not possible for a man of learning. Therefore Zhu Xi said in his late years: “ ‘To know a lot about earlier words and past deeds’30 is certainly an urgent need for a gentleman, but when I reflect about it now, I can’t find a resting place, so I begin to understand that I have been too profuse.”31 He also said: “I also realised that in the past, my words were too profuse; when I reflect and seek the cause in myself, I find that I have not been thorough enough in meditating and polishing myself.”32 He also wrote in a poem: “In the past, I vainly wasted my energy for steering the boat; now, I happily let it float in mid-stream.”33 This is how Zhu Xi “expressed threefold his opinion“34 on ‘elemental study.’35 If we later Confucians only delve into the vast expanse of his discursive writing, how difficult will it be for us to reach elemental, substantial insights! Moreover, present day’s scholarship consists of a number of different sciences that are a study of ‘the investigation of things

29  Zhu Xi, Daxue zhangju: The text mistakenly gives sangmul (‘images and things’) instead of chungmul (‘multitude of things’). I suspect that this was a misprint due to the similarity of characters. 30  A quote from the Book of Changes. 31  This is a quote from Huang Zongxi’s commentary to yulu (Recorded Sayings) of Zhu Xi’s opponent Lu Jiuyuan. 32  From the same source, quoting a letter to Zhou Shujin. 33  From Zhu Xi’s poem “Guan shu you gan, qi er” [On reading a book/letter; no. 2]. 34  A phrase from the biography of the poet Qu Yuan in the Shiji (Records of the Historian). 35   Ponwŏnsang kongbu. This is diction of the Wang Yangming school.

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and extension of knowledge’36 and a matter of intellectual education, while the ‘learning of the principles of the heart’37 is a matter of moral education; the two can’t be admixed into the same kind of study. If one wishes to teach the young with Zhu Xi’s discursive writings, in view of their ocean-like expansion they will develop aversion against the difficulties and complexities even before they have opened a single book. All the more as they live in an age when the pressing worldly affairs arise every day without end, it is truly difficult for them to start with a study that takes so many years. So when Confucians today wish to pursue ‘fundamental scholarship,’ then following the learning of Wang Yangming is really the easy and relevant ‘gate to the law.’38 For his teaching of ‘extending intuitive knowledge’ points directly to the heart, providing a route for transcending the profane and entering the realm of the holy, and the unity of knowledge and action provides superior reflectional powers concerning the subtleties of dealing with one’s own heart, and animated decisiveness in dealing with matters and affairs. This is why the followers of Wang Yangming have so much energy and so many outstanding results in their activities. Alas! How can I, an epigone with shallow experience, dare to offer judgement on the differences between Zhu Xi’s and Wang Yangming’s learning and bring about a big case of discussion for our scholarly community? But when I observe the younger generation of scholars, it is obvious that without an easy and direct ‘gate to the law,’ there will be very few people who devote themselves to the learning of Confucius and Mencius. As Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming are both followers of Confucius and Mencius, why should we have to decide between the two? In order to prevent the complete loss of Our Way of Confucius and Mencius, it is appropriate to point out to the younger generation an easy and direct ‘gate to the law.’ Alas! The foolish opinions I dared to develop in regard to the three major problems are actually not original ideas but are bright treasures provided by the classic tradition itself. As I propose nothing else but a remedy against downfall and loss and a restoration of the original countenance, I hope that the gentlemen of my times will not scold and blame me, but consider the matter with an open mind. For the past nineteenth century and the present 20th century are the times of great advancement of Western civilisation, but 36  A phrase distilled from the ‘Confucian classic’ (since Song times), the Daxue [Great Learning]: “The extension of knowledge is in the investigation of things.” This epistemic underpinning of Confucian morality was understood in a more intellectual sense by Zhu Xi, in a more spiritual sense by Lu Jiuyuan and, in his wake, Wang Yangming. 37   Simnihak, also a neologism for ‘psychology.’ 38   Pŏmmun, a term stemming from Buddhism and used for Buddhism nowadays.

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the coming twenty first and twenty second century will be the time of great advancement of Eastern civilisation. So Our Confucian Way will not actually collapse. Rather, the time will come when its light will shine over the whole world. Confucians of Korea! If we take the future into account, we have to activate ourselves and rise to the challenge. Even if we look at the religios situation of the West, the time of the old Roman faith was a Dark Age for Europe. If there had not been the reformation undertaken with the courage and enthusiasm of a Martin Luther, who knows whether Europe would not have remained in a Dark Age until now. For how intimately is religion related to the worldly fate! It is the old habit of the Korean Confucians to think of upheaval at the mention of reform. But all the things under heaven, whether big or small, get corrupted over time and have to be reformed; if the corrupted is not reformed, it will meet its demise. We have to be aware of this. Although ‘renewal’ is regarded as ‘something else,’ the word ‘new’ is intrinsic to Our Way. Confucius talked of “[to] keep cherishing old knowledge so as continually to be acquiring new.”39 Zhang Zai said, “remove old views in order to attain new interpretations.”40 “Morality has to renewed every day to shine forth,”41 “the country prospers through revitalisation”:42 the idea of renewal is not an import from outside, my Confucian gentlemen! Selected and translated by Marion Eggert

39   Analects 2, 11. I have slightly adapted Legge’s translation (140) for fitting the phrase into the sentence. 40  Zhu Xi is reported as quoting this saying by Zhang Zai in Zhuzi yulei j. 9 (xue 3). 41  Not quite exact quote from the Book of Changes. 42  Similarly transformed quote from the Shijing [Book of Poetry].

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Watanabe Kaigyoku: The Hopes of Buddhists for the Peace Conference (Japan, 1918) Introduction The weeks leading up to the opening of the Paris Peace Conference, which began in January 1919, were filled not only with a global sense of relief that the First World War had come to an end, but also with a widespread hope, grounded in Wilsonian ideals, that war itself had now been forever defeated. The conference was seen as the venue in which delegates would draft the blueprint for this enduring, worldwide peace. Such optimism was prevalent in much of the Japanese press,1 and is found in the writings of many Japanese Buddhist intellectuals and leaders of the time. The manifesto translated below was written by the scholar-priest Watanabe Kaigyoku (1872–1933), a high-ranking official of the Jōdo sect and one of the most active Buddhist leaders of the Taishō period (1912–1926).2 Entitled “The Hopes of Buddhists for the Peace Conference,” it was published on the front page of the Chūgai nippō (Daily News from Home and Abroad), the leading Buddhist newspaper of the time, just eleven days after the armistice ending the First World War was signed in Compiègne.3 It is thus one of the earliest, perhaps even the earliest, of such systematic petitions circulated in Japan. Kaigyoku’s manifesto is at once an expression of cautious optimism, an indictment of the Western powers, an introduction to Buddhist doctrines for Western leaders, and a set of prescriptions to bring about a lasting world peace. Kaigyoku was an influential Buddhologist, probably best known among scholars for his supervision, along with Takakusu Junjirō (1866–1945), of the compilation of the Taishō shinshū daizōkyō, the Taishō Tripiṭaka canon of

1  Tamai Kenkyūkai, “Pari kōwa kaigi to nihon no masumedia [The Reaction of the Japanese Mass Media to the Paris Peace Conference],” Seijigaku kenkyū 35 (Gakusei Ronbunshū, Keio Gijuku Daigaku Hōgakubu, Seijigakka Zeminaaru Iinkaihen: 2005): 271. 2  For an account of his life and activities, see Tsunemitsu Kōnen, Meiji no bukkyōsha, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1969), 414–424. 3  Watanabe Kaigyoku, “Bukkyōto no kibō—heiwa kaigi ni taishite [The Hopes of Buddhists for the Peace Conference],” Chūgai nippō 22 (November 1918), 1.

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Chinese Buddhist scriptures.4 In addition to his scholarly pursuits, Kaigyoku was an educator and well-known social activist concerned, among other things, with the welfare of impoverished workers.5 He spent the years from 1900 to 1910 studying Buddhist canonical languages such as Sanskrit, Pali and Tibetan, as well as comparative religion, with the Swiss Indologist Ernst Leumann (1859–1931) at Kaiser Wilhelm University in Strasbourg (then part of the German Empire). This extended firsthand encounter with European culture informs much of his scholarly writings on the role of Buddhism and Buddhist studies in the modern world, as well as the following manifesto. Kaigyoku’s document is an expression of a widely—and deeply—held conviction among Japanese Buddhist intellectuals, from at least the middle of the Meiji period (1868–1911), that Buddhist teachings were the preeminent articulation of the human religious mind. Inoue Enryō (1858–1919), perhaps the bestknown Buddhist thinker of this period, was instrumental in formulating this sentiment, and in 1887 captured it thus: Buddhism is now our so-called strong point. [. . .] Material commodities are an advantage of the West; scholarship is also one of their strong points. The only advantage we have is religion. This fine product of ours excels those of other countries; the fact that its good strain died out in India and China may be considered an unexpected blessing for our country. If we continue to nurture it in Japan and disseminate it some day in foreign countries, we will not only add to the honor of our nation but will also infuse the spirit of our land into the hearts and minds of foreigners. I am convinced that the consequences will be considerable.6 Kaigyoku too held these convictions, and he sought to implement Inoue’s call to disseminate Buddhism abroad by first raising the standards of Buddhist scholarship in Japan. At this he was highly successful, with the publication of the Taishō canon mentioned above serving as one, glowing, example. In the 1924 foreword to this collection Kaigyoku writes that these scriptures thoroughly expound nothing less than “the true reality of the universe” and that 4  See Jackie Stone, “A Vast and Grave Task: Interwar Buddhist Studies as an Expression of Japan’s Envisioned Global Role,” in Culture and Identity: Japanese Intellectuals During the Interwar Years, ed. J. Thomas Rimer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 217–233. 5  Jackie Stone, “A Vast and Grave Task,” 222–3. 6  Jackie Stone “A Vast and Grave Task,” 218–19. Originally quoted in Kathleen M. Staggs, “ ‘Defend the Nation and Love the Truth’: Inoue Enryō and the Revival of Meiji Buddhism,” Monumenta Nipponica 38, (1983): 271.

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they are truly “the fountainhead of wisdom and virtue for humanity and the great treasury of the world.” He continues: “Yet apart from us, the Buddhist scholars of Japan, who can clarify and spread its teachings? The responsibility of propagation rests on our shoulders. All the more so after the great world war, when the need to seek the truth presses most urgently upon us.”7 This sense of responsibility and urgency pervades Kaigyoku’s 1918 manifesto and is a reflection of the profound reversal of world historical destiny that Buddhists perceived the First World War to usher in. Jacqueline Stone acutely sums this up: “Japan, recipient of Western enlightenment in the Meiji period, becomes the country that shall bring enlightenment to the world.”8 With some fifteen million dead and another twenty million wounded in the carnage of the past four years, this historical moment was an unprecedented nadir in terms of the moral authority of Western civilisation, and Japanese Buddhists were not shy to point this out. According to Goto-Shibata, the Japanese press at this time was often overtly critical of the West and employed terms such as ‘justice’ (seigi) and ‘humanity’ ( jindō) “to denote their moral high ground.”9 Kaigyoku, too, seizes this moral high ground in article 1, by first grounding humanitarianism ( jindōshugi), a putative Western ideal, in a Buddhist doctrine—that of ‘great compassion’ (daijihi), and then by warning against the hypocrisy of not practicing what one preaches. It is an ironic and barely-concealed barb requesting that Western leaders live up to their own ideals while suggesting that previously they have not. Although Kaigyoku does not use the term, he criticises aspects of ‘imperialist’ behavior explicitly in five of the articles (1, 2, 4, 5 and 7) and implicitly in another (6). The indictments range from the hypocrisy mention above, to inhumane behavior (article 1), racial and religious discrimination (articles 2, 4 and 7), cultural imperialism in the form of the denigration of the cultures and histories of non-European ethnic groups (article 5), and exploitative economic practices (article 6). The remedy for these “mistakes and prejudices of the past” mentioned in article 10 lies in the implementation of universal principles, all of which find expression in traditional Buddhist doctrines.

7  Quoted in Jackie Stone, “A Vast and Grave Task,” 227. Footnote 14 cites the original as Takakusu Junjirō and Watanabe Kaigyoku, eds., Taishō shinshū daizōku sōmokuroku (Tokyo: Taishō shinshū daizōku kankōkai, 1924), 1–2. 8  Jackie Stone, “A Vast and Grave Task,” 227. 9   Harumi Goto-Shibata, “Internationalism and nationalism: Anti-Western sentiments in Japanese foreign policy debates, 1918–22,” in Nationalisms in Japan, ed. Naoko Shimazu (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2006), 66.

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It was a conscious concern of leading Buddhists to demonstrate to Western leaders that while on the surface some of their teachings might appear to contradict those of other religions and Western principles, in fact, at the most fundamental level there was profound agreement.10 Kaigyoku seeks to demonstrate this congruity between Enlightenment ideals and Buddhist doctrine. As we saw, for him, humanitarianism flows from Buddhist compassion. Most importantly, perhaps, Kaigyoku as well as numerous other contributors to the Chūgai nippō during the months of the Peace Conference, saw in the doctrine of shitsu-u busshō—all beings are innately endowed with Buddha-nature—a kind of Buddhist natural law upon which the ideals of freedom, equality, and human rights are founded. Kaigyoku sees the racial ( jinshu no) and religious prejudices of the past as the primary obstacles to achieving a future peace, and it is precisely for this reason that a foundational principle stressing human ontological equality is so crucial. As, in fact, racial and religious differences did not underlie the fraternal carnage of the recent European conflict, we see here a particularly Asian concern for a fundamental change in the Western powers’ treatment of non-white peoples. The second major prescription that Kaigyoku declares necessary for the establishment of peace is leniency towards Germany. In article 3 he urges delegates to engage in “entirely impartial and selfless justice,” ideals which also proceed from Buddhist doctrines—those of non-attachment and no-self (mushū muga). In article 8 he extends this generalised condition to the specific case of Germany and makes an impassioned appeal for “kind treatment” that draws not only upon Buddhist tolerance, but also upon Japanese martial virtues as found in bushido. By invoking “the path of loving one’s enemies” as further rationale for such leniency, he seems again to be drawing attention to parallels between Buddhist, and Japanese, teachings and the values underlying Western civilisation, in this case, Christianity. Another major concern of Kaigyoku’s is the fate of religion in the postwar world (articles 2, 4, 7, 9, 10). It is worth highlighting the widespread Buddhist hope that he articulates for a resolution concerning the freedom of missionary activity “grounded in the great principle of the freedom of religious belief, to be guaranteed at the upcoming Peace Conference (article 7).” While Christian missionaries were allowed to proselytise in Japan in accordance with the ­treaties signed with European powers in the 1850s, Buddhists only gradually began to emulate such foreign missionary work during the latter decades of the nineteenth century. Their hope to be allowed to expand this activity, along 10  See Ume, “Bukkyōto no sengen o yomu [Reading the Buddhists’ Declaration],” Chūgai nippō 28 (1919): 1.

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with the two hopes detailed above—the overcoming of racial prejudice and leniency toward Germany—comprise the paramount concerns of this manifesto. Failure in any of these regards, the manifesto warns, can only result in a “fragile peace” (article 2). As we know, the peace turned out to be very fragile indeed. The decisions reached by the allied delegates at the Paris Peace Conference were characterised much more by infighting, hypocrisy, and power politics based on national self-interest than by Wilsonian ideals. One tragic result of such deportment by the allied powers in Paris is that it reconfirmed and deepened a longstanding mood of mistrust towards the ultimate international designs of Anglo-American nations not only among pan-Asianists and ultranationalists, but among the moderately progressive, internationalist-leaning, and cautiously optimistic sectors of traditional Japanese society, the hopes of which Kaigyoku’s manifesto expresses. John S. LoBreglio

Further Reading

Goto-Shibata, Harumi. “Internationalism and nationalism: Anti-Western sentiments in Japanese foreign policy debates, 1918–22.” In Nationalisms in Japan, edited by Naoko Shimazu, 66–84. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2006. Kawanami, Hiroko. “Japanese Nationalism and the Universal Dharma.” In Buddhism and Politics in Twentieth-Century Asia, edited by Ian Harris, 105–126. New York: Pinter, 1999. Large, Stephen. “Buddhism and Political Renovation in Prewar Japan: The Case of Akamatsu Katsumaro.” Journal of Japanese Studies 9 (1983): 33–66. Large, Stephen. “Buddhism, Socialism, and Protest in Prewar Japan: The Career of Seno’o Girō.” Modern Asian Studies, 21 (1987): 153–171. Sakamoto, Rumi. “Race-ing Japan.” In Japanese Cultural Nationalism: At Home and in the Pacific, edited by Roy Starrs, 179–92. Folkestone: Global Oriental Ltd., 2004. Shimazu, Naoko. Japan, Race and Equality: The Racial Equality Proposal of 1919. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. Stone, Jacqueline. “A Vast and Grave Task: Interwar Buddhist Studies as an Expression of Japan’s Envisioned Global Role.” In Culture and Identity: Japanese Intellectuals During the Interwar Years, edited by J. Thomas Rimer, 217–233. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.

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Source Text11

One: May the Peace Conference proceed according to a merciful and charitable humanitarianism based upon the fundamental Buddhist doctrine of great compassion.12 It is not possible to establish the basis for world peace if one preaches humanitarianism while in actual fact one’s actions are inhumane. Two: Based upon the teaching that all beings have Buddha-nature innately (shitsu-u busshō),13 we hope that [the delegates] will guarantee an equal measure of human rights and freedom. The concepts of freedom and equality that arise from the Buddhist doctrine of all beings innately having Buddha-nature are the source of mutual love and mutual respect among humanity and the foundation of international amity. The solution to the matter at hand—the issue of peace—can most reliably be guaranteed according to this doctrine. If, because of racial ( jinshu no) and religious differences, human rights and freedom are not accorded equally, it cannot but result in a fragile peace. Three: As one of the most potent and necessary conditions for the establishment of peace, we hope that [the delegates] may take as the basis of the Peace Conference the entirely impartial and selfless justice found in the Buddhist truths of non-attachment and no-self (mushū muga).14

11  Watanabe Kaigyoku, “Bukkyōto no kibō—heiwa kaigi ni taishite, [The Hopes of Buddhists for the Peace Conference],” Chūgai nippō 22 (November 1918), 1. 12   Daijihi, or “great compassion,” is the third and highest level of Buddhist compassion, which abandons discriminatory thought and flows from the perception of the absolute equality of all things. 13   Shitsu-u busshō is the doctrine held by some Mahāyāna Buddhist sects that all sentient beings are equally endowed with the quality of Buddhahood and thus have the potential of awakening to this fact. 14   Mushū muga refers to two of the most fundamental Buddhist doctrines, those of ‘nonattachment’ and ‘no-self.’ ‘Attachment’ is the desire for things, or the fixation upon concepts. This is seen as one of the major causes of human suffering. The teaching of non-attachment is thus aimed at divorcing the individual from such bonds in order to progress toward enlightenment. Perhaps the primary attachment human beings have is to the notion that they possess an integral, independent and permanent ‘self’ (atman, Sanskrit ātman). The Buddhist teaching of no-self counters such a notion, arguing against the reality of such a self or ‘soul.’ Rather, according to the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism, “the empirical self is merely an aggregation of various elements, and with their disintegration it ceases to exist; therefore it has no ultimate reality of its own.”

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Four: Out of a sense of love for humanity and egalitarianism we would like to urge [the delegates] to eradicate intolerant and narrow-minded prejudices concerning race and religion and to respect and value equally races and ­religions. The recent warfare was caused by Germany’s holding of biased views such as that of the ‘yellow peril’ which transgresses against humanity via its racial and religious prejudices. Five: We would like [the delegates] to respect, value and hold in high esteem the culture and history of every ethnicity (minzoku); to share with each other the virtues and accomplishments of these [cultures and histories]; and, to bring about the promotion of the welfare of national subjects (kokumin). Along with racial and religious prejudices, [the delegates] must abolish [attitudes] such as that which holds only the culture of white peoples and the history of Europe as praiseworthy, and which derides the cultures and histories of other ethnicities (minzoku). As each country differs in its respective history and culture, it is mistaken to regard only the history and culture of one’s own country as good and beautiful, to force this upon the subjects of other nations (kokumin), and to do such things as attempt to alter their history and culture. Such is not the way to guarantee a permanent peace. Six: According to the doctrine of ‘repaying kindness’ (hōon),15 we hope that all countries will operate according to the principle of mutual assistance and that they will engage in mutual economic and cultural support to repay the debts that they owe to each other. If this is put into practice, we will be able to mitigate to a certain extent an economic war following the Great War. Seven: On the freedom to engage in missionary work. While all religion must be free to engage in propagation and missionary work in every country, it is not right that, depending on the country, the same rights for engaging in missionary work are not recognised. We would like the freedom to engage in missionary work, grounded in the great principle of the freedom of religious belief, to be guaranteed at the upcoming Peace Conference. Eight: On the kind treatment of enemies. In regard to our enemy, Germany, we hope that, [the delegates] will not repay violence with violence and, without cruelly going into detail about past crimes, will generate the so-called attitude of ‘hating the crime but not the person.’ Once the enemy’s swords have been shattered, their arrows spent, and they have surrendered, it is the spirit of Japanese bushido and the spirit of Buddhist tolerance to pursue the matter no further. Thus, [the delegates] should not consider this solely as a political matter, but with spiritual concern should take the path of loving one’s enemy. 15   Hōon is the Buddhist teaching that stresses the importance of acknowledging, and returning, the favors and blessings one has received.

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Nine: We hope that concerning work for world peace, or [concerning] movements to get rid of vice and corruption and to promote culture, all religions will join together in a spirit of tolerance and freedom and engage in actions of united cooperation [concerning] the prohibition of alcohol, the abolition of prostitution, the prohibition of opium, the banning of scandalous literature and the elimination of other evils of the world. [We also hope that] all religions will be determined to act with united cooperation in regard to movements that could promote the wellbeing of humanity. Even though each religion differs in its respective doctrines and history, as each agrees in its objective of trying to promote the wellbeing of humanity, we are convinced that [religions] can unite and join together to a certain degree if they go about this in the right way. Ten: We hope that all religions work together with like-minded spirit, and based on the authority of their beliefs, become pillars for the maintenance of peace, and that they may become the vehicles of a worldwide alliance that could prevent once and for all the devastations of war. If, from the standpoint of humanity, equality and justice, all religions keep in mind the safeguarding of world peace by means of a spirit of tolerance and freedom, we are convinced that we will avoid the mistakes and prejudices of the past, and that the enactment of like-minded cooperation is not at all impossible. Selected and translated by John S. LoBreglio

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Shaku Sōen: Strenuous Endeavors (Japan, 1912) Introduction The ‘opening’ of Japan to increased foreign contact in the 1850s represented but one in a series of challenges faced by a burgeoning modern nation-state. For Japanese Buddhist sectarian leaders and scholars, the socioeconomic and political problems attendant to the pressures exerted by Euro-American colonial interests in Asia and Japan’s own rapid industrialisation—to say nothing of the institutional threats, both actual and perceived, posed by the construction of State Shinto and the influx of foreign Christian missionaries in Japan— necessitated a significant rethinking of Buddhism’s role in modern Japanese society. The growth of domestic infrastructure and increased opportunities for travel abroad further complicated this discursive process as Japanese Buddhists were brought into contact with an ever-growing number of new interlocutors. As networks of exchange grew among Buddhists from around Japan and across Asia, between Anglo-American orientalist scholars, proponents of modernist enlightenment thought, and Protestant evangelicals, the need to define Buddhism as ineluctably ‘modern’ precipitated a wide variety of debates and proposed measures for reform such as: the nature and function of Buddhism according to modernist claims made on ‘religion’; the means and objectives for the promotion of Buddhist education; the proper role of institutional Buddhism in the colonial context; and, of course, the range of possible exegetical relations between Buddhist doctrine and modern civic virtues (e.g, patriotism, hard work, etc.). While consensus regarding these issues was rarely achieved among Buddhists belonging to the same sect, let alone different sects, Buddhist progressive reformers, regardless of their national, political or institutional affiliations, were in general agreement over the need to construct a logically sound and philosophically consistent vision of Buddhism that might be successfully deployed in addressing the specific social and political problems attendant to the modern age. It is in this changing socio-political landscape that Rinzai Zen priest Kōgaku Sōen (1860–1919), better known as Shaku Sōen, rose to prominence as one of the most well-known, and well-connected, Buddhist sectarian leaders of the day.1 Ordained at age ten by Ekkei Shuken (1810–1884, Myōshinji branch), 1  In addition to the numerous accounts of Sōen’s early life and later career available in Japaneselanguage sectarian biographies such as Inoue Zenjō, Shaku Sōen den [A Biography of Shaku Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Sōen went on to study with several teachers before finally completing his Zen training under the direction of Kōsen Sōon (Imakita, 1816–92), chief abbot of Engakuji and himself an early Meiji proponent of Buddhist clerical reform and lay practice. After receiving Kōsen’s ‘seal of transmission’ (inka shōmei) in 1883, Sōen embarked on a brief period of study at Keiō Gijuku (now Keiō University) enrolling in the ‘special course’ in Western studies. Despite his teacher’s initial objections to the move, unique for a Zen priest at this time, Sōen’s short tenure at Keiō (1885–86) brought him into direct contact with Anglo-American missionaries employed by the college as instructors, and thus indirectly into contact with the perceived threat posed by Protestant Christianity, in particular, as a model and challenge to Japanese Buddhist revival. In a subsequent trip to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in the spring of 1887, Sōen bore witness to the reform measures undertaken by such notable Buddhist figures as Anagārika Dharmāpala (1864–1933) and Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907) with respect to improvements in education and renewed interest in forms of proselytism, measures which were in part a response to the pervasive presence of Christian missions in c­ olonial South Asia.2 While the ostensible reason behind his threeyear sojourn was to study the precepts practiced in the Theravāda monastic community, Sōen’s experiences in Ceylon provided further proof of the urgent necessity, as he put it, “of setting before the world a rational and a practical Buddhism that will satisfy the minds of thinkers as well as meet the demands of a needy society.”3 The social construction of ‘modern Buddhism,’ often used synonymously with the term ‘New Buddhism’ (shin bukkyō), began taking shape by the latter half of the Meiji period.4 Along with Shimaji Mokurai,5 Ōuchi Seiran and Inoue Enryō, Buddhist figures, both lay and cleric, set about promoting a cosmopolitan, socially committed conception of Buddhism through extensive peripatetic tours organised in Japan, across Asia, and around the world. Upon Sōen] (Kyoto: Zenbunka Kenkyūjo, 2000), and biographical dictionaries, Sōen left behind at his death an autobiographical manuscript entitled, Koromo no hokorobi [Split Seams in a Monk’s Robe], which was later incorporated into his Complete Works [in Japanese]. Sōen’s works can be accessed through the following compilations: Matsuda Take no Shimabito ed., Shaku Sōen zenshū [The Complete Works of Shaku Sōen] (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1929–30); Nagao Daigaku (Sōshi) ed., Sōen zenji shokanshū [Collected Letters of Zen Master Sōen] (Tokyo: Nishōdō, 1931). 2  For more on Sōen’s trip to Ceylon, see: Richard Jaffe, “Seeking Śākyamuni: Travel and the Reconstruction of Japanese Buddhism,” Journal of Japanese Studies 30/1 (2004): 65–96. On Olcott, see chapter 3.08 in this volume. 3  Shaku Sōen, “The Future of Religion in Japan,” in the Japan Evangelist 3/5 (1896): 279. 4  The Meiji period extended from 1868 to 1912. 5  See chapter 2.02. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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his return from Ceylon in October 1889 and promotion to the post of head abbot of Engakuji shortly thereafter, Sōen embarked on what would be the first of many such tours conducted during his lifetime, namely, a three-month stay in Chicago culminating in his appearance as a member of the Japanese delegation to the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions.6 His status now assured as one of the great ‘champions of Buddhism,’ the general regard with which he was held as a sectarian leader and skilled orator grew apace. Following a brief stint of service as a military chaplain during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) and his subsequent trip to the United States (1905–06) where he delivered a series of lectures to American and Japanese nationals—the latter of which resulted in the publication of Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot (1907)7—throughout the last decade of Meiji he was actively engaged in preaching tours at home as well, often speaking to the lay community at Engakuji in Kamakura, the Young Buddhists’ Association, and to various women’s groups. Despite recurring health problems, he continued to engage in such activities until, following a series of trips made to Hokkaidō, Shikoku and Kyūshū throughout 1909–11, he was restricted to bedrest in May 1912. It is a testament to the extreme zeal with which Meiji era Buddhists pursued this type of peripateticism that when Nakamura Zekō, then-governor of the South Manchuria Railway (SMR), visited Sōen in Kamakura in September of 1912 to request his services in delivering a series of public talks in Manchuria, Sōen was quick to accept the invitation. Shortly after meeting with Nakamura, Sōen left for Korea on October 8, taking with him Taibi Keishun (Shaku) and Hōgaku Jikō (Seigo) as attendants. Arriving in Pusan the following morning, they then travelled up the railway, finally connecting with the Andong-Mukden trunk line on October 11. The party arrived in Dalian five days later where Sōen had a chance to observe the SMR facilities there before travelling on to Port Arthur (Lüshun). After returning again to Dalian they set out back up the main line stopping in Dashiqiao, Yingkou, Liaoyang, Mukden and Fushun. The trip was finally cut short with Sōen falling ill yet again in Changchun, the main line’s northern terminus, whereupon Sōen and his attendants began the journey home to Japan via Korea on October 31. During this whistle-stop tour conducted in just a few short weeks and covering over 3,500 miles round-trip, Sōen preached in over 6  On Japanese participation at the World’s Parliament, see: James E. Ketelaar, Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and Its Persecution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), esp., 136–73. 7  Shaku Sōen, Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot: Addresses on Religious Subjects, including the Sutra of Forty-two Chapters, trans. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki (Chicago: Open Court, 1907), (Reprint in 2004, Three Leaves Press/Doubleday).

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20 places to a combined audience of more than 7,000 people.8 In “Strenuous Endeavors,” one of the fifteen lectures that was transcribed and later compiled for publication by his attendants under the title Nenge mishō (The Flower Held up and the Faint Smile),9 Sōen offers a civic interpretation of ‘religion,’ or ‘religious mind,’ as it relates to the future health and welfare of the modern nation-state. The epistemological confusion concerning canonical conceptions of ‘religion’ in evidence at the very start of Meiji is exampled here as Sōen goes on to adopt a seemingly universalist approach to understanding religion and its material importance in modern society, in this instance meaning Japanese colonial empire.10 By drawing a direct corollary between the project of colonisation and an ethic of work predicated on Zen Buddhist teachings, Sōen thus attempts to demonstrate the social utility of ‘religious mind’ for his audience, both in Manchuria and on the page. Representing one of the most pervasive shifts in late Meiji Buddhist discourse, this turn towards the social— variously expressed as ‘social work,’ ‘social education,’ or much later as ‘social Buddhism’—necessitated that religion in general, and Buddhism in particular, be viewed as a functional aspect of modern social formation. Whereas early Meiji proponents of reform had initially sought to clarify categorical distinctions between ‘politics’ and ‘religion,’ their late Meiji colleagues, including Shaku Sōen, variously set out to blur these very same distinctions by staking a claim for Buddhism’s ‘legitimate entry’ into all aspects of Japanese social life. Sōen’s legacy is perhaps most commonly understood today as it concerns the initial role he played in the introduction of Zen to the West, both through his own efforts and those of his lay disciple, Suzuki Daisetsu (D. T. Suzuki, 1870–1966). In the context of late Meiji Japan, however, Sōen stands as an important transitional figure, between those who sought 8  While nowhere near the estimated 187,500 people whom Olcott addressed during his 1889 lecture tour in Japan, the figure given here represents roughly a quarter of the entire Japanese population in the railway zone in 1912, just under 28,000. 9  The collection was first published under the title, Shuyō no shiori [A Guidebook for Practice], by the South Manchuria Railway Company General Affairs Section in 1913, and then later reprinted in 1915 by an independent publishing house in Tokyo that specialised in Buddhist publications, Heigo Shuppansha. This latter edition was reprinted again in 1977 by Kokusho Kankōkai. The translation here is based on the 1915 edition. 10  The suggestion of religious pluralism in Sōen’s talk is further complicated elsewhere in the collection as he seeks to address the underlying foundation of the ‘spirit of the Yamato race,’ namely, Zen Buddhism. This tendency towards cultural essentialism apparent in early twentieth-century Zen Buddhist discourse has received a great deal of attention from scholars since the 1990s. See Brian Victoria, Zen at War (New York: Weatherhill, 1997).

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to ‘preserve the dharma’ and those who argued for a complete overhaul of the entire institutional framework of Japanese Buddhism. Beyond the formal sectarian and educational appointments he assumed—serving twice as head abbot of Engakuji and twice as the president of Rinzai University (now Hanazono University)—Sōen, like so many other Buddhist reformers at this time, played a definite role in facilitating the more informal networks of communication that existed in and between different countries in Asia, Europe, and North America. What emerged from this complex web of interrelations as ‘modern Buddhism,’ both in Japan and elsewhere, represents a wide spectrum of specific political agendas and individual positions regarding Buddhism as a religion in and of itself that changed over time, but which nevertheless continues to affect our understanding of the Buddhist ‘tradition’ to this day. Helen A. Findley

Further Reading

Auerback, Micah. “A Closer Look at Zen at War: The Battlefield Chaplaincy of Shaku Sōen in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05).” In Buddhism and Violence: Militarism and Buddhism in Modern Asia, edited by Vladimir Tikhonov and Torkel Brekke, 152–171. New York: Routledge, 2012. Furuta, Shokin. “Shaku Soen: The Footsteps of a Modern Zen Master,” translated by Sumiko Kudo. Philosophical Studies of Japan 8 (1967): 67–91. Kōnen, Tsunemitsu. “Shaku Sōen (1859–1919).” In Shapers of Japanese Buddhism, edited by Yusen Kashiwahara and Koyu Sonoda, 219–229. Tokyo: Kōsei Publishing, 1994. Mohr, Michel. “The Use of Traps and Snares: Shaku Sōen Revisited.” In Zen Masters, edited by Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright, 183–216. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.



Source Text11

This evening I will not focus on a particular topic, but I would like to speak on the main theme of ‘Strenuous endeavors’ (rikkō).12 Meeting with you all 11  Shaku Sōen, “Rikkō” in Nenge mishō [The Flower Held up and the Faint Smile] (Tokyo: Heigo Shuppansha, 1915). 12  The term rikkō is perhaps most commonly associated with an ideology of personal striving and social success ubiquitous in late Meiji popular discourse, a discourse encapsulated by such continental aphorisms as risshin shusse (rising in the world). As a descriptive term, it Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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right now, face to face like this, various feelings well up in me. Once before when I set foot here in Manchuria,13 my initial impression was of a vast and desolate landscape in which the dust of the north wind blew about. This being the natural landscape, there is nothing particularly surprising about such an impression. Yet the thought of this bleakness, the profound loneliness of it, has increasingly come to my mind whenever I think about your life here. By mere observation one can see that you have grand homes here and that even hospitals have been built. Surely then there should also be graveyards. They are not yet conspicuously present, however. There should also be shrines as we have in the homeland (naichi), and yet there don’t happen to be many. What about such sites as Buddhist temples? I fear that there aren’t very many of these either.14 How does this strike you? Does the thought not cross your minds constantly, my fellow countrymen, that there is something missing in a situation such as this? I have travelled about in the West previously.15 Of course this doesn’t mean that I’ve toured every inch of those countries, yet while staying for some time over there I have myself entered the homes of their native countrymen and collected still more information from others. To raise one or two examples: first, the great cities of the West are, needless to say, provided with every kind was particularly deployed in connection to various educational and emigration schemes promoting avenues for upward mobility, these schemes in many instances being further supported by religiously affiliated institutions—the most prominent example of which is the eponymous Nippon Rikkōkai (Japanese Strenuous Efforts Society), a Protestant Christian charity founded in 1897 to support students in need wishing to study overseas. 13  Sōen is here referencing his time spent as a military chaplain attached to the First Division Headquarters during the Russo-Japanese War. He spent a little over two months (May–July 1904) at the front attending to the wounded at field hospitals and conducting funeral services. 14  As early as 1871, Japanese Buddhist priests were being sent overseas to conduct missionary work along Japan’s colonial frontiers. Higashi Honganji was the first to take action in this regard, sending some 100 priests to Hokkaidō in the early Meiji period. By 1912, the sect maintained a total of 46 mission stations in Sakhalin (Karafuto), Korea, Manchuria and Hawaii. In Dalian alone, there were already four mission stations in 1912, associated with the Nichiren, Shingon, Jōdo and Sōtō Zen schools, as well as two branch temples belonging to the Nishi and Higashi Honganji branches of Jōdo Shin. 15  In addition to his trip to Chicago in 1893, Sōen spent almost a year in the United States as a guest of Ida Evelyn Russell (1862–1917), before travelling on to Europe in April 1906. He left for Asia via Egypt in July, and then continued on to Ceylon and India before finally returning home to Japan on September 4, 1906. Portions of his published accounts, Kankattō [Idle Conversations] (1907) and Ōbei unsuiki [Diary of a Monk in Europe and America] (1907), were incorporated into Suzuki’s editorial organisation of Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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of social facility imaginable, each having its own churches, hospitals, libraries, various places of amusement and so on. Going out into the countryside then, we are greeted first by the sight of churches, and next, schools. Indeed, hospitals, churches and schools, among other things, should be deemed a necessity in any place where group life is undertaken—that is, wherever human beings live. Upon entering their houses then, the placement of musical instruments in the drawing room will catch one’s eye right away, these rooms being invariably furnished with at least an organ or piano, for example. Taking pride of place on the drawing room table, moreover, are the sutras. I say ‘sutra,’ but as those countries are Christian nations they are certain to be in possession of such a text as the Bible. Along with these things, paintings, collected according to the family’s taste, and edifying books form the principle decorations of the parlor. Whether you are gazing in from outside or taking a look around from within the house, for some reason it feels as if a cordial breeze is blowing through the home. The atmosphere within is such that, supposing there were snow or frost on the ground, or even when no one is at home, it is as if a warm breath of air were circulating about the house. How would this compare to the homes in our own country? How regrettable it is that we still fall far short of this domestic ideal! Unsatisfied by mere material progress, these Westerners thus take another step forward into the spiritual world (seishin kai) finding solace there . . . This need for spiritual comfort is revealed in the home, sometimes with a single musical instrument and sometimes with paintings and sculptures. At the same time, it is an expression of their religious faith and moral culture. Because of this, when Westerners determine to travel abroad, or immigrate, they treat wherever they go as their own homeland, and so setting up permanent residence there they can accomplish great things. [. . .] Students often recite the poem “Dying in a foreign land, shall we long for the land of our ancestral graves? No, wherever in the world we may be may serve as our final resting place.” We should greatly admire the resolve expressed here. Yet if we merely mouth the words and cannot find in our hearts a sort of firm standpoint on which to base this resolve, then we will by no means be able to cast aside our birthplace and take a foreign country to be the land of our family graves. If you truly do decide to make your final resting place wherever you happen to be, then you have only to establish a place that can satisfactorily serve as the location of your family grave. What I imagine, thinking it over and comparing it with this and that, is that you all came here to Manchuria and without wanting in food, clothing or shelter, you have certainly made a life of material civilisation for yourselves. And yet, with respect to the spiritual world

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here, I believe that you also find it lacking in comparison to that found in the homeland. Now then, during my travels I frequently heard tell that while Westerners are particularly zealous when it comes to religion (shūkyō),16 the Japanese are really quite indifferent to it. How about this? If we look back across the generations to our parents and our parents’ parents, there is not one among our ancestors who was either irreligious or faithless. I dare say we will not find any such person when we examine the matter carefully. And yet, at the time of the Meiji Restoration, even those things which should have been of the greatest consequence to us were shaken to their core by the violent winds of change sweeping through society, and as further consequence, the fine morals and religion, which had up until that time been present, were temporarily destroyed. In that case, then, there is nothing which could properly take the place of this absence. Of course, in documents like the Imperial Rescript on Education (kyōiku chokugo)17 there is a value ascribed to religion in a certain sense; however, this is still new. Consequently, the spiritual world may be said to be in a period of transition, and even now we have yet to find a spiritual foundation upon which we can securely stand. Now I have to at least make mention of the religious mind (shūkyō shin) at this point—we are all, by our very natures, inherently possessed of this thing called ‘religious mind.’ If we have such feelings as sadness and happiness, hate and love at all, then on the other hand we can’t neglect our religious sensibilities. We absolutely can’t declare that we have no religious mind. For to say that 16  First popularised in the 1870s, shūkyō eventually became the standard translation term for the Euro-American concept of religion, thus displacing earlier attempts to devise functional neologisms for this fundamentally modern conceptual structure within the specific context of mid-nineteenth-century diplomatic relations. By the end of Meiji, shūkyō signified a legal category of structural differentiation—legitimating private belief, and its public expression, in relation to officially sanctioned institutional affiliations (e.g., Buddhism, Shinto, Christianity). The term was also accepted as encompassing the broader ethnographic and universalistic claims embedded in ‘religion’ as a modernist category of knowledge to such an extent, indeed, that Sōen can now posit shūkyō here as a natural and necessary part of the Japanese historical experience. 17  Promulgated on October 30, 1890, the Imperial Rescript on Education does not explicitly reference any particular religion. It does make mention, however, of many key Confucian concepts (e.g., loyalty, filial piety, etc.) in connection with the promotion of moral virtues for the benefit of the kokutai (national polity). Confucianism itself was a subject of great debate among nineteenth-century Asian and Euro-American scholars who were intent on clarifying its taxonomic status as either a ‘philosophy’ or ‘religion.’

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we don’t all but suggests suicide—that is, it is precisely the same as taking one’s own life. How lamentable it is that confused by the conditions of our external world, we have yet to give expression to this aspect of our being! Busy eating, busy putting on clothes, busy chasing after material goods, nothing can ever be enough for us, to the extent that we cannot find time to arouse within ourselves a single moment of self-awareness. Fortunately for us, however, when we happen upon something, as when we notice the light of the stars twinkling in the night sky, we have occasion to recognise in this sight the pure and exalted sentiment called ‘religious mind’ . . . Without calling it either kami or buddha, it is something that you all try to find, and I believe, it is something that is searching for you from the opposite direction. When you knock upon a door, there is that which will open the door from the inside. When you strike a bell with a great dong, there is that which will answer with a dong. And, when you ring it with a slight ting, there is that which will ting in response. This thing that momentarily shows itself is none other than the religious mind. For all our innate religious sensibilities, given the social disorder and violence attendant to the beginning of the Meiji period, those people who had received instruction in various books at school went about boasting saying that they didn’t belong to any religion. At the time, people thought it clever to be considered irreligious. Those who made such boastful pronouncements were believed to be men of learning as a result . . . They set off saying “Since I’m out of school, I’ll start by travelling in the West. First, I’ll go to America and try to live and work there.” Meanwhile, there were those who received sponsorship and ended up receiving employment from people over there. And after being asked various questions by these Westerners, such as what their general history was and what kind of trade they engaged in, they were in the end questioned about what religion they practiced. At that time, they were confused as to how best to answer as is the case now, even after so much time has passed. Shallow-minded people will then respond with utter and complete thoughtlessness, believing that because they are in a Christian country that if they say they are Christian, Westerners will take a liking to them. So, they answer, “I am a Christian.” They will then be asked: “That’s all well and good, but why do you believe in Christ? Everyone knows that since ancient times in Japan there has been Shinto, Confucianism, and also Buddhism. But then, finding these religions somehow lacking, you followed Christianity as well?” Since their initial answer was irresponsible, they will be unable to reply to this question. In the worst case scenario, they will even declare, “I don’t belong to any religion.” Upon hearing such a thing, these Westerners . . . will think that the opening up of Japan precipitated a body of promising youth to fall prey to irreligion. And if they are irreligious, then they must be immoral. If the foundation of the mind Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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called religion is absent, then they will commit evil acts whenever they please following their own inclinations. And they won’t hesitate to do something which will benefit themselves personally, whether it be good or bad, when they are ordered to do so by another. Because these Westerners think as much, they will discreetly get out of employing the Japanese, which is truly regrettable. People, whether they follow Buddhism, Christianity, Shinto or place their faith in a sardine’s head,18 if they believe with honest faith, or true sincerity, then they are people who have something to recommend them. For a person of this caliber can certainly do work of some consequence. [. . .] The Japanese people are born having in their possession this religious mind, though they are, in a word, unaware of it. That famous Bryan19— who in the upcoming American presidential election is serving as the commander of the Democratic Party in opposition to Roosevelt20 and incumbent President Taft21—this man has come to Japan once before. While there, he met with rather important businessmen as well as distinguished politicians and economists. Upon returning home to his country, in passing comment on the Japanese, he said “The top-ranking people in Japanese society speak in grand terms about ordinary reason, but meanwhile when it comes to making a remark on religious faith, their religious mind is a truly sad subject.” Returning to his country, Bryan delivers public lectures making these types of comments. Over there, when speaking of reputable industrialists, Bryan is acknowledged as both learned and moral in his dealings, and likewise in the case of religion, he is known to have a spirit of dedicated faith. As a man generally looked up to as a leader of many exceeding middling rank, he is not simply an industrialist, but is also surely a religious man, possessed of firm belief. If those who 18  Part of an idiomatic expression in Japanese, to “place faith in a sardine’s head” implies that through belief anything can be made sacred, even something as insignificant as a sardine’s head. Sōen seems to suggest here something on the order of religious folk practices falling outside the ken of the institutional religions he mentions. 19  William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) was responsible for the Democratic Party’s nomination of Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) in the 1912 presidential election. Long before Bryan took up office as Secretary of State (1913–1915) during Wilson’s presidency, he had acquired considerable fame as a public speaker on the Chautauqua circuit, a popular education movement begun in the late nineteenth century. Having earned the moniker, ‘the Voice,’ Bryan used the summer events sponsored by Chautauqua organisations as a platform from which to spread his populist and evangelical message. 20  Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) ran on the Progressive Party’s ticket in the 1912 election. Sōen himself met Roosevelt in 1905, during his second trip to the United States. 21  Republican Party nominee William Howard Taft (1856–1930) lost the election to Wilson, who won a majority in the Electoral College and forty-two percent of the popular vote.

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advocate a religion are considered separately, well then, he is certainly at least something like a great scholar or great philosopher who through his own learning has discovered a kind of morality, or a certain religious sense. Such being the case, he was bound to be disappointed in coming to Japan. In our country, such distinguished persons as the genrō (elder statesmen) and ministers of state often say “We are neither school teachers nor are we monks, so we’ll be hanged if we’re going to be judged by the standards of morality and religion!” This is indeed an astonishing statement, a truly superficial view. Just because one is a politician, it doesn’t at all mean that religion and morality are unnecessary. If one is a politician, these are all the more indispensable, and if one is an industrialist, these are all the more necessary. In those days when I used to idle away my time around Mita,22 I constantly frequented the home of the venerable Fukuzawa. On one occasion, old Fukuzawa said to me, “Sōen, I am not well acquainted with matters of religion, but in Zen is there not the phrase ‘Attaining buddhahood with this very mind’ (sokushin jōbutsu)?23 Well, I follow the idea ‘Pursuing industry with this very mind’ (sokushin jitsugyō).” This is an extremely interesting remark. It means cultivating a living person who directly upon leaving school can take up the duties of work. But a living person is also endowed with religion and morals, and it is this sort of person whom today I would also like to fashion in great numbers. If we take for granted that being a scholar means that you simply acquire learning but lack religious faith, or that being an industrialist means that you have the talent to conduct business but lack a sense of morality, then morality and religion are in this way relegated to the concern with things beyond this world. We must see, however, how greatly mistaken this view in fact is. For if this were indeed the case, then I fear Japan would not possibly be able to achieve any truly sound progress. This evening, many of my miscellaneous thoughts and impressions have come up, and we have ended up digressing from the main topic. From this point on, however, we will turn the discussion back to ‘strenuous endeavors.’ [. . .] 22  The area in Tokyo where Keiō Gijuku (Keiō University), founded by leading Meiji intellectual Fukuzawa Yukichi (1834–1901), is located. Fukuzawa, as noted here, became something of a mentor to Sōen during the latter’s tenure at Keiō. This relationship is all the more significant in the present context given the impact that Fukuzawa himself had on the popularisation of the term shūkyō through his many public speeches and published writings, including the seminal Bunmeiron no gairyaku [An Outline of a Theory of Civilisation] (1875). 23  Written with the character kokoro (mind/heart) for shin, the phrase is an alternative rendering of sokushin sokubutsu (This mind itself is the buddha-mind). More commonly, however, we see the phrase appear with the character mi (body) for shin, and is in this instance translated “Attaining buddhahood in this very body.”

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Do we come into this world to eat? Or, do we come into this world to work?24 Scientifically speaking, these questions give rise to controversy, and yet, people must at least consider these questions even if not from an academic perspective. There are quite a few people out there, nevertheless, who will without giving much thought to the question say that we are born to seek out food. Again, there are those who will say that we live for clothing or to find pleasure . . . It sounds reasonable to argue that we are born in order to eat, and yet logically speaking, this is wrong. We must say, in fact, that humans come into this world to work. That being so, we eat in order to work; we do not work in order to eat. These two statements sound similar, but they don’t mean the same thing. There is a world of difference between saying that we eat to work and saying that we work to eat. Why do we work? Because we, as a species, must work. And why must we work? Because the functioning of our minds, the structure of our bodies, are such that they both require that we exert ourselves. This duty to work, this sacred task as it were, is not merely limited to us human beings. The sky that we all look up at day after day; the earth that we walk upon day after day; and everything else besides are also each endowed with their own sacred task. When we examine the natural world, we see that . . . the perpetual exchange between day and night, night and day, does not cease for a single moment, for if the world were to stop spinning even for a single day terrible things would occur. Day and night alternate continuously, the four seasons—spring, summer, fall and winter—cycle in their proper order; just like the turning of a wheel, there is no beginning and there is no end. Whether it is the sun or the moon, both properly revolve following a single orbital path as far as we have observed. The numberless stars in the heavens may likewise simply seem to steadily emit light, yet each of these stars has a path that it goes around as well. Everything on earth—down to every blade of grass, tree, grain of sand or piece of rock—is also in motion in its own way; not for even a moment do they stand still. Given that the degree of our development as a species far 24  Work, manual labour in particular, has historically been prized within the Zen monastic community as a form of religious praxis. Sōen’s seemingly precipitate turn to the topic of work here, however, must also be understood within the larger context of Meiji Buddhist reform. Since the early modern period, Buddhism increasingly came under attack by Nativist and Confucian scholars, many of whom charged the religion with being an inherently socially parasitic institution. As this critique gained traction among factions within the early Meiji state, Buddhist proponents attempted to argue in favor of the ‘practical’ value of their teachings vis-à-vis the burgeoning nation-state: not only could Buddhist priests render service to the country in various concrete ways, but they could also prove useful in promoting an ethic of work, or industry ( jitsugyō), essential to a rapidly industrialising Japan.

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out surpasses all others, it is patently clear that we humans are born into this world not to eat, but rather to work. This, one might say, is a form of religious belief. And even supposing people didn’t belong to any formal religion, if they embrace a belief of sorts, then we may say that they possess a type of religion also. When we have faith that our mission is to exert ourselves and take action, we will be able to endure hardship. But if we hold on to the petty desire for such things as food or clothing, then we immediately come undone as soon as we are frustrated in the attempt to attain them, not at all unlike a monkey having fallen from a tree. This is merely empty activity on our part and a sign that we lack true courage. But as we must work, if we hold the belief that we have a sacred task to perform firmly in our hearts, then we can get knocked down seven times and get up eight. No! more than that; we can stumble nine times and still bounce back. And so, every time a difficulty arises, our resolve will continue to increase all the more. All of you, regardless of your gender, are surely possessed of courage in coming to this foreign land. There is nothing more depressing than loss of hope. When one gives up and gives in to hopelessness, there’s nothing more to be done. People can’t go on when they are lost in despair. But, when you hold on to a conviction firmly, no matter the situation you find yourself in at present, your future will be full of promise holding the same sure expectation one feels looking out over a calm and balmy sea. Even Columbus’s discovery of America, while [the success of his voyage] was largely dependent upon the strength of his knowledge and learning, that he was able to put [this knowledge and learning] into practice in itself was because strong conviction had become his foundation. People, therefore, must become aware of their own mission in and through work. [. . .] In Zen it is said that meditation in the midst of activity is a million times more superior to that performed in silence . . . It’s fine, of course, to shut oneself up in some mountain temple and sit in meditation with the intention not to harm even a fly; however, the strength of true practice is useless if it is not cultivated in this ever noisy, complicated world we find ourselves in. This is what I meant just now by ‘practice in the midst of activity.’ That is, I temper my mind by accepting and taking up my responsibilities. To put this another way, my duties and myself are not separate from one another. In this sense, then, when a person has a job to perform they will do it to their utmost even when no one else is there to observe their efforts . . . This is true not only for manual labourers; it applies to all people, no matter how lofty their position. There will, of course, be a difference in the conditions of those who have received an education and those who haven’t, but we can at least say that a person with work to do can himself make use of all the hours in the day [in seeing that a job gets done]. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Long ago someone said, “You are all used by the twelve parts of the day; I use the twelve parts of the day.”25 And as these words suggest, most people are kept busy being pursued by time. Crying that they are overwhelmed by their hectic lives, they have no room in their minds for anything else. In another sense, we can say that they place no worth on simply going about their work. But, for those able to cultivate their minds (shūyō),26 they will themselves make use of time. They will develop the considerable strength to say while I have up until now been used by things, this time I will be the one who makes use of things . . . For this reason, we must all of us, from morning till night, make use of time without being used by time. It is only after this very realisation that time can be transformed into wealth, into jewels, into life. Now, with respect to self-cultivation, there are many facets to this as well, but what this practice [principally] entails is that we maintain the discipline it takes to do right by ourselves, to say nothing of doing right by others, even when we are not being observed by someone else. In other words, say you were alone sitting in a darkened room, you would still need to possess the spirit to stay true to yourself. From where does this spirit arise, you may ask? It comes from religious faith itself. In realising this, we have to awaken to the fact that the true form of our own minds is no different from the true nature of God or the Buddha. Scholars may speak of this as a ‘universal’ or an ‘absolute,’ but in this busy world we do not have time to come to this realisation theoretically. And yet, for those lacking the capacity to understand this, they will continue to earnestly beg for the Buddha to intercede on their behalf, for God to take pity on them. Since time began, people have been fighting one another, constantly matching their wits against each other. The workings of our fellow men being, in truth, petty and predictable, it is apt to lead to conflict and fighting or full-scale war. More than our being insignificant creatures, however, we all are born from something great. And so when we fully come to understand the implications of our true natures, it is then possible for us to attain faith, a faith which is unshakable. What is this faith in itself? A name can’t be given to it, but if forced, one might name it God or the Buddha. But whether we call it God or Buddha, this does not mean that we are offering up prayers to some high, 25  In the Chinese system, the day is divided into twelve two-hour periods. cf. Jōshū-roku, 28. 26  The term shūyō, also translated here as ‘self-cultivation,’ emerged in the 1890s as an alternative approach to the more rigorously formal moral education provided by the public school system. In the context of late Meiji pedagogical discourse, shūyō implied the creation of civically minded individuals in and through the assiduous practice of various forms of self-discipline and was thus seen as a conceptual scion of many older systems of moral cultivation, or self-improvement.

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f­ar-off place. For the gods are together with us always. We can thus achieve peace of mind when we have even a small sense of this, knowing that the Buddha’s compassion, God’s love, rests within our grasp. And with this peace of mind comes courage. People lack real courage when they cannot first pacify their own minds, and if they lack real courage, they cannot then faithfully execute their jobs. Their work, in short, grows inconsistent and slipshod. It’s not a problem when it’s a single person, but when one becomes two or three people—when the number of those who do the same shoddy work day after day begins to increase—then their labour is of no use whatsoever. One might even say that this growing tendency towards inconsistency precipitates the breakdown of society itself. Only when those citizens possessed of a spirit as steady and sound as iron grow in number can a nation’s prestige be exalted overseas. Progress in the future, consequently, must be sound progress. As for the phrase ‘rapid progress,’ such progress is not in fact a matter for rejoicing. When we leapfrog forward into progress, we can only work in fits and starts. Although our country was victorious in the Russo-Japanese War, we must yet again undertake a task just as great. Even so, when it comes to making strides in improving the country’s manufacturing capacity or resource base, we cannot expect to achieve this all at once. We cannot expect that enriching Japan will be as simple a matter as making some easy cash. It’s not just that it’s impossible; rather, we are likely to accrue debt if we try to do everything all at once. Because we live under these conditions, together we must cultivate within ourselves a strong and steady spirit in striving for the future progress of a sound Japan. And, what is the foundation of this spirit? It is none other than our religious mind. There are still a great many things I would like to say, but as we have gone on for quite a while, I will leave off here for tonight and will speak more at some later time. Dashiqiao, Manchuria October 1912 Selected and translated by Helen A. Findley

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R. G. Bhandarkar: The Basis of Theism and its Relation to the So-Called Revealed Religions (India, 1883) Introduction Ramkrishna Gopal Bhandarkar was a distinguished Sanskritist on the European model. He came from a Brahmin family in Malvan, on the coast of Maharashtra, about 300 km south of Bombay (now Mumbai). He studied Sanskrit at university, and became Assistant Professor of Sanskrit at Elphinstone College, Bombay, in 1868, and Professor of Sanskrit at Deccan College, Poona (now Pune) in 1882. As the first Indian Sanskritist to obtain international academic distinction, he published research papers on Indian antiquities, literature and language in leading journals, mainly in India but also in Europe. Besides being thoroughly at home in Marathi (the language of Maharashtra), Sanskrit, and English, he read indological publications in German. Having no scruples against sea travel, he attended the International Congress of Orientalists in Vienna in 1886. He wrote a widely used Sanskrit teaching course, as well as an Early History of the Deccan and a treatise on religious history, Vaiṣṇavism, Śaivism and Minor Religious Systems, published in 1913 as part of the multivolume Grundriss der indo-arischen Philologie und Altertumskunde edited by Georg Bühler and Franz Kielhorn. He was also involved in the movement for religious and social reform which had begun in Calcutta. As a sixteen-year-old student in Bombay, he was initiated into a secret society in which members of different castes ate together in defiance of rules of purity.1 Later, he joined the Prārthanā Samāj (Prayer Society) which was formed in 1867 under the influence of Keshub Chunder Sen, who lectured in Bombay in 1864 and 1868. Like the Brāhmo Samāj, this was at once a social reform movement and a religious movement promoting the rational worship of God, independent of any single source of revelation. However, whereas the leaders of the Brāhmo Samāj differed greatly in their attitudes to Hindu tradition, and in their use of Bengali and Sanskrit sources, the Prārthanā Samāj attached itself to the tradition of devotional poetry in 1  R. G. Bhandarkar, Collected Works of Sir R. G. Bhandarkar, vol. II, ed. Narayan Bapuji Utgikar (Poona/Pune: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1928), 479–480.

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Marathi. This poetry is part of what is called the bhakti (devotion) movement: a term embracing a number of Hindu traditions of devotion to and reliance on a personal deity. The bhakti traditions are marked by the use of vernacular poetry; unlike the learned tradition in Sanskrit, this is often the work of nonBrahmins, and sometimes of women. The poets generally despise ritual rules, Sanskritic learning, and caste privileges. Bhakti poetry in Marathi is known from the fourteenth century; the best-known is the work of Tukārām (1607– 1649). Like other bhakti poets, Tukārām is revered as a saint, and credited with miracles. His songs, in a rhymed but metrically free form called abhaṅg, are widely known and sung. Bhakti poets often identify God with a particular image; Tukārām worshipped Viṭhobā or Viṭṭhal, a form of Vishnu whose shrine at Paṇḍharpur, in south-eastern Maharashtra, is a centre of pilgrimage. But, since he refers to this god as the source of all being, supreme object of devotion and bestower of grace, the Prārthanā Samāj had no difficulty in applying his songs to the worship of the one formless God. As Bhandarkar mentions (see the source below), the Samāj also used Marathi in its services. Bhandarkar’s work for social reform went hand in hand with his scholarship. His academic work included research on the historical origins of the customs to which he and his fellow-reformers objected: caste,2 child marriage,3 and perpetual widowhood.4 By critically examining the dharma literature and its chronology, he found in each case that the restrictions had been introduced gradually over time, and were much lighter or non-existent in the earliest recorded period. Reform therefore was a matter of restoring features of the ancient order of Āryan society. Unlike Dayānanda Sarasvatī,5 however, he accepted the European scholars’ account of the Āryan invasion and the composition of the Veda; unlike him, too, he sought to reform or restore society through existing institutions: the education system, the legal system and the press, all under the aegis of British rule. The selection from Bhandarkar is an anniversary lecture to the Prārthanā Samāj, in 1883. He sees the Samāj as facing opposition on three fronts: traditional Hinduism, Christianity (referred to simply as ‘a foreign religion’) and atheism. The latter two present their ideas largely in English, and address an English-reading public; this is his justification for the Samāj’s practice of having an anniversary lecture in English rather than Marathi. In his title, ‘Basis of Theism, and its Relation to the so-called Revealed Religions,’ the term ‘Theism’ 2  Bhandarkar, Collected Works, 445–458. 3  Bhandarkar, Collected Works, 462–465; 538–602. 4  Bhandarkar, Collected Works, 465–468. 5  See chapter 2.05.

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refers to belief in, and worship of, one formless God, as advocated by the Brāhmo Samāj and Prārthanā Samāj; ‘Theist’ was regularly used as a synonym of ‘Brāhmo.’ ‘Revealed Religions’ refers mainly to Christianity. Bhandarkar begins in terms of European thought, but then turns to Indian history as reconstructed by European scholars and by Western-educated Indians like himself. He ends by appealing to Hindu traditions, with the Prārthanā Samāj as their latest development (he says little about Islam). Part of his purpose is to counter the Christian claim to a special revelation that is only to be found in the Bible. Instead, he claims that religion is a universal feature of humankind, and that this constitutes a general revelation, which should be examined using the methods of historical research. Every culture has some knowledge of the divine or the infinite, based ultimately on the evidence of the senses, and developing progressively in the course of history, though this progress is sometimes interrupted by periods of decline. He proposes to examine the history of Indian religion as a particularly instructive example. This had been done by Friedrich Max Müller (1823–1900), a German Vedic scholar long resident in England, in his Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religions of India.6 Müller presents a similar picture of a progressive general revelation, rejecting both special revelation and the idea of an innate religious instinct, and claiming that the search for the infinite is a response to sensory experience. However, he confines his survey almost entirely to the hymns of the Ṛg-Veda, which are the earliest extant Indian texts; Bhandarkar’s history of Hindu religion continues to the present. He gives a special place to Tukārām, and identifies his message with that of the Prārthanā Samāj. In his peroration, he presents this history as a divine revelation on which the Samāj should rely. The whole lecture is an affirmation of what he sees as best in the Hindu tradition; he further suggests that this tradition contains its own resources for reform and has a universal message. Dermot Killingley

Further Reading

Bhandarkar, R. G. Collected Works of Sir R. G. Bhandarkar, vol. II. Edited by Narayan Bapuji Utgikar (Government Oriental Series–Class B, No. II). Poona/Pune: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1928. 6  Friedrich Max Müller, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religions of India (London: Longmans, Green), 1878. See also chapter 3.10 in this volume.

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Bhandarkar, R. G. Vaiṣṇavism, Śaivism and Minor Religious Systems. Poona/Pune: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1928. Reprinted New York and London: Garland, 1980. Jones, Kenneth W. “Socio-religious Reform Movements in British India.” In New Cambridge History of India III. vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Müller, Friedrich Max. Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religions of India. London: Longmans, Green, 1878.



Source Text7

Gentlemen—I have been asked by the Secretary to deliver an English address to you [. . .] What is the necessity of an English address? Why is a day assigned to it in the programme of our Anniversary ceremonies? Our usual service is conducted in Marathi, we pray to our Almighty father in Marathi, we discuss theological questions in Marathi,—we do not expect, at least for a long time, to find converts to our views among those whose mother tongue is English. Why then should we have an English address? I will answer this question, in part, by referring to something that I have said in my evidence before the Education Commission. In reply to one of the questions of the Commission I have stated my belief that there are some sceptics and atheists among educated natives but that this fact is not due to the instruction imparted in Government Colleges. In English thought, the agnostic and atheistic side has at present acquired a prominence, and as India is now intellectually affiliated to England as it is politically, that side of thought must be expected to cast its reflection here. To this influence the students of Missionary as well as Government Institutions are equally open, and the result in both cases is the same. My idea therefore is that the religious views of a good many of our brethren are influenced by those of some of the leading authors of England. Their mode of thought is European and English and hence can best be dealt with in English. And there is another reason. The prevailing Hindu Religion is a religion in which we find various shades of belief and modes of action confused together. We cannot say it is not monotheism, we cannot say it is not polytheism or even 7  R. G. Bhandarkar, “The Basis of Theism and its Relation to the So-Called Revealed Religions” (a lecture to the Prārthanā Samāj, in English, delivered and published in 1883), in Collected Works of Sir R. G. Bhandarkar, vol. II, ed. Narayan Bapuji Utgikar (Poona /Pune: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1928), 603–616. About 1,800 words have been cut, but without interrupting the argument.

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fetishism.8 It is neither simply a religion of external observances nor is it a religion enjoining purity of heart only. We are dissatisfied with this state of things and have been seeking a more consistent and rational system of religious faith and action. A foreign religion has for some time been knocking at our door and claiming admission.9 If we have deliberately refused to admit it we must give our reasons. And this can only be properly done in the language in which its claims are enforced. And the first thing that I wish to say to both these classes of my hearers is that our religious basis is that supplied to us by the critical method. This method of comparison and criticism has been successfully applied to the determination of historical and literary truth. It has brought about in the short space of about twenty-five years a complete and remarkable revolution in ­philology.10 The favourite theories of centuries have been entirely exploded, and the true relations between the many languages spoken by civilized man have been ascertained, and the principles that determine the origin and growth of human speech have been discovered. We expect similar results from the application of this method to religion, to find out how it is that God reveals himself to man, to determine what is essential and necessary in religion and what is purely accidental, to separate the truth that God himself has taught to man, from the error, with which, in his mental and moral weakness, man has mixed it up. The fact that we have all of us to face in the beginning is that religion is not confined to one people or one country, but that human beings in all ages and 8  ‘Fetishism’ is a term for the worship of inanimate objects. It was proposed by Charles de Brosses (1709–1777) as the original form of religion (Du culte des dieux fétiches, 1760); the theory was revived in the mid-nineteenth century. Jacques Waardenburg, Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion: Aims, Methods and Theories of Research (The Hague: Mouton, 1973–1974), 1, 8; 1, 269; 2, 34. 9  This would have been instantly recognised as a reference to Christian missions. 10  Bhandarkar is referring to the development of comparative philology, the method for reconstructing the history of languages by comparing the earliest attested forms in two or more related languages. The affinity of Sanskrit with European languages was publicised by Sir William Jones in Calcutta 1786 (though he was not the first to notice it). The comparative study of what came to be called the Indo-European language family was developed from that time, mainly by German scholars, and became increasingly methodical, especially from around 1860 onwards. Language change was analysed in terms of ‘laws’ analogous to the laws of the physical sciences, and the phrase ‘science of language’ became current. Some believed that comparative study would throw light on the origins of language itself. The German Sanskritist Friedrich Max Müller (1823–1900), who wrote prolifically in English, encouraged this belief, and also held that the study of ancient texts could be the foundation of a science of religion, which in turn would lead to an understanding of the nature and origin of religion.

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all countries, whether savage or civilized, have had some religion. Religion is inseparable from humanity. Man has always believed in some Invisible Power from which all that is visible has sprung, in something Infinite on which all that is finite rests, in a power on which he is dependent and which is beneficial and has felt reverence for that power and worshipped it. [. . .] The truth is that this universality of belief in the Infinite and Invisible is as much necessitated by man’s apprehensive powers as the belief in an external world and in the constancy of nature. At the very dawning of human intelligence, when the heavens above and the earth below excited the wonder and admiration of man, when practically his eyes apprehended no limit to the scene by which he was surrounded, when he saw the play of powers about him, which acted independently of him, and on which depended his happiness, the Invisible and the Infinite forced itself upon him and evoked his reverence and love, and he fell down and worshipped. [. . .] My answer to the second class of persons spoken of before11 who have placed before us a religion which they say was alone revealed by God in all its parts at a certain period in the history of man, and who call upon us to accept it on that ground, also rests similarly on the basis supplied to us by the critical method. Christianity is not the only religion professed by man. Hinduism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism and a variety of other religions have flourished in the world and are flourishing. Are these the work of self-deception? If we say so, we shall simply be playing into the hands of the opponents of all religions. What are the special claims of one of these religions to be considered as the only Revelation? There is truth in all, and all have something objectionable which the light derived from the others should enable us to discover and cast aside. [. . .] If religion is of supreme importance to man, we must expect that it should have been revealed to him in the very beginning, being implanted by God in his very nature so that wherever he went he might carry it with him like his shadow. And this is what we actually find. Man has been carrying religious belief like his shadow wherever he goes; religion is as widely spread as humanity itself. Thus then God’s Revelation to man was made not only at a certain period in the world’s history, but it began with the dawning of human intelligence and went on progressing through all ages and it is going on still and will go on. God is ever with us communicating more and more of his truth to us as our powers of apprehension become purer and keener. The latest phase of His Revelation

11  Christians (see note 3).

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to man is that embodied in the movement which we here represent.12 It is therefore turning a deaf ear to this appeal from the High to accept one religion only as exclusively revealed by Him. It is disregarding the grand fact that God has ever been the Father of man and has ever been educating him into a knowledge of Himself. And not only does the comparison of the different religions that prevail or have prevailed in the world enable us to determine the significance of each— the idea or ideas which it elaborates and to distinguish the essence of religion from its accidents—but the study of the development of religious thought and action in one and the same country serves the same purpose. No country in the world has undergone such strange and wonderful religious revolutions as ours and no where will the faithful servant of God be able to trace more clearly the manner in which He gradually unfolds His truth to man. I will therefore devote the remaining portion of the time at my disposal to the consideration, necessarily very brief, of what our religious history has to teach us. It was in the phenomena of Nature that the ancient Āryans first discovered their God or rather God discovered Himself to them. The heavens above, and the earth below, the Sun that traversed the sky from day to day and fructified the earth, the rising Dawn, before which the darkness of the night gradually disappeared and which gave a lovely appearance to the universe about them, the waters that periodically fell from heaven and cooled and refreshed the earth, parched by the summer heat of the Punjab,13—these and such other phenomena excited the wonder and admiration of our remote ancestors, and in the visible they saw the Invisible, and found in these phenomena the Gods Dyaus, Pṛthivī, Sūrya, Savitṛ, Uṣas, Indra and others and even Aditi or the Illimitable, the mother of them all.14 The happiness of man depended upon the operations of nature, that is, on the powers of these Gods, and they 12  The Prārthanā Samāj. The last part of the lecture argues that the Prārthanā Samāj (not named, but referred to as ‘we’) represents the culmination of centuries of Indian religious history, and that this history, if properly examined through the critical method, constitutes a divine revelation. 13  The region in which the hymns of the Ṛg-Veda, the oldest collection of Sanskrit texts, were composed. 14  These are names of gods in the Ṛg-Veda. The words dyaus, pṛthivī, sūrya and uṣas are also nouns meaning ‘sky,’ ‘earth,’ ‘sun’ and ‘dawn,’ showing that at least these gods are personifications of natural phenomena. Müller and others developed a theory that each Vedic god represented some natural phenomenon, and that all Vedic mythology originated in representations of aspects of nature. Savitṛ is also associated with the sun, and the mythology of Indra in the hymns involves the releasing of water. Aditi, meaning etymologically ‘illimitable,’ is the mother of the gods.

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were invoked to protect and bestow blessings. [. . .] To most of these Gods, the creation of heaven and earth and supreme power which none could transgress, was ascribed. In the course of time men found that each of the Gods possessed the attributes of the Supreme Godhead, and since the Supreme can be but One, they came to regard Indra, Mitra, Varuṇa and Agni15 as but several names of the One Supreme and declared that ‘the creator of heaven and earth was but one God.’ After they had arrived at this stage there was a halt. As in the history of the physical, social and political advancement of man there are periods when the human spirit after having worked actively for some time becomes dormant and there is no further progress, so are there in the history of man’s religious advancement. Along with the development of the religious ideas which I have sketched, grew a worship of the gods. This worship gradually became complicated and acquired such an importance that every minute point in connection with it became the subject of an inviolable rule.16 Cold and dead formalities took the place of warm and living devotion and the very verses and hymns which contained the fervent prayers of the old Ṛṣis,17 were repeated mechanically in the course of the formal worship, without even an attempt to apprehend the sense. [. . .] The deities lost all importance, and in the course of time the theologians of this religion denied God and proclaimed sacrificial rites as the saviour of mankind.18 But error by its very excesses rouses the dormant human spirit and brings its own destruction. The reaction was on the one hand led by the authors of the Upaniṣads,19 and on the other, by the Philosophers, principally of the Sāṃkhya school,20 and by Buddhism. The Upaniṣads declared that ‘sacrificial rites were but frail boats,’21 and enjoined contemplation of the ‘Omniscient Soul whose greatness we observe in the world—the author, source and pervader of the 15  ‘They call it Indra, Mitra, Varuṇa, Agni; it is also the divine bird Garutmat. That which is one, the poets call variously’ (Ṛg-Veda 1.164.46). 16  Complex ritual prescriptions are contained in the Brāhmaṇas and sūtras which are included in the Veda. 17  The sages who composed the Vedic hymns. 18  The Pūrva-Mīmāṃsā system, which provided a philosophical foundation for Vedic ritual, had no place for a supreme God. 19  Texts which form part of the Veda, but are only partly concerned with ritual, and sometimes explicitly reject it. Their main concerns are the nature of consciousness and of the world, and of the ultimate reality (brahman). 20  A school which investigated phenomena on the basis of the five senses and their corresponding sense-objects. 21   Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 1.2.7.

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universe, the lord of all, the unborn, the unchangeable and the pure or holy,’22 and when a man saw him in his heart and everywhere else, he was free from death and attained eternal happiness. [. . .] The Buddhists [. . .] equally with the others declared that sacrificial rites were inefficacious, and denied the authority of the Vedas on which it was contended they were based. Eternal happiness was according to them to be attained by a strict course of moral discipline, by restraining the passions and purifying and ennobling the heart. Buddhism was also a protest against the exclusiveness of the Brahmanical religion of sacrifices which could be exercised only by the three regenerate classes23 and of which Brahmans24 alone could be priests. It was not only a religion for all classes of the Indian community but for the whole world, the Mlecchas25 or barbarians included. But how was the standard of moral purity which Buddhism set up, to be practically attained by frail humanity? [. . .] In his despair man naturally cries for help. It was here that Buddhism was found wanting. By denying God it deprived man of his friend and saviour [. . .] To supply this defect the doctrine of Bhakti26 arose, and the work in which it was distinctly enunciated was the Bhagavadgītā. The Gītā derives its theism from the Upaniṣads, equally with them it enjoins moral purity and the contemplation of God, but in addition, it teaches man to love God and not himself, to live for Him and not for himself, and to place unlimited faith in Him. The idea of a religion for all and not for certain classes only, which Buddhism first realized[,] was taken up by the Bhakti school and its method of salvation was open to all. But the purity of religion it was difficult to maintain in a country, the population of which was composed of various elements. The doctrine of Bhakti was first set forth in connection with the worship of Viṣṇu, to whom all the attributes of Godhead as laid down in the Upaniṣads were ascribed. Then came the worship of Śiva and various other gods and goddesses, who must originally have been the objects of adoration with the aborigines of the 22  This is a summary of several passages in the Upaniṣads. 23  The Brahmins, kṣatriyas and vaiśyas. Together these are called dvija, literally ‘twice-born,’ translated here as ‘regenerate’; the initiation which qualifies men of these three varṇas to participate in Vedic ritual is regarded as a second birth. Another term for the twice-born is ārya. The śūdras, who are not twice-born, are excluded from knowledge of the Veda. 24  Bhandarkar’s rendering of the Sanskrit brāhmaṇa. Elsewhere in this chapter we use the spelling ‘Brahmin,’ which avoids confusion with the related word brahman, a name for the ultimate reality. 25  A Sanskrit term for foreigners, often translated ‘barbarians,’ implying people of strange speech who should be avoided by Āryans. 26  ‘Devotion.’ This term occurs frequently in the Bhagavadgītā.

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country. Ceremonial religion of another kind than that which prevailed before, came to be practised, and vows, fasts, and observances were multiplied. [. . .] Then there arose the Sādhus or the pious men of the mediaeval period, who protested against this artificial religion, re-asserted the doctrine of Bhakti with vigour and inculcated purity of heart; and the last Great Sādhu in this part of the country was our own Tukārāma of Dehu.27 What the mission of these men was generally, may best be seen from an Abhaṅga of Tukārāma in which he states the purpose of his coming into the world. I translate it as follows: I am a denizen of Vaikuṇṭha28 and have come for this purpose viz., to bring into practice that which was taught by the Ṛṣis: we will sweep clean the ways of (constructed by) the sages; the world is over-grown with weeds: we will accept the portion that has remained. Truth has disappeared in consequence of the Purāṇas,29 ruin has been effected by word knowledge. The heart is addicted to pleasures: and the way (to God) is destroyed. We will beat the drum of Bhakti, the terror of the Kali age,30 says Tukā,31—raise shouts of victory through joy. And this is our mission also. The Indian world still remains over-grown with the weeds of falsehood notwithstanding the efforts of those great men. The truth taught by the Ṛṣis of the Upaniṣads still remains neglected, and ceremonial practices have still usurped the place of spiritual worship. [. . .] Let us like Tukārāma exert ourselves to bring into practice the teaching of the old Ṛṣis, and learn from all the sources now available to us, indigenous as well as foreign. Let us learn from the Vedic hymns that the temple in which we should find God and worship him is the universe and the heart of man; from the sacrificial religion which once prevailed, that we should not over-grow and destroy the tender plant of spiritual worship; from the rise of Buddhism, that religion is not a privilege of a favoured class, and that without high moral 27  Tukārām (1607–1649) is the most popular of the saint-poets of Mahārāshtra. His poems (abhaṅgs) in Marathi were used in worship by the Prārthanā Samāj. 28  The heaven of Viṣṇu. 29  Sanskrit texts containing mythology and ritual prescriptions. Many of them enjoin the worship of Viṣṇu, but Tukārām condemns them all because they represent mere verbal knowledge (‘word knowledge’) and the dominance of Sanskrit. 30  The fallen age of the world, in which we now live; it is marked by deceit and misery. 31  A short form of the name Tukārām. Bhakti poets often include their names in the closing lines of their poems.

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feeling and action it is an empty nothing; and from its failure, that mere morality will not exalt the spirit and satisfy the religious craving of the heart and cannot be attained; from the Upaniṣads, that purity of heart is the way of arriving at God, and contemplation brings us face to face with Him and elevates the soul; and from the Gītā and the Bhakti school, that man by his own efforts cannot effect his salvation, that God alone is our Father, Friend and Saviour, and that we should lay our souls at His feet, live in Him, and for Him, and not for ourselves. If in all humility we learn this, and learn whatever else is to be learnt from the other sources, that God in His mercy has laid open to us, and follow our guide fearlessly and faithfully, we need not be afraid of our future. Selected and annotated by Dermot Killingley

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Ghulām Aḥmad al-Qādiyānī: The Messiah of the Christians—Peace upon Him—in India (India, 1908) Introduction

Jesus Died in India—Qādiyānī and Muslim-Christian Controversies about Eschatology Hardly any Islamic reform movement has been more challenging to Muslims and Christians alike than the Aḥmadiyya movement,1 founded by Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad Qādiyānī (1835–1908) in British India. His eschatological teachings and claims provoked harsh criticism from Muslim2 and Christian scholars. His interpretation of the second coming of Jesus (ʿĪsā Ibn Maryam) was the object of fierce debates with Christian missionaries. Dissent between the Aḥmadiyya and other Muslim groups even led to violent riots against members of the movement in Lahore in 1953, culminating in the official exclusion of the Aḥmadiyya from Islam by the government and National Assembly of Pakistan in 1974. Until today, Ahmadis are facing persecution and violence, especially in Pakistan and Bangladesh. In the following, Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad’s theological views on Jesus are highlighted, and it will be explained why the Aḥmadiyya became a target of criticism for both Muslims3 and Christians. 1  For a general overview of the competing religious reform movements in nineteenth and early twentieth-century India see Kenneth W. Jones, Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press), 1999; for a history of the Aḥmadiyya see Spencer Lavan, The Ahmadiyah Movement: a History and Perspective (New Delhi: Manohar Book Service, 1974) and Yohanan Friedmann, Prophecy Continuous: Aspects of Aḥmadī Religious Thought and its Medieval Background (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 1989). 2  For Muslim refusals of Ghulām Aḥmad’s teachings see: Abul Aʿla Maududi, The Qadiani Problem (Lahore: Islamic Publ., 1991); Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, Qadianism: A Critical Study (Lucknow: Academy of Islamic Research and Publ., 1980). 3   For an analysis of the early stages of this debate see Claudia Preckel: “Islamische Bildungsnetzwerke und Gelehrtenkultur im Indien des 19. Jahrhunderts: Muḥammad Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Ḫān (st. 1890) und die Entstehung der Ahl‑e ḥadīṯ-Bewegung in Bhopal,” PhD diss. (Ruhr-University Bochum, 2009). Martin Riexinger, Sanāʾullah Amritsari (1868–1948) und die Ahl-i-Ḥadīs im Punjab unter britischer Herrschaft (Würzburg: Ergon, 2004).

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Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad’s Early Career Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad was born in Qadian, Punjab, in 1835. His family claimed descent from the Mughal Emperors of India and belonged to the landholders of the Punjab. Although a considerable part of the family property was seized first by the Sikh rulers of the Punjab and later by the British, Ghulām Aḥmad grew up under wealthy conditions. After his father’s death in 1876, Ghulām Aḥmad started his public career as a preacher. He entered some public debates with various Christian and Hindu religious leaders, trying to prove Islam’s superiority over all other religions. For the same reason, he wrote his first book in 1880, called Barāhīn-i Aḥmadiyya (Proofs of the Aḥmadiyya), which was well-received even among those Muslim scholars who later heavily criticised Ghulām Aḥmad. In 1882, conflicts with some Muslim scholars evolved after Ghulām Aḥmad had announced that he received a divine inspiration declaring him to be a ‘renewer of the faith’ (mujaddid). This claim refers to a famous Prophetic Tradition (hadith), according to which God will send someone at the end of each Islamic century who will renew his religion.4 Ghulām Aḥmad’s writings gained a clear eschatological turn with the advent of the Islamic year 1300 H (thirteenth of November, 1882) and the approach of the year 1900 CE (twenty-eighth of Shaʿbān 1317 H). Mainstream Islam’s Views on the Last Hour In Sunni Islam, the subject of eschatology is of high importance.5 Both Quran and hadith are full of descriptions of the Last Hour. Eschatological teachings have always received a fresh impetus shortly before any turn of the century— interestingly, this can be applied both to the Islamic (hijrī) and the Gregorian calendar. Another important date was the turn of the first Islamic millennium, corresponding to the nineteenth of October 1591. One book on this topic in particular became extremely influential throughout the Islamic world, namely al-Ishāʿa li-ashrāṭ al-sāʿa (The Propagation of the Conditions of the Last Hour) written by al-Barzanjī (d. 1691). According to 4  Muslim scholars have intensively discussed the question to whom the title of a mujaddid might be attributed. Throughout the centuries, lists with different names of such renewers were compiled. In the nineteenth century, almost every Indian Muslim reformist group proclaimed its own mujaddid. See E. van Donzel, “Mudjaddid,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2008, Print; Brill Online, 2012, Online); Preckel, Islamische Bildungsnetzwerke, 371–388; Friedmann, Prophecy Continuous, 94–101. 5  David Cook, Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic (Princeton: Darwin Press 2000); Jean-Pierre Filiu, Apocalypse in Islam (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 2011); Jane I. Smith; Yvonne Y. Haddad, The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection (New York: Oxford Univerity Press, 2002).

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this author6 the process leading to the end of the world is irreversible and has already started with the death of the prophet Muhammad in 632 CE. This is commonly regarded as the beginning of an unfolding decline of Islam, which includes the division of the Muslim community (umma) into Shia and Sunna and into different schools of law (madhāhib). The final stage before the Last Hour (sāʿa)7 begins with the appearance of the Mahdi (mahdī, ‘the rightly guided one’)8 on earth, when chaos and turmoil already prevail. The Mahdi will start to fight against his main adversary, the ‘Anti-Christ’ (Arabic: dajjāl).9 At the same time, the ‘beast of the earth’ (dābbat al-arḍ) will come. The most important moment of the whole apocalypse, however, is the second appearance of Jesus,10 the Messiah,11 on earth. According to the prevalent opinion, Jesus will come down from where he has been kept alive, after God had ‘raised him to heaven.’ Muslims believe that Jesus will be a Muslim this time and that he will ‘perform his prayer behind the Mahdi.’ He will then take the lead of the army fighting against Gog and Magog (Yājūj wa-Majūj), the barbaric and monstrous peoples coming from the fringe of the world.12 After successfully fighting them, the Messiah will give military support to the Mahdi in his fight against the dajjāl. They will be victorious, and the Kingdom of Justice will be established, which will last for 1000 years, until the final day of Judgement arrives. This description is the Sunni view of the Last Hour prevailing in mainstream Islam. It should be rather obvious that there are many similarities between these views of the End of the World and the Christian eschatology described in the Bible.

6  See Preckel, Islamische Bildungsnetzwerke, 392–397; Friedmann, Prophecy Continuous, 105–111. 7  U. Rubin, “Sāʿa (In eschatology),” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. 8  Wilferd Madelung, “al-Mahdī,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. 9  Armand Abel, “al-Dadjdjāl,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. David Cook, “Aktuelle muslimisch-apokalyptische Porträts des Dajjāl,” in Der Antichrist: Historische und systematische Zugänge, ed. M. Dalgo (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag GmbH, 2011). 10   George C. Anawati, “ ‘Īsā,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition; Mona Siddiqui, Christians, Muslims, and Jesus (New Haven et al.: Yale University Press, 2013); Arent J. Wensinck/ Clifford .E. Bosworth, “Masīḥ,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. 11  Arent J. Wensinck and Clifford E. Bosworth, “Masīḥ,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. The Aḥmadīyya uses the phrase ‘the promised messiah’ (masīḥ al-mawʿūd) for Ghulām Aḥmad. Usually, the term ‘promised’ is applied to the mahdī only. The application of this term thus reflects the idea that Mahdi and Messiah are one and the same. 12  Cf. Genesis 10:2; 1 Chronicles 5:4; Ezekiel 38, 39; Revelation 20:7–10.

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Ghulām Aḥmad’s Messianic Claims It has already been mentioned above that, according to Sunni doctrine, the Mahdi and the Messiah were two different persons, and that Jesus was the Messiah. Ghulām Aḥmad, however, claimed that the Mahdi and the Messiah were one and the same. According to his interpretation, Jesus could not be regarded as the promised Messiah, as he had survived his crucifixion, migrated to India and died there (see below). As an ordinary human being who had faced a natural death, Jesus could not be part of Islamic eschatology. Consequently, Ghulām Aḥmad stated that another person than Jesus was the promised Messiah. Ghulām Aḥmad did not dare to state that he was Jesus himself, but he claimed to be ‘a counterpart of Jesus’ (mathīl ʿĪsā). In order to back his statement, he applied all interpretations of the classical Islamic sources concerning Jesus to his own person. One example is the Islamic tradition that—when appearing on earth again—Jesus / the Messiah will descend ‘in the eastern part of the city of Damascus.’ Ghulām Aḥmad claimed that the correct interpretation of this tradition is ‘in the East of Damascus.’ He further stated that his own birthplace Qadian, compared to Damascus, could be found in the eastern part of the world. Following the belief that Jesus will descend to earth at the ‘Minaret of Jesus’ in Damascus, Ghulām Aḥmad initiated the construction of the White Minaret in Qadian. In November 1903, he personally laid the foundation stone of the ‘Minaret of the Messiah,’ which was completed in 1916. Ghulām Aḥmad also heavily criticised the current Muslim view of the mahdī and the masīḥ as military leaders in a ‘bloodthirsty jihad’ against the enemies of Islam. He claimed that the mahdī/masīḥ, the unified personality which he put forward, was a peaceful leader of a peaceful religion, something that Islam had been from its beginnings. With this statement he denied the legitimacy of the so-called jihad of Sayyid Aḥmad Barelwī (d. 1831) against the Sikhs in the North-Western Frontier Provinces,13 as well as all insurrections against British rule. It is likewise important to stress that Ghulām Aḥmad compared Islam with other Indian religions like Jainism or Buddhism, whose adherents were ‘peaceful’ and ‘not able to kill a single fly.’ According to him the Muslim rhetoric of jihad gave a very negative image to Islam and placed them at a disadvantage in the multi-religious environment of the Punjab, where many religious missionaries were active.

13  Marc Gaborieau, Le Mahdi incompris: Sayyid Ahmad Barelwī (1786–1831) et le millénarisme en Inde (Paris: CNRS éditions 2010).

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Jesus in India Ghulām Aḥmad’s teachings on Jesus being the promised Messiah, his crucifixion and his resurrection evoked severe criticism from Christians and Muslims alike. One reason for this was Ghulām Aḥmad’s extensive use of the Bible and his reference to other non-Biblical gospels, in particular the so-called Gospel of Barnabas, a much-disputed text which supports the Muslim view that Jesus was not crucified.14 Both Rashīd Riḍā (d. 1935)15 and the Indian scholar Raḥmatullāh Kairānāwī (d. 1891) made use of such texts for their refutations of Christan missionaries.16 They claimed that even Christians did not really believe in the doctrine of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. Ghulām Aḥmad further added another quote from the Bible, namely that a “hanged man is the curse of God.”17 He argued that without any doubt, Jesus was a prophet sent by God. Therefore, it was not conceivable that a prophet would be punished and humiliated by Him through the horrible act of crucifixion. Concerning the crucifixion of Jesus, Ghulām Aḥmad stated that Sunni scholars usually relied on Quran 3:55: “I cause you to die and then raise you to me.”18 Some claimed that Jesus did not die on the cross, and that the word tawaffā in this context meant ‘sleep’ and not ‘death.’ Jesus was crucified, but as he was immortal, the crucifixion did not result in his immediate death. Thus, he could be raised to heaven while still being alive. Others held the opinion that it was not Jesus himself who died at the cross, but God gave another person Jesus’ outward appearance—and this person was crucified. Ghulām Aḥmad agreed 14  See especially Mikél de Epalza, “Le Milieu hispano-moresque de l’évangile islamisant de Barnabé (XVIe–XVIIe siècle),” Islamochristiana 8 (1982): 159–183; Luis F. Bernabé Pons, “Zur Wahrheit und Echtheit des Barnbasevangeliums,” in Wertewandel und religiöse Umbrüche ed. Reinhard Kirste (Balve: Zimmermann, 1996), 133–188. 15  See Chapter 2.06 in this volume; Umar Ryad, Islamic Reformism and Christianity: A Critical Reading of the Works of Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā and His Associates (1898–1935) (Leiden: Brill, 2009). 16  Al-Kairānawī’s most important work Iẓhār al-ḥaqq [Manifestation of truth] states that Christian beliefs in trinity, the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection are completely erroneous. This is mainly because the texts of the Gospels were manipulated to a large extent by human beings. See Christiane Schirrmacher, Mit den Waffen des Gegners: Christlich-Islamische Kontroversen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 1992). 17  C.f. Deuteronomy 21:23, “[. . .] for a hanged man is cursed by God” (ESV). 18  Arabic: Innī mutawaffika wa-rāfiʿuka ilayya. Other Sunni interpretations differ markedly from the version presented by Ghulām Aḥmad, as expressed in translations like those given by Yusuf Ali: “I will take thee and rise thee to Myself”; or Pickthall: “I am gathering thee and causing thee to ascend unto Me.”

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with the doctrine that Jesus was crucified, but stated that the effects of crucifixion were not strong enough to kill him, so that his life could be saved. But he clearly refused the Islamic belief that Jesus was raised to heaven alive (ḥayyan) with his material body. To him the idea of Jesus being alive in heaven until the Last Hour was inacceptable. This was because the Prophet Muhammad himself was considered to have died and to be waiting in the barzakh, the ‘barrier’ between this world (dunyā) and the Hereafter (ākhira) where the human souls will stay after death until the day of resurrection. The subject of a ‘living Jesus’ and a ‘dead Muhammad’ was the main contentious issue in public debates between Christian Missionaries and the Aḥmadiyya.19 Thus, it was Ghulām Aḥmad’s main effort to provide reliable proofs for his theory that Jesus did not die on the cross. In response to the Christian missionaries’ reference to the “Sign of Jonah” (Matthew 12:39f.), i.e. to Jonah’s stay of three days in the belly of the whale, as a divine hint to the resurrection of Jesus, Ghulām Aḥmad presented this story as an example for a survival under extreme circumstances: as it was possible for Jonah to remain alive in a state of unconsciousness within the belly of the whale, Jesus survived the crucifixion and only became conscious again after three whole days. After that, his wounds resulting from crucifixion were healed by an ointment which Ghulām Aḥmad called Marham-i ʿĪsā, the ‘ointment of Jesus,’ or Marham-i rusul, the ‘ointment of the prophets.’20 The prescription of this ointment can indeed be found in many books of the Graeco-Islamic medical tradition, called Ṭibb-i yūnānī (Greek Medicine, Unani Medicine) in India.21 When his wounds were completely healed, Jesus left Jerusalem for Persia and today’s Afghanistan, finally reaching Kashmir, where he spent some time studying and ­preaching. 19  Beside Ghulām Aḥmad’s works, the following books of Aḥmadī scholars are explaining the Aḥmadī view on Jesus: Khwāja Naẓīr Aḥmad, Jesus in Heaven of Earth (Lahore: Working Muslim Mission & Literary Trust, 1952); Mumtaz Ahmad Faruqi, The Crumbling of the Cross (Lahore: Ahmadiyya Anjuman Ishaʿat-i Islam, 1973); Fida Hassnain, The Fifth Gospel (Srinagar: Dastgir Publications, 1988). 20  The Marham-i ʿĪsā is considered to be helpful against skin diseases, e.g. abscesses, ulcers and even pest-spots. It even removes dead flesh. Corresponding to the number of apostles, it has 12 ingredients and is therefore also called Marham al-ḥawāriyīn (Ointment of the apostles). It contains e.g. white wax, resin of pine, galbanum or bdellium. It is mentioned in the famous Canon of medicine by Ibn Sīnā/Avicenna (d. 1037). See: Ibn Sīnā, al-Qanūn fi-ṭ-ṭibb, III, Kitāb 5, maqāla 11 (Bairūt: Dār Ṣādir, n.d., 405). 21  See about this form of medicine and its recent development in South Asia e.g. Guy Attewell, Refiguring Unani Tibb. Plural Healing in Late Colonial India (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2007); Altaf Ahmad Azmi, Basic Concepts of Unani Medicine: A Critical Study (New Delhi: Jamia Hamdard, 1995).

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According to some traditions and sources further mentioned by Ghulām Aḥmad, the people in Kashmir descended from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, who migrated to South Asia after the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians in 722 BC. Those tribes never returned to Palestine and settled down in regions of South Asia, claiming descent of the Banū Isrāʾīl, meaning the ‘Tribes of Israel.’ Ghulām Aḥmad considered these accounts to be true, as the Old Testament gave another ‘proof’ of his theory: in the apocryphal book of II Esdras (13:39–46), it is mentioned that the Banū Isrāʾīl migrated to Assareth or Azareth—which the Aḥmadiyya considers to be identical with the Hazara district in present-day Northern Pakistan and Indian Kashmir. According to Ghulām Aḥmad, Jesus chose to travel to India because he had heard about the fact that the Banū Isrāʾīl had given up their religion, (i.e. Judaism) and became Hindus or Buddhists. Further reclaiming local traditions, he stated that Jesus was accompanied and supported by his mother Maryam (Mary),22 his wife Mary Magdalene23 and his apostle Thomas who later preached the gospel among the Banū Isra⁠ʾīl of Malabar and Sri Lanka. Jesus, however, lived in Kashmir as a preacher until he reached the age of 120 years, when he died a natural death. His body was buried in a shrine in the Khān Yār Street in Srinagar. This tomb is also known as ‘Rozabal,’ meaning rauża for a ‘tomb of a prophet’ and bal for ‘place’ in Kashmiri. The local population of Srinagar says that it is the grave of ‘Haḍrat ʿĪsā Ṣāḥib’ (Lord Jesus), the ‘Shāhzāda Nabī’ (the king’s son and prophet) or that of Yūz Āsaf (see below).24 Today, big wooden plates outside the tomb (fixed over the original ones) block the visitor’s view from the names of the persons buried in this tomb. Older pictures of the plates at same place show that the Shiite Sufi Sayyid Naṣīr al-Dīn Riḍwī, a saint who lived in the fifteenth century, is buried there along with Yūz Āsaf. He said to have been following the spiritual line of the famous preacher and prince Yūz Āsaf. People also say that Sayyid Naṣīr al-Dīn’s grave is 22  There is also an alleged tomb of Mary on top of a hill in Murree (today Punjab / Pakistan). It is said, that the town of Murree is named after Mary. See Paul Constantine Pappas, Jesus’ Tomb in India: The Debate on his Death and Resurrection (Freemont, CA: Jain Publishing Company 1991), 79. 23  It is worth of mention that the Aḥmadiyya claims that Jesus—after Mary Magdalene’s death—married a Kashmiri woman and had some offspring with her. The Spanish esoteric writer Andreas Faber-Kaiser described his meetings with the family who claim to be descendents of Jesus. The person whom Faber-Kaiser was talking to was called Ṣāḥibzāda Basharat Salīm—who also stated that Yūz Āsaf and Jesus were the same. See Andreas Faber-Kaiser, Jesus Died in India (London: Gordon and Cremonesi, 1977), 90–103. 24  Pappas, Jesus’ Tomb in India, 94; quoting Faber-Kaiser’s interviews with local people in Srinagar.

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facing Mecca—whereas the other one (of Yūz Āsaf) is facing Jerusalem, meaning that Yūz Āsaf is buried according to Jewish burial customs.25 Ghulām Aḥmad also took up several different strands of tradition which identified Yūz Āsaf with Buddha. His analogy was: if Yūz Āsaf was Jesus, Jesus could be identified with (a reincarnation of) Buddha, and Buddha died in Kashmir, then it was perfectly clear that Jesus died and is buried in Kashmir. As a ‘proof,’ Ghulām Aḥmad used the most important source of the Yūz Āsaf legend: the story of Bilawhar and Būdhāsaf,26 which is the life story of Siddārtha Gautama, known as Buddha. The Arabic translation from an original Sanskrit source (second to fourth century) became very popular under the title Kitāb Bilawhar wa-Būdhāsaf. During the translation process into different languages, the original version of the name Būdhāsaf changed to Yūdhāsaf and then finally to Yūz Āsaf. It was also a simple printing error concerning the name of Buddha’s place of death which made it possible for Ghulām Aḥmad to identify Yūz Āsaf with Buddha and finally with Jesus: According to D. M. Lang,27 the Arabic edition of the book Wisdom of Balahvar (Mumbai 1889) contained the following confusion concerning the place of Buddha’s/Yūz Āsaf’s death: the sources in Pali mention Kushinara28 as place of Buddha’s death (Arabic: k-w-sh-y-n-r), which in the Arabic edition is confused with Kashmir (k-sh-m-y-r). Thus, Ghulām Aḥmad could keep up his view that Yūz Āsaf/Jesus died in Kashmir and was buried there.

25  Pappas again ( Jesus’ Tomb in India, 94); quoting either Faber-Kaiser and Kersten who talked to the (Aḥmadī) people around the shrine and claimed to have seen the tombstones and the secret entrance of the shrine. Both claim that it is not possible for foreigners to see the tombstones inside. Indeed, when Claudia Preckel visited the shrine in 2011, entrance to the tombs was restricted. 26  The legend is also known as the Christian novel Barlaam and Josaphat. It tells the story of an Indian prince who gives up his wealth and property after meeting the Christian hermit and monk Barlaam. Josephat finally converts to Christianity. The intention of the story is quite clear: it emphasises the strength of Christianity and the value of an ascetic lifestyle. The authorship of the Greek version of this novel is attributed to St. John of Damascus (d. ca. 749). It is a quite interesting fact that Buddha, whose life was the model for Josephat, thus was listed in the Martyrium Romanum from 1583 until 2001/2004. See Herman Rosenthal, “Barlaam and Josaphat,” The Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. II, 536–537. David M. Lang, “Bilawhar wa-Yūdāsaf,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edtion. 27  David M. Lang, The Wisdom of Balahvar: A Christian Legend of the Buddha (London: Allen & Unwin, 1957). 28  Or: Kushīnagar, in today’s Indian State of Uttar Pradesh.

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When Did Jesus Live in India? Ghulām Aḥmad was not the first one writing on Jesus’ travels to India. In the late nineteenth century, the Russian traveller Nicolas Notovitch (born 1858, died some time after 1916) was the first one to write about this subject. Born into a Jewish aristocratic family in the Crimea, Notovitch later converted to (Greek) Orthodox Christianity. He gained some fame as a political journalist, authoring several books on Russian politics. In the 1870s, Notovitch started to travel in the Orient and claimed to have visited Amritsar and then to have left for Leh, the capital of Ladakh. According to his own account,29 Notovitch stayed in the Buddhist monastery of Hemis (near Leh) for some time after an accident. He wrote that the Buddhist monks were convinced that “the spirit of Buddha became incarnate in the sacred spirit of Issa (Jesus).” He further claimed that Buddhist monks of Hemis showed him a very old scroll “giving proof” of the fact that Jesus was born in Israel as the incarnation of Buddha. After spending his first thirteen years in Israel, Jesus migrated to India, where he lived among the Jains and after that among the Buddhists. He studied the Pali language and thus was able to understand some important Buddhist texts. He was preaching and teaching in the centres of Indian Buddhism like Jaganath or Rajagriha. At the age of 29, Jesus returned to Israel, where he spread his message, which had now become deeply influenced by Buddhism. But finally, he was sentenced to death and killed. Like Ghulām Aḥmad, Notovitch vehemently denied the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Ghulām Aḥmad, who knew Notovitch’s work, heavily criticised him for claiming that Jesus visited India before his crucifixion and not after it. Ghulām Aḥmad, however, was not the only critic of Notovitch: Indologists like the Germans Max Müller (d. 1900) and Leopold von Schroeder (d. 1920) accused him of having invented the whole story around the manuscript in the Hemis monastery.30 Although both Ghulām Aḥmad’s and Notovitch’s works have remained highly disputed until today, they influenced authors like Faber-Kaiser or Holger Kersten31 in their more recent publications 29  Nicolas Notovitch, La Vie inconnue de Jésus-Christ (Paris: Paul Ollendorff, 1894), English translation: The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ (Chicago: Quill, 1895). Notovitch faced many problems from the Catholic Church when he wanted the book to be published in Europe. 30  A collection of articles from the magazine The Nineteenth Century gave very negative reviews of Notovitch’s works on Jesus, declaring them to be a hoax. See http:// www.tertullian.org/rpearse/ scanned/notovitch.htm. 31  Holger Kersten, Jesus Lived in India: His Unknown Life Before and After the Crucifixion (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2001)—English translation of Jesus lebte in Indien—Sein geheimes Leben vor und nach der Kreuzigung (München: Langen Müller, 1983).

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on Jesus in India. The last mentioned authors are well-known for their esoteric interpretations of the life of Jesus. Especially Holger Kersten tried to prove that Jesus was deeply influenced by Buddhism. Jesus is portrayed as having lived the life of a Buddhist monk, preaching a simple lifestyle and Buddhist values. Doing so, Faber-Kaiser and Kersten present Jesus as a preacher who embodied the values of more than one (monotheist) religion, preaching the universal message of humanity. Faber-Kaiser and Kersten regarded the Aḥmadiyya as a useful source confirming their own esoteric interpretation of Jesus and Christianity, which were as challenging as Ghulām Aḥmad’s teachings. Ghulām Aḥmad’s Account of Jesus in India Ghulām Aḥmad compiled ‘proofs’ of Jesus’ survival of the crucifixion, his travels to India, his natural death and his grave in Srinagar. In 1899, he completed his work on a treatise devoted to the biography of Jesus, arranging the material according to sources from the Gospels, from the Quran, historical and medical writings, and Buddhist sources. During the next years, Ghulām Aḥmad extensively published on this subject, and many of his works in Arabic and Urdu contain chapters on ‘Jesus in India.’ His works were spread in many Islamic countries where they evoked much criticism, including that of Rashīd Riḍa in his journal al-Manār.32 In 1902, Ghulām Aḥmad published chapters on the question of Jesus in India in his Urdu monthly Review of Religions,33 but the complete book Masīḥ Hindustān meṅ (The Messiah in India) only appeared shortly after his death in 1908. It is not clear when the first Arabic translation of the complete work was made, but it is known that an English translation appeared in 1944. Since the first publication, the book has been translated into many languages. The below translation of the book’s introduction is mainly based on the Arabic translation, but also takes the Urdu original into account. To sum up, the text clearly shows Ghulām Aḥmad’s efforts to spread his own religious interpretations in the multi-religious environment of nineteenthcentury Punjab. Beside the Aḥmadiyya, several other newly-founded reformist Muslim, Hindu and Christian groups were preaching and proselytising, ­creating an atmosphere of religious competition. Ghulām Aḥmad was fully

32  See Rashīd Riḍā, “Masīḥ al-Hind al-Qādiyānī al-dajjāl” [The Indian messiah of Qadian, the ‘Anti-Christ’], al-Manār 31 (1931), 391–395, 379–380, 559–560; 751–752. See also chapter 2.06 in this volume. 33  www.reviewofreligions.org/archives/.

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aware of the fact that Hindus and Christians considered Islam to be a violent and bloodthirsty religion. He himself was of the opinion that those Muslims legitimising jihad fostered a negative image of Islam. On the other side, he observed a kind of moral superiority of other Indian religions, like Buddhists and Jainas, who were well-known for their peacefulness and nonviolence. Like many of his co-religionists, Ghulām Aḥmad believed that the apocalypse was near and could not be stopped. He was, however, convinced that God had sent him to earth to end the moral decay of the Muslim community and to establish a new moral authority. For this reason, Ghulām Aḥmad gave a new interpretation of the sources on the Last Hour and declared himself to be part of the process at the end of times. Thus, he replaced the role of Jesus with himself as the ‘promised messiah’ by taking up local traditions around Jesus which were already circulating in certain Indian regions. According to Ghulām Aḥmad, Christian traditions about Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection could not be true—so he gave a ‘proof’ of Jesus’ death and burial in Kashmir by making the shrine in Srinagar a place of pilgrimage for his adherents. The transfer of Christian and Muslim traditions from the Middle East to the Indian context, as well as his idealisation of the nonviolence that he found in Jainism and Buddhism, made his claims a unique attempt to establish a new Islamic morality in nineteenth-century India. Jonathan Korbel and Claudia Preckel

Further Reading

El-Wereny, Mahmud. “Ausgewählte Glaubensgrundsätze der Ahmadiyya aus orthodoxislamischer Perspektive [Selected Religious Tenets of the Ahmadiyya from the Orthodox Islamic Perspective].” Journal of Religious Culture/Journal für Religionskultur 173 (2013). http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/ docId/29914 Khan, Adil Hussain. From Sufism to Ahmadiyya. A Muslim Minority Movement in South Asia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015. Latham, Andrea. “The Relativity in Categorizing in the Context of the Ahmadiyya.” Die Welt des Islams 48 (2008), 372–393. Qasmi, Ali U. The Ahmadis and the Politics of Religious Exclusion in Pakistan. London et al.: Anthem, 2014. Valentine, Simon Ross. Islam and the Ahmadiyya Jamaʿat. History, Belief, Practice. London: Hurst, 2008.

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Source Text34

In the Name of the Compassionate and Merciful We praise Him and pray to His Distinguished Prophet Oh Our Lord! Lay open the Truth between us and our people, for You are the Best of all to lay open (the Truth)35 Foreword My main intention to write this book is to respond to all these misleading and dangerous ideas about the early and late life of the Messiah (al-masīḥ)— Peace upon Him—which are widespread among the majority of Muslim and Christian groups. The explanation of the real events and the complete historical testimonies are verified with the utmost accuracy and the enlistment of the old foreign documents.36 I intend to refute those ideas, the evil results of which are to be found in the destruction of the fundaments of the Unity of God (al-tawḥīd). But that is not all: their void and poisonous influences continue to prevail in the moral condition of the Muslims in these countries. Due to belief in these superstitions and baseless tales, much sickness of the minds has spread widely among most of the Muslim groups, like immorality, bad faith, as well as cruelty and roughness of the heart. Human virtues like compassion and solace, righteousness and modesty are decreasing day by day, so that they are about to be rooted out. It is because of this cruelty and immorality that we believe that many Muslims do not differ much from beasts. It is among the good things we have seen that everybody who follows Jainism or Buddhism even avoids killing a single mosquito or a fly—whereas we are very much distressed about the fact that the majority of Muslims are not hesitating to shed blood unjustly or to kill randomly. May God (the AllMighty and Magnificent), who values human life much higher than that of all other animals on earth, prevent this! So what is the reason for this cruelty, barbarity and brutality? Obviously, the reason is that stories of superstition and dangerous ideas about the jihad are drummed into the ears (of the Muslims) and carved into 34  Ghulām Aḥmad al-Qādiyānī, Masīḥ al-nāṣarā—ʿalayhi as-salām—fī l-Hind, New Arabic Ed. (Qādiyān: al-Sharika al-Islāmiyya, 1423/2002), 1–16. 35  A popular prayer from the Quran (7:89). 36  Here, Ghulām Aḥmad refers to the testimonia from different sources which he extensively lists at the end of this foreword.

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their hearts since their early childhood days. Step by step they are swept away towards a breakdown of morals until their hearts cannot feel the ugliness of these despicable acts anymore. [. . .] It should have become obvious that the majority of Muslims and Christians believe that Jesus—Peace upon Him—was alive when elevated to Heaven. For a long time both groups did not stop claiming that Jesus—Peace upon Him— is still alive in Heaven and that he will descend to earth at the end of times, the time of times. The particular difference in the traditions of the two groups (the Muslims and the Christians) is that the Christians say that Jesus—Peace upon Him—had died on the cross, then returned to life and ascended to Heaven with his physical body. There he sat down at the right side of his Father and will return to earth at the end of times in order to restore justice. And they (i.e. the Christians) also say that the whole universe belongs to him, and there is no other creator and master of it than the Messiah (i.e. Jesus).37 And he is the one who will descend in glory among the people in order either to reward or to punish them. Then all those people who do not believe in this divineness or the divinity of his mother will be sent to hell where there is lamenting and trembling with fear. The Muslim groups I mentioned above, however, claim that Jesus—Peace upon Him—was not hung at the cross and therefore did not die there. Instead (they say that) the Jews captured him in order to crucify him, but the angel of all of God’s angels (i.e. Gabriel) elevated Jesus to heaven with his material (physical body). Until the present day, he is alive in the second Heaven, where the Prophet of God John (Yaḥyā), that is John the Baptist (Yūḥannā), also resides. This is the reason why Muslims claim that Jesus—Peace upon Him—is among the prophets of God but neither is divine himself nor the son of God. They also believe, however, that he (Jesus) will descend from Heaven at the end of time. This will happen at the minaret in Damascus or at another place. He will lay his hands on the shoulders of two angels and he will kill all nonMuslim peoples of the world who do not submit to the rule of the Imam Muḥammad al-Mahdī of the Banū Fāṭima [i.e. Prophet Muhammad] who will have preceded Jesus with his appearance in this world (dunyā). Both of them will not leave anyone alive and not spare anybody’s life and not hesitate except for those those people who convert to Islam. [. . .] 37  Interestingly, Ghulām Aḥmad claims that the Christians believe in Jesus as the creator of the universe. He alluded to the Quranic verse denying the concept of trinity, saying: “Surely, in disbelief are they who say that Allah is the Messiah, son of Maryam (Mary)” (5:17).

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How is it, therefore, possible that we have internalised religious compulsion, whereas His book, the Holy Quran, clearly taught us that there is “no compulsion in religion?”38 How can we attribute the belief of compulsion to the great prophet (Muhammad) whereas he constantly instructed his Followers during the whole period of thirteen years in the sacred city of Mecca that evil cannot be returned with evil—and to submit themselves to patience? If the aggression of the enemies (of Islam) crosses any limits, and all peoples are plotting against the religion of Islam, then it is God’s command to kill with the sword all those people who have raised the sword (against Islam). Except for this, the Quran never taught compulsion at all. If compulsion really was part of the teachings of Islam, then the Companions of the Prophet Muhammad—may God honor him and give him peace—could not have acted as true believers when confronted with traditions of dubious trustworthiness. Verily, the trustworthiness of the companions of our master, our leader and our Prophet (Muḥammad)—may Allāh honor him and give him peace—is beyond any need for further explanation. And everybody who is looking for something comparable to their trustworthiness and their loyalty will not find anything like this in another community. This perfect community (umma) has not abandoned its honesty and conscientiousness even under the shadow of the sword—but it rather persists in loyalty to its Great and Holy Prophet. It is impossible for any person to be adorned with this (loyalty) unless his heart and chest are enlightened with belief. To sum up: There is no compulsion in Islam, and there are only three categories where Islamic wars come from: 1. 2. 3.

Defensive war—in order to defend oneself. Punitive war—this means punishing someone who is shedding blood, War of liberation—this means to pave the way for religious freedom and to break the strong hostile tyranny during which Muslims were killed because of their being Muslim. [. . .]

Verily, I am the light of this darksome era, and he who follows me will be rescued (from falling) into these abysses and pits, which the devil (shayṭān) has prepared for those people dwelling in the darkness. God has sent me to lead the world (dunyā) to the true God through peace and gentleness, and to renew the fundaments of the Islamic morality. 38   Lā ikrāha fi dīn, Quran 2:256.

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God gave to me heavenly signs (ayāt) in order to satisfy the students of truth with them, and he revealed to me his miracles in my support. And he revealed to me the matters of the unseen and the secrets of the future, which are the true standards of the knowledge for the righteous people according to the holy books of God. And he gave to me the sacred knowledge and spiritual enlightenment, and this was the reason why the souls hating the truth and embracing mischief turned against me—but I am absolutely determined to solace mankind as much as I will be able to do it. It is among the biggest consolations for the Christians during this era that we draw their attention to the true God, who is more exalted than birth and death and all the other afflictions and deficiencies. This deity, who has created all bodies and all primitive particles in a spherical shape, has thus given evidence to His own existence by His laws of nature. His own being is characterised by His oneness, as is the case with all spherical particles. Therefore, he simply has not created anything in a triangular form. I mean that the hand of God—may he be glorified and exalted—has created everthing at the beginning of all existence in a spherical shape—like the earth, the skies, the sun, the moon, the stars and many other elements. These things all have a spherical shape, and in this spherical shape is the proof for the oneness of God (tawḥīd).39 Thus, the best method of consolation and showing sympathy for the Christians is to guide them to the true God—may He be glorified and exalted—, who is free from trinity in all that He has created with His hand. The biggest consolation for the Muslims, however, is the enforcement of a reform of their moral conditions. We will eradicate that which is rooted down in their hearts from the false hopes and expectations concerning the appearance of a bloodthirsty Mahdi and a likewise Messiah. Those teachings are completely against the true message of Islam. I had already written that the belief of some Muslim scholars of these days concerning the appearance of the bloodthirsty Mahdi who will spread Islam by the sword is against the teachings of the Quran and is a mere product of their arbitrary interpretations. It is sufficient for any honest Muslim who loves the truth to keep himself away from those ideas, to study the Noble Quran closely and patiently, to do this with reflection and devotion, in order to realise that the holy words of God oppose all threats to kill someone if he does not become 39  Ghulām Aḥmad’s concept of the sphere as the perfect form can be traced back to Plato and Aristoteles and played a highly important role in early modern astronomy and cosmology in Europe. It also reflects the discussion of cosmological models within the Muslim community of nineteenth century India. See Riexinger, Sanāʾullah Amritsari (1868–1948), 364–387.

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a Muslim. This one single proof is sufficient enough to prove these misconceptions wrong, but out of a feeling of sympathy I have decided to refute them through historical testimonia and other convincing evidence. In this book I will prove that Jesus—Peace be upon him—did not die on the cross and was not elevated to Heaven, so one should never expect his return from Heaven to earth. In fact, he died in Srinagar in Kashmir, shortly after he reached the age of one hundred and twenty years. His tomb is to be found in the Khānyār-Street in Srinagar.40 I have divided this study into ten chapters and an epilogue (khātima) in the following manner: The testimonia that we find in this regard in the gospels. The testimonia that we find in the Holy Quran and the hadith. The testimonia that we find in the books of medicine. The testimonia that we find in the books of history. The testimonia that reached us by the oral tradition told from generation to generation (mutawātira). The testimonia we discovered from those close connections that support each other. The testimonia from conclusive arguments. The testimonia revealed by the divine revelation, which was finally sent to us. These are the eight chapters. The ninth chapter will contain a short comparison between Islam and Christianity regarding their teachings, as well as the significant proof for the truthfulness of Islam. The tenth chapter will contain an explanation of the aims that God has sent me and a further explanation of the evidence to prove that I am the promised Messiah of God the Exalted. This book will end with an epilogue containing some important guidelines. I hope that those who read this book will do so with carefulness and that they do not reject these facts because of a bad thought about it. I hope they realise that this study is not a superficial one, but the outcome of our big and exhausting efforts. I pray to God (the Magnificent and Exalted) for supporting us in accomplishing this work and to grant us His special revelation, the light of complete truth and doubtlessness, because any kind of true knowledge and clear perception comes from Him alone. He is the one who guides 40  Kashmir / India.

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the hearts towards success with the success He (the Magnificent and Exalted) grants. Amen! The humble servant Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad From Qadian April 25/Nīsān 1899 Translated by Jonathan Korbel and Claudia Preckel

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3.06

ʿAbbās Afandī ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ: Treatise on Civilisation (Iran, 1875) Introduction The Risāla-yi madaniyya (Treatise on Civilisation)1 by ʿAbbās Afandī ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ (1844–1921) constitutes an interesting contribution to the reformist discourse of the nineteenth-century Middle East. Written in 1875, it is prima facie the response of an educated patriotic Iranian Muslim to the reformist policies of Mīrzā Ḥusayn Khān (1828–1881) who was ambassador in Istanbul from 1858 to 1870 and became the Iranian prime minister in 1871. Emulating the Ottoman Tanẓimāt reforms, he initiated administrative and political reforms which met the opposition of the conservative religious and political establishment.2 Apart from expressing explicit support for Ḥusayn Khān’s reforms, the treatise also engages in a more general discourse on the relationship between Islam and modernity. Secular and atheist intellectuals like the poet and playwright Fatḥ ʿAlī Akhūndzāda (1812–1878)3 blamed Islam for the backwardness of Iran whereas the ulama saw the solution for their country’s problems in the return to original Islam. Despite the contradictory evaluation of the role of Islam in Iranian society, both parties saw an inherent enmity between Islam and modernity.4 ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ’s treatise—similar to other contemporaneous modernist authors in the Middle East—argues against such a dichotomy. Together with Yak kalima (One Word), written around 1870 by

1  The Persian title of the Risāla-yi madaniyya [Treatise on Civilisation] is not to be confused with Mīrzā Malkam Khān’s Risāla-yi uṣūl-i tamaddun [Treatise on the Foundations of Civilisation], written in London at about the same time and arguing for economic reforms and commercial links with Europe. See Hamid Algar, Mirza Malkum Khan: A Biographical Study in Iranian Modernism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), 108–112. 2  For the relationship between Mīrzā Ḥusayn Khān and the ulama see Hamid Algar, Religion and State in Iran in 1785–1906: The Role of the Ulama in the Qajar Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 169–183. 3  Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. “Akūndzāda” vol. I, ed. Ehsan Yarshater (London: Routledge & Paul, 1985). 4  Nader Saiedi, “An Introduction to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Secrets of Divine Civilization,” in Converging Realities 1:1 (2000). Accessed February 11, 2004, http://converge.landegg.edu/saiedi5.htm.

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Mīrzā Yūsuf Khān Mustashār al-Dawla (d. 1895),5 the treatise is among the first works in the Persian language which intends to demonstrate the compatibility of Islam with modern reforms. However, a marked geographical and sectarian position of liminality characterises both the treatise and its author. While the treatise is conceived as a contribution to debates in Iran, ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ was, at the time of its composition, exiled to the Ottoman prisoner colony of ʿAkka. Hence, both the reformist milieu of the Ottoman world as well as debates around the modernisation of Iran provide the two geographical contexts in which the treatise needs to be placed. In this sense, his treatise illustrates the influence of Ottoman reforms and the discourse around them outside of the Ottoman world,6 stimulating Ḥusayn Khān’s own reform initiatives as well as ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ’s and other Iranian authors’ supportive intellectual underpinning. More important perhaps is the sectarian liminality of the treatise’s author. It was written and published anonymously in 1882 and with its overt references to the Quran, Prophetic traditions and other Islamic sources lets its author appear to be an Iranian Twelver Shii Muslim. ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ was, however, the son of Mīrzā Ḥusayn ʿAlī Nūrī Bahāʾ Allāh (1817–1892), the Iranian-born prophet-founder of the Baha⁠ʾi Faith, a new religious movement with roots in Shii messianism that later departed from Islam. At the time of the composition of the treatise, ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ and his father actively sought to establish links between the nascent Baha⁠ʾi movement and Muslim reformers and Ottoman dissidents. Hence, the emergence of the Baha⁠ʾi movement and its interaction with the nineteenth-century Middle Eastern gedankenwelt provide a further frame in which the treatise needs to be positioned. The following discussion initially contextualises ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ’s treatise historically by illustrating the rise of the Baha⁠ʾi movement, its relationship with the reformist environment of the nineteenth century Middle East, its themes and arguments, reception and relationship to contemporaneous reformist discourse. While for Baha⁠ʾis today the Treatise on Civilisation is part of the corpus of their religion’s holy writ and thereby somehow detached from the historical context in which it was originally produced,7 the discussion of this 5  Mehrdad Kia, “Constitutionalism, Economic Modernization and Islam in the Writings of Mirza Yusef Khan Mostashar od-Dowle,” Middle Eastern Studies 30 (1994): 751–777. 6  On links between Ottoman and Iranian reformers see Fariba Zarinebaf, “From Istanbul to Tabriz: Modernity and Constitutionalism in the Ottoman Empire and Iran,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 28 (2008): 154–169. 7  An English translation has been produced by the Baha⁠ʾi author Marzieh Gail, The Secrets of Divine Civilization (Wilmette, Ill.: US Baha⁠ʾi Publishing Trust, 1957). The English ­translation

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work intends to illustrate the very situatedness of the work in the nineteenthcentury Middle Eastern reformist milieu. Context ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ was born in Tehran in 1844 into a prominent aristocratic family. His father, Mīrzā Ḥusayn ʿAlī Nūrī, later known as Bahāʾ Allāh, became a follower of the Bāb, Sayyid Muḥammad ʿAlī (1819–1850), a young charismatic merchant from Shiraz who began to put forward messianic-cum-prophetic claims from the mid 1840s onwards which led to the emergence of the Bābī movement in Iran. Due to Bahāʾ Allāh’s prominent involvement in this movement he was exiled to Baghdad (1852–1893), Istanbul and Edirne (1863–1868) and finally to ʿAkka where he lived until his death in 1892. During his exile Bahāʾ Allāh developed his own millenarian and prophetic claims, which together with his ability to secure the loyalty of most Bābīs in Iran led to the emergence of the Baha⁡ʾi movement as a distinct offshoot of Bābism.8 ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ accompanied his father in his exile, became his amanuensis and succeeded him as head of the Baha⁡ʾi movement in 1892. During his exile in the Ottoman Empire, Bahāʾ Allāh’s encountered its political climate and reformist discourse and came in contact with several prominent reformers. The intellectual and personal encounters affected the doctrinal development of his religious movement, as he was acquainted with several modern ideas and began to engage with the political climate of the Middle East from 1868 onwards. For instance, Bahāʾ Allāh increasingly supported the idea of consultation (shūrā) and contemporary constitutional movements and their attempts to curb the absolutist power of Middle Eastern rulers.9 Baha⁡ʾis had been in contact with Ottoman dissidents since their exile to Edirne. These contacts intensified in ʿAkka, as many dissidents shared imprisonment in the fortress city with the Baha‌ʾis. ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ was either in personal contact or communicating by letters with leading reformers in the Ottoman Empire, such as Ottoman dissidents like Namik Kamāl (1840–1888), takes its title from the 1882 printed edition of the treatise, entitled Al-asrār al-ghaybiyya li-asbāb al-madaniyya (Bombay 1882). Gail’s translation is undertaken from a Baha⁠ʾi perspective and tends to relativise the very strong situatedness of the treatise in the Islamic modernist intellectual milieu. See Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. “Resāla-ye madaniya.” 8  See Denis MacEoin, “From Babism to Baha⁠ʾism: Problems of Militancy, Quietism, and Conflation in the Construction of a Religion,” in Religion 13 (1983): 219–255. 9  For the development of Bahāʾ Allāh’s socio-political ideas see Juan R. I. Cole, Modernity and the Millennium: The Genesis of the Baha⁠ʾi Faith in the Nineteenth-Century Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).

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the Ottoman statesman Midḥat Pashā (1822–1884), Muslim reformers and activists like Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī (1838–1897) and Muḥammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905) or the Iranian reformer Mīrzā Malkam Khān (1833–1908).10 What remains unclear is how he presented himself, particularly his religious affiliation. Given the heterodox nature of the Baha‌ʾi movement, ʿAbduh’s student Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā (1865–1935) suggests that ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ practised taqiyya, concealing the full claims of his father and presenting the Baha‌ʾi movement as a Shii religious reform movement. The followers of mystical, esoteric and philosophical movements outside the religious mainstream often had to dissimulate their beliefs in a hostile environment. The few accounts which are available by Ottoman dissidents and reformers who have met ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ in ʿAkka or corresponded with him confirm the suggestion that he concealed the full millenarian and theophanic claims of his father11 and gave the impression that the Baha‌ʾi movement was a Shii reform movement working for a rapprochement with the Sunnis, a new Islamic school of thought (madhhab) or a Sufi order (ṭarīqa). Contents That the Treatise on Civilisation was the second Baha‌ʾi book to be printed—the first edition was published in Bombay in 1882—illustrates the importance it was given. The Cambridge Orientalist Edward G. Browne noticed the wide circulation of the Bombay-printed edition of the treatise among Iranian Baha‌ʾis.12 Evaluating the reception of the book outside of Baha‌ʾi circles is more difficult. Despite the close links between the Baha‌ʾi leaders and many Muslim reformers in the 1860s and 70s, the heterodox nature of the Baha‌ʾi movement rendered such relations problematic and explains a possible unwillingness of contemporaneous reformers to admit any influence.13

10  For more information on al-Afghānī, ʿAbduh and Riḍā, see the chapters 1.10 and 2.06 in this volume. For contacts between Baha⁠ʾis and Ottoman reformers see, for instance, Necati Alkan, Dissent and Heterodoxy in the Late Ottoman Empire: Reformers, Babis and Baha⁠ʾis (Istanbul: The Isis Press, 2008). 11  On ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ’s taqiyya see Kamran Ekbal, “taqiyya und kitman in den Babi and Baha⁡ʾi Religionen,” in Akten des 27. Deutschen Orientalistentages (Bonn—28. September bis 2. Oktober 1998): Norm und Abweichung, ed. Stefan Wild and Hartmut Schild (Würzburg: Ergon, 2001), 363–372. 12  Edward G. Browne, “The Bábís of Persia,” Selections from the Writings of E. G. Browne on the Babi and Baha⁡ʾi Religions, ed. Moojan Momen (Oxford: George Ronald, 1987), 250. 13  Moojan Momen, “The Baha⁠ʾi Influence on Reform Movements of the Islamic World in the 1860s and 1870s,” Baha⁡ʾi Studies Bulletin 2 (1983): 48–49.

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While the treatise bears most resemblance to the Persian tradition of ‘Mirrors for Princes,’ it addresses different elements of the Iranian elite. ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ engages in quite a learned discourse with references to and citations from the Quran, Prophetic traditions and Persian poetry. Unlike the more sober style of other reformist works, the treatise is couched in the ornate language of Persian mystical and esoteric writing. The author exhibits his knowledge and awareness of discourses and events outside of the Middle East, being acquainted with nineteenth century European intellectual discourse, referring to European authors such as Voltaire or using current events in Europe such as the Franco-Prussian war in order to support a particular argument. ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ also demonstrates his awareness and appreciation of other religious traditions quoting, for example, from a Persian translation of the Bible. The treatise develops different arguments in order to express its support for the modernising reforms of Ḥusayn Khān. First, it endorses these reforms from a pragmatic-utilitarian perspective, arguing that these reforms bring progress and benefit to Iran. Second, its tone is nationalistic, appealing to the glory of ancient pre-Islamic Iran. Third, it deals with the question of the relationship between Islam and modernity, presenting Islam and religion in general as the ultimate civilising forces of humanity. Fourth, it develops a non-essentialist notion of civilisation, acknowledging, for example, that early Muslims translated and appropriated the philosophical and scientific heritage of the ancient Middle East for the advancement of their own civilisation—an example that Muslims nowadays should emulate. ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ’s argumentation in the treatise reflects similar contemporaneous discourses among Muslim reformers and modernists. It refers to the greatness of Islamic civilisation which needs to be revived, presents Islam as a religion that supports progress and civilisation and provided the foundation for European civilisation. The treatise also denounces European modernity as materialistic and deprived of morality and spiritual purpose, thereby counterbalancing the material and technological superiority of Europe with the moral and spiritual superiority of Islam. Hence, the treatise mirrors the reformist and apologetic tone of other Muslim modernists who intend to find support for modern concepts in the Islamic tradition while at the same time claim the superiority of Islam as both the source of European civilisation and its necessary moral corrective. In contradistinction to other modernist authors, ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ reveals a more universalist and irenic stance towards other religions and civilisations. For instance, he expresses admiration for the way Christianity spread around the globe by peaceful missionary means. Contrary to the widespread notion that Islam is a religion of the sword, he maintains that Islam is a religion of peace, Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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since Muḥammad prohibited coercion in matters of religion and sanctioned the use of violence only against the first Arab converts who apostatised from Islam. Thereby, ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ not only rejects—in line with other modernist apologetics—the criticism of Christian missionaries and European Orientalist scholarship that Islam spread through the use of force. He even expresses his high esteem for the peaceful nature of Protestant missionary activities. Were Muslims to emulate their example, Islam would spread around the globe. Obviously impressed by the assiduous engagement of Christian missionaries with the Islamic religion, ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ not only encourages other Muslims to study the Bible, but also rejects the Shii laws of ritual impurity of non-Muslims which do not allow for personal interaction with followers of other religions, presented as essential for bringing them into the fold of Islam. Oliver Scharbrodt

Further Reading

Alkan, Necati. Dissent and Heterodoxy in the Late Ottoman Empire: Reformers, Babis and Baha⁠ʾis. Istanbul: The Isis Press, 2008. Amanat, Abbas. Resurrection and Renewal: The Making of the Babi Movement in Iran, 1844–1850. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989. Bayat, Mangol. Mysticism and Dissent: Socioreligious Thought in Qajar Iran. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1982. Cole, Juan R. I. Modernity and the Millennium: The Genesis of the Baha‌ʾi Faith in the Nineteenth–Century Middle East. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Scharbrodt, Oliver. Islam and the Baha‌ʾi Faith: A Comparative Study of Muhammad ʿAbduh and ʿAbdul-Baha‌ʾ ‘Abbas. London: Routledge, 2008.



Source Text14

This is well-known and evident: the mightiest means for attaining human success and welfare and the greatest instrument for achieving civilisation and advancement of all those on earth are love, affection and unity among all members of humankind. Nothing is conceivable and attainable without unity and harmony. In the world, the most perfect instrument for achieving affection 14  ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ, Risāla-yi madaniyya [Treatise on Civilisation] (Hofheim: Baha⁡ʾi-Verlag, 1984), 86–112.

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and unity is true divine religion: “If you had spent everything that is on earth, you would not have brought their hearts together in affection, but God brought them together.”15 When through the mission of divine prophets the power of true unity, both in its spiritual and material dimensions (bāṭinī wa-ẓāhirī), joins together tribes and communities that had once opposed and fought each other, into the shelter of the one word of God, 100,000 souls are directed to become one soul, and thousands of individuals are formed into one single person: “They appear as manifold as the waves of the seas, Becoming manifold if there is a breeze.”16 “Because ‘God sprinkled upon them some of his light,’17 Never can be divided the light of his.”18 “The souls of wolves and dogs are apart, While united are the souls of God’s lions.”19 Accounts of events at the time of the mission of previous prophets (peace be upon them), their acts, conditions and effects are not mentioned in detail in reliable historical records. However, in the verses of the Quran, the Prophetic traditions (aḥādīth) and the Torah they are briefly mentioned. Since from the time of Moses to the present, all events are written down in the mighty Quran, the sound Prophetic traditions, the Torah and reliable historical records, only a brief explanation is provided here. Truthful proofs will be given in order to make it for everyone well-known and evident whether, in the existing world, religion is the fundamental source of humanity and civilisation or whether— as Voltaire and those like him assume—it destroys the edifice of progress and tranquillity of humankind. In order to prevent any community (ṭāʿifa) from finding an opportunity to reject the following argument, the explanation is provided in accordance with authentic historical records as common among the nations and recognised by all people in the world. 15  Quran 8:63. 16  Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Mathnawī, 7 vols., ed. Mohammed Estelami (Teheran: Kitabfurushi-yi Zuwwar, 1990), Book 2, 185. 17  See the hadith attributed to Muhammad: “God created the creatures in darkness, and then sprinkled upon them some of his light.” For this hadith’s citation in al-Ghazālī’s Al-munqidh min al-ḍalāl, see Al-Ghazali, Deliverance from Error: Five Key Texts Including His Spiritual Autobiography, al-Munqidh min al-Dalal, translated and annotated by R. J. McCarthy (Louisville: FonsVitae, 1980), 58. 18  Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Mathnawī, Book 2, 189. 19  Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmi, Mathnawī, Book 4, 414.

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At the time when the Israelites had grown in the kingdom of Egypt, it was known across Egypt that its pharaonic rulers bestowed honor and power on their own people but humiliation and abasement on the Israelites whom they viewed as foreign. When for a long time the Israelites were divided and fractured, they were slaves in the hands of the Egyptians’ tyranny and oppression and humiliated and abased in the eyes of everyone: the most abased Egyptian levelled torment and cruelty against the noblest Israelite. This was the extent of their slavery, humiliation and oppression: day and night, the Israelites’ lives were not safe, their children and families had no refuge from the injustice of the pharaoh’s aids, those in need of safety ate the pieces of their hearts, broken by the abundance of suffering and pain, and drank the tear-drops from an Oxus-like river. The Israelites remained in this state of anguish until the beauty of Moses let the gloom of the fire of divine oneness appear from the right side of the valley in the blessed land,20 raised the call of the ever-increasing divine life from the fire, kindled by the Lord on the tree “that is neither of the East nor of the West”21 and was called to his full prophethood. Then the lamp of guidance was lit amongst the tribes of Israel, guided by its light those who had gone astray in the darkness of ignorance onto the straight path of knowledge and perfection and raised the knowledge of perfect unity to the heights of harmony and concord, while overcoming the divisions among the Israelite tribes by the shelter of the one word of divine unity. In a short time, these ignorant souls received divine education, having been once complete strangers to the truth became its followers and were delivered from their abasement, humiliation, poverty, slavery and ignorance until they finally achieved honor and prosperity. After they had left the kingdom of Egypt, they turned towards the ancient Israelite homeland, entered Kanaan and Palestine, initially conquered the banks of the River Jordan and Jericho and settled in that land. Finally, all the neighbouring lands, from Phoenicia, Edom to Ammon—a dominion including thirty-one lands altogether at the time of Joshua—were occupied by the Israelites. This community excelled all other tribes and nations in all matters, characteristics, human virtues of knowledge and insight, stability, effort, courage, audacity, honor and generosity. An Israelite in that time when he entered a group of people was viewed as being of an excellent and worthy character so that other tribes in order to praise someone would say that he was like an Israelite. In numerous historical records it is mentioned that Greek philosophers like Pythagoras learned most aspects of divine and natural philosophy (ḥikmat) 20  See Quran 28:30. 21  Quran 24:35.

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from Solomon’s students. In addition, Socrates met on his journey the most revered divine scholars of the Israelites and on his return to Greece laid the foundation for the belief in divine oneness and in the permanence of human spirits after they have put aside their elementary bodily cloaks. In the end, the ignorant among the Greeks resolved to reject the secrets of philosophy (ḥikmat) and rose to murder him. The people forced the ruler of Greece to let them give Socrates a cup filled with poison before a tribunal. In short, after the Israelite nation had progressed in all degrees of civilisation and had reached the ultimate degree of prosperity, it gradually forgot the fundamental sources of religion and the law (sharīʿa) of Moses and engaged in formalised customs and unworthy acts. In the time of Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, major divisions emerged among the Israelites. Jeroboam, who was one of the Israelites pursuing leadership, introduced the worship of idols. Several centuries of warfare between Rehoboam and Jeroboam and their descendants ensued, dividing and fracturing the Jewish tribes. In short, the meaning of the divine law was forgotten, as the Israelites were characterised by ignorant fanaticism, unworthy manners, rebellion and unrest. Their scholars (ʿulamāʾ) utterly forgot the requirements of human reality as written down in the Bible (kitāb-i muqaddas), thought only of their own advantages and threw their nation into ultimate negligence and ignorance. Through the fruits of their deeds that former honor was changed into humiliation. The kings of Persia, Greece and Rome became their rulers, as the banner of their independence was overturned. The ignorance, foolishness, misery and self-love of their religious leaders and priests became evident in the rise of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, who erased the foundations of the Israelite nation. After slaughtering its population, looting its possessions, destroying its houses and even uprooting its trees, he enslaved those who were spared from his swords and took them to Babylon. When after seventy years their children were freed from slavery, they could return to Jerusalem (bayt al-maqdis). Hezekiah and Ezra (peace be upon them) renewed the religious foundations as established in the Bible. As day by day the Israelite nation made progress, the morning light of the initial ages shone forth. After a short time, major divisions in their acts and thoughts emerged again, as the efforts of the Jewish scholars turned towards their own selfish desires. The reforms initiated at the time of Ezra (peace be upon him) were changed into corrupt conduct and conditions. Rightful efforts came to an end so that the soldiers of the Roman kings and the later Roman republic conquered again and again the Israelite lands. Finally Titus, the Roman war hero and general, erased the Jewish homeland into dust: all men were killed, women and children enslaved, houses destroyed, trees uprooted, books burned, possessions looted and Jerusalem turned into a hill covered by ashes. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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After this great catastrophe the star of Israelite dominion sank into annihilation. This nation remains destroyed like this until now, as it is scattered to all corners of the world: “Humiliation and poverty struck them.”22 These two mighty catastrophes by Nebuchadnezzar and Titus are also mentioned in the noble Quran: “In the book, we declared to the Israelites: ‘Twice you will spread corruption on earth and reach the pinnacle of arrogance.’ When the first of these two warnings was fulfilled, we sent servants from us against you with strong force. They scuffled through your houses. So the first warning was executed . . . When the second warning was fulfilled, we sent them again to sadden your faces, to enter your place of worship as they did the first time and to destroy whatever they could destroy.”23 Thus, the purpose of this is to draw attention to the fact that true religion is the cause of civilisation, honor, prosperity, prestige, insights and progress of communities that were once humiliated, enslaved, abased and ignorant. When it fell into the hands of ignorant and fanatical scholars, through their maltreatment, its mighty splendor was turned into the darkest night. When for the second time, the signs and effects of dispersal, humiliation, annihilation and subjection of the Israelite community became visible, the kind and holy breezes of the Spirit of God (rūḥ allāh [i.e. Jesus]) blew over the banks of the river Jordan and the land of Hebron, the cloud of mercy opened up and the rain of great spiritual revitalisation poured down in abundance on that land. From the drops and waves of the mightiest ocean the holy land was perfumed with the fragrant plants of the knowledge of God and all the majestic melodies of the Gospels reached the ears of those who inhabit the chambers of the angelic kingdom. Through the soul of the Messiah dead souls were raised from their graves of negligence and ignorance and reached eternal life. During three years that bright epitome of perfection wandered in the plains and deserts of Jerusalem and Palestine, led everyone to the morning of divine guidance and brought education through spiritual manners and worthy qualities. If the Israelite nation had accepted that shining beauty, it would have served him with obedience and would have been granted through the reviving fragrances, imparted by the Spirit of God, a new spirit and immeasurable victories. However, they all rejected the benefits brought by him and tormented that source of divine knowledge and the focal point of divine revelation, except for a few who, turning their faces towards God, were sanctified from the dark matters of the contingent world, putting their resolve on transcending it. All kinds of severe calamities reached that dawn of divine benevolence that he 22  Quran 2:61. 23  Quran 17:4–7.

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could not stay or settle in any place. Nevertheless, the banner of great divine guidance was raised and the foundations of civilising human manners, fundamental for the civilisation of society at large, were laid. In Matthew 5, 37 it is written: “When misery, evil or torment befalls you, do not reject it. When someone strikes you on your right cheek, offer him your left cheek as well.” In the following verse 43 it is likewise written: “You have heard that it was said that you should love those that are close to you and hate those that are your enemies. But I say this to you: Love your enemies, think well of your evil-wishers, show mercy to those who hate you and pray for those who torment and dispel you. Thereby you will become like the children of God in heaven. His sun rises for both the evil-doers and the virtuous and his cloud of mercy showers upon both the oppressors and the righteous. When you love your friends, what reward and distinction does this bring for you? Do not even the publicans do the same?” There are many of such teachings stemming from that dawning place of divine wisdom. Indeed, souls that are sanctified by these qualities are gems in the existing world and the dawning places of true civilisation. The Spirit of God based the holy law on pure spirituality and good manners and assigned to the believers a special conduct and behavior, the gem of life in the world. As much as those manifestations of divine guidance appeared to suffer from the most severe punishment and agony, in reality they were saved from oppression of the isolated Jews, rose at the morning of new creation and were illuminated by the light of eternal honor. The vast Jewish nation was annihilated and destroyed while the numerous believers hurried to the shelter of the blessed tree of Jesus (shajara-yi mubāraka-yi ʿīsāwiyya)24 and verily transformed the entire world. At that time, all peoples in the world had reached the lowest degree of fanaticism, foolishness, utter ignorance and idolatry. Nobody preached the belief in one God apart from a small group of Jews who had been entirely isolated and defeated. These blessed souls who followed the Spirit of God rose to spread his cause which rejected and opposed the beliefs of all humankind at that time. All the kings on four of the five continents of the world firmly resolved to obliterate the Christian nation, while in the end they hurried to spread the divine religion with all their life and heart. All the nations of Europe, most

24  See Quran 24:35. This is an allusion to the “blessed olive tree (shajara mubāraka zaytūna)” mentioned in the light-verse and possibly symbolising a heavenly tree that functions as the axis mundi, embodied by the prophets and Sufi saints. See also Gerhard Böwering, “The Light Verse: Qurʾanic Text and Sufi Interpretation,” in Oriens 36 (2001): 120–121.

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c­ ommunities in Asia and Africa and some inhabitants of the islands of the vast ocean were joined together in the shelter of the word of divine unity. Consider now whether not in every respect through religion the mightiest foundations were created, whether any other cause with such a creative force can be conceived than the divine religions, whether any other cause can be the instrument to attain complete love, affection, unity and concord than the belief in the Almighty, whether not only the heavenly religions laid the foundations for universal education in all manners—qualities that the sages have achieved, who have excelled in philosophy, and character traits that exemplified perfection to the mightiest degree? The believers in God, from the moment they sincerely believe, become the manifestation of that worthy human character. Consider how the souls, that drank from the river of paradise (salsabīl) and were put into the shelter of the Gospels by the benevolent hands of the Spirit of God, have reached a degree of manners that even Galen, the famous physician, although not a Christian himself, praised them in a comprehensive commentary on a book by Plato dealing with the leadership of cities (siyāsat-i mudun). The translation is as follows: “The common people are unable to grasp the method of logical discourse and require figurative words describing reward and punishment in the afterlife. Evidence for the solidity of this proposition can be gained when we observe the people who are called Christians and who believe in reward and punishment in the afterlife. Good deeds come forth from this community—the same deeds that qualify a true philosopher. Based on what our eyes have witnessed, they do not fear death and in terms of their strong longing and yearning for justice and equity (ʿadl wa-insāf ) they can be considered to be true philosophers.”25 For Galen, the station of a philosopher constituted the mightiest station possibly conceivable at that time. Consider how the illuminating spiritual power of divine religions leads their ordinary adherents to a degree of perfection to which even Galen, the physician, though not himself a member of this community, bears witness. Among the effects of these good manners of the people of the Gospels in that day and age were their enduring engagement in charity and welfare. Hospitals, infirmaries and other charitable institutions were established. The first person who built public institutions for the healing of the poor and sick left without treatment in the Roman kingdom was Constantine. This mighty emperor was the first Roman ruler who rose to support the cause of the Spirit of God and with utmost effort gave his life for the spread of the teachings of 25  The original source of this excerpt from Galen’s commentary on Plato’s Republic, probably written around 180 CE, is lost and is only accessible through Arabic citations. See Richard Walzer, Galen on Jews and Christians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949), 9–15.

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the Gospels. He based and centred Roman rule, which in reality had been the epitome of tyranny, on justice and equity. His blessed name shines at the dawn of history like a bright morning star. His great fame in the world of those with civilisation and status is still resounded throughout all Christian sects. As a blessing of educating holy souls who then rise to spread the teachings of the Gospels, what permanent foundations for good manners were established in that time, how many schools, seminaries, hospitals, institutions and places for the education of orphans and poor children were founded, and how many souls who laid their own advantages aside, “seeking God’s pleasure,”26 spent their entire life teaching and educating the general populace. However, at the time when the rise of the illuminating morning of the beauty of Aḥmad [i.e. the Prophet Muhammad] was approaching, the reigns of the affairs of the Christian people fell into the hands of ignorant priests. All were cut off from those merciful breezes of the winds of divine favor and through the maltreatment and actions of these souls, who were outwardly ordained with spiritual authority but inwardly diminished in true spirituality, the purpose of religion was negated. All famous historians amongst the peoples of Europe in their explanation of the quality, conditions, effects, leadership, civilisation, insights and all other matters in the ancient, medieval and modern centuries mention that in the ten medieval centuries, that lasted from the sixth to the fifteenth century CE, the kingdoms of Europe were in the ultimate degree of barbary and lack of civilisation in all matters. The fundamental reason for that was that the clerics, who were so to speak the spiritual and religious leaders of the European peoples, neglected the eternal honor of adhering to the holy cause and the heavenly teachings of the Gospels and interfered with the basis of worldly dominion which was characterised by complete tyranny and unrest at that time. Turning their eyes away from permanent glory, they put all their effort and endeavor in pursuing short-lived and fleeting benefits and their own selfish desires. Ultimately, it reached such a state that the general populace were enslaved in either of the two Christian sects. These conditions and effects were the cause for the destruction of the foundations of religion, humanity, civilisation of the peoples of Europe. When the kind winds from the breezes of the Spirit of God on the horizons of the contingent world were obliterated through the inept deeds and thoughts and unbecoming intentions of the religious leaders and darkness, ignorance, foolishness and unworthy manners encompassed the entire world as a result, the morning of hope rose and a new divine spring began. The clouds of mercy opened up again and the life-giving breezes of the winds of divine favor blew 26  Quran 4:114, 2:207, etc.

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another time. The sun of divine reality shone forth from the Hijaz and Yathrib in the point of Muhammad (nuqṭa-yi muḥammadiyya).27 On the horizons of the contingent world the lights of eternal glory became abundant and the soil of human talents was transformed, illustrating the words: “And the earth will shine with the light of its Lord.”28 The world was made new and its dead body excelled through an unlimited spirit. The edifice of tyranny and ignorance was destroyed and the palace of knowledge and justice erected so that the ocean of civilisation roared and the lights of insights shone forth. The barbaric peoples and communities in the Hijaz, before the fire of great prophethood had been kindled in the gaslamp (zujāja)29 of Batha,30 were amongst the most ignorant tribes and most barbaric communities of the world. Their reprehensible way of life, their barbaric customs, their blood thirst, their divisions and hostilities are mentioned in all historical books and records. The civilised communities of the world at that time would not even count the Arab tribes of Yathrib and Batha to be members of the human species. However, after the bright horizons had risen in that land, through the education of that source of perfection and focal point of divine revelation and through the effulgence of the holy divine law they were joined together into the shelter of the word of divine oneness in a short time. This group of barbaric people made such progress in terms of human dignity and perfection that all other nations of the world at that time were bewildered and astonished. The communities, tribes and nations of the world, that had always derided and taunted the Arabs 27  The term ‘point’ refers back to a hadith attributed to Muhammad, stating: “All that is in the books sent down from heaven is in the Quran. All that is in the Quran is in its opening chapter (al-Fātiḥa). All that is in its opening chapter is in the basmala, In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate (bi-ism allāh, al-raḥmān, al-raḥīm). All that is in the basmala is in its first letter bāʾ. All that is in the bāʾ is in the point (nuqṭa) below the letter bāʾ.” ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Jīlī (1354–1424) in his commentary on the basmala explains that the point below the Arabic letter bāʾ is the first material manifestation of divine utterance, the literal starting-point from which divine revelation begins. The point not only initiates the process of divine revelation, it is also—as the hadith suggests—the container of all divine knowledge and thereby a symbol of the moment when the hidden divine self becomes manifest through his revelation: “The point is an allusion to the divine self, hidden behind the canvas of his manifestation, containing his treasure.” (ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Jīlī, Al-kahf wa-al-raqīm fi sharḥ bi-ism allāh, al-raḥmān, al-raḥīm [The hidden and apparent meaning of the basmala] (Cairo: Maktaba al-Qāḥira, 1998, 8) Referring to Muhammad and other prophets as ‘points’ indicates their role as vehicles of divine revelation. 28  Quran 39:69. 29  See Quran 24:35. 30  Old name of Mecca.

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and viewed them as a race without any distinction, now went with complete yearning to the lands of the Arabs in order to acquire human virtues, learn statecraft, obtain insights and civilisation and study arts and crafts from them. Consider the tangible effects of true divine education: people who out of complete barbary and foolishness at the time of ignorance ( jāhiliyya) buried their seven-year-old daughters alive. This is an act that apart from a human being even the nature of animals would find abhorrent and repugnant as an extreme sign of ignorance but that they considered an expression of honor and industry. These foolish people reached through the effulgence of outward education from that great person such a degree that they conquered the lands of Egypt, Syria, Chaldea, Iraq and Iran and alone were in charge of the four quarters of the world. The Arab community was ahead of other nations and peoples in all fields of knowledge, arts, insights, philosophy (ḥikmat), leadership, manners, crafts and inventions. The fact that this barbaric and abased community achieved the ultimate degree of the mightiest human perfections in such a short time, is the proof of the true prophethood of the lord of all truths (sarwar-i kāʾinat [Muhammad]). In the early period of Islam, all the communities in Europe received the virtues and insights of civilisation from the Muslim population of Andalus. If one examines with utmost care the history books, it is proven and evident that the civilisation of Europe was received through Islam for the most part. All the books of the philosophers, sages, scholars and notables of Islam were gradually collected in Europe, with complete care studied and debated in academic meetings and gatherings and their useful aspects applied. Nowadays, the books of Islamic notables which have disappeared from the lands of Islam, exist in numerous editions in the libraries of Europe. The laws and legal foundations that are applied in all lands of Europe have been for the most part if not entirely received from the books of Islamic jurisprudence and the legal opinions of Islamic scholars. If one did not fear an unnecessary extension of this argument, one could deliberate on each of these aspects received by the Europeans on their own. Civilisation began to appear in Europe in the seventh century after the Hijra. The explanation for this is as follows: at the end of the fifth century after the Hijra, as the holy sites of Christianity like Jerusalem, Bethlehem or Nazareth fell under Islamic dominion, the pope, leader of the Christian nation, began to lament and clamor and, encouraging and inciting the kings and the populace of Europe alike, led them to the belief in the necessity of engaging in holy war (ḥarb-i dīnī wa-jihād). His clamor, sighs and moaning reached such a level that all the lands of Europe rose and the crusader kings crossed the Bosporus with numerous armies heading towards Asia. At that time, the Fatimid caliphs Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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(khulafā-yi ʿalawiyya) ruled over Egypt and parts of North Africa, while most of the time the rulers of Syria, namely the Seljuqs, were in command and control of this same region. Within short time, the kings of Europe attacked with their numerous armies the lands of Syria and Egypt. For a period of two hundred and three years the rulers of Syria and of Europe were constantly engaged in warfare with support from Europe always arriving. The European kings conquered every fortress of Syria repeatedly, while the rulers of Islam then saved them from the hands of the Europeans. Finally, in the year 393 after the Hijra, Salāḥ al-Dīn, the victorious Ayyubid ruler, expelled the kings and armies of Europe from the lands and coasts of Syria and Egypt. Hopeless and defeated, they returned to the lands of Europe. During these wars, which are known as the Crusades, millions of people died. In particular, between the years 490 and 693 after the Hijra, the kings, military leaders and notables of Europe frequently visited the lands of Syria and Egypt. Finally, all returned to Europe. In the period of about two hundred years, they had observed the leadership, civilisation, insights, schools, libraries and laudable customs and habits in the lands of Islam. After their return to Europe, they established similar institutions there. Civilisation in Europe took its beginning at that time. Oh, people of Iran! Until when do you remain idle and negligent? Once you were the rulers and commanders of all parts of the world. How much of the former glory has survived now that you have crawled into the corner of perfidy? Once you were the sources of insights and the origins of civilisation in the world. How much have you faded, drained and withered away now? Once you were the sources of illumination of the horizons of the world. How much are you immersed in the darkness of negligence and weakness now? Open your eyes and understand your own existential needs! Fasten the belt of effort and diligence and strive to grasp the means of attaining insights and civilisation! Is it not remarkable that foreign communities and tribes received virtues and insights from the works of your predecessors and ancestors, while you prohibit your children and descendants from doing the same? Is it acceptable that your contemporaries and neighbours day and night strive with endurance to gain the instruments for achieving progress, honor and prosperity with all their heart and life, while you—in your ignorant fanaticism—are occupied with antagonism, dispute, passion and desire? Is it commendable and praiseworthy that you leave and abandon your innate intelligence, natural ability and inborn acumen weak and idle? Again, we digress from the argument. In short, all intellectuals and scholars among the peoples of Europe who can be characterised as trustworthy and just and who are acquainted with the realities of past historical conditions acknowledge and recognise that the

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­foundations of all aspects of their civilisation were received from Islam. The famous writer and researcher Draper from the people of France whose expertise, ability and knowledge is recognised in the midst of all writers and intellectuals of Europe provides in a chapter of his book, entitled The Intellectual Progress of Nations,31 which is his most famous publication, a detailed exposition. He states that the European nations adopted the foundations of civilisation, progress and prosperity from Islam. The exposition is quite detailed so that its translation and inclusion in this treatise would be the cause of an unnecessary extension, if not distraction from its purpose. In case, someone is not satisfied by what has been said, he may refer to that book itself. In short, he explains that the entire civilisation of Europe, its laws, order, principles, insights, philosophies (ḥikam), fields of knowledge, laudable customs and habits, intellectual refinement, crafts, organisation and system, conduct and ­manners—even many expressions used in the French language—were received from the Arabs. One by one, he provides a detailed account and firmly establishes and proves when each of these was received from Islam. Likewise, he provides an account of the arrival of the Arabs in the land of the Islamic West which is now the kingdom of Spain. In a short period, they established a perfect civilisation in that land of such a type, their leadership and insights were of such a degree of perfection, the established schools and libraries of their knowledge, arts, philosophy and crafts were of such firmness and organisation, their leadership and greatness in the world of civilisation reached such a state, that many children of notables from the European kingdoms that attended the schools of Cordoba, Granada, Seville and Toledo studied the insights and arts of the Arabs and acquired civilisation. He even mentions one person from the peoples of Europe, whose name was Gerbert,32 who went to Islamic Spain and studied at the school of Cordova which was part of the Arab lands at that time. Upon his return to Europe, he reached such a state of fame that in the end he ascended to the throne of religious leadership and became the pope of the Catholic Church. 31  This is a reference to the British-American philosopher and scientist John William Draper (1811–1882) and his book A History of the Intellectual Development of Europe (New York: Harper Brothers, 1864). The book probably became accessible to Ottoman reformers through its French translation, Histoire du développement intellectuel de l’Europe (Paris: A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven et cie, 1868–69). 32  Gerbert of Aurillac (ca. 950–1003), the later Pope Sylvester II, studied at universities in Islamic Spain and became an important mathematician and astronomer. See Draper, Intellectual Development of Europe, 328–330.

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The purpose of these explanations is to make it well-known and evident that divine religions are the true foundations of the spiritual and material ­perfections (maʿnawiyya wa-ẓāhiriyya) of human beings and the dawning places of civilisation and insights beneficial for humankind in general . . . Selected and translated by Oliver Scharbrodt

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Speech to the Former French Prime Minister Joseph Caillaux on the Occasion of His Stay in Beirut in May 1912, Written by Members of the Masonic Lodge Le Liban (Lebanon, 1912) Introduction Freemasonry was one of the most prominent cultural trends in the Middle East that came from Europe during the nineteenth century. Masonic lodges under different European auspices, and later also under the auspice of local Grand lodges, served philanthropic aims and as networks for business and culture. But the lodge as a space apart from state and religious communities was also a platform for discussion on grievances within the society. This is true especially for the French lodges. The lodge from which the source text originated—Le Liban—was a Masonic lodge affiliated to the Grand Orient de France (GOdF). Established in 1868 in Beirut, it was from its founding days concerned with issues that many local citizens perceived as serious impediments for any kind of progress in the society of Syria and Lebanon, namely a lack of patriotism, education and wealth among the people. The Masons of Le Liban saw the main reason for these grievances in confessional and religious cleavages, in the authority of the Christian churches, as well as in the dependence from Western Powers. They suggested overcoming this situation by the establishment of nondenominational schools, where the children were to be taught in the Masonic spirit of fraternity and equality and trained in all relevant subjects that made them independent from and competitive to the Western Powers. The text presented here, a speech by lodge members to the French politician Joseph Caillaux in May 1912, was written at a time when this ambitious project had been abandoned for practical reasons. However, the idea of reforming the society and breaking the confessional borders by education was still alive. Instead of the establishment of Masonic schools, the members of Le Liban now saw the French ‘laicist mission’ (mission laïque) as the key to eliminate the grievances of Syria and Lebanon.

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Freemasonry in the Middle East Freemasonry had established itself by the early eighteenth century in Europe within the framework of a philanthropic society with a wide appeal among various elite groups. It spread quickly to other parts of the world, including the Ottoman Empire. European Masons founded lodges in cities of the Empire with administrative and economic significance, such as Aleppo and Izmir, already in 1738, one year after the first lodge had been established in Germany.1 Initially, these lodges had only a loose organisation, but this changed in the middle of the eighteenth century, when the European Grand Lodges opened their own branches, or when lodges came under their auspices. Their members consisted exclusively of Christians and Jews of different European countries. It was not before 1850 that Muslims also joined Masonic lodges. Until that time, Ottoman Muslims seem to have consciously refrained from involvement with Freemasonry, while it seems that the lodges did not attempt to win members of the local population to their ranks; among Ottoman Christians, distrust was widespread as well. The Ottoman government tried to prohibit Masonic activities in 1748; this, however, with only moderate success.2 Around the middle of the nineteenth century, the Grand Orient de France started to actively invite Muslim Ottomans into their lodges. In order to press ahead with the integration of local people, the Masonic rites and constitutions were translated into Ottoman Turkish. Indeed, more and more Muslims came to join the lodges. Freemasonry became prominent among the Muslim economic elites, as well as among intellectuals and high-ranking court officials. Even members of the royal family such as Sultan Murad V (1876) and his brothers Nureddin and Kemaleddin became Masons. However, the development of freemasonry in the Ottoman Empire slowed down under Sultan Abdülhamid II (1876–1909), who regarded the lodges as agents of French and British interests and persecuted and banished many of their members. The Beiruti Lodge Le Liban In Beirut, many, often religiously mixed, voluntary societies were founded during the nineteenth century that were committed to a general vision of cultural revival as well as to the solution of specifically local problems. Members of local merchant families and intellectuals ran these societies, i.e. the new middle stratum that had developed with Beirut’s increased significance as a 1  Jacob Landau, “Muslim Opposition to Freemasonry,” Die Welt des Islams 36 (1996): 186–203 (188). 2  Jacob Landau, “Farmāsūniyya,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition (Leiden: Brill 2004), 296–297 (296).

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port and trading city in the first half of the nineteenth century.3 Conscious about their new influential economic status in Beirut, these families tried to take an active part also in the political, social and cultural development of the local society. These committed merchants and citizens perceived Beirut and its vicinity as their ‘homeland’ (waṭan) for which they personally felt responsible. The Syrian Scientific Society (al-Jamʿiyya al-ʿilmiyya al-sūriyya), for instance, organised lectures on modern hygienic standards, facing the frequent cholera epidemics in Beirut. Masonic Lodges equally served as forums for similar reformist and patriotic activities.4 In comparison to other Ottoman cities, the first Masonic lodges were established relatively late in Beirut. This was probably due to the fact that, for a long time, Beirut had neither economic nor administrative significance for Europeans merchants and diplomats, who usually founded the lodges. This changed after Beirut developed to one of the leading port cities in the Levant from the first half of the nineteenth century onwards. Le Liban was founded in 1868 under the auspices of the Grand Orient de France and on the initiative of members of Beirut’s until then first and only lodge Palestine, a Scottish lodge, founded in 1861.5 The founding members of Le Liban described the atmosphere within the British lodge as marked by tensions between European and local members. According to them, its head, the consul Jackson Eldrige, used “all the autocracy [sic] his nationality gives him to upset the Masons of Lebanese origin.”6 Instead of the promised equality inside the lodges, Lebanese members of Palestine found there the same inequality that characterised the relations between the Ottoman Empire and the European powers. The founding members of Le Liban wished to avoid European privileges and to cultivate Le Liban as a lodge for the local population. This was emphasised one year later, when Arabic was introduced, besides French, as a second working language within the lodge.

3  Jens Hanssen, Fin de siècle Beirut: The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital (Oxford, 2005). For the new middle stratum see Fruma Zachs, The Making of a Syrian Identity: Intellectuals and Merchants in Nineteenth Century Beirut (Leiden 2005). 4  Georges Daher, “Genèse de la franc-maçonnerie au Liban,” Les Cahier de l’Orient 69 (2003): 88. 5  For a study of Scottish lodges in Beirut see Dorothe Sommer, “Revolutionary Thoughts: Lebanese Freemasonry before the Young Turk Revolution, part II,” Zeitschrift für Inter­ nationale Freimaurerforschung 18 (2007): 9–46, (35–43). 6  “[. . .] toute l’autocracie que sa nationalité lui confère, pour indisposer les Maç. Indigenes du Liban.” Alphonse Lambert to the Grande Oriente de France, 29 September 1868, Boîte Fm 853 (not edited), Cahier 11051, 16 October 1868, Archives of the department of manuscripts in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.

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The intention to create a lodge to serve the local population was carried out successfully. In the first decade after the lodge’s establishment almost 83 percent of the Masons were Ottoman subjects and only six percent were Europeans.7 From 1900 to 1913—when the source text was written—78 percent were from the Ottoman Empire and 12 percent from Europe. Most members of Le Liban were merchants and belonged to the local economic and political elite. Also many government employees joined the lodge. In addition, several prominent intellectuals associated with the Arab cultural revival movement (nahḍa) joined Le Liban, among them Ibrāhīm al-Yāzijī Fāris Nimr, Yaʿqūb Ṣarrūf and Shāhīn Makāriyūs.8 Also the influential Egyptian Muslim scholar Muḥammad ʿAbduh became member of Le Liban, after he was exiled to Beirut in 1882.9 Concerning the confessional background of the members, it is difficult to give exact figures, since religious affiliation is not indicated in the membership rosters. The biographies of several known members show, however, that people from various confessional groups joined the lodge, among them different Christian denominations, Sunni Muslims, Druze and Jews. Since Le Liban was under auspices of the Grand Orient de France, their members were not obliged to believe in God anymore. Probably influenced by the Church’s stark opposition to it, but also due to the new movement of agnosticism among French intellectuals, the Grand Orient de France decided in 1877 to exempt its members from belief in the ‘great Architect of the Universe’—a periphrasis for the divine creator—as it was fixed in the Masonic constitutions of 1723.10 Although this amendment allowed not only men of different confessions, but also non-believers to join the French lodges, it is doubtful whether Le Liban in particular and the French masonry in general became atheist

7  From 1868 until 1913 the lodge had altogether more than 550 members, for detailed figures see Sarah [Büssow-]Schmitz, “Beirut als Beispiel für das Wirken von Freimaurerei im spätosmanischen Kontext: Debatten und Dokumente” [Beirut as an Example for the Activities of Freemasonry in the Late Ottoman Context. Debates and Documents] (Magister thes., Halle-Wittenberg: Martin-Luther-University, 2008). 8  I would like to thank Dorothe Sommer for sharing this information with me. On Nimr, Ṣarrūf, and Makāriyūs, see Zachs, Making, 119–25 and Dagmar Glaß, Der Muqtaṭaf und seine Öffentlichkeit: Aufklärung, Räsonnement und Meinungsstreit in der frühen arabischen Zeitschriftenkommunikation (Würzburg: Ergon, 2004). 9  On Muḥammad ʿAbduh, see chapter 1.10 in this volume. 10  Pierre Chevallier, Histoire de la franc-maçonnerie française, vol. II: La Maçonnerie: Missionnaire du Libéralisme (1800–1877) (Paris: Fayard, 1993), 535–40.

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­societies.11 Being a Freemason and believing in a religion was not a contradiction. It was the authority of religious organisations that the Masons attacked, not religion itself. An examination of Le Liban’s correspondence, bills and receipts shows that the lodge fulfilled various functions for its members. Its structure of membership suggests that it constituted an economic network, which, due to its ties to France and other lodges, provided important trans-regional contacts that turned out to be helpful also when in need of emigration due to social persecution of Masons. Besides this, Le Liban also engaged in philanthropic work, supporting families of needy Masons and donating money to medical institutions and war victims. However, besides this solidarity and support, Le Liban, in the tradition of French lodges, also offered a protected space for political and religious discussion. From early on, Masonic lodges worldwide faced opposition from the Churches, particularly the Catholic Church, as several Papal bulls denunciated the society as a ‘secret society’ with sinister aims.12 In Beirut, Freemasons were confronted with the same strong anti-Masonic attitude of the Church, with the Jesuits as its most active proponents. Jesuits threats and aggressions were so strong that the meetings of Le Liban were in abeyance in 1889.13 Masons regularly complained about personal persecution or public vilification by Jesuits. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Jesuit priest Louis Cheikho published several polemics against Freemasonry in the local press, which were in response to other articles by local intellectuals that depicted the Masonic society in a positive light. Cheikho, in his articles, mostly criticises the Masonic secret rites. But the main motivation for his publicist attacks was probably the local Masons’ harsh criticism of the strong influence that the Church and the Jesuits exerted on the local society. Without acceptance within society, however, any Masonic plans for social reform were certain to fail.

11  On the opposite, it seems that the decision of 1877 made local Syro-Lebanese Masons feel uncomfortable. See Sommer, Revolutionary Thoughts, 30; Thierry Zarcone, Mystiques, Philosophes et Franc-Maçons en Islam: Riza Tevfik, penseur Ottoman (1868–1949), du soufisme à la confrérie (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1993), 219. 12  Zarcone, Mystiques, 24, 107. 13  I thank Dorothe Sommer for this information.

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Local Masons and Local Needs: Social Criticism and Reformist Educational Projects The lodge’s programme was geared towards local problems. Under the auspices of the liberal and anti-clerical Grand Orient de France the social situation could be discussed critically and solutions be proposed. The main question was, as becomes clear from the minutes of a meeting in April 1869,14 in how far Syrians and Lebanese could emancipate themselves from European domination and how they could overcome their ‘backwardness.’ According to the documents produced by Le Liban, the chief reasons for ‘backwardness’ were the religious cleavages within local society and autocratic religious leaders, who ruthlessly pursued their own interests. These were stressed even further, remarked the Masons, by ‘fanaticism’ and ‘superstition’ as well as by violent conflict between confessional groups. ‘Fanaticism,’ they observed, was both religious and political, since every confessional group was protected by a foreign power.15 All this, they concluded, led to a lack of unity and patriotism. Unity, the Masons proposed, could only be gained by overcoming the prevailing confessional distinctions. As an instrument in this regard they proposed the establishment of Masonic schools for students of all confessions that should teach technology, natural sciences, arts and philosophy. It is noteworthy that the Masons wanted to abolish not only religious education but also the teaching of foreign languages. The schools should be open to boys and girls of every confession, and to ensure universal access, they should be free of charge. The teachers were to be chosen by the Grand Orient de France, since they also should instruct the students in the Masonic principles of tolerance and fraternity. The Masonic ideas should be propagated publicly, not only by schools but also by the establishment of a library and the publication of Masonic journals. The Masons further hoped to develop the local economic situation through the students’ training in technology and natural sciences. The local Masons also wanted to overcome the economic dependence on the foreign powers that swamped the country with their products, proclaiming the goals to build one’s own factories and to fight poverty as means to reach “the level of the Occident.”16 14  This and the following refers to the Archives for Manuscripts in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Boîte Fm 853, Cahier 802, 19 Septembre 1869, “Voeu émis par la dite Loge [Le Liban].” 15  “Voeu émis,” 1869. This statement refers to the so-called capitulations. See Maurits H. van den Boogert, The Capitulations and the Ottoman Legal System: Qadis, Consuls, and Berats in the Eighteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2005). 16  “Voeu émis,” 1869.

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It is certainly not by chance that the Masons of Le Liban focused on the establishments of new schools. In 1864, an Italian lodge in Istanbul had founded the first Masonic school in the Ottoman Empire,17 and the second half of the nineteenth century in general was marked by a general enthusiasm for education as a way to foster social, economic and moral ‘progress.’ Christian missionaries were especially active in founding educational institutions. American missionaries, for example, founded primary and secondary schools in Beirut and Mount Lebanon, including educational institutions for girls.18 These European and religious educational institutions fostered distinctions between confessional groups. In response, several Islamic reformist school projects were introduced by the Ottoman government as well as by local intellectuals and wealthy families. In this context, the proposed characteristics of the Masonic schools, except the propagation of Masonic ideas, seem to correspond to a sort of reformist standard. In conclusion, the members of Le Liban, in the beginning of its existence, advocated far-reaching plans to reform the society of their home country and to overcome the dual dependence on European powers and religious authorities. This made the lodge an active participant in the general debate on the prospects of ‘emancipation’—such as that of Arabic speakers, of the citizens, and of women—in the nineteenth-century Middle East. Le Liban and the Mission Laїque Française By the year 1912, when the speech to the French politician Joseph Caillaux was held, it had become clear that the school project could not be realised. The precise reasons for this are not stated, but one may surmise that the above-­ mentioned missing acceptance of Freemasonry within wider society was a crucial factor. One has to take into account also a possible lack of financial support for this ambitious project, since through the lodge’s correspondence it becomes clear that it was unable to even raise enough money to support one single needy family over an extended period. However, social critique and plans for reforms were still being articulated. But now it was another e­ ducational

17  Thierry Zarcone, “Quand la laïcité des francs-maçons du Grand Orient de France vient aux Jeunes Turcs,” in Le choc colonial et l’islam. Les politiques religieuses des puissances coloniales en terres d’islam, ed. Pierre-Jean Luizard (Paris: La Découverte, 2006), 137–158, (149). 18  Ellen Fleischmann, “Evangelization or Education: American Protestant Missionaries, the American Board, and the Girls and Women of Syria (1830–1910),” in New Faith in Ancient Lands. Western Missions in the Middle East in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, ed. Heleen Murre-van den Berg (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2006), 263–280.

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­ roject, namely the French ‘idée laїque,’ which the members of Le Liban took p for the solution of their society’s grievances. Apparently, it was the successful anticlerical policies of the Third Republic (1870–1940) that had become a model for the masons of Le Liban. The French president and Freemason Jules Ferry (1832–1893) had introduced schools free of charge in 1881 and a secular (laic) education in 1882, and had also reduced the Jesuits’ influence in France. From the turn of the twentieth century, the so-called Mission Laїque Française (MLF), founded by Pierre Deschamps (1873–1958), was to take care of the establishment of non-confessional schools that were modelled after the French teaching program in the French colonies.19 Already in 1909, the MLF had established a school in Beirut—the s­ econd school of this organisation worldwide. During the French Mandate over Syria and Lebanon more laic schools were to be established in Damascus and Aleppo. It is uncertain to what extent the Masons of Le Liban were aware of the fact that the Mission Laїque schools were among the instruments of French cultural imperialism.20 In any case, disillusioned with the feasibility of their plan of an independent local economic and scientific revival, the lodge members asked for the help of a country that belonged to those Western powers from whose influence it had tried to emancipate itself fifty years before. Sarah Büssow-Schmitz

Further Reading

Landau, Jacob. “Farmāsūniyya.” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Leiden: Brill, 1960–2008, Print; Brill Online, 2012, Online. Landau, Jacob. “Muslim Opposition to Freemasonry.” Die Welt des Islams 36 (1996): 186–203. Reinalter, Helmut. Die Freimaurer. München: C. H. Beck, 2004. Zarcone, Thierry. Secret et sociétés secrètes en Islam, Turquie, Iran et Asie central XIX–XX siècles. Franc-Maçonnerie, Carboneria et Confréries soufies. Milan: Milano Arché, 2002.

19   On the Mission Laїque Française in Syria and Lebanon see Randi Deguilhem, “Impérialisme, colonisation intellectuelle et politique culturelle de la Mission Laїque Française en Syrie sous mandat,” in The British and French Mandates in Comparative Perspectives, eds. Nadine Méouchy and Peter Sluglett (Leiden: Brill 2004), 321–341. 20  Deguilhem, “Impérialisme.”

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Source Text21

Mr President!22 In the beginning, please allow us to thank you for the honor you gave us by accepting our request for an audience. We regard this as a sign of respect and a complimentary appreciation for the issues that you will come across in our conversation. Please be sure of our gratitude. As we have already informed you, we would like to draw your attention to the progress and future of the laicist idea (idée laïque) in Syria that dominates the greater part of the French press and books. To be honest, we believe, Sir, that since your arrival in Syria you have heard just one voice, which people have have tried to present to you: namely that the influence of the clergy is not only prevailing, but that it is the only existing one. If this is the case, we do not want to hide our judgment that this was a deception. If it is true that the greater part of the current enlightened generation has been educated by the clergy, the result would be that they would completely remain under its moral dependence and that they were not able to rid themselves of it even later. However, in our opinion, it would be a mistake to believe this. Logical thought and experience show the following: the adolescent leaves the clerical college at the age of eighteen to twenty. He has been taught in his mother tongue,23 in the French language and in the ethics of the Catholic Church, and he has read the classical authors. For eight or ten years he has been subject to a very real influence. Now, there he is, free, and meanwhile quite skilful in the French language. If nothing else would come to Syria than books that bear the stamp of the Fathers, our young man perhaps would not make progress. But he reads and reflects on French authors and press articles that are often in a spirit very different from what he has been fed on so far. He understands, that until then his horizon has not been widened and will then ask himself, for what he was educated. More often than one thinks, he will severe the ties to his first (religious) 21   Archives of the Grand Orient de France, Boîte 685/2, Cahier 7 Juin 1912, No. 9627. 22  I.e. the President of the Council of Ministers was the head of government of the French Third and Fourth Republics, the modern term is Prime minister. At the time of the meeting, Joseph Caillaux, who had served from June 1911 to January 1912, was not the President of the Council anymore, this form of address was probably meant as an expression of respect. 23  I.e. Arabic.

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education, which he does not see anymore as leading towards absolute truth, and he thus becomes ethically independent of the clergy. Therefore, under the pressure of the current French thought, which is, in its average expression, quite remote from that of his first educators, the young Syrian has developed towards a greater ideal. Indeed, for a decade, the progress of Freemasonry in Syria has been extremely rapid, and its new adepts are numerous. This means that the clergy has lost ground, while the laic idea has gained ground, and it is quite certain that on a not too distant day, this idea will have gained supremacy. This is an intellectual development that manifests itself most vividly in Beirut, a city that belongs to the most enlightened ones in the entire Orient. From the above-mentioned one can conclude that the laic idea has germinated in Syria and is growing fast, although the soil was badly prepared to receive it. Which speed would her development thus reach, if the education of the youth were more neutral and liberal and not exclusively offered by the religious congregations! These were the thoughts which experience suggested to us, when some years ago, in 1909, the French Idée Laïque founded an institution in our city.24 Apart from that, this was necessity from two points of view: once for the development of tolerance and once for the development of scientific and technical education. Should tolerance not be carefully cultivated in our Orient, where so many dogmas clash with each other and hate each other? The laic spirit, who, as Quinet25 said, makes progress through the mutual love of the citizens, independent from their belief—is it not most suitable to teach all, regardless of their religion, the respect for different opinions, unity and peace? The laic teacher who is used to speak to the child forcefully and with authority, whenever it concerns an indisputable truth, but to speak with a maximum of restraint, when he risks touching a religious sentiment, is he not predestined to be an excellent teacher here? The scientific and technical education develops the abilities of observation and logical thinking. So far, this has not been regarded as something of great significance in Beirut, where it was neglected and where education was limited almost exclusively to language and to the development of a vibrant and rich imagination, with which nature has talented the Syrian student sufficiently. The laic French college, for the first time, had the fortunate idea to urge the 24  The Grand Lycèe Franco-Libanaise. 25  Edgar Quinet (1803–1875), French historian.

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parents to give its sons an adequate baggage of industrial knowledge, and thus to allow them later to play leading roles in the local industry, which is still in a nascent stage. The neglect to which this double education was exposed until now, has not allowed industry—its material results—to forge ahead like elsewhere. For the observer it appears indeed that our great city, equipped with such a blue sky and such a fine climate, does not have, to be honest, an industry worthy of the name. What do you really see in Beirut? In normal times, you see prosperous commerce and many representatives of the liberal professions, doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, writers and even poets. However, there are almost no engineers, foremen or industrial workers in the real sense of the term. They could work in different fields: agriculture with its related industries, the collection of water and its distribution to use it as a source of energy in our mountainous Lebanon would create numerous opportunities. We firmly hope that the Mission Laïque will become the object of loving care by the government of the French Republic. There is no doubt that its doctrine will bear fruit here. More liberal, more scientific and more neutral than the given doctrines in the clerical colleges, it comes closer than them to the education currently given to the French youth. Therewith, the new generation of French thought becomes more comprehensible for our children—a thought so generous in its action, emancipating contemporary societies ethically, imbued with the idea of justice, and so closely connected with the progress of humankind. Selected and translated by Sarah Büssow-Schmitz

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Henry Steel Olcott: The Buddhist Catechism (India, 1881/1908) Introduction In December 1878, the theosophist Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907) took a ship from New York to Bombay. For the rest of his life, he would mainly live in India, because he was, or became, convinced that the solution to his spiritual questions lay in Asia. Finally, he settled in Adyar, today a borough of Madras (Chennai), where the Theosophical Society had its headquarters. In India, he began to conceive a worldview in which he combined Western and Indian traditions in the frame of his theosophical positions. His perhaps most successful publication was his Buddhist Catechism of 1881—a publication which implied that Olcott, an American protestant with only superficial knowledge of Buddhism, became the voice of Buddhism, at least in his own perspective. The Author and His Context Olcott was born as a son of a Presbyterian businessman, Henry Wyckoff Olcott, and Emily Steel Olcott, and brought up in New Jersey. After having quit university and after an engagement as a journalist he joined the Union in the American Civil War. Since 1868 he worked as a lawyer. He became a freemason probably around this time. In 1874 he visited spiritualist séances of the Eddy family in Vermont, where communications with spirits were claimed to take place; Mary Baker Eddy later became the founder of Christian Science. In these circles he met Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who with her Secret Doctrine became a key figure of nineteenth-century occultism.1 Together with Blavatsky he founded the Theosophical Society in New York in 1875. This society may well be understood as a backlash against spiritualist practices. Instead of assuming that a medium proved the existence of spirits and of an afterworld, theosophists presented additional perspectives: They searched for personal experience (in later years by meditation) and they claimed to explore the hidden forces in nature. With regard to the Buddhist Catechism, a third field was highly important. Theosophists began to collect and study religious texts from non-­Western cultures, in order to find a secret religion in or above the known religions 1  See chapter 1.12 in this volume.

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and thus gain access to a spiritual and hidden knowledge. The Theosophical Society, as an elitist ‘brotherhood,’ was then to transfer this knowledge under the guidance of secret ‘Masters,’ the ‘Mahatmas.’ In short: Theosophists amplified the empirical tenets of spiritualism by adding on personal experience and a hermeneutical construction of knowledge, thus being part of the historicist reinterpretation of Western culture in the late nineteenth century. In 1878, Blavatsky and Olcott moved to India. They became convinced that Buddhism provided the oldest scriptures and the deepest thoughts of mankind and guaranteed ‘higher knowledge.’ They started an intensive search for masters of meditation—without success.2 In 1880, the two ‘theosophical twins,’ Blavatsky and Olcott, took the pansil, the Five Precepts of a Buddhist lay-person (Pali: pancasila) and regarded themselves as Buddhists. Olcott (as well as Blavatsky) became a strong critic of Christianity and tried to support the Buddhists in Sri Lanka, e.g. by building up a school-system as an alternative to the Christian missionary colleges. Olcott, remaining president of the Theosophical Society until his death in 1907, maintained his engagement for Buddhist education in Ceylon and for the unification of the different Buddhist schools and traditions throughout his life. His Buddhist Catechism played a key role in these efforts. The Buddhist Catechism The Buddhist Catechism first appeared in English and Sinhalese in Colombo, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), on 24 July 1881.3 At that time, Sri Lanka, which had been occupied by the British in 1815, was a part of the Empire and dominated by the Europeans in terms of economy, power and culture. Especially the educational system was strongly influenced by the Britons. Since getting one of the well-paid jobs in the colonial administration was bound to an English education, most Ceylonese families tried to send their children to one of the many Christian missionary schools. Traditional forms of learning were gradually displaced by modern English education, which included Christian religious instruction in its curriculum. By the mid-nineteenth century, a major part of the coastal middle class paid at least lip-service to Christianity. In this context, Olcott pursued a threefold purpose with his Catechism: to serve as a basis for the instruction of Buddhist pupils in the Theosophist-founded schools; to provide a ground 2  See Karl Baier, Meditation und Moderne: Zur Genese eines Kernbereichs moderner Spiritualität in der Wechselwirkung zwischen Westeuropa, Nordamerika und Asien (Würzburg: Könighausen & Neumann, 2009), 291–375. 3  Howard Murphet, Yankee Beacon of Buddhist Light: Life of Col. Henry S. Olcott (Wheateon/Ill.: Theosophical Publishing House, 1988 (1972)).

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for the union of all Buddhists; and as an “antidote to Christianity.”4 He had finished writing the text in May 1881.5 With regard to religious contacts the genesis of the Catechism is as interesting as the mere fact of its existence, because the discussion with Buddhist representatives from Ceylon showed the clash of different, partly contradictory perspectives, while all participants tried to reach a consensus. Before the Buddhist Catechism was published in English, Olcott had it translated into Sinhala in order to present it to the monks of Vidyodaya, the freshly built Buddhist ‘university’ in Colombo. This talk took place on the 15 May 1881. It was Hikkaduve Sumangala (1827–1911), one of the leading figures of the monastic communities in the coastal area and “of the clerical division of the BTS [Buddhist Theosophical Society]” in Ceylon,6 who was expected to assert with his authority the correctness and dignity of the Catechism as a ‘true’ Buddhist position. The circumstances of this discussion are known through the entries in Olcott’s diary. In a meeting with Hikkaduve, he went “over the text, word by word, with the High Priest and his Assistant Principal, Hiyayentaduwe.” Hikkaduve faced considerable difficulties, for example concerning the ‘Nirvana’ and the “survival of an abstract human entity.” Olcott saw “a difference of opinion among Buddhist metaphysicians,” whereas Hikkaduve opposed precisely this plurality of positions. Hikkaduve denied the existence of an individual being or entity descending from and going back to Nirvana.7 He threatened, as Olcott wrote, to “cancel his promise to give me a certificate that the Catechism was suited to the teaching of children in Buddhist Schools,” if he “did not alter the text.”8 But finally, the text was “approved, and recommended for use in Buddhist schools” by Hikkaduva Sumangala, as it was written on the frontispiece. Nevertheless, further discussions arose, probably because Hikkaduve was not able to understand the English version of the catechism correctly.9 In 1905, there were again quarrels between Olcott and Hikkaduve, who resigned 4  Olcott, quoted in: Stephen Prothero, The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott (Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996), 102. 5  Anne M. Blackburn, Buddhist Learning and Textual Practice in Eighteenth-Century Lankan Monastic Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 135. 6  Richard F. Gombrich, Theravada-Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo (London et al.: Routledge, 1994), 186. For a detailed analysis of Hikkaduve’s role in the Buddhist revival see Anne M. Blackburn, Locations of Buddhism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2010). 7  Blackburn, Buddhist Learning, 137. 8  Cited in: Blackburn, Buddhist Learning, 135. 9  Blackburn, Buddhist Learning, 137.

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from the Theosophical Society in 1905 but withdrew his decision, “having reached an agreement with Olcott on revisions of the Catechism.”10 Much more complicated were the quarrels with other Buddhists, because Olcott and Hikkaduve had underestimated the plurality of Buddhist positions. Although Hikkaduve had already hesitated before approving Olcott’s Catechism, it was Mohottivatte Guṇānanda (1823–1890), the famous antiChristian debater and polemicist, who started a full-fledged campaign against Olcott’s interpretation of Buddhism soon after the Catechism appeared. While Guṇānanda and Olcott agreed that the laity had to be thoroughly informed and educated, there was increasing dissent over the aims and contents of this enterprise. The Catechism through and through reflected Olcott’s opinion that Buddhism was not a religion but a moral philosophy, quite closely mirroring the ‘textualised’ design of Buddhism created by Western academic specialists. It was virtually deprived of all aspects of religious devotion and ritual activity that, as he states, was condemned by the Buddha right from the beginning. According to Young,11 this alienated not only Guṇānanda, but also the majority of his many followers. As a counteraction, Guṇānanda published his own catechism, the Bauddha Praśnaya (Buddhist Questions), and a manual of Buddhist doctrine and practice called Buddha Ädahilla in 1887. In these two works, even though the first one follows closely the generic style introduced by Olcott’s catechism, Guṇānanda presents Buddhism as a devotional activity based on rituals of worship not only of the Dhamma (Olcott’s ‘philosophy’), but also on the Buddha and his Sangha. The tensions between Olcott’s and Guṇānanda’s catechisms are pivotal because both documents show two different styles of how people are rendered as ‘good Buddhists.’ For centuries, the Buddhist communities were constituted by a common set of religious narratives, ritual routines and personal or family relationships to individual monasteries and their inhabitants. Olcott, here reflecting typical Protestant notions about religion and religious adherance, replaced these embodied structures by a formal and inward approval of a creed. The popular edifying stories about the Bodhisattva—the Buddha in his former lives—were nothing but mythology to him, rituals were an outward superstition, and devotional practices and relationships were anti-rational and in contradiction to the individualist outlook of Buddhist ‘philosophy.’ This was understood as a ‘fraud’ by Guṇānanda. His ‘counter-catechism’ compensated for these shortcomings, referring to the 10  Blackburn, Buddhist Learning, 138. 11  Richard Fox Young and Gintora Parana Vidanaga Somaratna, Vain Debates: The ChristianBuddhist Controversies of Nineteenth Century Ceylon (Vienna: The De Nobili Research Library, 1996), 206.

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‘full’ story of the Buddha and giving religious worship to the Buddha and the monastic communities its due place. Especially his Buddha Ädahilla was very successful and was continually reworked and enlarged. In 1908, the Anglican Bishop of Colombo wrote that every Buddhist who was able to read possessed a copy of this book. Nevertheless, Olcott’s design of an intellectualised Buddhism was widely propagated through the activities of his Buddhist Theosophical Society and became a major influence in the further development of Buddhist Modernism.12 Nevertheless, it cannot be stated that this ‘philosophic tendency’ of Buddhist Modernism took over control and completely styled the religiosity of the whole movement, even if we only take the urban bourgeois intelligentsia into account. It is certainly difficult to imagine the rise of masses of English Orientalist-style Buddhist armchair-philosophers in the midst of (but aloof from) a society where family traditions and collective social expectancy induce a behavior according to traditional religious patterns. The tension between an ‘intellectualist’ and a ‘devotional’ approach to Buddhism can still be felt in the twenty-first century. Also, the Bauddha Prasnanak and the Buddha Ädahilla are still available in bookshops, highly estimated by some, despised by others. Nevertheless, Olcott’s Buddhist Catechism was a great success. During his lifetime, 41 editions in English and probably more than a dozen translations into Asian and European languages were printed. In this process, Olcott altered the text again and again, perhaps because of criticism, such as that articulated by Hikkaduve, Dharmapala and others, but also because he changed his opinion of the ‘essential’ tenets of Buddhism. In any case, the size of the 1908 edition, the last one for which Olcott took responsibility, was more than twice that of the 1881 edition. For more than 15 years, the Buddhist Catechism had been an intercultural work in progress. And it remained popular for decades. On the Selected Passages Olcott’s Buddhist Catechism was no simple European construction of the Buddhism by a European mind, but is a document of the continuous transformation of Olcott’s conception in contact with Buddhists and with his critics. Yet, the book never rid itself of the deep Western coinage it had received through the hands of Olcott. The passages presented below show both aspects: the attempt to understand and to present ‘Buddhism’ ever better, but also the limits of this process, as visible in the lasting structures of Western thought.

12  David L. McMahan, The Making of Buddhist Modernism (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), esp. Chapter 4.

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The Western frame is basically given already with the title: a ‘catechism,’ coined in the Christian tradition, is a manual for people who are considering converting to Christianity. Obviously, Olcott regarded Buddhism as a religion with dogmatic positions and sharp boundaries, which made the application of the model of conversion reasonable. Furthermore, Olcott regarded Hikkaduve as a leading figure and as a ‘high priest’—which evokes the conception of a pope, despite Olcott’s Protestant background. Other notions and concepts are clearly transferred from Western culture onto Olcott’s conceptualisation of his Buddhism (and illustrated by quotations below), for instance: the question whether Buddhism is a ‘religion’ or ‘science’ or a ‘philosophy’ (Olcott opted for ‘science’ and ‘philosophy’); the application of ‘evolution,’ which was in Olcott’s perspective compatible with the Buddhist cosmology; the dominance of the concept of the individual as a central feature of anthropology. It is not really clear whether Olcott really believed in the transitory existence of the individual—which Hikkaduve had claimed to be a central tenet of Buddhism. Olcott remained a ‘Protestant Buddhist’—just like Dharmapala, for whom Richard F. Gombrich has coined this notion13—but one might legitimately also call him a ‘Buddhist Protestant.’ Sven Bretfeld and Helmut Zander

Further Reading

Blackburn, Anne M. Locations of Buddhism. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Godwin, Joscelyn. The Theosophical Enlightenment. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. Prothero, Stephen. The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott. Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996. Young, Richard Fox, and Jī. Pī. Vī. Somaratna. Vain Debates: The Christian-Buddhist Controversies of Nineteenth Century Ceylon. Vienna: The De Nobili Research Library, 1996.

13  Gombrich, Theravada-Buddhism, 172–197.

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Source Text14

A Buddhist Catechism: According to the Canon of the Southern Church, First Edition (1881)

The Buddhist Catechism, 42nd Edition (1908)

Certificate Certificate to the first edition Widyodaya College Colombo, July 7, 1881. I hereby certify that I have carefully examined the Sinhalese version of the Catechism prepared by Col. H. S. Olcott, and that the same is in agreement with the Canon of the Southern Buddhist Church. I recommend the work to teachers in Buddhist schools, and to all others who may wish to impart information to beginners about the essential features of our religion. H. Sumangala, High Priest of Sripada and Galle, and Principal of the Vidyodaya Pirivena. Widyodaya College, April 7, 1897.

Certificate Certificate to the first edition Vidyodaya College Colombo, July 7, 1881. I hereby certify that I have carefully examined the Sinhalese version of the Catechism prepared by Colonel H. S. Olcott, and that the same is in agreement with the Canon of the Southern Buddhist Church. I recommend the work to teachers in Buddhist schools, and to all others who may wish to impart information to beginners about the essential features of our religion. H. Sumangala, High Priest of Sripada and Galle, and Principal of the Vidyodaya Pirivena. Vidyodaya College, April 7, 1897.

14  Henry Steel Olcott, A Buddhist Catechism: According to the Canon of the Southern Church. Approved, and Recommended for Use in Buddhist Schools by H. Sumangala, High Priest of the Sripada (Adam’s Peak) and Galle, and Principal of the Widyodaya Parivena (Buddhist College) (Colombo: Theosophical Society, Buddhist Section, 1881).  Henry Steel Olcott, The Buddhist Catechism: Approved and Recommended for Use in Buddhist Schools by H. Sumangala, Pradhaya Nayaka Sthavira, High Priest of Sripada and the Western Province and Principal of the Vidyodaya Pirivena, foreword by Annie Besant, 42. Edition, (London et al.: Theosophical Publication Society, 1908).

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I Have gone over the thirty-third (English) edition of the Catechism, with the help of interpreters, and confirm my recommendation for its use in Buddhist schools. H. Sumangala Preface Being intended for the use of beginners, this little work aims only to present the main facts in the life of Gautama Buddha and the essential features of his Doctrine. Strange to say, it is unique of its kind in Ceylon, notwithstanding the Missionaries have scattered their Christian Catechisms broadcast in the Island, and for many years have been taunting the Sinhalese with the puerility and absurdity of their religion. To whatever cause it may be due this apathy is something to be deplored by every Buddhist or admirer of the Buddhist philosophy. The present Catechism is largely a compilation from the works of T. W. Rhys Davids, Esq., Bishop Bigandet, Sir Coomara Swamy, R. C. Childers, Esq., and the Revs. Samuel Beal and R. Spence Hardy; in a few cases, their exact language has been used.

[missing]

[On evolution] Question 70 What is the doctrine of science called? Evolution.

[missing]

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Question 233, Annotation The denial of “soul” by Buddha (see Samyutta Nikaya, the Sutta Pitaka) points to the prevalent delusive belief in an independent personality; an entity, which after one birth would go to a fixed place or state where, as a perfect entity, it could eternally enjoy or suffer. And what he shows is that the “I” of one birth differs from the “I” of every other births [!]. But every thing that I have found in Buddhism accords with the theory of a gradual evolution of the perfected man viz., a Buddha through number less natal experiences.

[missing]

[On religion] Question 1 Of what religion are you? The Buddhist.

Question 1, with annotation Of what religion are you? The Buddhist. [Annotation:] The word “religion” is most inappropriate to apply to Buddhism which is not a religion, but a moral philosophy, as I have shown later on. But by common usage the word has been applied to all groups of people who profess a special moral doctrine, and is so employed by statisticians. The Sinhalese Buddhists have never yet had any conception of what Europeans imply in the etymological construction of the Latin root of this term. In their creed there is no such thing as a “binding” in the Christian sense a—submission to or merging of

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self in a Divine Being. Agama is their vernacular word to express their relation to Buddhism and the Buddha. It is pure Samskrit, and means “approach, or coming;” and as “Buddha” is enlightenment, the compound word by which they indicate Buddhism— Bhuddhagama—would be properly rendered as “an approach or coming to enlightenment,” or possibly as a following of the Doctrine of Sakyamuni. The missionaries, finding Agama ready to their hand, adopted it as the equivalent for “religion;” and Christianity is written by them Christianagama, whereas it should be Christianiban­ dhana, for bandhana is the etymological equivalent for “religion;” The name Vibhajja vadt—one who analyses—is another name given to a Buddhist, and Adbayuradi is a third. With this explanation, I continue to employ under protest the familiar word when speaking of Buddhistic philosophy, for the convenience of the ordinary reader. Question 2 What is a Buddhist? One who professes to be a follower of our Lord Buddha and accepts his doctrine.

Question 2 What is Buddhism? It is a body of teachings given out by the great personage known as the Buddha.

[missing]

Question 3 Is “Buddhism” the best name for this teaching? No; that is only a western term: the best name for it is Bauddha Dharma.

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[On salvation] Question 88 Do Buddhists consider the Buddha as one who by his own virtue can save us from the consequence of our individual sins? Not at all. No man can be saved by another. He must save himself.

Question 168 Do Buddhists consider the Buddha as one who by his own virtue can save us from the consequence of our individual sins? Not at all. Man must emancipate himself. Until he does that he will continue being born over and over and over again the victim of ignorance, the slave of unquenched passions.

Question 65 What is Nirvana? A perfect condition of total cessation of changes, of perfect rest, of the absence of desire and illusion and sorrow, of the total obliteration of every thing that goes to make up the physical man. Before reaching Nirvana man is constantly being reborn; when he reaches Nirvana he is born no more.

Question 130 What is Nirvana? [unchanged]

[On miracles, charms] [missing]

Question 186, with annotation Are charms, incantations, the observance of lucky hours and devildancing a part of Buddhism? They are positively repugnant to its fundamental principles. They are the surviving relics of fetishism and pantheism and other foreign religions. In the Brahmajata Sutta the Buddha has categorically described these and other superstitions as Pagan, mean and spurious.

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[Annotation:] The mixing of these arts and practices with Buddhism is a sign of deterioration. Their facts and phenomena are real and capable of scientific explanation. They are embraced in the term “magic,” but when resorted to, for selfish purposes, attract bad influences about one, and impede spiritual advancement. When employed for harmless and beneficent purposes, such as healing the sick, saving life, etc., the Buddha permitted their use. Question 132 Does Buddhism admit that man has in his nature any latent powers for the production of phenomena commonly called “miracles”? Yes; but they are natural, not supernatural. They may be developed by a certain system which is laid down in our sacred books.

Question 365 Does Buddhism admit that man has in his nature any latent powers for the production of phenomena commonly called “miracles”? Yes; but they are natural, not supernatural. They may be developed by a certain system which laid [!] down in our sacred books, Visuddhi Marga for instant.

Question 133 What is this branch of science called? The Pali name is Iddhiwiddhinana.

Question 366 [unchanged]

Question 134 How many kinds are there? A. Two: “Laukika” (i.e., one in which the phenomena-working power is obtained by ascetic practices and also by resort to drugs, the recitation of mantras (charms), or other extraneous aids), and “Lokothra” (that in which the power in question is acquired by interior self-development)

Question 367 How many kinds are there? A. Two: Bahira, i.e., one in which the phenomena-working power may be temporarily obtained by ascetic practices and also by resort to drugs, the recitation of mantras (charms), or other extraneous aids; and Sasaniks, that in which the power in question is acquired by interior self-development, and covers all and more than the phenomena o. Laukika Iddhi.

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[On higher faculties] Question 109 How does he [a Buddha] proceed? Throughout that birth and every succeeding one, he strives to subdue his passions, to gain wisdom by experience, and to develop his higher faculties. He thus grows by degrees wiser, nobler in character, and stronger in virtue until, finally, after numberless re-births he reaches the state when he can become Perfected, Enlightened, All-wise, the ideal Teacher of the human race.

[missing]

[On cosmology] Question 113 Do they [the Buddhist] accept the theory that everything has been formed out of nothing by a Creator? The Buddha taught that two things are causeless, viz., ‘Akasa’ and ‘Nirvana.’ Everything has come out of Akasa, in obedience to a law inherent in it, and, after a certain existence, passes away. Nothing ever came out of nothing. We do not believe in miracle; hence we deny creation, and cannot conceive of a creator.

Question 327 Do Buddhists accept the theory that everything has been formed out of nothing by a Creator? The Buddha taught that two things are causeless, viz., Akasha, and Nirvana. Everything has come out of Akasha, in obedience to a law of motion inherent in it, and, after a certain existence, passes away. Nothing ever came out of nothing. We do not believe in miracles; hence we deny creation, and cannot conceive of a creation of something out of nothing. Nothing organic is eternal. Everything is in a state of constant flux, and undergoing change and reformation, keeping up the continuity according to the law of evolution.

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[On science] Question 331 Question 121 Is Buddhism a chart of science, or a Should Buddhism be called a chart of science or a code of morals? code of morals? It is chiefly a pure moral philosophy. Properly speaking, a pure moral It assumes the universal operation philosophy, a system of ethics and of the law of motion and change, by transcendental metaphysics. It is so which all things, the worlds and all eminently practical that the Buddha forms, animate and inanimate, upon kept silent when Malunkya asked them are governed. It is unprofitable about the origin of thing. to waste time in speculating as to the origin of things. In the Malunka Sutta we read that when Malunka asked Buddha to explain the origin of things he made him no reply; as he considered that the inquiry tended to non profit. Buddhism takes things as they are, and shows how the existing evil and misery may be overcome. [missing]

Question 361 In what does our modern scientific belief support the theory of Karma, as taught in Buddhism? Modern scientists teach that every generation of men is heir to the consequences of the virtues and the vices of the preceding generation, not in the mass, as such, but in every individual case. Every one of us, according to Buddhism, gets a birth which represents the causes generated by him in an antecedent birth. This is the idea of Karma.

Selected by Sven Bretfeld and Helmut Zander

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Hermann Cohen: Germanness and Judaism (Germany, 1916) Introduction When the 72-year old Hermann Cohen once more set forth to join the public arena and began to write down his considerations on Deutschtum und Judentum in about 1915, he faced challenging times and tasks for both Germanness and Judaism, and, of course, for their special relation. He did so in double capacity, both as a philosopher and a Jew, and both deeply rooted in German culture. Although having been granted emeritus status since 1912, Cohen nevertheless did take the trouble and the responsibility of answering the challenge of the times, and he did so as a major representative of both contemporary German philosophy and German Jewry, not only for a certain current in philosophy or for German liberal Judaism alone. The result was a penetrating reflection on a special contact situation, a situation which has continuously been a major theme of Cohen’s thinking and which can be characterised by the question of the meaning of being Jewish in a Christian environment and in an environment occupied by the concept of nation and Germanness. To understand Hermann Cohen’s text, which was written during the time of World War I, we have to keep one simple historical fact in mind. Since the final destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem and the expulsion from the city in 135 CE at the latest, we cannot speak of any Jewish political entity at all. Already in the sixth century BCE the golah, the exile, had started. In the nineteenth century, partially as a result of the arising nationalism in Europe, which brought along a growing anti-Semitism, we find certain nationalistic developments also in Judaism. The most famous was Theodor Herzl’s Zionist congress in Basel in 1896. In its aftermath a controversy arose between those German Jews who supported this particular nationalistic movement and those who, for religious or philosophical reasons, opposed it. Among the opponents of Zionism because of philosophical reasons1 was Hermann Cohen, who at the turn of the twentieth century was the most respected among the German Jews. He was the first Jewish professor of 1   For Cohen’s understanding of ‘nation’ and ‘nationalism’ see Hartwig Wiedebach, Die Bedeutung der Nationalität für Hermann Cohen (Hildesheim et al.: Olms, 1997) (Europaea

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­ hilosophy in Prussia at Marburg University. Born in Coswig in 1842 to a p Jewish cantor in Dessau (Saxony-Anhalt) he studied at the Jewish-Theological Seminary in Breslau and at the Universities of Breslau and Berlin.2 One of his lifelong objects of study was Kant’s philosophy, to which he contributed three major monographs in several editions. After he had received his professorship in Marburg in 1876 he was also responsible for the later editions of his academic mentor and predecessor Friedrich Albert Lange’s famous book Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart.3 Cohen’s Kantian philosophy made him (together with his former student and friend Paul Natorp) one of the protagonists of the Marburg Neokantian School.4 In his time, as a Jew, Cohen was and for some time remained an exception in academic philosophy and scholarship. Despite all his scientific merits and personal efforts in his lifetime he did not manage to institutionalise the Science of Judaism at German Universities. He also failed to install the Jewish Philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945) as his successor at Marburg. At last since Heinrich von Treitschke’s anti-Semitic attacks during the 1880s, Cohen also engaged in Jewish matters.5 In an article in the Preußische Jahrbücher (Prussian Yearbooks) Treitschke had questioned the affiliation of the Jews to the German nation state, citing Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe to Germany and their unwillingness to assimilate into the German society. In his reasoning, Jews in the newly-founded German Kaiserreich were a ‘danger’ because they represented a heterogeneous element in society. In addition to that, Treitschke considered the Jews to be responsible for the excesses of materialism in Gründerzeit Germany.6 As a firm believer in the deeply-rooted memoria, I/6). For an English Edition see Hartwig Wiedebach, The National Element in Hermann Cohen’s Philosophy and Religion (Leiden: Brill, 2012). 2  For his biography see Franz Orlik, Hermann Cohen (1842–1918): Kantinterpret. Begründer der ‘Marburger Schule.’ Jüdischer Religionsphilosoph; Eine Ausstellung in der Universität Marburg vom 1. Juli bis 14. August 1992; mit einer Einführung von Reinhard Brandt (Marburg: Universitätsbibliothek, 1992); Hartwig Wiedebach, “Hermann Cohen,” in Andreas Kilcher et al., eds. Metzler Lexikon jüdischer Philosophen (Stuttgart / Weimar: Metzler, 2003), 262–266. 3  Published in English as History of Materialism and Criticism of Its Present Importance (3 volumes, 1887–1881; repr., New York: Arno Press). 4   Klaus Christian Köhnke, Entstehung und Aufstieg des Neukantianismus: Die deutsche Universitätsphilosophie zwischen Idealismus und Positivismus (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1986). 5  See Dieter Adelmann, ‘Reinige dein Denken’: Über den jüdischen Hintergrund der Philosophie von Hermann Cohen. Aus dem Nachlass herausgegeben, ergänzt und mit einem einleitenden Vorwort versehen von Görge K. Hasselhoff (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2010). 6  See Heinrich von Treitschke, “Unsere Aussichten” in Preußische Jahrbücher 44 (1879), 559–576.

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historical and philosophical connection between Germanness and Judaism, Cohen replied to Treitschke in great detail and expressed his disappointment about the rise of socially accepted anti-Semitism, backed by scholars:7 “We, the younger generation, were allowed to hope that we would gradually succeed in joining in with the nation of Kant [. . .] This confidence has now been shattered. The old anxiety is reawakened.”8 Cohen maintained the basic positions he had elaborated in this early article throughout his life, above all the rejection of Zionism and the idea of the resemblance of Judaism and Protestantism or rather of Germanness and Judaism. At the turn of the twentieth century Cohen started to write the bulk of his systematic philosophy9 as well as his religious philosophy, which originally had been planned as a work on the “Grundriss der Gesamtwissenschaft des Judentums” (Outline of the General Science of Judaism) inaugurated by the Society for the Promotion of the Science of Judaism of which he was a founding member.10 He was also engaged in certain enterprises to promote the education of the Eastern European Jews, mainly as a member of the (Zionist!) Komitee für den Osten (Committee for the East). After his retirement from Marburg University in 1912 Cohen moved to Berlin where he taught at the Lehranstalt für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Seminary for the Science of Judaism) until his death in 1918. In his last days he was involved in the founding process of the Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Academy for the Science of Judaism). Although Cohen himself did not live to see what was 7  Another of these academic anti-Semites was Paul de Lagarde (see chapter 2.10 in this volume). 8   Hermann Cohen, “Ein Bekenntnis in der Judenfrage” (1880), in Der Berliner Antisemitismusstreit, ed. Walter Boehlich (Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1965), 124–125. See also Shulamit Volkov, Germans, Jews and Antisemites: Trails in Emancipation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 23. 9  H. Cohen, System der Philosophie (Berlin: Cassirer), vol. 1: Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, 1902, 2nd ed. 1914; Ethik des reinen Willens, 1904; 2nd ed. 1907; Ästhetik des reinen Gefühls, 1912. Not part of this series is a further publication: H. Cohen, Der Begriff der Religion im System der Philosophie (Gießen: Töpelmann, 1915). The intended book on psychology (“Einheit des Bewusstseins”) was never written. See Dieter Adelmann, Einheit des Bewußtseins als Grundproblem der Philosophie Hermann Cohens: Vorbereitende Untersuchung für eine historisch-verifizierende Konfrontation der Fundamentalontologie Martin Heideggers mit Hermann Cohens ‘System der Philosophie’, edited by Görge K. Hasselhoff and Beate Ulrike La Sala (Potsdam: Universitätsverlag Potsdam, 2012). 10   See H. Cohen, Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums, (Frankfurt/ M.: Kauffmann, 2nd corrected ed. 1929); for the original publication place see Adelmann, Reinige dein Denken, 151–174.

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to follow, his widow Martha, to whom he was married for over forty years, was deported in 1942 and murdered in Theresienstadt at the age of 82. The text introduced here stems from the period during World War I, when Cohen again engaged in public controversies about the status of Jews in the German Kaiserreich. The war situation proved to be a decisive test for the integration of the Jewish community into the German nation state. It also provided a touchstone for the success of the Jewish emancipation movement originating from the times of Moses Mendelssohn. Could Jews claim for equal treatment in terms of civil citizenship? The threat of the state was interpreted as the opportunity for the Jews to prove their worth as loyal citizens. Here, Kaiser Wilhelm’s famous speech on ‘truce’ (Burgfrieden)—though the Jews themselves were not explicitly addressed—had special significance for all German Jewry, liberal, orthodox and Zionist. The war against Russia was especially popular among German Jews, particularly the orthodox, and Zionists, as the Tsar was regarded as the ‘arch-enemy’ of all Jews because of the pogroms tolerated by his government in the years before. It is interesting to note that some Jewish journals, regardless of their affiliation, meditated about the possibility of using Russian Jews (as being descendants from medieval immigrants from Germany) in order to promote Germanness, for these Jews “wherever the Germans will come to, will be a support for Germanness, which is not to be underestimated.”11 Accordingly, leading Jewish organisations such as the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens and the Verband der deutschen Juden declared their patriotic self-understanding at the beginning of the war in August 1914 and demanded an extra effort for the fatherland from every German Jew.12 But as soon as January 1915 the Centralverein had to concede that anti-Semitic tendencies in German society as well as in the German army did not only remain unchanged by the situation of the war, but had rather strengthened. Despite all Jewish efforts in practical patriotism, the result was disillusionment rather than social acceptance. The culmination point of these tendencies was the so-called ‘census of Jews’ ( Judenzählung), a decree by the Prussian Minister of War Wild von Hohenborn from October 1916 to examine if Jews were disproportionally declared unfit for military service, and, accordingly, guilty of shirking in a situation of national danger. Cohen reacted to this challenge with an article titled “Gottvertrauen” (Trust in God), which he 11   Im Deutschen Reich, Nr. 10–12 (Okt. 1914), 382. 12  See the “Aufruf des Verbandes der deutschen Juden und des Centralvereins deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens, Im deutschen Reich.” Zeitschrift des Zentralvereins deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens 9 (1914): 339.

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c­ onsidered to be the only adequate reaction to this insult.13 The anti-Semitic tendencies within German society, however, were not the only topic and the only adversary Cohen had to deal with in his publications. Another challenge came from within Judaism itself. In 1915 Cohen published a first treatise entitled Deutschtum und Judentum14 which triggered a discussion with Martin Buber over the status of Jews from Eastern Europe in Germany. Here, Treitschke’s challenge is reflected in innerJewish discussion. Just as the truce among all German citizens failed, the innerJewish truce among the three major currents quickly came to an end. Cohen himself was part of this development. In 1916 Cohen contributed another article with the same heading to a volume edited by Friedrich Thimme.15 In this article Cohen treated current social and political conflicts such as the racial debate, the question of the ‘Absolutheit des Christentums’ (Ernst Troeltsch), or the immigration of Polish Jews into Germany. His starting point was that the unification of Germany after the German-French war of 1870/71 had been a political but not a cultural unification: Already the existence of two major Christian confessions contradicted the idea of a homogeneous society. The question of a ‘racial’ unity would not be solved either. But with Judaism, although assimilated to the German culture, the situation was even more complicated. Despite the neglect to accept the common ground of Jews and Christians there was, nonetheless, a religious common basis of Judaism and Christianity in the ‘Old’ Testament. This was already expressed by the Protestant theologian Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803) in his epochal book Der Geist der Ebräischen Poesie (The spirit of Hebrew Poetry).16 Religious ethics could also be unifying by forming the basis of inter-religious debate despite differences in the respective theologies. Judaism itself with its orientation towards the Messiah, who is for Cohen expressed in humanity and the ‘perfection of mankind’ (Vollendung 13  Hermann Cohen, “Gottvertrauen,” Neue Jüdische Monatshefte I/3 (1916): 79–82, repr. in id., Kleinere Schriften, vol. 6, ed. Hartwig Wiedebach (Hildesheim et al.: Olms, 2002), 345–352. 14  Hermann Cohen, Deutschtum und Judentum mit grundlegenden Betrachtungen über Staat und Internationalismus (Gießen: Töpelmann, 1915), in Kleinere Schriften, vol. 5, ed. Hartwig Wiedebach (Hildesheim et al. Olms, 1997), 465–545. 15  Hermann Cohen, “Deutschtum und Judentum,” in Vom inneren Frieden des deutschen Volkes: Ein Buch gegenseitigen Verstehens und Vertrauens, ed. Friedrich Thimme (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1916), 547–562; repr. in: H. Cohen, Jüdische Schriften, ed. Bruno Strauß, vol. 2 (Berlin: Schwetschke, 1924), 302–318; and H. Cohen, Kleinere Schriften, vol. 6, ed. Hartwig Wiedebach (Hildesheim u.a.: Olms, 2002), 109–132. 16   Johann Gottfried Herder, Vom Geiste der Ebräischen Poesie: Eine Anleitung für die Liebhaber derselben und der ältesten Geschichte des menschlichen Geistes (Leipzig: Phillip Haugs Wittme, 1787).

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der Menschheit), gives a perfect model here, namely that fulfilled mankind is neither bound to any nation nor to Zionism in particular. Even more, the destruction of Israel as a nation in the second century CE was the trigger for a Jewish universalism and the spread of ethical monotheism as its main characteristic. Therefore, it is required that Jews are loyal to the states in which they live. In return the state should take the responsibility for Jewish religious matters. Responsibility in religious matters is a means to develop the religion. In a way, the state thus guarantees the religious progress. Cohen did not supply a scholarly apparatus to the article in focus. Therefore, it is difficult to match out the debates to which he referred, but it is for certain that one of his opponents was Heinrich von Treitschke, who triggered the Berliner Antisemitismusstreit (Berlin anti-Semitism controversy).17 But apart from this ongoing debate, there are several other debates present in the text that have to be mentioned. The struggle with Zionism is of special importance because it most clearly manifests Cohen’s philosophical self-understanding. To him, Zionism threatens to undermine Judaism’s universal mission, which aims at the whole of mankind. To claim a nation state of its own in Palestine or to claim for a morality exclusively limited to itself means to forfeit Judaism’s dignity as the carrier of the idea of messianic mankind, which is by definition valid for all peoples on earth. This has philosophical reasons. True religion for Cohen is based on the truth of systematic philosophy, and true religiosity is based upon clear philosophical insight.18 Religion is defined as the desire for God, i.e. the ‘unique’ (einziger) God.19 “It is God’s uniqueness, rather than his oneness, that we posit as the essential content of monotheism” is the first sentence of the first chapter in Cohen’s posthumous work Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums (Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism).20 In Judaism one can find elements fitting to elaborate a religion of reason which basically consists in philosophical ethics. Cohen claims: “Religion must not be torn from the living connection to ethics, even if it is no longer capable of independence

17   The Antisemitismusstreit is well documented by Walter Boehlich, Der Berliner Antisemitismusstreit; see also Karsten Krieger, Der ‘Berliner Antisemitismusstreit’ 1879–1881: eine Kontroverse um die Zugehörigkeit der deutschen Juden zur Nation (München: Saur, 2003). 18  Hermann Cohen, Der Begriff der Religion im System der Philosophie, Werke Band 10 (Hildesheim/Zürich/New York, 1996), 137. 19  See Cohen, Der Begriff der Religion, 138. 20  Cohen, Religion der Vernunft, 41.

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then.”21 Once this ethics is elaborated, it will have a universal claim that is based upon its rationality, its logical conclusiveness. This conclusiveness results from Cohen’s notion of monotheism, which does not mean to speculate on God’s being alone, but rather indicates a correlative theology with a certain perspective: one can only think about God with regard to man and vice versa: one can only think about man with regard to God.22 The notions of this correlation are ethical ones, which prevail for all mankind. In systematically working on this kind of ethics, Cohen even considers a dogmatic necessary for a proper scientific system of religion.23 But before that, the seed of this religion of reason has to be defended. It is up to the Jews to defend this monotheism against idolatry. The unsurpassable boundary between the Jewish People and the world guarantees the safeguard of the purest monotheism. It is because of this struggle that Judaism acquires certain rights: In his Religion of Reason he states: “Israel alone suffers persecution at the hands of the idol worshippers, and Israel has the vocation not only to uphold the true worship of God, but to diffuse among the nations.”24 The historical task of Jewish religion is the messianic execution of monotheism, i.e. keeping faith to an “idealism of the future” despite all suffering which is caused by the obstruction of monotheism.25 So accordingly, it was the supreme task of Jews to remain in their prevailing countries of birth in order to provide an example for monotheism and the ethical potency of universal laws for all in each country they were dispersed to. In his speech “Das Judentum als Weltanschauung” (Judaism as Weltanschauung) Cohen explains this idealism of the future in its world-missionary potency as follows: “The Messiah who liberates Israel transforms the nations together with Israel to the one mankind which is adequate to the One God. The Idea of the Messiah is the Idea of Mankind, the Idea of World History.”26 This world-opening power, though, can only be achieved, if religion is treated as Weltanschauung, which for Cohen means the ‘idealisation of religion’ or to be more precise, “the idealisation of religion to an idea of the ethical world.” This idea fulfills the aim of all

21  Cohen, Der Begriff der Religion, 9–10. 22   See Karl Erich Grözinger, Jüdisches Denken. Theologie—Philosophie—Mystik. vol. 3 (Frankfurt/ New York: Campus, 2009), 623. 23  See Cohen, “Das Judentum als Weltanschauung (1898),” in Adelmann, Reinige Dein Denken, 323. 24  Cohen, Religion der Vernunft, 330. 25  See Cohen, Religion der Vernunft, 312. 26  Cohen, “Das Judentum als Weltanschauung (1898),” 325.

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religion: peace and the union of humans despite all difference of religion, and, as such, as a consequence becomes the idea of mission.27 Another debate is marked by the status of Polish and Russian Jewish immigrants in Germany. This debate, mainly fought out between Cohen and Martin Buber (1878–1965), reflected an interesting religious contact phenomenon within early twentieth century Judaism. Due to the immigration of East European Jews to Middle and Western Europe, the Jews of Germany had to face the existence of another kind of religiosity that turned out to be a challenge to the assimilated Western Judaism, at least in the writings of younger Jewish intellectuals such as Martin Buber, who intended to use this contact for renewal of Jewish religious life. This religiosity is mostly associated with Hasidism, which promoted an immediate relationship to God in ecstatic feeling and experience and opposed traditional rabbinic orthodoxy. The impact of Eastern Judaism on the Western countries was described in terms of mission and conversion: via East European Judaism the assimilated and basically areligious Jews of the West could be converted to a new form of Judaism. Consequently, Jewish authors such as Theodor Lessing and Hans Kohn (Buber’s biographer) considered Europe to be a field of mission for a spiritual Asia.28 Yet as younger Jewish intellectuals set out to promote a ‘Jewish Renaissance’ (Buber) in that way, Hermann Cohen, expressing a deep concern for Eastern Jewry, took a reverse perspective and expressed his hope that the Jews of the East immigrating to the West might now be elevated in their Judaism to philosophically founded ‘Science of Judaism’ and ethical monotheism.29 Of course, this idea contains all elements of mission as well. To him, German Jewry in the tradition of Mendelssohn is the shining example for the future of all Jews, whereas Buber and his followers consider the East European Jews that way. Another debate to which Cohen refers is the debate of Protestant bible scholars on an ethical monotheism and the essence of Christianity, culminating in the controversy between himself, his favourite student Benzion Kellermann (1869–1923) and the Protestant theologian Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923) in the years 1915–1917. In his article, Cohen mentions Adolf von Harnack’s concept of the “Wesen des Christentums” (Essence of Christianity) which, according to him, cannot be developed with regard to the New Testament only. Instead, the 27  See Cohen, “Das Judentum als Weltanschauung,” 321. 28  See Hans Kohn, “Geleitwort,” in Vom Judentum, ed. Verein Jüdischer Hochschüler Bar Kochba (Leipzig, 1913), VI. 29  See Hermann Cohen, “Der polnische Jude,” in Der Jude 1 (1916): 152. See also Hermann Cohen, Kleinere Schriften VI. 1916–1918 (Werke 17), Hildesheim/Zürich/New York: Olms 2002, 187–202.

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Biblical Prophets have to be taken into account as well, because they provide Christianity with its ethical basis, thus linking Christianity and Judaism most closely with regard to ethical monotheism. Furthermore, in the debate on the Ethos of the Hebrew Prophets, Cohen and his followers argued that ethical monotheism can be described as a combination of both Kantian transcendental philosophy and the moral claims of the Hebrew Prophets and, accordingly, prepares a ‘Religion of Reason’ for all mankind. Troeltsch, however, criticizes Cohen’s idealizing method by stating that prophecy has nothing to do with abstraction or a tendency towards rational philosophy. To him, Cohen’s account of the Prophets is unhistorical for all claims of the Prophets might be explained with regard to the social and political history of the Israelites’ settlement. Accordingly, the ethics of the Prophets is national and not ­universal.30 Cohen considers this idea to be a sociological reduction that relativises prophetic ethos.31 Later on, Cohen was hit hard in his self-understanding, as expressed in his articles on Germanness and Judaism, when he was attacked by the Neokantian philosopher and co-editor of the Kantstudien Bruno Bauch (1877–1942),32 who denied that non-Germans and especially Jews have any understanding of German philosophy. Likewise, he denied all possibility of assimilation and claimed—in accordance with the Zionist’s standpoint—for cultural pluriversalism which separates cultures with regard to peoples (Völker).33 To consider Jews alien to the German spirit, so Cohen explained in a letter to Natorp, was more than he could endure.34 Late in his life, therefore, Cohen had to experience rejection by Troeltsch and Bauch, a later supporter of National Socialism, because of his Jewishness, a rejection by the very German institutions he had always considered to be compatible to properly understood Judaism: philosophy and protestant Theology. Görge K. Hasselhoff and Knut Martin Stünkel 30  See Ernst Troeltsch, “Das Ethos der hebräischen Propheten,” in Logos 6 (1916): 1–28. 31  Wendell S. Dietrich, Cohen and Troeltsch: Ethical Monotheistic Religion and Theory of Culture (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 31. 32  Bruno Bauch, “Vom Begriff der Nation,” in Der Panther 4 (1916): 917–921. 33   See Matthias Schöning, “Bruno Bauchs kulturphilosophische Radikalisierung des Kriegsnationalismus: Ein Bruchstück zum Verständnis der Ideenwende von 1916,” KantStudien 98 (2008): 200–219. 34  See Cohen’s letter to Paul Natorp from November 6, 1916, in Helmut Holzhey, Cohen und Natorp. Band 2 Der Marburger Neukantianismus in Quellen. Zeugnisse kritischer Lektüre— Briefe der Marburger—Dokumente zur Philosophiepolitik der Schule (Basel/Stuttgart: Schwabe, 1986), 455.

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Further Reading

Aschheim, Steven E. Brothers and Strangers. The East European Jew in Germany and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800–1923. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1982. Mendes-Flohr, Paul. German Jews. A Dual Identity. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999. Meyer, Michael A. Deutsch-jüdische Geschichte in der Neuzeit, Vol. 3: Umstrittene Integration 1871–1918. München: Beck, 1997. Sieg, Ulrich. Jüdische Intellektuelle im Ersten Weltkrieg. Kriegserfahrungen, weltanschauliche Debatten und kulturelle Neuentwürfe. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001. Wiedebach, Hartwig. The National Element in Hermann Cohen’s Philosophy and Religion. Leiden: Brill, 2012.



Source Text35

It is no wonder that the opposition between Germanness and Judaism has revived due to the unification of the German people in the nineteenth century. Every national development comprises the strife for returning to the basic forms of a national uniformity, to racial unity, and to religious uniformity more and more. This wish had been all the more natural in Germany, because here, the fusion of the original tribes took place much later than in France or in England, and because the repercussions of the conflicts among the tribes have not yet been overcome completely. With regard to the second basic form of national unity, i.e. religious uniformity, Germany of all civilised nations undoubtedly suffers most from the schism which produced the religious characteristic of the German spirit. This schism increases the tension against any further religious difference which intends to come to terms with the German being and actually wants to participate in it. If we consider the claim for racial unity first, it is not satisfying if one shows that it cannot be objectivised in a purely scientific sense. Nevertheless, for the national state the unity and purity of the race remains an understandable wish, although the notion of race cannot be coined by a precise definition. If not only the anatomic, but also the psychic, spiritual and moral conditions have 35  This translation is based on excerpts from: Hermann Cohen, “Deutschtum und Judentum” [Germanness and Judaism], in Vom inneren Frieden des deutschen Volkes: Ein Buch gegenseitigen Verstehens und Vertrauens, ed. Friedrich Thimme (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1916), 547–562.

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to be taken into account differently, the racial question gets even more complicated. For a Jew, to join this sense of the discussion must not only become difficult, but also embarrassing. But as I was of the opinion that I had to accept the mandate for agreement here, I will try to provide an objective judgement on this point. I really do indeed take my point of departure from the assumption that one will not apply a bad hereditary character to the descendants of the Prophets. Otherwise I would not join the discussion. To me it is not unlikely, though, that the pressure lasting for centuries and the obligation to trade und monetary business, on the one hand, produced uncertainty and embarrassment in personal conduct, but, on the other hand, led to a preference of the sense of remunerative occupation and the emotions connected with it. Besides, with decreasing pressure, the old mental force of aspiration rises again. And so, capable men emerge, not only for industry but for all fields of science and arts, from these families of trade. Nevertheless, I would not deny materialism in a part of contemporary Jewry, for everyday resignation and conversion within higher social and administrative classes clearly exposes an alarming lack of moral public feeling and religious respect in times of an increasingly desperate situation for Judaism. The seduction by state and society has to be considered, even though it does not provide sufficient excuse. And as this fact contains statistical evidence, there will as well be no lack of many different examples in every-day life, in which long-standing cultivation has produced those wellknown disgusting phenomena. Certainly, such an economic materialism, however, is revealed within all peoples with distressing clarity in times of the war. Because of this, the idealistic strivings, the dispositions and the habits of German morality should be connected impartially to the idealistic essential traits of Jewish religiosity in order to weaken gradually all those common instincts which disfigure one’s countenance. In fact, it is just the scientific point of view which weakens the racial objection and realises the possibility for the participation of the Jews in Germanness. For Jews have settled in Germania since the destruction of the Jewish realm, above all at the shores of the Rhine, and in times of Charlemagne they even appear as political mediators. Throughout the Middle Ages they have lived in German language and poetry, they even appeared among the Troubadours and collaborated sprightly in the construction of old-germanic poetry. Up to the times of the Crusades their social conditions in Germany were not wholly unfavourable; the persecution became so strict and planned that emigration of large numbers to Poland and Russia followed only with the Black Death and the accusations of well poisoning. Up until then, they had cultivated a pure Germanness with their Jewish-German idiom in religious as well as in ­domestic literature, which consisted in the combination with Hebrew words. And this Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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pure German they had taken to Poland and Russia; only then was it mutilated into the jargon of Jew-German (Judendeutsch), but it, nevertheless, remained an indication of devotion, for these German Jews in their new Polish-Russian environment did not lose or give up their native tongue. But as those people returned to Germany, with their adherence to Germanness in their language, they even spoiled with their jargon the original purity of language that the Jews of Germany had maintained up to then. And with their language—how could it be otherwise—they had grown into many characteristics of habits, for the inner connection with the spiritual life was the precondition for participation in literature. [. . .] It seems that the persisting religious separation contradicts the evidence of spiritual convergence; it even seems to consolidate an insurmountable foreignness in this relation. We do not underestimate this doubt. We even concede a reason for alleviation of the hatred of Jews which just recently reemerged among us. Consider only the way how Catholicism and Protestantism contradict each other in the basic notions of religion; how they mutually deny each other true Christianity. By doing so, the religious difference increases and the aim for alleviation becomes weaker to begin with. Additionally, the political aim to divert the confessional struggle on Judaism will prove to be a decisive element in the reemergence of anti-Semitism. Furthermore, the sensitiveness against every otherness that tries to assert itself is increased. And when the readiness for peace arises over and over again among the Christian opponents, the Jewish particularity becomes an all the more annoying incidence. For those efforts for a reunion of the Christian churches unite, on the other hand, with the cultural ideal of Protestantism that prospects a pure Christianity behind the Christianity of the church, whose construction is connected to the real aim of Protestant culture. For Judaism, on this hilltop of religious freedom an even greater interior danger than the medieval stakes emerges, threatening its existence. For speaking about the truth and absoluteness of Christianity, one does not mean the truth of Christian doctrines of faith anymore, but instead—grounded in a fiction of original Christianity—a fiction of the essence of Christianity has spread, which is based upon scientific construction, upon selection and interpretation of religious documents and notions. And the more this modern Christianity is convinced of its rigid scientific character, the stronger the opposition to Judaism becomes, leading to a contradiction of the common scientific character and the spiritual unity of culture. But although balancing with regard to this point of view seems to be impossible to carry out (because even more than religion the culture of the European Spirit is the epitome of all national interests of a modern people), right from Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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here the most profound reconciliation might become possible. The opposites were lacking the centre whose radiation will make them transparent. Where does modern science take its elements of the essence of Christianity from? Exclusively from the New Testament? Or is in fact the New Testament most intimately connected to the Old, especially for the idealizing historical construction of Christianity? Protestant lectern theology has gained its merits by the rediscovery of Prophetism. By doing so, in the fundamental questions of morality, in the question for the individual and that of the peoples, it itself has cemented its connection and, according to historical development, its dependence upon the basic idea of Jewish religion. In the scientific sense and spirit it is now impossible to state that there is a real moral-religious difference between Judaism and Christianity. For modern religiosity, particularly in Germany, does not adhere to the text of dogmas, but it sees the inner core of belief, it looks for its truth within the basic traits of religious morality for the human individual as well as for the peoples of mankind. Revelation is not reflected and venerated as revelation of the divine but rather as that of human morality. Even the most horrible war cannot tear us out of messianic escort of Israelitic prophets, so that we could forsake the ultimate goal of general human morality, of which the future of mankind and of divine providence in history would despair. These perspectives provided by the Prophets have remained the fundamentals of Jewish religion; they have their life as well as the life of its confessors preserved; and with themselves in the basic teachings they have, despite all suffering, persecution, and slander, preserved the belief in the unique God, which they gave to the world first, as being vital. Given all these facts, given the undeniable community of genuine, deepest, most truthful basics of living religiosity of a modern German, how may one speak of a real or even irreconcilable contraposition of Judaism and Christianity in the vivid motives of personal belief? Or is it rather the materialism of racial sentiment, which infiltrates the spiritual sanctuary of modern man? And if, consequently, Judaism itself by its own capacities contributes to a possible understanding, the German spirit, on the other side, has erected the most powerful pillars on whose fundament a religious agreement, regardless of traditional differences, in the sense of a notion of culture would be not only the possible but necessary consequence. The German consciousness undoubtedly takes its highest pride in the age of our classical spirit. [. . .] Is this German humanity in times of the Classics without religion in the sense that it is beyond the sources of religion, that it scorns it or that it replaces it generally by the Greek sources? Herder’s name alone destroys this prejudice. He was not only a Christian and superintendent, and additionally a poet and literary scholar, but from his religiosity his Spirit of Hebrew Poetry emerged. And as he always collected all Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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voices of the peoples to a harmony of mankind, there could be no doubt that he recognised the basic source of his all-embracing religiosity in the poetry of the Hebrew Bible. Even within the most ancient legends of the Genesis he sensed the premonition and the core concept of the unique God for the unity of the peoples. [. . .] But as long as the theology of the Old Testament is represented at German universities, the situation of the Jews in Germany cannot be considered as desperate; and the national perspective will prevail that, starting from scientific sources, interest in the Science of Judaism and its academic promotion may strengthen, and that impartiality, objectivity, idealisation, and finally sympathy for the religious treasures and ideas of Judaism, which are as well abiding for the Christian, may be continuously awakened and asserted. Now wherein does an opposition between Christians and Jews, disregarding the question of race, in Germany exist? [. . .] Only the question for God remains, whether it prevails in trinity or in pure monotheism. Concerning this question, open-minded and unsparing examination is needed. First of all, the duty of the Jews for firm discretion and deference towards those elements of the Christian faith, which they themselves reject, yet must nevertheless recognise and value by means of idealisation, must not be doubted. Each stumble in tact rightly turns out to be a severe annoyance for it is the unguarded result of religious boisterousness and it is a sign of the lack of the needed strive towards national unanimity. The Jew, in contrary, should seek to collaborate in the idealisation of this Christian characteristic, not only in the spirit of humanity but also in the spirit of monotheism. In his first article in the Prussian Yearbooks even Treitschke himself, while introducing intellectual anti-Semitism, made a difference between the ‘pure forms’ and historical Christianity. [. . .] This duty of idealisation is by no means a new claim, but an old custom in Jewish polemics of religion. I may mention the history of medieval Jewish philosophy of religion (which is as well an authoritarian dogma of belief), where is was a principle not to judge the teachings of Christianity and Islam from the predominant common perspective but by means of scientific considerations. If this scientific and as well ethical duty of the idealisation of dogma, one’s own and that of the other, is commonly accepted, the most important means is won and secured to obtain true agreement on religious matters. With its help, clear orientation, objective evaluation, an equal distribution of light and shadow which is not missing in every spiritual idea and every historical phenomenon will gradually be the basic opinion about this floating national opposition. The basic assumption within this national problem and its invulnerable claims, however, must not be mystified by any question. If the Jews are allowed to maintain their unity of tribe, it must be clear that the only reason Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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that it cannot be rejected is to maintain the purity of belief. [. . .] The messianic future is the epitome of monotheism, the root of the power of Jewish religion. Therefore, this religion does not belong to one state. In this way we German Jews understand the prophecy of the downfall of the Jewish state as proclaimed by the Prophets. In this way we understand our whole history as that of our religion. [. . .] Undoubtedly it is my right and duty as a religious being let alone as a confessor of Judaism to impose as an idealistic task on my German state the protection and preservation of the Jewish tribe in order to preserve the Religion of the Unique God. But I do not see as a German citizen how to combine the task for the preservation of Judaism with the idea of a Jewish state without weakening the idealistic duties for the German state with that collateral thought, i.e. to be exclusively attached to it with an undivided heart, with absolute enthusiasm and confidence. [. . .] The German Jew in serious struggles desires to maintain the right to protect and to develop the characteristics of the Jewish religion in the German fatherland and thereby as well in the lands of culture. But this religious conviction must not become conspicuous of national ambiguity. This conviction is so little of a danger, so little of a loss of German sentiment for the state, that we even attribute our religious preservation to our German state as a cultural duty. For religious profoundness and religious vision have to make it clear to the modern mind insistently that the continuation of Israelic monotheism is forever an impassable task of world culture, and especially for the leading German spirit within it. [. . .] God’s uniqueness has this fundamental importance for all being, and it is the basic characteristic of rigid monotheism that may never be replaced. All problems of idealism are also connected to the concept of divine uniqueness. [. . .] It is not pantheism including all being within God, which proves to be right, but rather monotheism, which deduces all being from God and grounds everything in God. This foundation, however, is based upon God’s unity. For a true and profound agreement between Germanness and Judaism there is a theoretical precondition: that the worth of Israelic monotheism for the general idealism of the perception of world and life is recognised and appreciated more and more frankly. Just as consideration of the Old Testament is an ever growing duty for scholarship, it must be recognised that there are people in the world and in our beloved Germany who straightforwardly believe in the One God without addition of divine and human forces and secondary meanings. It may be worth a thought that in this world, which is characterised by the struggle for life, this tradition of the unique God is upheld by human beings Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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who because of this belief, depending on the situation, always suffer all kinds of martyrdom, which was the temporal price for this kind of veneration of God. [. . .] The Jews of World History are the martyrs of true religious idealism. [. . .] With regard to the often discussed question of immigration of RussianPolish Jews I do not claim expertise on this difficult question of economic policy nor do I consider myself in the position to utter a wish. [. . .] Without any doubt, misery has caused much ethical damage and poverty has among many inured plain honesty in trade and conduct of life. This is not to be disputed or white-washed. It is my conviction, nevertheless, that an idealistic perspective has gained too little attention. We are not faced here with a proletariat in the usual sense. For these people, in their majority, are not illiterates as almost all of them read and write Hebrew letters. And it is not only the reading of prayers, to what they are used; there will be hardly any town or village where there is not a number of rabbinic scholars present, who, as researchers on the Talmud, are concurrently legal scholars and theologians. And although this scholarly education expanding on the whole people has recently withered, its spiritual consequences are still alive. [. . .] Long martyrdom for a holy belief has kept these forces vivid and prevented the old nobility of souls from being destroyed. With regard to this perspective it may correspond to true German kind, however, to evaluate ethical dignity and the prevailing spiritual ability to be added to a new whole of state with regard to this religious persistence and faithfulness, with regard to this power of belief which cannot be subdued by any tribulation of life, with regard to this power of spirit. [. . .] The solution of the Jewish question, which we related to the condition of its idealisation, for us consists solely in the recognition of Jewish religion as an ethical force of culture and as an ethical cultural value. [. . .] So it is religion itself which prepares the ground for reconciliation and it is not different, thus, with the German consciousness of state. This has its roots not in materialism and eudemonism of economic forces and values of life. The German state and German law have always tried to mediate the antinomy between the whole and the individual. [. . .] The Jewish question must be considered in the light of humanity and with regard to the most profound power of justice. To doubt justice is the worst skepticism in all history, philosophy, and wisdom of life. Justice is the living founding force of the spirit of people, and the most fertile root of all of its products which guarantee its persistence. From the classical turn of the ­eighteenth century, from the origin of the new German spirit in its idealism, there emerged the new legislation on Jews in the German states. And the further development of our political history has confirmed and realised this political acceptance more and more. It would be false humility (for it would be ungrateful Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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of Germans of Jewish blood and even more of Jewish faith) not to point out that these German Jews in all fields of culture to which they were allowed, of science and arts, in trade and production, as well as in matters of the state itself have achieved considerable and upright merits. The empirical proof of German efficiency has been sufficiently given by the German Jews. [. . .] We German Jews find ourselves in the comfortable position to recognise the great merits of the German spirit for the spiritual life of Jews as an indisputable historical fact: that the Jews of all modern peoples in their religious ideas, in their cult and in their part of the Science of Judaism have almost solely been influenced by the German Jews. And—with regard to our own spiritual life— the most intense religious community has been revealed by the accordance between Jewish messianism and German humanism. [. . .] We breathe, we think and compose poetry, we work and create under the protection and guidance of the German spirit. Its honor, its permanent rejuvenation, its never-ending radiation is the motto of our work. We hold, unwaveringly, our straight German path. When with regard to the imperfection and contingency of daily life with its unavoidable tensions our sincerity is doubted and our efficiency is criticised, it may annoy us, but it cannot make us doubt the naturalness of our striving. It may neither disturb us if we have to recognise distrust and misunderstanding of our characteristic features even when closely living next to each other. These experiences only remind us more and more to stick to the examination of the characteristics of the people’s hearts. But those unavoidable incidents may not distract us from the road of justice and humanity, from the road of national concord and confidence, from hope and enthusiasm for the development of the German spirit to the highest goals of human morality. On behalf of clearness and security of this German morality in religion and state, it must be finally recognised that there is nothing more dangerous and pernicious for a people in the political sense than to attempt to act as providence. No people is allowed to decide about the right to live of another people or nation because of political egoism even if it is political foresight. And what is forbidden to the people because of the state, is as well forbidden by true religiosity. The persistence of the Jews in any case is perhaps the most singular phenomenon of all World History. If, then, humility is a historical virtue, it is nowhere more appropriate as with regard to these ruins of an eternal past, which, nevertheless, have stayed alive and remained in an indisputable cultural effectiveness. Translated by Knut Martin Stünkel

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Max Müller: Chips from a German Workshop (England, 1867) Introduction There can be no doubt that Western scholarship was an important part of the colonial project. Yet, that does not necessarily imply that it was viewed in a negative way. The work of the philologist, orientalist and religious studies scholar Friedrich Max Müller (1823–1900), for instance, is still remembered with the greatest respect in India. In his biography of Müller, the famous Bengali writer Nirad C. Chaudhuri tells his readers how as a child he came to know about him. He had learned from his father who “was not a highly educated man in the formal sense” how Müller had established “that our languages and the European languages belonged to the same family . . .; that Sanskrit Dyaus Pitr and the Greek Zeus Pater were identical; and that we Hindus and the Europeans were both peoples descended from the same original stock.”1 Müller never visited India, but his critical edition of the Rigveda (1873) was the de facto canonisation of a Sanskrit classic, later used to support a Hindu nationalism in India. The East was thus represented textually by translations. In this vein Müller launched the edition of the Sacred Books of the East—49 volumes appeared between 1879 and 1904 (the index was published in 1910).2 His plan to include the Old and New Testament had to be abandoned out of fear that it would offend orthodox Christians. Müller has established his fame as a comparative philologist and, especially, as the founder of the comparative study of religion.3 He was born in Dessau in Germany in 1823. His father, Wilhelm Müller (1794–1827) was a well-known 1  Nirad C. Chauduri, Scholar Extraordinary: The Life of Professor the Rt. Hon. Friedrich Max Müller, P. C. (Delhi et al.: Oxford University Press, 1974), 5. 2  F. Max Müller, ed., The Sacred Books of the East: Translated by Various Oriental Scholars (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879–1910); Arie L. Molendijk, Friedrich Max Müller and the Sacred Books of the East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 3  On Müller and his scholarship see also: Norman Girardot, “Max Müller’s Sacred Books and the Nineteenth-Century Production of the Comparative Science of Religions,” Religions 4, 1/3 (2002): 213–250; Arie L. Molendijk, The Emergence of the Science of Religion in the Netherlands (Leiden: Brill, 2005); Peter van der Veer, Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain (Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001).

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Romantic poet, who is nowadays chiefly remembered as the writer of poems such as Die schöne Müllerin and Die Winterreise, set to music by Franz Schubert. Max Müller worked and studied in Leipzig, Berlin, Paris, London, and Oxford. In Berlin, he attended classes with linguist Franz Bopp and Friedrich Schelling’s lectures on mythology. In Paris, he was introduced to the eminent philologist Eugène Burnouf (1801–52), who encouraged him to copy and to edit a manuscript of the Rigveda. In 1858, he was elected a fellow of All Souls College at the University of Oxford. To his great disappointment, however, he did not obtain the prestigious and well-endowed Boden professorship of Sanskrit. In its obituary, The Times addressed this traumatic issue as follows: “he was foreigner, his theology was suspect to the rigid orthodoxy, he was the familiar friend of the liberal movement in Oxford.”4 In 1868, Oxford acknowledged Müller’s achievements and created a new chair for him in comparative philology. Müller had high expectations in the newly established scholarship of comparative religion (as the endeavour was often called at the time) and he succeeded in popularizing the field. His lectures on religious subjects drew large crowds, and he was what one might call an academic celebrity. He had to read his Hibbert Lectures twice because the auditorium did not offer enough room for all who wanted to attend,5 and various pirate editions of his Introduction to the Science of Religion circulated. Müller himself was not unduly modest about what was to be achieved: “The Science of Religion may be the last of the ­sciences which man is destined to elaborate; but when it is elaborated, it will change the aspect of the world, and give new life to Christianity itself.”6 The narrowness of our own religious horizon will disappear if we are willing to conduct the study of religion “in a bold, but scholar-like, careful, and ­reverent spirit.”7 Müller combined a Romantic view of the value of religious difference with a firm belief in the possibility of a sound scientific investigation of these phenomena. If we are willing to study “positive facts” and to “read . . . the history of the world,” we will see:

4  Lourens P. van den Bosch, Friedrich Max Müller. A Life Devoted to the Humanities (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 83. 5  Cf. Max Müller, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religions of India (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1878), vii. 6  Max Müller, Chips from a German Workshop, vol. I: Essays on the Science of Religion (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1867), xix–xx. 7  Müller, Introduction to the Science of Religion (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1873), ix.

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that, as in geology, so in the history of human thought, theoretic uniformity does not exist, and that the past is never altogether lost. The oldest formations of thought crop out everywhere, and if we dig but deep enough, we shall find that even the sandy desert in which we are asked to live, rests everywhere on the firm foundation of that primeval, yet indestructible granite of the human soul,—religious faith.8 The analogy with the work of the geologist who digs up old layers and materials, the fundament of our existence, is striking. The findings of nineteenth-­century geology and archaeology had contributed to the overthrow of the biblical chronology of world history. This was an important step in the development of a naturalistic science, which allowed the very origin of humankind to be studied without reference to supernatural intervention. What is also remarkable in the above quotation is the metaphor of the ‘sandy desert,’ which betrays a nostalgia for the religious past. Most pervasive, however, is the implied global view, which frames unity within religious difference. The preferred way to unearth the treasure is the comparative method: “all higher knowledge is acquired by comparison, and rests on comparison.”9 This insight also pertains to ‘our religion.’ “In order to understand fully the position of Christianity in the history of the world, and its true place among the religions of mankind, we must compare it, not with Judaism only, but with the religious aspirations of the whole world.”10 In the end, this endeavour, Müller strongly believed, would be to the benefit of Christian belief. In 1867, Müller published the first volume of his Chips from a German Workshop, in which he collected his shorter essays on the science of religion “to engage the attention of the public at large” (viii). The text fragment presented here is taken from the preface of this collection and focuses on some of the basic issues of the new science and the benefits Müller expected from it. On the one hand, Christianity is seen as the culmination of religious development in world history, on the other hand, there is a (Romantic) notion of decay discernible in his work and the call to look for the unblemished origins of religion. Müller is especially interested in the radical (from the Latin radix = root) elements of religion, which although they often be distorted, come to the surface again and again. These original elements are—according to him—an

8  Müller, Chips from a German Workshop, xxxii. 9  Müller, Introduction to the Science of Religion, 12. 10  Müller, Chips from a German Workshop, xxviii.

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intuition of God, a sense of human weakness and dependence, a distinction between good and evil, and a hope for better life.11 In his preface, Müller also noted that scholars had collected so many cultural and religious materials over the last fifty years, thereby making comparison feasible and meaningful. This does, however, not mean that there is agreement about the character of the various religions, and it is with this observation about ‘contradictory views’ that the fragment below starts. In the selected text, Müller explicitly points to the utility of the comparative study of religion for missionaries (who also, of course, collected materials, although it is clear that Müller is predominantly interested in the textual character of religions). The fragment stops when Müller embarks upon elaborating on the fact that the ‘Fathers of the Church’ were much more in favour of comparing religions than many present-day believers. Müller’s most famous saying likely is: “He who knows one [religion], knows none.” The comparative study of religions will thus contribute to a better understanding of religion and will dig up invaluable treasures, the indestructible granite of the human soul, i.e. religious faith. This anti-institutional view of religion in fact implied a program of reform. Müller took a stance against all kinds of ‘superstitions’ and ‘miracles’ and defended an interiorised, almost mystical form of religion that “places the human soul in the presence of God.”12 The establishment of the new comparative science of religion, believed Müller, would lead to a transformation of religion itself and show the unity of the Finite and the Infinite.13 Arie L. Molendijk

Further Reading

Molendijk, Arie L. Friedrich Max Müller and the Sacred Books of the East. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Molendijk, Arie L. The Emergence of the Science of Religion in the Netherlands. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Van den Bosch, Lourens P. Friedrich Max Müller: A Life Devoted to the Humanities. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Van der Veer, Peter. Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001. 11  Müller, Chips from a German Workshop, x. 12  Müller, Introduction to the Science of Religion, 263. 13  Van den Bosch, Müller, 151. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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If such contradictory views can be held and defended with regard to religious systems still prevalent amongst us, where we can cross-examine living witnesses, and appeal to chapter and verse in their sacred writings, what must the difficulty be when we have to deal with the religions of the past? I do not wish to disguise these difficulties which are inherent in a comparative study of the religions of the world. I rather dwell on them strongly, in order to show how much care and caution is required in so difficult a subject, and how much indulgence should be shown in judging of the shortcomings and errors that are unavoidable in so comprehensive a study. It was supposed at one time that a comparative analysis of the languages of mankind must transcend the powers of man: and yet by the combined and well directed efforts of many scholars, great results have here been obtained, and the principles that must guide the student of the Science of Language are now firmly established. It will be the same with the Science of Religion. By a proper division of labour, the materials that are still wanting will be collected and published and translated, and when that is done, surely man will never rest till he has discovered the purpose that runs through the religions of mankind, and till he has reconstructed the true Civitas Dei on foundations as wide as the ends of the world. The Science of Religion may be the last of the sciences which man is destined to elaborate; but when it is elaborated, it will change the aspect of the world, and give a new life to Christianity itself. The Fathers of the Church, though living in much more dangerous proximity to the ancient religions of the Gentiles, admitted freely that a comparison of Christianity and other religions was useful. “If there is any agreement,” Basilius remarked, “between their (the Greeks’) doctrines and our own, it may benefit us to know them: if not, then to compare them and to learn how they differ, will help not a little towards confirming that which is the better of the two.” But this is not the only advantage of a comparative study of religions. The Science of Religion will for the first time assign to Christianity its right place among the religions of the world; it will show for the first time fully what was meant by the fulness of time; it will restore to the whole history of the world, in its unconscious progress towards Christianity, its true and sacred character. Not many years ago great offense was given by an eminent writer who remarked that the time had come when the history of Christianity should be treated in a truly historical spirit, in the same spirit in which we treat the ­history 14  Taken from Max Müller, Chips from a German Workshop, vol. 1: Essays on the Science of Religion, second edition (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1868), xix–xxviii; taken from the “Preface,” dated October 1867 (identical with first edition 1867). Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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of other religions, such as Brahmanism, Buddhism, or Mohammedanism. And yet what can be truer? He must be a man of little faith, who would fear to subject his own religion to the same critical tests to which the historian subjects all other religions. We need not surely crave a tender or merciful treatment for that faith which we hold to be the only true one. We should rather challenge for it the severest tests and trials, as the sailor would for the good ship to which he entrusts his own life, and the lives of those who are most dear to him. In the Science of Religion, we can decline no comparisons, nor claim any immunities for Christianity, as little as the missionary can, when wrestling with the subtle Brahman, or the fanatical Mussulman, or the plain speaking Zulu. And if we send out our missionaries to every part of the world to face every kind of religion, to shrink from no contest, to be appalled by no objections, we must not give way at home or within our own hearts to any misgivings, that a comparative study of the religions of the world could shake the firm foundations on which we must stand or fall. To the missionary more particularly a comparative study of the religions of mankind will be, I believe, of the greatest assistance. Missionaries are apt to look upon all other religions as something totally distinct from their own, as formerly they used to describe the languages of barbarous nations as something more like the twittering of birds than the articulate speech of men. The Science of Language has taught us that there is order and wisdom in all languages, and that even the most degraded jargons contain the ruins of former greatness and beauty. The Science of Religion, I hope, will produce a similar change in our views of barbarous forms of faith and worship; and missionaries, instead of looking only for points of difference, will look out more anxiously for any common ground, any spark of the true light that may still be revived, any altar that may be dedicated afresh to the true God. And even to us at home, a wider view of the religious life of the world may teach many a useful lesson. Immense as is the difference between our own and all other religions of the world–and few can know that difference who have not honestly examined the foundations of their own as well as of other religions– the position which believers and unbelievers occupy with regard to their various forms of faith is very much the same all over the world. The difficulties which trouble us, have troubled the hearts and minds of men as far back as we can trace the beginnings of religious life. The great problems touching the relation of the Finite to the Infinite, of the human mind as the recipient, and of the Divine Spirit as the source of truth, are old problems indeed; and while watching their appearance in different countries, and their treatment under varying circumstances, we shall be able, I believe, to profit ourselves, both by the errors which others committed before us, and by the truth which they discovered. We Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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shall know the rocks that threaten every religion in this changing and shifting world of ours, and having watched many a storm of religious controversy and many a shipwreck in distant seas, we shall face with greater calmness and prudence the troubled waters at home. If there is one thing which a comparative study of religions places in the clearest light, it is the inevitable decay to which every religion is exposed. It may seem almost like a truism, that no religion can continue to be what it was during the lifetime of its founder and its first apostles. Yet it is but ­seldom borne in mind that without constant reformation, i.e. without a constant return to its fountain-head, every religion, even the most perfect, nay the most perfect on account of its very perfection, more even than others, suffers from its contact with the world, as the purest air suffers from the mere fact of its being breathed. Whenever we can trace back a religion to its first beginnings, we find it free from many of the blemishes that offend us in its later phases. The founders of the ancient religions of the world, as far as we can judge, were minds of a high stamp, full of noble aspirations, yearning for truth, devoted to the welfare of their neighbors, examples of purity and unselfishness. What they desired to found upon earth was but seldom realized, and their sayings, if preserved in their original form, offer often a strange contrast to the practice of those who profess to be their disciples. As soon as a religion is established, and more particularly when it has become the religion of a powerful state, the foreign and worldly elements encroach more and more on the original foundation, and human interests mar the simplicity and purity of the plan which the founder had conceived in his own heart, and matured in his communings with his God. Even those who lived with Buddha, misunderstood his words, and at the Great Council which had to settle the Buddhist canon, Asoka, the Indian Constantine, had to remind the assembled priests that “what had been said by Buddha, that alone was well said;” and that certain works ascribed to Buddha, as, for instance, the instruction given to his son, Râhula, were apocryphal, if not heretical. With every century, Buddhism, when it was accepted by nations, differing as widely as Mongols and Hindus, when its sacred writings were translated into languages as wide apart as Sanskrit and Chinese, assumed widely different aspects, till at last the Buddhism of the Shamans in the steppes of Tatary is as different from the teaching of the original Samana, as the Christianity of the leader of the Chinese rebels is from the teaching of Christ. If missionaries could show to the Brahmans, the Buddhists, the Zoroastrians, nay, even to the Mohammedans, how much their present faith differs from the faith of their forefathers and founders, if they could place into their hands and read with them in a kindly spirit the original documents in which these various religions Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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profess to be founded, and enable them to distinguish between the doctrines of their own sacred books and the additions of later ages, an important advantage would be gained, and the choice between Christ and other Masters would be rendered far more easy to many a truth-seeking soul. But for that purpose it is necessary that we too should see the beam in our own eyes, and learn to distinguish between the Christianity of the nineteenth century and the religion of Christ. If we find that the Christianity of the nineteenth century does not win as many hearts in India and China as it ought, let us remember that it was the Christianity of the first century in all its dogmatic simplicity, but with its overpowering love of God and man, that conquered the world and superseded religions and philosophies, more difficult to conquer than the religious and philosophical systems of Hindus and Buddhists. If we can teach something to the Brahmans in reading with them their sacred hymns, they too can teach us something when reading with us the Gospel of Christ. Never shall I forget the deep despondency of a Hindu convert, a real martyr to his faith, who had pictured to himself from the pages of the New Testament what a Christian country must be, and who when he came to Europe found everything so different from what he had imagined in his lonely meditations at Benares! It was the Bible only that saved him from returning to his old religion, and helped him to discern beneath theological futilities, accumulated during nearly two thousand years, beneath pharisaical hypocrisy, infidelity, and want of charity, the buried, but still living seed, committed to the earth by Christ and his Apostles. How can a missionary in such circumstances meet the surprise and questions of his pupils, unless he may point to that seed, and tell them what Christianity was meant to be; unless he may show that like all other religions, Christianity, too, has had its history; that the Christianity of the nineteenth century is not the Christianity of the Middle Ages, that the Christianity of the Middle Ages was not that of the early Councils, that the Christianity of the early Councils was not that of the Apostles, and “that what has been said by Christ that alone was well said?” The advantages, however, which missionaries and other defenders of the faith will gain from a comparative study of religions, though important hereafter, are not at present the chief object of these researches. In order to maintain their scientific character, they must be independent of all extraneous considerations: they must aim at truth, trusting that even unpalatable truths, like unpalatable medicine, will reinvigorate the system into which they enter. To those, no doubt, who value the tenets of their religion as the miser values his pearls and precious stones, thinking their value lessened if pearls and stones of the same kind are found in other parts of the world, the Science of Religion will bring many a rude shock; but to the true believer, truth, wherever it appears, is Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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welcome, nor will any doctrine seem to be less true or less precious, because it was seen, not only by Moses or Christ, but likewise by Buddha or Lao-tse. Nor should it be forgotten that while a comparison of ancient religions will certainly show that some of the most vital articles of faith are the common property of the whole of mankind, at least of all who seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him, the same comparison alone can possibly teach us what is peculiar to Christianity, and what has secured to it that pre-eminent position which now it holds in spite of all obloquy. The gain will be greater than the loss, if loss there be, which I, at least, shall never admit. There is a strong feeling, I know, in the minds of all people against any attempt to treat their own religion as a member of a class, and, in one sense, that feeling is perfectly justified. To each individual, his own religion, if he really believes in it, is something quite inseparable from himself, something unique, that cannot be compared to anything else, or replaced by anything else. Our own religion is, in that respect, something like our own language. In its form it may be like other languages; in its essence and in its relation to ourselves, it stands alone and admits of no peer or rival. But in the history of the world, our religion, like our own language, is but one out of many; and in order to understand fully the position of Christianity in the history of the world, and its true place among the religions of mankind, we must compare it, not with Judaism only, but with the religious aspirations of the whole world, with all, in fact, that Christianity came either to destroy or to fulfil. From this point of view Christianity forms part, no doubt, of what people call profane history, but by that very fact, profane history ceases to be profane, and regains throughout that sacred character of which it had been deprived by a false distinction. Selected by Arie L. Molendijk

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Carrying the Gospel to All the Non-Christian World (Resolution of the World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh) (Scotland, 1910) Introduction The 1910 World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh was a culmination of the missionary movement of the nineteenth century. Its aim was to concentrate and coordinate the efforts of the Protestant mission societies which were striving “to evangelize the whole world within this generation.”1 Christian missionary activities underwent a revival as a Protestant enterprise independent from military conquest and state power. The pre-­millenarian2 or Pietist movement of mission societies started with the Christian Mission Society in London and the Basel Missionary Society at the end of the eighteenth century. This movement did not institutionally originate in the Christian Churches and was not directed by religious experts such as theologians and clergy, but by lay people. They formed societies whose members came both from urban and (especially) from rural Christian communities which belonged to the ‘Awakening’ or ‘Revival Movement’ (Erweckungsbewegung). Important for their self-understanding was a literal interpretation of Matthew 28, 18–20 (King James Version): [. . .] All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. 1  The motto of the conference in Edinburgh was a quotation from John R. Mott, The Evangelization of the World in This Generation (New York: Students Volunteer Movement for Foreign Mission, 1900). 2  ‘Pre-millenarian’ alludes to the drama of the end of the world, the ‘script’ of which is given in the last book of the bible, the Apocalypse of John. The last stage of this drama is the reign of Christ and his chosen people for one thousand years (‘millennium’ from Lat. mille annos; ‘chiliasm’ from Gr. chilia etē).

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Even casualties among the missionaries were interpreted as signs of success; based on the assumption that the resistance of native elites was the work of the devil, the death of a missionary was the necessary martyrdom of the ‘Man of God.’ The conference brought together representatives of every Protestant missionary society, altogether some 1200 participants from Europe and North America. Catholic societies were not invited, and only few ‘native’ Christians participated. John R. Mott, an American Methodist, a leading figure of the YMCA and secretary general of the World’s Student Christian Federation, presided. The conference was modelled on the ‘Congo Conference’ held at Berlin in 1884–85; during that meeting, and as a reaction to the Belgian imperialism in Congo, the leading nations of Europe had negotiated their respective colonial aspirations, channelling them into a system of competing yet separate activities. That involved the division of Africa into spheres of influence that allowed each European power to build up its own colony and incorporate it into their ‘empire.’ The aim of colonisation, the ‘European mission,’ was to lead the ‘young nations’ into a better future by educating the so-called ‘primitive people.’ The underlying concept of education comprised violence and coercion if necessary. Similarly, the Edinburgh conference wanted to coordinate the activities of the missionary societies in the field of religion in order to prepare the way for the second coming of Christ for the Last Judgment. This theological concept opened up a first phase under the control of European experts. During the following phase, the African, Asian or Oceanic Christians were expected to build their own autonomous Churches. This concept has its roots in the (heterogeneous) Protestant ecclesiology: every nation agrees on its own religion and ecclesial organisation (e.g. a state church), using the vernacular. The Roman Catholic Church and its missions used mainly Latin (for liturgical and administrative purposes) or the languages enforced by the colonial nations, e.g. English and French. The challenge of globalisation—described by British imperial rhetoric as ‘Commonwealth’ and by Karl Marx critically in economic terms—was met in the West with conferences that seemed to answer the needs of a globalising world. Thus, the first ‘World Exposition’ (Expo) was held in London in 1850. It was supposed to foster peaceful trade and mainly displayed technical innovations. The 10th Expo in Chicago in 1893 took place 400 years after Columbus had conquered the New World. In conjunction with this ‘Columbian fair,’ Protestant lay groups—mainly Unitarian—organised the World Parliament of Religions which intended to promote religious dialogue and to guide the way towards an unmediated Unitarian religion as the new universal and ­therefore

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truly ‘world religion.’3 But the outcome was different: in the aftermath we can observe the rise of Hinduism as a new addition to the already existing ‘world religions.’4 The World Zionist Congress was first held at Basel in 1897. Leading figures from Middle and Western Europe (under the presidency of Theodor Herzl until his death in 1904) promoted their plan of a Jewish homeland for the ‘Jewish Nation’ erected around the Zion, the hill of prophet David’s Jerusalem.5 Also, a series of international conferences on the ‘science of religion’ led to the founding of the International Association for the History of Religions.6 And, finally, the missionary conferences were continued after World War I in 1925.7 The document presented below interprets its contemporary circumstances both as crisis and chance. For its authors, the challenges of the beginning globalisation require a new strategy and immediate action. The commission bears the political and geo-strategic development in mind (‘colonialism’) but drafts its own theologically grounded strategy for mission. This strategy is in many aspects different from colonialist concepts. It is based on a strict interpretation of scripture (Matthew 28:18–20, see above), centres on the individual decision of the prospective believer and emphasises indigenous autonomous action and institutions as its long-term goal both in Europe and the colonies. While the colonial nations’ foremost interest was economical (it lay e.g. in natural resources and opportunities for settlement), the missionary interest lies in Christianity’s universal and exclusive claim of truth. Therefore, other religions are seen as rivals on a religious market. The only true and living religion, however, is, according to the inner logic of the theological system, the passion, death and resurrection of Christ, the Son of God. That leads to an

3  Dorothea Lüddeckens, Das Weltparlament der Religionen von 1893. Strukturen interreligiöser Begegnung im 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002). Christoph Auffarth, “Weltreligion als ein Leitbegriff der Religionswissenschaft im Imperialismus,” in Mission und Macht im Wandel politischer Orientierungen. Europäische Missionsgesellschaften in politischen Spannungsfeldern in Afrika und Asien zwischen 1800 und 1945, eds. Ulrich van der Heyden and Holger Stoecker, Missionsgeschichtliches Archiv 10 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2005), 17–36. 4  See chapter 1.06 in this volume. 5  David Vital, Zionism. 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980–1989). 6  Arie Molendijk, “Les premiers congrès d’histoire des religions, ou comment faire de la religion un objet de science?” Revue Germanique Internationale 12 (2010): 91–103. 7  Despite intermissions during the two World Wars, the Edinburgh ‘World Conference’ was continued by international conferences in Jerusalem 1928, Tambaram (near Madras) 1938, Whitby 1947, Willingen 1952, Accra/Ghana 1958, Mexico 1963 (the first organised by the ecumenical World Council of Churches), 1972 Bankok, 1980 Melbourne, 1989 San Diego/USA, 1996 Salvador da Bahía, Brasil, 2005 Athens and the centenary conference Edinburgh 2010.

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assessment of other religions which places them, if at all, on lower levels of truth and a fruitful life. This corresponds to the Christian universal truth claim which the document takes for granted. Even if the resolution states that the Church’s adequacy as a world religion is on trial, that nevertheless does not place it on an equal footing with the other religions. The “supreme Lordship of Christ” is the motivating force behind the missionary endeavour. It is in the light of this conscience of supremacy that the various religions and cultural contexts are addressed, e.g. the challenges of Islam, the political upheavals in Muslim regions, or Judaism. The relationship to Judaism bears the marks and conscience of Christianity’s historical roots: Christianity is the rightful ‘inheritance’ which must be handed over to the Jews. Here we encounter an interesting twist to the then common anti-Semitic topos of the “enormous influence which the Jew is wielding in the world”: This situation renders it even more urgent that Judaism have the opportunity to revert to its true roots. We can grasp here the entanglement of ecclesiastical, political and cultural discourses. The Resolution of the World Missionary Conference in 1910 marks a peak of Christian (esp. Protestant) missionary zeal. Later in the 20th century, prominent definitions of Christianity’s relationship to other faiths tended to emphasise the possibility of respectful co-existence, while at the same time upholding the exclusivity of the Christian ultimate truth. One example is the Second Vatican Council’s declaration Nostra aetate that tried to formulate principles of the relationship with other religions:8 The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself. The Church, therefore, exhorts her sons, that through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, carried out with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian 8  The Declaratio de Ecclesiae Habitudine ad Religiones Non-Christianas Nostra Aetate and its English translation “Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions Nostra Aetate Proclaimed by His Holiness Pope Paul VI on October 28, 1965” are available on http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_ decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_lt.html (last access 22.03.2016).

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faith and life, they recognize, preserve and promote the good things, ­spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among these men. Nostra aetate decidedly calls for dialogue and collaboration and—a commonplace of ius naturae—states anew that true and holy things can also be found in other religions. The new concept which emerges to reconcile the Church’s truth claim with the respect for other traditions and their dignity is that of graduality. Similar notions are present in many Protestant texts and contexts of the later 20th century as well, indicating a decisive departure from the World Missionary Conference’s competitive outlook a few decades before. Unlike the Catholic Church, Protestantism by historical necessity displays a variegated plethora of traditions; the lack of the magisterium makes it impossible to find a text comparable in authority to the above-quoted conciliar declaration. Even though the missionary movement sought to distance itself from pro­ jects of exploitation and domination, the Edinburgh Conference of 1910 must be seen in relation to colonialism and imperialism. The Conference itself had been modelled on the Congo Conference, a culmination of imperial politics in the nineteenth century, which grew out of an attempt to negotiate moral and political boundaries for colonialism. The resolution illustrates how theological considerations and political developments are entangled. For example, we find allusions to contemporary political changes such as the Young Turk Revolution (1908) and the Persian Constitutional Revolution (1905–07). However, the perception of such events and processes is highly selective. Only those that affect mission opportunities are singled out; others—although important and later crucial—are neglected, e.g. the first Russian revolution (1905). The document takes up the colonial concept of ‘unoccupied fields’ but transforms it from the Christian perspective by relating it to Scripture. Thence emerges a strong and reiterated sense of the urgent responsibility the Church is called to face for the sake of the whole world—a distinctively Christian instance of globalisation rhetoric. This perception of globalisation is congenial to Christianity from its origins (see Mt 28:18–20 above; also—metaphysically—John 1:3). Thus, worldly circumstances are not simply acknowledged and assessed merely pragmatically in order to ensure missionary success; this success is seen to depend essentially on the spiritual life of both missionaries and the ‘Churches’ at home. The underlying ecclesiology is both Protestant and emancipatory: it aims at the establishment of indigenous churches. Conversion does not simply mean ‘death or baptism’—as in earlier centuries—but a real conversio mentis as an inner and individual act of the believer. And it is this personal, individual, and inner decision that is the precondition for participation in an active change of Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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the world. This case is very different e.g. from the quietist meditation which the Buddhist mission offered as the means of salvation from this world, and represents a major factor for the success of the missionary movement. The ‘Resolution’ expressly states the “habits of spiritual culture which ensure lives of Christ-like witnessing and of spiritual power” to be the “most direct and effective way” to support the missions and therefore calls for a new Protestant awakening in Europe and links inner and outward mission (innere/äußere Mission). The Edinburgh Resolution illustrates how the Protestant missionary movement sought to draw its ranks together so as to pursue its aim: to evangelise the world by putting the colonial order to its own use. The ‘reign of Christ in the whole world,’ the traditional goal of Christian missionary efforts which the Resolution proposes anew, aims at an empire that is completely different from colonial domination: an empire where education—both religious and secular—leads to emancipation and autonomous religious action. This strategy was not without effects on religious and political processes and debates in the homeland as well as in the indigenous cultures. While Protestant missions profited from the colonial infrastructure, they were mostly far from being a simple instrument of imperial politics as e.g. the strongly negative reactions to Friedrich Fabri’s influential pro-colonial pamphlet “Bedarf Deutschland der Kolonien?”9 (Does Germany need colonies?) show. The World Missionary Conference of 1910 thus epitomises the intricate web of political and theological discourses which the Protestant missionary movement of the 19th century was a part of. It clearly shows that a full understanding of religion can never be achieved apart from its cultural context. It also shows, however, that it is misleading to reduce religion to that very context and its political ideologies. The historian of religion must steer clear of both the Scylla of materialist or postmodern reductionism and the Charybdis of phenomenological or fundamentalist ahistoricism. Christoph Auffarth and Marvin Döbler

Further Reading

Chidester, David. Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa. Charlottesville. Va.: University Press of Virginia, 1996. 9  Friedrich Fabri, Bedarf Deutschland der Kolonien? Eine politisch-oekonomische Betrachtung (Gotha: Perthes 1879); digitally available at: http://digital.ub.uni-duesseldorf.de/urn/urn: nbn:de:hbz:061:1-38389. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Cracknell, Kenneth. Justice, Courtesy & Love: Theologians and Missionaries Encountering World Religions. 1846–1914. London: Epworth Press, 1995. Gründer, Horst. Welteroberung und Christentum: Ein Handbuch zur Geschichte der Neuzeit. Gütersloh: GVH, 1992. Masuzawa, Tomoko. The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago: University Press, 2005. Ustorf, Werner. Robinson Crusoe Tries Again: Missiology and European Constructions of “Self” and “Other” in a Global World 1789–2010. Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010.



Source Text10

Findings of the [First] Commission I. THE Commission, after studying the facts and after taking counsel with the leaders of the missionary forces of the Church at home and abroad, expresses its conviction that the present is the time of all times for the Church to undertake with quickened loyalty and sufficient forces to make Christ known to all the non-Christian world.11 It is an opportune time.12 Never before has the whole world-field been so open and so accessible. Never before has the Christian Church faced such a combination of opportunities among both primitive and cultured peoples. It is a critical time.13 The non-Christian nations are undergoing great changes. Far-reaching movements national, racial, social, economic, religious 10  “Findings of working group One ‘Carrying the gospel to all the non-Christian world,’ ” Report of Commission I–VIII, Published for the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh 1910 (Edinburgh et al.: Oliphant et al., 1910), 362–370, http://www.archive.org/stream/ reportofcommissi01worluoft#page/362/mode/2up, accessed October 3, 2013. 11  Since the union of ‘state and church’ (a gradual process following Constantine’s accession to power) the Christians took over the imperial administrative system, which organised the whole inhabited world (Greek: oikuméne, hence engl. ecumenical etc.) into provinces (dioikesis, hence dioceses under one bishop) and neighbourhoods (paroikía, hence parish). Even the desert was attributed to an existing parish. In the Protestant endeavor, however, more emphasis is laid on the commandment to baptise all the people of the world, i.e. every individual. 12  “Opportune time” is a metaphor which is used both in ancient ethics (kairós) and in ­biblical language: God provided (Lat. providere: to foresee; to plan) for his Messiah (e.g. John 2, 4) and for men in general. 13  Around 1900 time was judged both by the Bürgertum and the working class as a time of crisis or fin de siècle. See Lucian Hölscher, Weltgericht oder Revolution, Industrielle Welt 46 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1989). Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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are shaking the non-Christian nations to their foundations. These nations are still plastic. Shall they set in Christian or pagan moulds? Their ancient faiths, ethical restraints, and social orders have been weakened or abandoned. Shall our sufficient faith fill the void? The spirit of national independence and racial patriotism is growing. Shall this become antagonistic or friendly to Christianity? There have been tunes when the Church confronted crises as great as those before it now on certain fields; but never before has there been such a synchronizing of crises in all parts of the world. It is a testing time for the Church. If it neglects to meet successfully the present world crisis by failing to discharge its responsibility to the whole world, it will weaken its power both on the home and foreign fields14 and seriously handicap its mission to the coming generation. Nothing less than the adequacy of Christianity as a world religion is on trial.15 This is a decisive hour16 for Christian missions. The call of Providence17 to all our Lord’s disciples,18 of whatever ecclesiastical connection,19 is direct and urgent to undertake without delay the task of carrying the Gospel to all the non-Christian world. It is high time to face this duty and with serious purpose to discharge it. The opportunity is inspiring; the responsibility is undeniable. The Gospel is all-inclusive in its scope, and we are convinced that there never was a time more favorable for united, courageous, and prayerful action 14  The metaphor of the ‘field,’ which is often used in the following text, resides on Matthew 9:37–38: “Then saith he unto his disciples ‘The harvest is truly plenteous, but the labourers are few. Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest!’ ye.” 15  On ‘world religion’ and the World Parliament of Religions in 1893 see Christoph Auffarth, “Weltreligion als ein Leitbegriff der Religionswissenschaft im Imperialismus,” in Mission und Macht im Wandel politischer Orientierungen. Europäische Missionsgesellschaften in politischen Spannungsfeldern in Afrika und Asien zwischen 1800 und 1945, eds. Ulrich van der Heyden and Holger Stoecker (Missionsgeschichtliches Archiv 10, Stuttgart: Steiner, 2005): 17–36. 16  On ‘decisive hour’ and ‘Christian Endeavour’ (Entschiedenes Christentum), especially the student Christian movement, see e.g. 24–7 Prayer. Prayer, Mission and Justice, “The ‘Decisive Moment’ of our Lives?,” blog entry by Pete Graig (2010, January 11th), www.24-7prayer.com/features/1149. 17  A fundamental theological concept esp. in Calvinism. The Calvinist influence can be gauged by the frequency of Providence as a city name in the USA. 18  I.e. a self-designation of the evangelical believers to indicate that they represent the inner circle of Jesus’ collaborators in the modern world. 19  Whereas formerly Lutherans, Swiss Reformed (Zwingli), Calvinists, Puritans and Baptists refused to collaborate, in order not to contaminate the pure creed (syncretism), the Edinburgh conference called for concerted action and did not allow dogmatic disputes during the conference. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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to make the universality of the Gospel ideal a practical reality in the history of the Church. 2. The utter inadequacy of the present missionary force to discharge effectively the duty of world-wide evangelization is evident. The present mission staff in the foreign field is not sufficient even to compass fully the work already in hand; much less is it prepared to accomplish any adequate expansion. On almost every field the efficiency and lives of the workers are endangered because of this effort to accomplish a task altogether too great for their numbers. The present status in some fields represents practically a deadlock; in many other fields there is no evidence of notable progress. Findings I. It is the high duty of the Church promptly to discharge its responsibility in regard to all the non-Christian world. To do this is easily within the power of the Church. Not to do it would indicate spiritual atrophy, if not treasonable indifference to the command of our Lord. Without attempting to estimate the necessary increase in income and foreign staff, it is the conviction of the Commission that the Church of Christ must view the world field in its entirety and do it full justice. There should be nothing less than a vast enlargement in the number of qualified workers, a thorough and courageous adaptation of means and methods to meet the situation, a wise unification in plans and forces, and a whole-hearted fulfilling of the conditions of spiritual power. II. The Commission, after a careful study of the missionary situation, and of the various considerations which should govern such a recommendation, would direct attention to the following fields as of special urgency in respect of the prosecution of missionary work: 1. Fields on which the Church as a whole should concentrate attention and effort. (a) In China there is at this moment a unique opportunity which is fraught with far-reaching issues for the future not only of China and of the whole East, but also of Christendom. (b) The threatening advance of Islam in Equatorial Africa presents to the Church of Christ the decisive question whether the Dark Continent shall become Mohammedan or Christian. (c) The national and spiritual movements in India, awakening its ancient peoples to a vivid consciousness of their needs and ­possibilities, present a strong challenge to Christian missions to enlarge and deepen their work. (d) The problems of the Mohammedan World, especially in the Near East, which, until recently, received little consideration from the Church at Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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large, have been lifted unexpectedly into prominence and urgency, as well as into new relations, by the marvelous changes which have taken place in Turkey and Persia. One of the important tasks before the Church at this time is to deal adequately with these problems. 2. Fields which do not claim the attention of the Church as a whole, but which demand additional effort on the part of the societies already in some measure occupying them. In Korea an evangelistic movement extending rapidly over the land calls for a great strengthening of the missionary force. In Japan the mission work which has been centered in the great towns and among the higher middle classes requires to be expanded effectively over the country, and among all classes. In Malaya Christian missions must strain every nerve to prevent Islam from gaining the heathen tribes, and to win them for Christ. Siam and Laos also present an urgent appeal for an aggressive advance. In Melanesia a multitude of tribes in New Guinea and other islands are opening in quick succession to Christian influences. In various fields of pagan Africa, the Christian missions which have been planted are confronted by immense opportunities among those who are waiting for Gospel teaching, but who cannot be reached by the forces now on the field. The rapid disintegration of the animistic and fetishistic beliefs of primitive peoples in most of the lands in the preceding lists presents an important problem. Most of these peoples will have lost their ancient faiths within a generation, and will accept that culture-religion with which they first come in contact. The responsibility of the Church is grave to bring the Gospel to them quickly, as the only sufficient substitute for their decaying faiths. 3. The Jewish people have a peculiar claim upon the missionary activities of the Christian Church. Christianity is theirs pre-eminently by right of inheritance. The Church is under special obligation to present Christ to the Jew. It is a debt to be repaid, a reparation to be fully and worthily made. The attempts to give the Gospel to this widely scattered yet still isolated people have been hitherto inadequate. The need is great for a change in the attitude of the Church towards this essential part of the Great Commission. The call is urgent in view of the enormous influence which the Jew is wielding in the world, especially throughout Christendom. The winning of this virile race with its genius for religion20 will be the strengthening of the Church of Christ and the enrichment of the world.

20  Abraham Geiger asserted in 1835 that a genius for religion was paramount among Jewish people. See also the chapters on Hermann Cohen (3.09) and Paul de Lagarde (2.10) in this volume. Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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The enumeration of these fields might seem to suggest that the Church is not able to deal adequately and simultaneously with the entire non-Christian world. But the Commission declines to concede that this is so. After facing the facts we share the conviction of the large majority of our correspondents that the Church of Christ, if it puts forth its strength, is well able to carry the Gospel to all these fields immediately. While we recognize the greater urgency in the case of certain fields, we find it impossible, in the light of the needs of men, the command of Christ, and the resources of the Church, to delay giving to any people the opportunity to learn of Him. The point of chief emphasis is, that what the Church expects to do anywhere it must do soon. What is needed is a regular, sustained advance all along the line, in which all agencies shall be utilised and multiplied until they are co-extensive with the need of the entire world. III. The unoccupied fields of the world have a claim of peculiar weight and urgency upon the attention and missionary effort of the Church. In this twentieth century of Christian history there should be no unoccupied fields. The Church is bound to remedy this lamentable condition with the least possible delay. Some of these unoccupied fields are open to the Gospel, such as Mongolia and many regions of Africa. In certain fields there are difficulties of access to be overcome. Both in Africa and Asia there are large regions belonging to the French Empire in which there are no Christian missions. There are other fields where political difficulties seem at present to prevent occupation, such as Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and Afghanistan. But the closed doors are few compared with the open doors unentered. It is the neglected opportunities that are the reproach of the Church. A large proportion of the unoccupied fields are to be found within the Mohammedan world, not only in Northern Africa and in Western Asia, but also in China. Indeed by far the greater part of the Mohammedan world is practically unoccupied. The claims of Christ upon the love and reverence of Moslem hearts should be faithfully and patiently pressed, with a zeal which will not yield to discouragement, and with passionate intercession which God will be pleased to hear and honor. The unreceptive and even defiant attitude of Islam towards Christianity, and its unwillingness to acknowledge the supreme Lordship of Christ, will yield to the Gospel if Christians do their duty. Its long dominance and intolerance are apparently being undermined by remarkable events. The present accessibility of Islam, the fruitfulness of the efforts already made, and the missionary energy of the Moslem propaganda favor direct, earnest, and unceasing efforts to convince the Mohammedans that Christ alone is worthy of their allegiance and

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­worship.21 Emphasis should be laid on the need of special preparation on the part of all who are to devote themselves to this great undertaking. IV. In view of the world-wide task confronting the Church of Christ, the proper disposition of the missionary forces in order to an effective advance becomes a question of vital importance. (1) With regard to the work of individual missionaries or missions, this question will be differently decided according to the countries and the peoples to be evangelized and the type of the evangelizing mission, the principle being that the sphere should be sufficiently restricted to enable the missionary or the mission effectively to influence the people. (2) With regard to the work in large areas well occupied for decades, such as South Africa, some port cities, and other great centers in such countries as Japan, China, and India, a new and careful survey is necessary, if the undesirable crowding of missions and stations in limited areas (due in most cases to the unfavorable conditions at the beginning of the work) is to be remedied by a proper rearrangement of the stations and redistribution of the workers. (3) With regard to the totally unoccupied or partially occupied fields which on all sides invite missionary extension, the wise policy is to extend by expanding the work already in hand, and when establishing new work to begin at strong strategic centers. V. As the missionary forces are divided into numerous independent organizations which are conducting foreign missions in different lands and with diverse methods, it is of the utmost importance that they should be in close touch with each other, that they should be familiar with each other’s work and methods, and that they should profit by each other’s failures and successes. The Commission recommends that an International Committee should be formed for the consideration of international missionary questions. This Committee, in addition to serving as an agency for dealing with questions on which the various missionary societies desire to take co-operative action, would act as a council for investigation and advice about such matters as the unreached portions of the world, the actual occupation of different fields, and the success and failure of missionary methods. This Committee would naturally avail itself of the co-operation of existing councils and organizations both on the home and foreign fields. 21  In most countries under Muslim governance both Christian mission and conversion of Muslims to Christianity was prohibited upon death penalty. The White Fathers (Pères Blancs)—a Catholic mission order founded in 1856—lived among Muslim people without explicit endeavours of evangelisation, concentrating instead on charity.

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VI. The Church on the mission field must be the chief evangelistic agency if the Gospel is to be preached to all men in our day. The evangelization of the non-Christian world is not alone a European, an American, an Australasian enterprise; it is equally an Asiatic and an African enterprise. While the number of well-qualified foreign missionaries must be greatly increased in order to plant Christianity, to establish the native Church, to place at its disposal the acquired experience of the Christian Church, and to enlist and train effective leaders, nevertheless the great volume of work involved in making Christ known to the multitudinous inhabitants of the non-Christian world must be done by the sons and daughters of the soil. It is essential, therefore, on every mission field to seek to permeate the whole life of the Church from its beginning with the evangelistic spirit, and further, in proportion as the Church increases, to develop strongly a native evangelistic staff, working in co-operation with the foreign force. For this end training-schools and classes must be multiplied and developed. In this way leaders may be prepared who will conduct a more effective indigenous training of catechists, evangelists, and Bible-women, thus providing a sufficient force for, a greatly enlarged evangelistic propaganda. Conferences on evangelistic work should be held within large areas admitting of concerted action. Moreover, if the Church is to abound with the spirit of self-propagation and prove an aggressive force, more attention must be given to building up its spiritual life and to establishing its members in the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith. VII. A crucial factor in the evangelization of the non-Christian world is the state of the Church in Christian lands. On this point there is almost unanimous agreement among missionaries abroad and leaders at home. In the initial stages, at least, the Church at home determines the quality of the faith, ideals, and practices which are being propagated. It chooses and commissions workers who are to plant Christianity in the non-Christian fields and influences their character and spirit. It likewise does much to determine the nature of the impact of Christendom upon the non-Christian world through political, commercial, industrial, and social relations and activities. Until there is a more general consecration on the part of the members of the Home Church, there can be no hope of such an expansion of the missionary enterprise as to result in making the knowledge of Jesus Christ readily accessible to every human being. Further, it is only through this more complete obedience to Him that the missionary movement can become irresistible and triumphant in the fields where it is already at work. To ensure such an outflow of the vitalizing missionary forces of the Church, its own life must be adequately energized. Whatever, therefore, can be done to make the Home Church conform in spirit and in practice to the New Testament teachings and ideals will contribute in Björn Bentlage, Marion Eggert, Hans Martin Krämer, and Stefan Reichmuth 978-90-04-32900-3 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/02/2024 03:08:55AM via University of Wisconsin-Madison

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the most powerful manner to the realization of the great aim of the world’s evangelization. A new and resolute awakening of the Church to the richness of its heritage in the Gospel and to the duty of an ardent, universal, and untiring effort to make disciples of all nations, is the clear message of God to the Church of today. VIII. Beyond doubt the most, fundamental requirement of the missionary enterprise is a greater appropriation of the power of the Spirit of God. Important as are those aspects of the undertaking which deal with the statistics, the machinery and the strategy of missions, the leaders of the movement should concern themselves far more with the spiritual dynamics of missions. The most direct and effective way to promote the evangelization of the world is to influence the workers, and indeed the whole membership of the Church at home and abroad, to yield themselves completely to the sway of Christ as Lord, and to establish and preserve at all costs those habits of spiritual culture which ensure lives of Christlike witnessing and of spiritual power. To this end there should be promoted retreats for groups of leaders, Bible institutes, conferences for the deepening of the spiritual life of Church members, and the ministry of private and united intercession. All workers in foreign missions should seek a fresh and constant realization of the truth that they are fellow-workers with God. In accordance with the word of our Lord, “My Father worketh hitherto and I work,” they should seek a clearer understanding of the working of God in governing the world, creating great opportunities, removing grave obstacles, opening effectual doors, and developing favorable conditions and influences. And they should seek to realize with reverent wonder that through them Jesus Christ in His grace is at the present time working out the fulfillment of His own word,22 “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.”23 “Our Living Lord is the Supreme Worker in all mission work; His alone is the power; and all true work on our part is in reliance on His promise, “Lo, I am with you always.” Joint actions [part of the conclusions, vol. VIII, 131–147, here 141 f.] [As an institutional structure the conference decided to install (1) a comity, (2) World conferences24 (3) Joint actions, as follows]

22  John 5:17. 23  John 12:32. 24  Jerusalem 1928, Tambaram (near Madras) 1938, Whitby 1947, Willingen 1952, Accra/Ghana 1958, Mexico 1963 (the first organised by the ecumenical World Council of Churches), 1972 Bankok, 1980 Melbourne, 1989 San Diego/USA, 1996 Salvador da Bahía, Brasil, 2005 Athens and the centenary conference Edinburgh 2010.

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The resources provided by the Church are so limited that it is essential, not only to press for additional forces, but also to employ to the utmost advantage the forces we have. It seems to us a duty to take steps wherever circumstances make it possible to secure increased efficiency by co-operative action in such matters as the following: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Arts Colleges. Medical Colleges. Normal Colleges. Theological Colleges (so far as the doctrinal views of the co-operating Missions render common instruction possible). Educational Associations (for the discussion of educational problems and methods). The development of a common system of Education in mission schools (by the adoption of the same courses of study, the appointment of inspectors, etc.). The production of Christian literature. The issue of periodicals and newspapers. The establishment of mission presses. [. . .] Selected and annotated by Christoph Auffarth

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Index ʿAbduh, Muḥammad 20, 111f., 117, 119, 120f., 124, 127, 141–159, 253, 293f., 297f., 375, 446, 464 ʿAbbas ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib 321 ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ, ʿAbbās Efendi 145, 443–8. See also Bahaʾism ʿAbdullah ibn ʿAbbās 322 A’chárya 208, 211 Abdülhamid II, Ottoman Sultan 114f., 127, 160, 294, 328, 462 Hamidian 114f., 161, 294, 303 abhaṅg 416, 424 Abraham 155 Absoluteness 33f., 37, 86, 90, 413, 497 Abūl-ʿĀsī ibn al-Rabīʾ 321 adab, ādāb 129, 144, 375 Adam Kadmon 180 Adbayuradi 481 Adiaman 331, 333 Aditi 421 ʿadl wa-insāf (justice and equity) 454 Advaita Vedanta 77, 81, 86–8, 90, 198 Adyar 472 al-Afghānī, Jamāl al-Dīn 111f., 117f., 124, 142, 145, 253, 294, 375, 446 Afghanistan 105, 375, 431 Africa 233, 238, 265, 369f., 375, 454, 458, 513, 520–4 afterworld 472 Agama 481 Agni 422 agnosticism 144, 418 Agrippa, Cornelius 177 Agrushada Parikshai 184f. Agus Salim 251n7, 253 Agvan Dorzhiev 54 Aḥad haAm (born as Asher Hirsch Ginzberg)  217, 339–46 ahl al-milla. See milla Aḥmadiyya 375, 426–8, 431–3, 435 Akasha 484 Akbar, Mughal emperor 271 ākhira (Hereafter) 431 Akhūndzāda, Fatḥ ʿAlī 443 ʿAkka 444–6

akkersocialisme (agricultural socialism)  259 ʿalam-i amr (world of directive energy) 106 Alabaster, Henry 68–70, 72n28 al-ʿālamīn (world’s inhabitants) 151 Alayunt 335 Albo, Rabbi Joseph 350f. alchemy 172, 176, 283n33 Aleppo 374, 462, 468 Alevism, Alevite 217, 325, 328–30, 336, 375 Alexander II 340 Alexandria 180f., 183 Alfieri, Vittorio 219, 309 Ali Molah 332 Ali, fourth caliph 262n17, 308, 326, 331n8 Aligarh 93f. anti-Aligarh literature 94 Aligarh Movement 267 Aligarh University (see university) All-India Muslim League 216, 265, 267f. All-India National Congress 265 All Souls College 504 Allahabad 267 Allahabadi, Akbar 94f. alterity 32, 34 Amdo (A-mdo) 55 Ameer Ali 253 America 17, 23, 41, 67, 75, 79, 125, 170, 178, 195, 246f., 283, 369, 396, 400, 402, 404, 408f., 412 American Civil War 472 American missionaries 65, 67, 221, 326–8, 334, 369, 401, 467, 513, 524 American Protestant schools 126 American Protestants 204, 472 United States of America 64n4, 68, 221, 238, 402, 405n15, 409n20 See also mission, Christian and mission, Protestant American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) 65, 327–9, 331n10, 334 Amīn, Qāsim 143 Amritsar 434 Anagārika Dharmāpala 31n3, 401, 476, 477

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anarchism 258 Anatolia 217, 325 ancestors 51, 63, 86f., 122, 134, 166, 168, 227, 244, 277, 284, 288, 331, 348, 353, 371, 378n1, 407, 421, 458 Andalus 457 Anglicanism 197, 204, 476 Anglo-American 396, 400 animism. See fetishism Ankenbrand, Ludwig 18, 20, 186–9, 190f. anthropology 103, 477 Anti-Christ. See dajjāl anti-semitism 340–3, 347, 355, 359 Antisemitismusstreit, Berliner 491 anuttarayoga. See tantra apologetics 34, 81, 127, 128, 146, 147, 198–202, 252, 297, 326, 371, 447, 448 apostasy 120f., 124, 132, 310, 322f., 327, 448 ʿaql (ratio) 128f., 134, 138 ʿaqīda, ʿaqāʾid (creed, faith, belief) 129 ʿĀqil ibn Abī Ṭālib 321 Aquinas, Thomas 177 Arabia 105, 113, 114 Arab Muslims 111, 125, 142, 143 Arab society 144 Arab world 116, 162, 263 Arabian Imperialism 272 Arabic language 117n7, 126–8, 140f., 143, 149, 171, 267, 294, 297, 299, 303, 375, 433, 435, 463, 467 Arabo-Persian descent 63 See also Saudi-Arabia architecture 1, 56 ʿĀrif, Necmeddīn 160–5 aristocracy 26f., 32, 107, 177, 250, 252, 381, 434, 445 Aristotelian Society 14, 96 Armenia, Armenians 168, 170, 274, 326f., 333f., 337 art 18, 23, 46, 56, 75, 77, 104, 128, 132, 173, 177, 180, 189, 296, 301, 302, 341n8, 350, 457, 459, 466, 483, 496, 502, 526 Ārya Samāj 216, 278, 279, 281, 284, 374 Āryan, Aryan 195, 421, 423n25 Āryan invasion 280, 283n32, 416 Aryan mind 191 Āryan society 416 Āryāvarta 282–4, 286

Ashʿariyya 146f. al-Ashʿarī 130, 152n38 Ashʿarite School 147, 153n43, 297 ashraf (ashrāf) 256 Asia 15, 54, 65n6, 69, 79, 186, 188, 195n25, 216, 220, 238, 241, 271, 369, 370, 375, 379, 395, 396, 400, 404, 454, 457, 472, 493, 522, 524 See also Asia Minor, Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia Asia Minor 325 aṣl. See uṣūl Aśoka 56, 509 ʿaṣr al-ʿilm (knowledge, age of) 295 Assareth, Azareth 432 Assembly of National Consultation 316 assimilation 97, 99, 217, 270, 328, 341–3, 494 astrology 25, 187 astronomy 68, 81, 132, 440n39, 459n32 ʿatabāt (thresholds) 306 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal 261f.n16, 266, 335n21 atheism 95f., 120, 128, 187, 194, 251, 254n12, 274, 302, 337, 416, 418, 443 atheist societies 464f. atheistic socialism 102 See also materialism, unbelief atman 77f., 397n14 atomism 100 Aum Shinrikyō 7 Australia 190 Austria 190, 195 Awakening Movement 512, 520 Awakening, Great 36 Ayutthaya 63f. Ayyubids 458 al-Azhar 16, 114, 124, 126, 142, 145 Bābism, Bābī, Bāb 445 Babylon 451 Bacon, Roger 177 Bacot, Jacques 55 al-badīhīyāt (axioms of intuition) 152 Badr, battle of 322 Baghdad 115, 445 bagu-system 231, 235 Baha Said Bey 328–30, 334n15

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Index Bahaʾism 144f. faith 310 movement 444–6 See also ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ, Bahāʾ Allāh Bahāʾ Allāh, Mīrzā Ḥusayn ʿAlī Nūrī 443–5 Bahira 483 Baikal, Lake 54 Balkan 374 Baluchistan 272 Bangkok 63–8, 71f. Banū Fāṭima 438 Banū Isrāʾīl. See Israel Baptism 65, 74, 274, 516, 519n19 Baptist Missionary Society 274 al-Baqara. See Quran Barbary 170, 223, 233, 428, 437, 455–7, 508 Barrows, John Henry 371 barzakh 431 al-Barzanjī 427 Basel Missionary Society 512 bāṭin 449 Bauch, Bruno 494 Bauddha Prasnanak 476 Bauddha Praśnaya 475 bayt al-maqdis. See Jerusalem Beijing/Beiping 39, 382 Beijing Association for Confucian Religion  382 Beirut 115, 125–7, 141f., 144f., 461–8, 470f. Bektashis, Bektashism 326f., 330, 336, 338 belief 46–47, 49, 73n30, 82, 113, 129, 134, 149, 158, 353, 373, 399, 407, 412, 498–501 animistic beliefs 521 (see also fetishism, animism) belief (ʿaqīda) 129 belief (iʿtiqād) 129f., 134 belief in God, Almighty 451, 453, 454 belief in miracles, superstition 21, 68, 73n30, 82, 113, 147f., 157, 174, 176–80, 183, 210, 215, 219, 223, 247, 280, 302, 326, 330, 362f., 373, 416, 437, 440, 466, 475, 482–4, 506 believers 33, 36, 45f., 95, 97, 134f., 146, 148, 158, 228f., 230, 251, 351, 373, 439, 453f., 464, 487, 506, 508, 510, 514, 516 Chondoist belief 44, 49 Christian belief 76, 203, 210, 217, 363, 430n16, 505

emphasis on belief 373 Hindu beliefs 216, 275, 280, 418 individual belief 46, 407, 498 Islamic belief 129f., 132, 134, 146, 149, 154f., 163, 252, 264, 302, 310, 336n25, 429, 431, 439f., 457 new belief, modern 47, 373, 485 old belief 47, 66, 210 religious belief 20, 49, 167, 239, 246, 282, 302, 326, 329, 395, 398f., 409, 412, 417, 446, 501 Sufi beliefs 113 unbelief 160, 163, 167–170, 297, 301f. Bengal 32, 60, 268, 273–5, 278, 281, 285n41, 415, 503 Bentham, Jeremy 273 benti (true essence) 38 Berlin 15, 187, 240, 354, 487f., 504, 513 Berliner Antisemitismusstreit. See Antisemitismusstreit Bhagavadgītā 56, 423 bhakti (devotion) movement 416, 423–5 Bhandarkar, Ramkrishna Gopal 274, 415–7, 419n10, 423n24 Bharatiya Janata 6 Bhikkhu 58n8, 189. See also Buddhist monks, priests Bhuddhagama. See Buddhagama Bhutan 522 Bible 74, 76f., 91, 123, 183, 231, 247, 274, 276, 280, 406, 417, 428, 430, 447f., 451, 510, 524f. bible lands 327 bible scholars 493 biblical criticism 197, 199f. Hebrew Bible 499 New Testament 23, 87, 200, 205, 209, 493, 503, 510, 524 Old Testament 23, 200, 432, 490, 499f., 503 bidʿa (reprehensible innovation) 120n22, 308f. Biga 329, 335 Bilawhar wa-Būdhāsaf, Kitāb 433 Bildungsbürgertum 355 Bismarck, Otto von 355 Bla brang. See Labrang black arts 173

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Blancombe 198, 204, 206, 208, 211 Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna 18, 172–5 bliss 86–8, 109, 159, 363 Bolshevism 259 Bombay (now Mumbai) 274, 278, 415, 446, 472 Book of Changes 387–91 Bopp, Franz 504 Boran Turks 338 Bose, Jagadish Chandra 60n11 Boston 327n4, 329 Bötticher, Paul Anton 354 Bowring Treaty 64 Boxer Uprising 26 Bradley, Dan Beach 65f. Brahmá 207, 208 Brahmajata Sutta 482 Brahmanism 50, 57, 66, 73, 77f., 81, 86f., 204, 206, 208f., 252f.n9, 276, 279, 288, 422f., 508–10 Brahmâtma 185 Brahmins 57, 73, 198, 276, 278, 283–92, 415, 416 Brāhmo Samāj (Theistic Society) 275, 277, 374, 415, 417. See also theism Britain, England 14f., 64, 103f., 169, 175, 206, 221, 247, 267 British Anglican theology 197, 200 British Empire 54f., 64, 190, 200, 265f., 272, 327, 473, 513 British evangelical circles 202 British rule 273, 276, 278, 281, 294, 416, 427, 429 English, language 8, 55, 66, 68f., 71n26, 80, 91, 93, 199f., 267, 273–8, 281, 344, 377, 415f., 418, 435, 473f., 476, 513 See also India British Imperial Tobacco Company 306 British India. See India Brotherhood 149, 184, 244, 256, 263, 270, 329, 343, 473. See also Muslim Brotherhood, Sufi Brotherhood Bruno, Giordano 192 Bryan, William Jennings 409 Buber, Martin 490, 493 Büchner, Ludwig 128 Buddha, buddha 26, 35–8, 48f., 58f., 68, 72, 74, 192f., 195, 207, 242f., 408, 413f., 433f., 475f., 479–85, 509, 511

Buddha (Siddārtha Gautama) 72n28, 433, 479–85, 509, 511 Buddha, incarnation of 433, 434 Buddha, teaching of 33, 48, 52f., 61f., 71, 193, 393 buddha dharma (fofa) 33, 35, 38, 240 Buddhahood 60n10, 397n13, 410 buddha-nature 49, 395, 397 New Buddhism 401 Shakyamuni 48, 50, 384, 386 See also Buddhism, dharma, Yūz Asāf Buddha Ädahilla 476 Buddhagama (Bhuddhagama) 481 Buddhism 18, 25, 28, 30–9, 63, 72, 74, 187–96, 363, 373f., 379, 386, 393, 400–04, 408f., 411n24, 420, 422–24, 472–6, 480–5, 509f. anti-Buddhist movement 237, 238 Buddhism in the West 187f., 190f., 194, 198, 372, 473, 475f., 477 Buddhist canon 23, 66, 179, 192, 195, 393, 434f., 509 Buddhist categories 30, 34 Buddhist community 66, 401, 475 Buddhist cosmology 61n12, 66, 68, 477 Buddhist doctrine 55, 392, 394f., 397, 400, 475 Buddhist education 31, 400, 473f., 478f. Buddhist identity 33 Buddhist institutions 237, 240 Buddhist intellectuals 392f. Buddhist laymen 16, 30, 64, 189, 473 Buddhist mission 395, 517 Buddhist monasteries 70n18, 189, 411n24, 434 Buddhist monks, priests 20, 58f., 189, 237f., 400f., 405, 411n24, 434f. Buddhist reform 30, 32, 66, 237f., 240f., 373, 400f., 404, 411n24 Buddhist revival 30, 401, 474n6 Buddhist temples 248, 405 Chinese Buddhism 25, 26, 30–3, 38 Indian Buddhism 275, 434 Japanese Buddhism 16, 215f., 237–40, 244f., 392–4, 400–2, 404 knowledge about Buddhism 190f., 472 modern Buddhism 30, 68f., 401, 404, 476 Nepalese Buddhism 198 philosophy and Buddhism 30, 33–8, 50f., 58, 67, 370

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Index religion and Buddhism 18, 28, 30, 61n13, 68, 74, 173, 199, 218, 239, 247, 248, 280, 363, 386, 403, 408f., 420, 422f., 429, 432, 435–7, 508 Siamese Buddhism 66f., 70 Singhalese Buddhism 50f., 61, 66, 68f., 189, 370, 401, 473 study of Buddhism, Buddhology 31n3, 69, 393, 434 Tibetan Buddhism 55, 58, 61 Zen Buddhism 5, 400f., 403, 405n14, 410–2 Buddhist Catechism, The 472–8 Buddhist Protestants 477 Buddhist Reform Movement. See Thammayut Buddhist Theosophical Society 474, 476 Buddhology. See under Buddhism Budi Utomo/Prime Philosophy (BU) 250 Bühler, Georg 415 Bunnag family 63 bureaucracy 6f., 15–7, 27n9, 113, 126, 160, 237, 250, 261, 292n60, 327n5 Burgerlijke Avondschool Afdeeling Wertuigkundige (Civil Evening School, BAS) 252 Burgfrieden (truce) 489f. Burma 65, 275 Burnouf, Eugène 504 Buryatia 54 Bushido 395, 398 al-Bustānī, Butrus 375 Buzar-jumihr 316 Cahn, Isidore 343 Caillaux, Joseph 461, 467, 469n22 Cairo 114, 121n28, 126, 142, 144f., 160, 189, 217, 293f., 374 Calcutta (Kolkata) 55, 77, 79, 273–5, 278, 415 caliph 139n26, 252, 261–3., 265f., 295, 298, 317n24, 326, 336 Cambridge University. See university Çanakkale 329 Cannavaro, Admiral 170 Canon of the Southern Church 478 canonical writings 8, 25, 32, 45f., 53n29, 179, 234n31 Canton 31 Capitalism 262 Capri 189

Carey, William 274 Carlyle, Thomas 355 Cassirer, Ernst 487 caste 6, 50, 175, 184f., 195, 206, 209, 219, 271, 276f., 280f., 286f., 289, 374, 415f. Caswell, Jesse 66, 71 Catholicism 28, 75, 240, 248, 358, 360, 362–4, 373, 497 Catholic Church 27, 64, 172n1, 177f., 181, 192, 434n29, 459, 465, 469, 513, 515f. Catholic faith 64 Catholic movements, groups 126, 192, 194, 274, 369f., 513, 523n21 Catholic theology 184, 240 Catholics 75, 90, 176, 181, 364 Roman Catholicism 25, 75, 90, 172n, 177, 181, 285, 391, 513 tianzhu jiao (Catholic religion) 230 census. See Judenzählung Centralverein 489 Ceylon (Sri Lanka) 55f., 58f., 61, 189f., 207, 370, 401f., 405n15, 432, 473, 474, 479 Chāndogya Upaniṣad 287 Changchun 402 Chaophraya Thiphakorawong (Kham Bunnag)  14, 17, 63f., 66–9, 73n30, 241n9 Charlemagne 496 Chatterji, Bankim Chandra 281 Chaudhuri, Nirad C. 503 Cheikho, Louis 465 Chemistry 82, 126, 380n5 Cheng (Hao), Master 388 Chicago 80, 402, 405n15, 513 children 71, 76, 116, 136, 167, 169, 190, 206, 211, 227n15, 244, 248, 262, 265, 314, 323, 340, 450f., 455, 458f., 461, 471, 473, 474 children of al-ʿAs 317f. children of Israel 318 God’s children 156, 360, 452 See also marriage China 7, 13–7, 19n10, 21f., 24f., 28, 30–4, 39, 50, 54, 59, 65, 72n27, 162, 170f., 195n25, 200, 215, 218f., 221–3, 225, 227, 229f., 232–5, 283, 373, 393, 510, 520, 522f. Chinese Buddhism (see Buddhism) Chinese Empire 21, 54, 385n13 Chinese intellectuals 31, 222 Chinese language 17, 35, 40, 49, 72n27, 393, 509

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China (cont.) Chinese people 22, 25f., 28, 38f., 75, 170, 223 Chinese religion 22, 24–30, 33, 73, 215, 219, 223–5, 230, 232f., 243, 373, 380f., 393 Chinese terms, concepts 22, 25, 221f. Chinese traders 249f. People’s Republic of China 54, 56, 59 Republic of China 222f., 224f. Cho Hŏn 387 Cholera 207, 463 Ch’ŏndogyo. See Chondoism Ch’anghae kŏsa (Hermit of/from the Blue Sea) 41 Ch’oe Cheu. See Ch’oe Suun Ch’oe Suun, Master (pen-name of Ch’oe Cheu) 49 Ch’ŏndo-gyo. See Chondoism Chondoism 20, 40–4, 47n9, 51n22 Ch’ŏndogyo (Teaching of the Heavenly Way) 40, 379 See also Korea ch’ŏnmyŏng (heavenly mandate) 47 ch’ŏnun (heavenly destiny) 47 Chŏng Chedu 380f. Chŏng Yagyong 377 Chŏngju 41 Christianagama 481 Christian Mission Society in London 512 Christianity 4, 5, 7, 16, 22, 25, 34, 60f., 64–8, 70, 72, 79, 80, 104f., 117, 123, 148f., 160, 163, 167f., 173f., 183, 194, 196–205, 209, 215–7, 220–5, 228, 239f., 242, 244f., 247f., 269, 270f., 274f., 280, 323, 327–30, 343, 359f., 363, 369, 371–75, 378, 382, 384, 386, 395, 401, 408, 409, 416f., 420, 433–35, 441, 447, 457, 473f., 477, 481, 490, 493f., 497–99, 504f., 507–11, 514–16, 519, 521–24 Christendom 1, 520f., 524 Christian catechism 479 Christian churches 22, 177, 183, 215, 217, 270, 461, 497, 512, 518, 521, 524 Christian education institutions 117, 123, 126, 274, 277, 364, 418, 467, 469f., 473, 517, 526 Christian fanaticism 163, 169, 170 Christian identity 163

Christian intellectuals 4, 18, 93, 145, 355, 499 Christian mission 4, 5, 7, 13f., 17, 18, 22, 61n13, 64–76, 81, 104, 115, 116, 123n37, 126f., 199–204, 211, 215, 216, 217, 221–3, 226f., 229, 248, 267, 273–5, 278, 280, 285n41, 325–31, 334, 356, 369, 370f., 373, 375, 387, 395, 400f., 418f., 426, 430f., 447f., 467, 473, 479, 506, 508f., 510, 512–17, 519, 520–26 Christian sects 331f., 455 Christian settlements 64, 170, 514 Christian truth claim, universal 514–6, 525 European and American Christians 125, 371 Oriental Christians 325, 462 See also Catholicism, Church, Protestantism Chu 385 Chulalongkorn, king 69 Chunqiu 234, 235 Church 4, 22, 45f., 121, 123, 126, 168, 173, 177f., 181–4, 192f., 194, 215, 217, 222, 225, 227–31, 247, 269, 346, 358, 364, 370, 379, 406, 461, 464f., 497, 512f., 515f., 518f., 520–6 Buddhist Church 478 Catholic Church (see Catholicism) Christian Church (see Christianity) church and state 22, 46, 65, 95f., 194n21, 217, 220, 225, 239f., 270, 518n11 church fathers 181, 205, 506, 507 church ministry 230 church organisation 269, 270 Confucian Church 231, 235 jiao tang (churches) 227, 229 jiaobu (church ministry) 230 jiaohui (church) 227f. libaitang (church) 230 national churches 223, 356, 358, 516, 524 official church 182, 225 Protestant Church 25 (see also Protestantism) Victorian Church (see Anglican Church) civilisation 4, 39, 49, 93, 160–171, 216, 221, 243, 262, 266, 276, 281, 296, 297, 302, 304, 355, 374, 390f., 394f., 406, 443, 446–60

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Index Christian civilisation 170 civilisation as knowledge and education (see education) civilisations (plural) 195n25, 302n19, 447 concept of civilisation 4, 164 cradle of civilisation 216, 281 Eastern civilisation 391 European civilisation 161–4, 171, 248, 447 Indian civilisation 216, 266, 281 Islamic civilisation 165, 171, 447 madaniyya/medeniyyet (civilisation)  164–6, 302, 443 Ottoman civilisation 164 umam mutamaddina (civilised nations)  296 universal civilisation 164 Western civilisation 4, 7, 39, 164, 195n25, 221, 390, 394f. ʿumrān (civilisation) 302 Civitas Dei 507 clairvoyance 172 classification 84 Clemenceau, Georges 168 clergy 46, 64, 66, 177–9, 184, 273, 305, 308–10, 320, 323f., 356, 363f., 401, 455, 466, 469, 470f., 474 Cochin Chinese 75 Cocovorism. See Kokovorismus Cohen, Herrmann 486–494 Cohen, Martha 489 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 197 Colombo 58n8, 473f., 476, 478 Colonialism 4–7, 13, 17, 18, 21, 40, 43, 54, 56, 79, 199, 203, 249, 251, 253, 265, 273f., 358, 369, 377f., 382, 400, 473, 503, 513–17 anti-colonial 145 colonial administration, bureaucracy 17, 18, 252, 473 colonial empire 40, 43, 403 (see also Empire) colonial expansion 79 colonial government 250, 274 colonial modernity 43 (see also modernism, modernity) colonial period 40, 42f., 80 colonial rule, regime 4, 6, 43f., 249–51, 253 colonial stereotypes 191 colonialist states 4

colonisation 7, 261n16, 304, 357f., 403, 513 semi-colonial 221 Columbus, Christoph 412, 513 Committee of Union and Progress 160, 301n18, 334n20 communio bonorum 257 Communism 41, 58n7, 218, 251, 254f., 257, 259, 338 Communist troops 41 Comparative Philology 357, 371, 419, 503f. Comparative Religion. See Religious Studies comparison 20, 83, 148, 199, 202, 211, 220, 285n41, 407, 419, 421, 441, 505–8, 511 Compiègne 392 Comte, Auguste 148f. Confucianism 7, 13, 18, 20, 22, 25f., 29, 50f., 215, 222–5, 233, 235n34, 373, 377–82, 384–9, 407f. Confucian circles (yurim) 381, 384, 388 Confucian community (yugyogye) 384, 388 Confucian reform 20, 215, 222–5, 377–83 Confucian system of knowledge 377 Confucian texts 16, 40, 223, 230, 233–5, 242n13 Confucianism, education and learning 379 Confucians (rujia) 25, 27, 224, 379f., 385, 388, 389–91 Confucius 25–9, 48f., 223f., 229–35, 384–91 Confucius-church (Kong jiaohui) 235 Confucius temples (wenmiao) 226, 231, 235f. Korean Confucianism 377–9, 382, 384, 391 Neo-Confucianism 16, 19, 28n10, 30, 380, 382, 387n21 Congo Conference 513, 516 Conjeveram 206 consciousness 31, 36, 38, 78–81, 86, 97, 100, 107, 109, 134, 156f., 167, 169, 175, 192, 195, 208f., 217, 221, 242, 249, 257, 266, 269, 271f., 342f., 364, 422n19, 439, 498, 501, 515, 520 conservatism 77, 99, 113f., 117, 125, 130, 142f., 222f., 293, 311, 355, 373, 377, 443 Constantine 180, 454, 518n11

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constitutionalism 215, 218, 222, 239, 242, 245, 264, 267, 298, 305–10, 316f., 323, 445, 516 Constitutional Monarchy 16, 218, 222, 298, 307 neẓām-nāme-ye eslāmī (Islamic constitution) 309 conversion 61, 64f., 73, 75, 83, 139, 188, 202, 204f., 224, 228, 263n18, 266, 274, 322, 327–9, 334, 336, 358f., 369n2, 371f., 375, 418, 433f., 438, 448, 477, 493, 510, 516, 523n21 Coptic 119 Cordoba 139n26, 459 Cosmology 61n12, 66–8, 173f., 204, 440n39, 477, 484 cosmos 38, 172, 295 Coswig 487 counterculture. See culture Creation 24, 73, 85, 94, 128, 133–8, 140, 152n38, 154n51, 158, 172, 204, 207, 247, 282–4, 289f., 315, 320, 350, 361, 422, 484 Creator 71, 73, 76, 90, 132–8, 151, 180, 207–9, 246n18, 290, 315, 360f., 422, 438, 464, 484 creed 4, 22, 25, 45, 46, 50, 122n30, 134, 141n1, 147–9, 151, 153, 155, 157f., 173, 237n2, 296, 301, 327f., 371, 373, 475, 480, 519n19 criticism 24n4, 66, 77, 100, 105f., 108, 127n4, 197, 199, 200, 203–5, 238, 273, 297, 303, 310, 371, 419, 426, 430, 435, 448, 465f., 476 “Criticism of the Three Articles of Instruction” 237–247 crusade 457f., 496 crusader, modern, civilised 163, 170 culture 3, 5, 13, 15f., 18–20, 24, 26, 46, 52, 80, 95, 100–2, 106, 144, 174, 186f., 193, 195, 203f., 248, 250, 271, 274f., 329, 332n11, 340, 352, 369f., 382, 386, 394, 398f., 417, 461, 463f., 472f., 476f., 490, 494, 497f., 501f., 506, 515, 517f. Confucian culture 224, 235, 380n6, 382–4, 386f. counterculture 186 culture and education 144, 250, 272, 274, 296, 406

culture and religion 20, 24, 191, 203, 218, 220, 237, 268, 328, 497f., 500, 506, 517, 521, 525 European culture 67, 192, 220, 243, 248, 294f., 352, 370n5, 375, 393f., 398, 461, 468, 473, 477, 497 German culture 217, 486, 490, 494, 498, 500–2 Indian culture 80, 274f., 417 Jewish culture 339–41, 344f., 494 material culture (see material world, materialism) modern culture 100, 102 Muslim culture 101, 216–19, 251, 268f., 272, 297, 298, 374, 461, 464 national culture 215, 338, 345, 356 popular culture 18 Protestant culture 497 Roman-Semitic culture 195 secular culture 340 Thai culture 63 Tibetan culture 55, 56 Turkic culture 217, 329, 330 dābbat al-arḍ (Beast of the Earth, apocalyptic) 428 Dada, the 332 dahriyya (materialism) 128 daijihi (great compassion) 394, 397n12 dajjāl (Anti-Christ) 428 Dalai Lama 54 Dalian 227, 402, 405n14 dalīl, adilla (evidence, proof, reason) 129, 138 Damascus 115, 429, 438, 468 dandi 206 Danube 335 Daoism 25, 26, 31n4, 51, 373 Dark Ages. See Middle Ages Darwin, Charles 23f., 79, 94f., 107, 136n18, 192, 276, 345, 348, 351, 353 Darwin’s theory 187n2, 276 Origin of Species 23, 79 Social Darwinism 22, 382 See also evolution Dashiqiao 402, 414 dasyu 280, 283

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Index Davis, Andrew Jackson 181 dawla (state, dynasty) 129, 134 Dayānanda Sarasvatī 216, 218f., 273, 276–83, 285–88, 290–92, 416 debate 30, 34, 55, 61, 278, 370, 426f., 431, 475, 493 deduction 33, 184 Delhi 17f., 278 Dersim 334 Dessau (Saxonia-Anhalt) 487, 503 determinism 296, 302 dede. See Dada deva 73 devil 71, 73, 75, 88, 119, 123, 174, 178, 182f., 321, 439, 482 devotion 207, 302, 314, 370, 389, 415, 416, 422f., 440, 475f., 497 Dge ’dun chos ’phel. See Gendun Chopel Dhamma. See dharma Dhammapada 56, 58 Dhammika-Sutta 193 dharma 35f., 57, 61, 193n20, 277, 284, 287n44, 288, 292, 404 Buddha dharma (fofa) 33, 35f., 38, 240 dharma literature 281f., 290n52, 416 See also Buddha, Hinduism Dharmakīrti 58, 59 Dharmapala (Dharmāpala) 31n3, 401, 476, 477 diaspora 217, 342, 344 Diefenbach, Karl Wilhelm 189 differentiation 17f., 37, 49, 79, 80, 407n16 dīn, diyāna (religion) 129 Discovery, period of 97, 412 Divinity 275, 362, 438 Divine authority 204, 208f., 210f., 246 Divine Thought 180, 208 Divine Time/Space 98 Divine way (shen dao) 225 dogma 19, 31n3, 36, 48, 114, 129, 131, 148, 156, 178–80, 193, 202, 262n17, 270, 329, 470, 477, 492, 498f., 510, 519n19 dong 408 Dong Zhongshu 27, 235 Dorje Drak (Rdo rje brag) monastery 55 Draper, John William 183, 459 Drepung (’Bras spungs) monastery 55

Drotsang (Gro tsang) 62 Druzes 169, 464 Du Potet, Baron 178 dualism 38 Dubnow, Simon 339, 343f. Dunhuang manuscripts 55 dunyā (world), dunyāwiyya (worldly) 128, 134, 431, 438f. Dutch colonial rule 249–51 Dyaus, Dyaus Pitr 421, 503 dynasty 21, 25–8, 31, 54, 222, 224, 231, 235, 322, 325, 385f. See also state, nation Earth 93f., 130, 133, 135, 139, 244, 295, 421, 428, 440 East, the 26, 43, 102, 216, 219, 253, 263, 271, 299f., 352, 383, 450, 488, 503 East Africa 341n10 East Asia 7, 18f., 44, 51f., 215, 219, 356, 369, 372–4, 376, 378, 385 Eastern countries 297 Eastern Europe (see under Europe) Eastern Jewry (see under Judaism) Easterners 295f., 299 Middle East (see Middle East) Near East (see Middle East) East India Company 18, 198, 203, 273 eclecticism, religious 66, 131 economische orde (economical order) 258 economy 4–7, 13, 18, 44, 64, 102f., 116, 125, 215, 218f., 220f., 223, 250, 257–60, 263–5, 296, 301f., 325, 342, 357f., 373, 377, 394, 398, 400, 409, 443n1, 462–8, 473, 496, 501, 513, 514, 518 Eddington, Sir Arthur Stanley 100 Eddy family 472 Edinburgh 204, 512f., 516f. Edinburgh Missionary Conference 204, 512f., 516f. Edirne 445 education 13–8, 21, 70n19, 77, 144, 163, 169, 240f., 250f., 284, 312, 352, 355f., 365, 390, 403f., 407, 409n19, 412, 452, 461, 467, 470f., 488, 501, 517, 526 Buddhist education 70n19, 400f., 403f., 473 colonial education 513

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education (cont.) Confucian education 222, 231, 233, 377, 379f., 388, 390 Divine education 450, 457 educated elite 22, 378 education (jiaoguan) 231 education (jiaoyu) 21 educational institutions 141f., 31, 67, 80, 94, 142, 145, 161f., 455, 467f., 526 educational reform 13, 119n19, 144, 219, 223, 277, 293–7, 297, 374, 401, 453 educational system 5, 161, 223, 374, 416, 473, 526 elementary education 15, 378 European/Western education 77, 123, 126, 162f., 167, 267, 401, 473 general education 15, 241 girls’ and women’s education 241, 276, 281, 286n42, 292n61, 296, 301, 467 higher education 15, 141, 161, 340, 379 Islamic education 272, 295 Jewish education 142, 340, 488 missionary education 116, 123n37, 126, 274, 526 modern education 145, 222, 267, 357, 374 moral education 167, 390, 413n26 religious education 17, 126, 142, 466, 467, 470, 517 scientific education 364 secondary education 241, 340 secular education 329, 468, 517 technical education 470 theological, education 241 traditional education 16, 40, 114, 126, 166, 222, 278, 340 universal education 454 Education Commission 418 Egypt 14, 16, 18, 67, 102, 111n1, 113, 119–2, 124, 126, 141–3, 160, 173, 180, 184, 189, 293, 294, 298, 318, 374f., 450, 457f., 464 Einstein, Albert 108 Ekkei Shuken 400 Eldrige, Jackson 463 Elphinstone College 415 emanation 31, 73, 76, 103, 115, 180 emancipation 108f., 143, 188, 315, 323n13, 346, 348f., 352f., 466–8, 471, 482, 489, 516, 517

Empire 6, 517 British Empire 200, 203, 272 Chinese Empire 21, 28, 54, 221, 223–5, 235, 385 colonial empire 40, 43, 403 French Empire 522 German Empire 356, 358, 393 imperial exams 15f., 221f., 236 imperial government 2n6, 129, 215f., 327, 385, 407, 215, 518n11 Japanese Empire 40, 43, 403 Mughal Empire 273, 427 Ottoman Empire 7, 112–6, 122n36, 125, 129, 135, 160–5, 265, 298, 302n20, 325, 328, 374f., 445, 462–4, 467 Russian Empire 340 Safavid Empire 325, 326 enchantment 174, 176 Engakuji 401f., 404 England. See Britain enlightenment 2, 49, 52, 53, 72n29, 105, 182, 221, 242, 244, 248, 336, 339, 369, 377, 389, 394, 395, 397n14, 400, 439, 440, 469f., 481, 484, 515 epistemology 2, 5, 19f., 31, 37f., 67, 174, 377, 390n36, 403 equality 50, 149, 219, 308, 310, 312, 316, 321–3, 340, 395, 397, 399, 461, 463 Erasmus 177 Eres Yisraʾel 341f., 344 eschatology 130, 426–9 Esdras, apocryphal book of 432 Eṣfahānī, Moḥammad Bāqer 306 Eṣfahānī, Moḥammad Taqī 306 esotericism 172, 173, 177, 184, 185, 435, 446, 447 Eternal Spirit 207, 209, 210 ethics, ethical systems 5, 48–50, 83, 102, 104, 146, 149f., 157, 187n2, 190, 192f., 195, 225, 263, 269f., 271f., 296f., 403, 411n24, 469–71, 485, 490–4, 499, 501, 518n12, 519 ethnicity 54, 251, 266, 268, 327, 330, 394, 398 Eurasia 1, 3–5, 8, 13, 15, 369 Europe 17f., 68, 79, 93, 101, 107, 112, 146, 160–4, 167f., 177, 191, 238, 248, 259, 267, 270f., 281, 286, 334, 369–72, 375f., 391, 398, 404, 447, 457, 458f., 461–3, 486, 510, 513, 517, 524

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Index Eastern Europe 339, 340, 342, 358, 487, 488, 490, 493 Euro-American culture 67, 75, 125, 170, 407n16 European civilisation 160–2, 164, 170, 248, 302, 447, 457, 458 European colonialism 6, 56, 79, 294, 514 European expansion, aggression 4, 117, 294 European ideas, concepts 95f., 162f., 217, 219, 238, 240, 268f., 273–5, 278f., 286, 310, 370, 393, 440n39, 476, 497 European imperialism 215, 218, 221, 294, 295, 333n14, 369 European languages 19, 58, 116, 123n37, 126, 162, 163, 418f., 476, 503 European mission 513 European nations, countries 5, 57, 76, 96, 112, 120, 150, 168, 186, 195n25, 219, 245, 246, 270, 272, 344, 370, 453, 455, 459, 462, 513 European powers 3, 126, 146, 195n25, 218, 395, 463 European scholarship 3, 18, 93, 146, 162, 163, 207, 276, 279, 375, 415–7, 447f., 459 European scientific and technological achievements 17f., 23, 68, 75, 79, 93, 160, 164, 169, 263, 296 European secularism 75, 96, 248 European superiority 161 Europeanisation 167, 466 Europeans 120, 171, 198, 243, 245, 277, 455, 457, 458, 463f., 473, 503 non-European 14, 18, 370–2, 394, 524 Western Europe 16, 339, 493, 514 European Buddhist congregation 187, 190 Eve 74, 76, 135, 137n23, 139n28, 140n29 evolution 2, 15, 24, 48, 79, 85–9, 94f., 101, 105, 128f., 135–9, 148f., 156, 194, 269, 276, 371f., 477, 479, 480 biological evolution 79 Darwin’s theory 187n2, 276 evolution (nushūʾ) 128, 135 evolutionary progress (taraqqī) 128, 136, 296, 301n18 human evolution 86, 94

natural selection 79, 93, 113 principle of evolution 85, 86, 87, 484 religious evolution 148f., 225, 371f., 477, 479 theory of evolution 79, 93, 94, 101, 128, 194 See also Darwin exile 54, 118, 142, 160, 222, 294, 382, 444f., 464, 486 existence 38, 67, 84–89, 132f., 484 experience 19, 31n4, 36, 78, 97–109, 469, 472f. Ezra 451 Fabri, Friedrich 517 faith. See belief Fan, Master 388 fanaticism 163, 169f., 183, 326, 451–3, 458, 466, 508 fann, fenn (art, science) 128, 132, 162. See also science Farquhar, John Nicol 200, 202 fatalism 219 fatherland. See nation Fatimids, Fatimid caliphs (khulafā-yi ʿalawiyya) 457 fatwa, fatwā, fatāwā (religious decree) 94, 121f., 306f. fenn. See fann fetishism, animism 180, 419, 482, 521 Ferry, Jules 468 Fez 170 Firūzābādī, Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb 318 fofa (buddha dharma). See under Buddha fojiao (Buddhist teaching). See under Buddhism The Four Books 25, 231, 233, 235. See also Confucianism Fox, George 103 France 15, 22, 64n4, 125, 169f., 177f., 221, 227, 230, 247, 258, 273, 323, 342f., 345–7, 370, 374, 459, 465, 468, 495 French freemasonry 145, 461, 464–7 (see also masonry) French Jewry 339, 341–3, 346f., 356 French laicist mission 461, 468, 470 French language 66, 121n25, 126, 145, 164f., 340, 344, 459, 463, 468, 469, 522

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France (cont.) French people, persons 55, 64, 67, 227, 247, 248, 335n21, 343, 347, 461f., 464, 468f., 471, 513 French Republic 471 French Revolution 82, 149, 346 Franck, Adolphe 346 Franco-Prussian war 227, 447 free will 73, 147, 153n43, 343 freedom 1, 4, 7, 36, 50, 99, 105, 147, 149, 153, 169, 216, 219, 239, 257, 272, 308, 310, 316, 319, 321, 323, 327, 336f., 339, 345, 353, 395, 397, 399, 439, 497 freedom and human rights 395, 397 freedom and tolerance 399 national freedom 272, 336, 345 political freedom 316, 348, 352 religious freedom 1, 4, 7, 216, 239, 316, 327, 343, 345, 353, 395, 398, 439, 497 Freemasonry. See Masonry freethought movement 186f., 194 French Revolution. See France Fukuzawa Yukichi 410 fulfilment theology 199–3, 205, 371 Galen 454 Gambetta, Léon 247 Gansu 54 Geibel, Emanuel 358 Geluk (Dge lugs) sect 54f. Geluk geshe 55 gemeenschap (society) 257f. Gendun Chopel (Dge ’dun chos ’phel) 17, 54–58., 60n11, 61 genrō (elder statesmen) 410 Germany 14, 104, 169f., 177, 186f., 189–92, 195, 217, 220, 227, 247, 267f., 340n4, 356–60, 370, 395f., 398, 462, 487, 489, 490, 493, 495–500, 503, 517 German Catholic movement 192, 194 German culture 217, 486, 490 German Empire 356, 358, 393 German Jewry 486, 489, 493 German language 496 German nationalism 217, 219, 355 German Religion 362 German scholarship 354, 419n10, 487, 500, 503

German spirit, character 359, 494, 495, 498, 500–2 German universities 354, 487, 488, 499 Germanness 486, 488, 489, 494–7, 500 German-French war 490 al-Ghazālī 130, 296n7, 297, 449n17 Ghazipur 93 al-Ghazzī, Ḥasan Abū Ḥalāwa 115 Ginzberg, Asher Hirsch. See Aḥad haAm guojiao (national religion) 25, 28, 215, 225 global public sphere 145 globalisation 13, 79–81, 144, 354, 356, 358, 369, 513f., 516 Gnosticism 173, 180–2, 184 God 45f., 48, 71–77, 85, 87–93, 95, 97f., 106, 109, 146–8, 150–6, 158f., 188n9, 204, 207–211, 243–247, 270, 285, 324, 331, 351, 421–5, 430 Almighty God 85, 135, 168, 418, 454 attributes of God 86, 106, 109, 146, 147, 150f., 208, 290f., 314, 320f., 416f., 422, 423 children of God 156, 360, 453 God Jehova 73f., 83 God of the Hebrews 192 God of the Vedanta 87–93, 207, 288n50f., 290 God or Buddha 413 (see also Buddha) God, the Creator (see also Creator) 71, 73f., 134, 136n19, 138, 152f., 158, 180, 207, 290n53 God, the father 73, 91, 208f., 211, 421, 512 God, the Sublime 135–40 God’s religion 155f., 158, 318 God’s revelation 130, 356f., 363, 419f. God’s rights 308f. God’s servants 73, 139, 151–3, 299f., 308, 318, 421, 452 gods 36, 90f., 100, 155, 179, 207, 224, 230, 243–7, 284f., 288, 414, 421–3 immanent God 87 impersonal God 89, 91f. nature of God 87, 413 personal God 37, 88–91, 192 rule of God 260f. son of God 48, 50, 201, 209, 211, 438, 514 Spirit of God 452–5, 525 true God 183, 439f., 508

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Index unity of God 73, 151, 183, 288n50, 290n53, 422, 437, 453, 491f., 498–500 universal God 92 worship of God 72f., 75, 82, 91f., 156, 207, 244n17, 246, 275, 321, 415, 492 See also Brahman Godhead, Supreme 422f. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 192, 268 Gog and Magog (Yājūj wa Majūj) 428 Golah 486 Gospel 181, 201, 204, 210, 221, 331f., 333, 387, 432, 435, 441, 452, 454f., 510, 519–2, 524f. Gospel of Barnabas 430 Gottvertrauen (Trust in God) 489 government 15, 68, 219, 242f., 276, 283 British government 207, 273, 274, 276, 342n11 central government 238, 260 Chinese government 223f., 386 civil government 261 colonial government 18, 250, 274 constitutional government 218, 242, 245, 305, 308, 311, 316, 323 form of government 307, 314f., 317, 319, 322 French government 345, 471 imperial government 215 Islamic government 261, 312, 316–8, 323 Japanese government 216, 237–9 Ottoman government 141, 462, 467 regional government 238, 303 self-government 272 Siamese government 14, 64 Government Colleges 267, 274, 418 Grand lodges, local. See Masonry Grand Orient de France (GOdF). See Masonry Great Britain. See Britain Great Commission 521 Greece 169, 248, 263, 451 Greek language 171, 498, 503, 518n11 Greek naturalistic thinking 46 Greek people 283, 334, 337, 349f., 434 Greek philosophy 100, 180, 183, 450f., 507 Guan Ning 387 Guangdong province 228 Guangzhou Bay 227 Guillet, Urban 168 Gujarat 278

Guṇānanda, Mohottivatte 61, 475 Gützlaff, Karl 65, 72, 74, 76 guojiao 25, 225 guozijian (National School) 235 Guru 207 Ha Sangyŏk 51 hadith, ḥadīth (Prophetic Tradition) 117, 119n16, 130, 140n29, 162f., 171, 300, 318, 427, 441, 444, 447, 449, 456n27 Haeckel, Ernst 128, 136, 187n2 Hamgyŏng Province 40f. Hamilton, Sir William 104 Han dynasty 25–27, 231–235, 385f. Ḥanbalism 122 ḥanīf 155 Harnack, Adolf von 493 Hasidism 339f., 493 Haskala 340 Hatt-ı Hümayun (Imperial Edict) 327 healers 177 Hebrew 339–44, 346, 348, 490, 496, 501 Hebrew God 192 Hebrew Prophets 494 Hebrew Scripture 205, 499 Hebron 452 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 102, 200, 259, 268 hegemony 4, 150, 204, 215, 218, 220, 326 Heidelberg 268 Heine, Heinrich 268 Heisenberg, Werner 98 hell 61, 72–4, 106, 121, 184, 194, 284f., 438 Hemis monastery 434 Hengstenberg, Ernst Wilhelm 354 Herder, Johann Gottfried von 490, 498 heresy 58, 120n19, 173, 197, 205, 326, 337, 345, 348–53, 388, 509 Hermeticism 172f. heroism 217, 261, 284, 319, 323, 337, 345, 360, 381, 384, 451 Herzl, Theodor 339–41, 486, 514 heterodoxy 113, 144, 173, 325–8, 375, 380, 446 Hezekiah, prophet 451 Ḥibbat Zion (Love of Zion), movement 340f. Hibbert Lectures 504 hierophant 182–5 higher knowledge. See knowledge

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Hijaz 456 ḥikma (wisdom, philosophy) 450f., 457, 459 Hikoho 246 Hinayana 26, 31n3, 386 Hinduism 18, 56, 73n30, 77, 80, 184, 202, 211, 216, 266, 275, 374 Hindu deities 66, 265 Hindu leaders, intellectuals 77, 80, 201, 203, 206, 266, 275, 427 Hindu nationalism 503 Hindu pandits 276 Hindu philosophy 78, 79, 204, 510 Hindu reform 6, 77, 80, 275–7, 290n53, 374, 435 Hindu religion 6, 77f., 80, 216, 417f., 420, 510, 514 Hindu texts 77, 79, 185, 276, 282n30 Hindu traditions and beliefs 175, 204, 216, 278, 280, 284n40, 415, 417 Hindu-Muslim relations 93, 216, 218, 265f., 272, 274, 427, 436 Hindus 1, 80, 173, 417 Hindus and Christians 16, 18, 79f., 197–204, 216, 273–5, 280, 284n41, 416, 427, 503 See also India Hindu-Muslim Unity 265 historical materialism 259 history 37, 40, 43, 47, 50, 55, 63, 99f., 103, 146, 165, 177, 191, 201, 209, 211, 251, 254, 266, 276, 316, 352, 357, 417, 422, 441 Christian history 173, 200, 240, 498, 507, 510, 515, 520–2 contemporary history, modern 100, 102f., 111, 116 entangled history 2f., 10 European history 375, 398, 473 German history 194, 488 historians 55, 64, 104, 181, 221, 232, 252, 268, 339, 455, 470n25, 517 historical criticism 77, 197, 199f., 203–5, 371, 417, 507f. historicism 78, 363, 473, 498, 507 historiography 51n22, 112, 197, 382, 386n16 ideas, history of 77, 200, 307, 505 Indian history 266, 267, 269, 274f., 417, 421n12, 435

Islamic history 216, 252, 269, 272, 319, 435 Jewish history 339, 343f., 488, 492, 494, 499f. languages, history of 357, 419n10 magic, history of (see magic) political and social history 56, 97, 494, 501 profane history 511 religious history 2f., 22, 66, 78, 106, 109, 111, 148, 172, 363, 415, 421f., 400, 507, 511, 517 (see also Religious Studies) scientific history 104, 108, 146 Turkish history 330 world history 1, 281, 394, 492, 501f., 504f., 507, 511 Hitler, Adolf 359 Hodgson, Richard 172 Hoen-gir-i-man 45 Hōgaku Jikō (Seigo) 402 Hohenborn, Wild von 489 Hokkaidō 402, 405 Holy Land 318, 321, 344, 452 Holy Scriptures. See Scripture homeland. See nation Homeland School. See madrasa Hommel, Friedrich 268 Hong Xiuquan 373 hōon (repaying kindness) 398 Ḥovevei Zion, circle of 339–43 ḥudūd (limits, capital offenses) 154 humanity 44, 82, 102, 103, 161, 164, 168, 170, 179, 181, 191, 232, 264, 268, 270, 320, 349, 353, 387, 394, 397–9, 420, 423, 435, 447, 490, 499, 501f. human evolution 94f., 101, 128, 148, 297, 456–60 human happiness 166, 169 human history 103 human mind, reason 23f., 46, 77, 84, 86, 89, 93, 97, 132, 135–39, 147, 183f., 208, 245, 362, 393f., 420, 505, 508 human nature, hearts 36, 39, 73, 89, 94f., 99, 104, 109, 147, 151, 154, 195, 234, 243, 264, 353, 356, 362, 498 human rights 395, 397 human self (khudi) 96 human soul, spirit 231, 422, 431, 451, 505f. human superhuman/non-human/ 362

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Index human way (ren dao) 225 humaneness 24, 234f., 242f., 437 humanitarianism (jindōshugi) 281, 394f., 397 humankind, mankind 23f., 147f., 154, 156, 277, 291, 312, 324, 417, 448f., 453, 455f., 460, 484, 493, 505 humans 24, 36, 50, 71, 84, 149, 151f., 158, 166, 242f., 315, 320, 357, 362f., 406, 411, 419, 429f., 457, 498, 500, 524 inhumane 394, 397 Humanism 186f., 190, 281, 502 Hume, David 108 Hundred Days Reform 222 al-ḥurr (free man) 153 Husayn, Ali’s younger son 319, 323f., 326 Ḥusayn, Sharīf. See Sharīf Ḥusayn Ḥusayn al-Jisr. See al-Jisr Hwanghae 378 Hwasŏ school 377 hypocrisy 148, 153, 156, 319, 394, 396, 510 Ibn al-ʿArabi (Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn al-ʿArabī)  98 Ibn Khaldun (Ibn Khaldūn) 104, 302 Ibn Taymiyya 114, 120 idealism 37f., 492, 500f. Iğdır 334 ijithād (independent reasoning) 130. See also reasoning, taqlīd Ijzim 114 Ilchinhoe (Association of United Progress)  379 ʿilm, ʿulūm (knowledge, science) 128, 130f., 134 146, 152n38, 161–3, 295–7, 463 Imam 120, 135, 137, 438 Ali, Imam (see Ali) Hidden Imam 308, 310f., 315n22, 317, 323 imāmat (Shiʾi religious leadership) 312 of a legal school 117, 122 twelfth Imam 319, 336 See also Mehdi, Messiah Imamiye, Imamiyya (Twelver-Shia) 336, 338 immortality 51–3, 91, 102, 182, 207, 430 imperialism 1, 4, 8, 21, 54, 199, 203, 272, 369, 516f. anti-imperialism 13, 160, 164, 394

cultural imperialism 6, 394, 468 imperial exams (see Empire) imperial expansion 4, 294f., 369 imperial government (see Empire) imperial powers, states 4, 6, 64, 195n25, 218, 227n19, 333n14, 513 imperialist threat, aggression 4f., 13, 295, 369, 372 imperialists 221, 265 Western, European imperialism 6, 215, 221, 295 See also Empire, colonialism incarnation 32, 55, 86, 186, 210, 276f., 433f. inclusivism 108, 130, 200, 203, 519 independence 22, 40, 194n21, 343f., 491 formal independence 6, 13, 298 national independence 6, 13, 119n14, 143, 216f., 249, 254f., 266, 312, 335n21, 337, 519 semi-independence 113, 221 Independence Club 377 India 17, 54f., 59, 67, 79, 93, 95, 175, 189f., 198f., 238, 260, 271, 282, 375, 426, 434, 472, 503, 510, 523 British India 6, 15, 54, 216, 265–8, 273, 276, 281, 292n60, 418, 426 Indian Brahmins 50, 57, 206, 276, 423 Indian Buddhism 31f., 58n5, 190, 393, 434, 473, 509 Indian Islam 105, 265–8, 269, 271f., 274, 427 Indian languages 55f., 274, 277, 415, 435 Indian nation and nationalism 6, 216f., 265–8, 272, 281, 374, 503, 520 Indian reform 216, 275, 277, 281, 421, 427n4 Indian religion 31n3, 50, 57, 77, 80, 105, 108f., 175, 185, 198, 203f., 216, 271, 274, 375, 417, 421n12, 429f., 433f., 436 Indian politics 265–8, 271f., 273 Indian society 272, 276 Indian tradition and culture 32, 56, 80, 219, 275f., 287n45, 431, 472 Northern India 17f., 268, 272, 273, 275, 278f., 282n30, 432 Western India 278f. See also East India Company, Hinduism Indische Partij (Indonesian Party, IP) 251

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individuality 99, 109, 191f., 271 individual, the 45, 257f., 260f., 269, 297, 301, 311, 316, 356, 397n14, 474, 477, 498, 501 individual belief 45, 97, 113, 148, 194, 369n2, 373, 375, 413n26, 511, 514, 516 individual consciousness 18, 78, 97, 99, 148, 343 individualism 177, 186, 256, 475 Indology 187, 279, 393, 415, 434. See also Orientalism Indonesia 250f., 254f. Indonesian Islam 250–4 Indonesian languages 249 Indonesian nationalism 217, 249 Indra 421f. Industrial Revolution, industrialisation 21, 93, 262f., 276, 400, 409–11, 471, 524 Infinite, the 90, 417, 420, 506, 508 inka shōmei (seal of transmission) 401 Inoue Enryō 393, 401 Inquisition 177 intellectuals 34, 55, 67f., 145, 218, 220, 261n16, 275, 444 Arab intellectuals 114, 128, 141, 144, 464 Asian intellectuals 3, 216 Buddhist intellectuals 31–4, 67f., 392f., 476 Chinese intellectuals 22, 31, 222, 240n7, 386 Indian intellectuals 93, 276 Japanese intellectuals 393, 410n22 Jewish intellectuals 340, 343, 348, 375, 493 Korean intellectuals 51, 377–9, 381 Muslim intellectuals 7, 141f., 144, 216f., 253, 445n7, 462 Ottoman intellectuals 112, 161, 165, 444, 462, 467 secular intellectuals 144, 443 Western/European intellectuals 3, 18, 80, 252, 355, 447, 458f., 464 women intellectuals 275 International Congress of Orientalists in Vienna 415 Iqbal, Muhammad 14f., 19, 95f., 216f., 267f. Iran 145, 219, 279, 306, 307, 310f., 321f., 323 325, 446f., 457f.

Iranian Constitutional Revolution 218, 305 pre-Islamic Islam 279, 283, 316–8, 447 Qajar Iran 443–5 ʿIrāqī, Fakhr al-Dīn 98 ʿĪsā. See Jesus Isfahan 306 Isis (Goddess) 180 iṣlāḥ (reform) 111, 116, 124n42, 144 Islam 25, 103, 116f., 120–3, 129, 141, 146, 149, 154f., 158, 217, 252, 259, 264, 268, 270, 272, 308, 312, 322, 325, 520 Islamic beliefs and practices 109, 112f., 134, 149, 158, 252, 254, 431, 439 Islamic caliphate 129, 252, 261, 295, 317 Islamic community (umma or milla) 129, 134, 253, 428 Islamic culture and civilisation 170f., 251, 269, 271, 311, 431, 447, 457, 459 Islamic empires and dynasties 261, 294, 317, 322, 458 Islamic eschatology 336n25, 427–9 Islamic ethics and morals 129, 134, 149, 157, 171, 269, 271, 436, 439, 447 Islamic faith and religion 127, 129, 132f., 134, 138f., 140, 147–9, 151f., 155, 167, 244, 262, 264, 266, 272, 275, 329, 334, 336, 371, 417, 429, 436, 438f., 441, 444, 447, 499, 515, 520–2 Islamic law and jurisprudence 16, 20, 119n13, 126, 129, 143, 170, 264, 297, 302, 305–13, 323, 326, 428, 451, 457 Islamic learning and scholarship 19, 129–31, 142, 162, 293, 295 Islamic modernism 93, 112, 116, 125, 131, 149, 253, 443–5, 447f. Islamic nationalism and politics 216f., 249–51, 253–5, 269, 271f., 298, 311, 322, 328, 426 Islamic philosophy 268, 306, 313n20 Islamic reform 106, 111f., 124, 141, 144, 150, 217, 253, 294, 296, 298, 375, 426 Islamic scholars 20, 116, 124, 143, 163, 252, 322, 457 Islamic schools and education 94, 116, 123n37, 126f., 134, 154, 253n9, 293, 296, 467

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Index Islamic socialism 249, 254f., 259, 263 Islamic state 129, 169, 253, 259–61, 268, 308, 312, 317f. Islamic theology (ʿilm al-tawḥīd or ʿilm al-kalām) 129, 141–4, 146, 151–3, 297, 306 Islamic thought 112–4, 116, 143f., 250, 309 Islamic tradition 19, 113, 115f., 145, 148, 163, 252, 275, 447 Islamic unity, Pan-Islamism 114, 253, 294 Islamic world 6, 101, 144, 263f., 270, 375, 427 Islamism 254, 328, 375 pre-Islamic times 262f., 302n21, 325, 330, 337, 447 Shiʾi Islam 316, 326, 331f., 336, 428, 446 Sunni Islam 146, 316, 326, 328, 427f., 446 supremacy of Islam 131n10, 171, 427, 441, 447 un-Islamic 306, 308, 317 See also Muslim Israel Israel (Kingdom) 432 Israel (land) 334, 450 Israel (nation) 345, 349, 352, 451f., 491f. Israel (people) 318, 347–9 Israelites 148, 318, 321, 346n18, 450f., 494 religion of Israel 349, 352, 498–500 tribes of Israel, Banū Isrāʾīl 432, 450 Yisraʾel, Eres 340–4 See also Zion Istanbul 115, 127, 165, 294f., 374, 443, 445, 467 iʿtiqād (faith, belief) 129f., 134 Itō Hirobumi 239, 380n5 Iwakura Mission 17, 238f. Izanami no mikoto 246 Izmir 462 Jaʿfarī religion 322f. Jacob, Zouave 177 Jaganath 434 jāhiliyya (time of ignorance) 457 Al-Jāḥiẓ 148 Jainism 56, 429, 436f. Japan 14–7, 31, 47, 195n25, 221f., 243, 378, 392, 395f., 400, 410, 414, 521 Japanese colonialism 7, 21, 43, 64n4, 379, 381, 403, 405n15

Japanese Emperor 238 Japanese language 33, 45n6, 47n10, 244n16, 400n1 Japanese protectorate 40, 50n20, 378 Japanese reform/modernism 16, 164n20, 216, 219, 237–41, 245, 379, 394, 400 Japanese religion 7, 31n3, 216, 218f., 225, 237–41, 246n18f., 247, 373, 380, 393f., 398, 400–2, 404, 405n15, 407–9 Java 249–53, 256 Jehovah. See God Jericho 450 Jerusalem 115, 346f., 353, 431, 433, 451f., 457, 486, 514 Jesuits 200, 221, 360f., 465, 468 Jesus 50, 58, 91, 148, 155, 242, 244, 270, 275f., 285, 336, 373, 428, 430–5, 435f., 438, 441 counterpart of Jesus (mathīl ʿĪsā) 429 Jesus Christ 74, 247n24, 285, 524f. Jesus (ʿĪsā), Prophet 168, 426–9, 430–2, 438, 453 Logos, Spirit of God (rūḥ allāh) 201, 210, 452 See also Messiah, Yūz Āsaf Jewry. See Judaism Jiangxi province 30 jiao (teachings) 21f., 25, 29, 32f., 35, 37n12, 223, 225–9, 230f., 233–5 jiao huang (pope) 230 jiao lü (law of religion) 227 jiao min (believers) 228 jiao tang (churches) 227 jiaoguan (education) 231 Jiaqing era 229 jihād 262n17, 429, 436f., 457 Jinnāḥ, Muḥammad ʿAlī 265, 268 jindō (humanity) and jindōshugi (humanitarianism) 394 jisi (sacrifice) 235 al-Jisr al-Ṭarābulusī, Ḥusayn 14f., 17, 19f., 121n28, 125–131, 132n11, 136f., 142f., 293 Jiulong 227 Jōdo shinshū (True Pure Land School) 237 John, the Baptist and Prophet (Yaḥyā, Yūḥannā) 438 John, Gospel of 181, 201, 209, 516, 518n12, 525n22f. Jones, John Taylor 65

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Jordan, River 450, 452 Judaism 117, 148, 156n60, 244, 275, 341, 350, 357, 364, 371, 432, 486, 491, 494, 495, 505, 515 anti-Jewish riots 340, 489 Jewish assimilation 217, 343f., 359, 364, 487, 490, 493 Jewish education 142, 340, 364 Jewish emancipation 346, 352, 489, 493 Jewish enlightenment 339f. Jewish identity 342f., 344, 348f., 351–3, 486, 494 Jewish intellectuals 144, 375, 451, 486f., 493 Jewish languages 497f. Jewish Mercaba 185 Jewish nation 180, 217, 342f., 344f., 348, 359, 453, 486, 500, 514 Jewish religion 344, 351, 359, 490–2, 496, 498–500 Jewish Renaissance 493 Jewish secularity 345 Jewish settlements 341f., 344 Jewish state and homeland 344, 346, 451, 486, 496, 500, 514 Jewish tribes 451, 500 Jewish universalism 491 Jewry 83, 119n16, 123, 128, 155, 200, 274, 310, 320, 336, 344, 433f., 438, 464, 492, 496, 501f., 515, 521 Jewry, Eastern 339f., 342, 487f., 490, 493 Jewry, French 342f., 346f., 356 Jewry, German 486–9, 493f., 496f., 499–502 Jewry, Polish 344, 490, 493, 497, 501 Jewry, Russian 339–41, 343f., 356, 489, 493 Jewry, orthodox 489 Jewry, Western 344, 352, 375, 462, 493 Judaism, concept of 339, 342–4, 348, 350f., 491, 497f., 501 Judaism, liberal 486 Judaism, modern 345, 375, 496 Judaism, Science of 487f., 493, 499, 502 See also anti-semitism, Zionism Jung, Carl Gustav 104f. justice 74, 164, 168, 170f., 182, 219, 228, 232, 257, 264, 280, 297, 302, 305, 307f., 322,

336n25, 382, 384, 394f., 397, 399, 428, 438, 454, 455f., 471, 501f., 520 injustice 228, 302, 305, 308, 319f., 450 Justin Martyr 200 juzʾ, ajzāʾ (smallest parts, i.e. atoms or particles) 128, 132f., 440 Kabala 177, 179–82 Kairānāwī, Raḥmatullāh 430 Kaiser Wilhelm (Emperor). See Wilhelm II Kaiser Wilhelm University Strasbourg. See university kalām (Islamic theology). See Islam Kali 424 Kalimpong 55 Kamakura 402 Kamāl, Namik 445 Kamchatka 335 kameraadschap 256 kami. See Shintō Kanaan 450 kanca 256 Kang Xi era 230 Kang Xiaoguang 224 Kang Youwei 21, 22n2, 215f., 218f., 222–6, 228, 235n34, 356n12, 381f., 386n18 Kant, Immanuel 97f., 109, 487f., 494 Kargın Turkmens 334f. Karma 247, 280, 485 Kashmir 431–3, 436, 441 Kathiawar peninsula 278 al-Kawākibī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 309 Kayastha family 77 Keiō Gijuku, Keiō University. See university Kerbela 306, 326 Kersten, Holger 433–35 Keshub Chunder Sen 275, 415 kexue (science) 22 Khadīja 321 Khalwaṭiyya Sufi order 126 Kham Bunnag. See Chaophraya Thiphakorawong Khān, Mīrzā Ḥusayn 443f., 447 Khān, Mīrzā Malkam 443n1, 446 Khān, Mīrzā Yūsuf 444 Khan, Sir Syed Ahmad 93 Kharpoot (Harput) 331 khilāfa. See caliph

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Index Khilafat Movement 265f. Khorāsānī, Akhūnd Moḥammad Kāẓem 306 Khosrow 316 khudi (human self) 96 khulafā-yi ʿalawiyya. See Fatimids Kido Takayoshi 239 Kiev, province 339 Kitāb Bilawhar wa-Būdhāsaf. See Bilahwar wa-Būdhāsaf kitāb-i muqaddas. See Bible Kiyozawa Manshi 241 Kızılbaş 325–30, 334–8 knowledge 5, 13, 20, 24, 45, 66, 70, 75, 78, 81, 82, 84, 86f., 107, 145, 148, 151, 161f., 166, 170, 183, 197f., 230, 258, 273f., 278, 295, 303, 325, 329f., 334, 386f., 412, 423f., 447, 450, 456, 459 acquisition of knowledge 5, 16, 19, 78, 100, 155f., 161–3, 166, 171, 190, 245, 300, 362, 390, 417, 440, 473 age of knowledge 115, 286, 295, 300 areas of knowledge 19, 44, 65, 457, 459 Buddhist knowledge 34, 62, 190f., 472 bureaucratic knowledge 7, 28 certain knowledge (ʿilm yaqīn) 93, 130, 138 Confucian knowledge 377, 385 Eastern knowledge 186, 190 education and knowledge 28, 123, 284, 362 esoteric knowledge 173, 177 essence of knowledge 86 form of knowledge 6, 44, 77, 84, 98, 120, 130, 132, 152, 241, 281, 296, 329, 390, 407n16, 440, 473 higher, supreme knowledge 151, 291, 440, 452, 473, 505 Indian knowledge 77, 86–8, 190 practical knowledge 162, 167–9, 171, 295, 300, 380n5, 471 progress of knowledge 45f., 160, 167, 202f., 246, 302, 390 occult knowledge 177, 180 order of knowledge 5, 8, 13, 20, 67, 377, 383 religious knowledge 6, 13, 49, 77, 146, 155, 162, 206, 276, 288, 295, 317n23, 349, 351, 362, 407n16, 452, 524

reservoir of knowledge 7, 13 scientific knowledge 5, 16, 19, 34, 67f., 79, 82, 92, 128, 162, 258f., 295, 390 secular, profane knowledge 82, 84, 162 spiritual knowledge 47, 440, 473 transmission of knowledge 5, 13, 16, 18, 155, 169, 190f., 274, 362, 378, 473, 524 universal knowledge 92, 98, 162f. Western knowledge 19, 65, 67, 161f., 163, 241 Westernisation of knowledge 162 Kōgaku Sōen, Rinzai Zen priest 400 Kohn, Hans 493 Kokovorismus 188 kokutai (polity) 245, 407n17 Kolkata. See Calcutta Komitee für den Osten (Committee for the East) 488 Kong. See Confucianism kongjiao (religion) 25, 29 Korea 7, 44, 50, 402 Chosŏn 51f., 386n17 Korean Buddhism 50, 379, 405n14 Korean Confucianism 7, 13, 15f., 50n21, 373, 377, 380, 382, 384, 391 Korean enlightenment 377 Korean missionaries 13, 521 Korean language 47n10, 377 Korean identity 43, 378, 382 Korean North 41, 378 Korean peninsula 40 Korean protectorate 40, 50, 378f., 381 Korean religion 51, 382 Korean sages 19 Korean society 44 Korean War 41 South Korea 51n22, 377n*, 382 See also Chondoism Kōsen Sōon 401 Krishna 73, 278 kṣatriya 283f., 290 Kulturkampf 358 kokumin (national subjects) 398 Kŭng-am 40 Kurdistan 115, 325, 329 Kütahya 335 kyō (teaching, religion) 242–7, 384n12 kyōhō (religion) 242f., 248

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kyohwagye (cultured community) 383 kyōiku chokugo (Imperial Rescript on Education) 407 kyōka (moral cultivation) 242 kyōmon (religion) 242. Kyoto 238, 240 Kyūshū 402 La Gerbe 339n2, 343, 345–8, 350f. Labrang (Bla brang) monastery 55 Ladakh 434 Lagarde, Ernestine de 354 Lagarde, Paul de 217, 219, 354–60, 488n7, 521n20 laïcité 4 laic ideas, spirit 372, 469f. laic school, education 468 laicist mission (mission laïque) 471 Lake Chad 170 Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de 192 Lampeter (college) 197–9, 205n16 Lange, Friedrich Albert 99, 107, 487 Lao-tse. See Laozi Laozi 26, 511 Last Hour, the. See al-sāʿa Last Judgment 513 Latakia 115 Latin 66, 171, 178, 181f., 256, 340, 480, 505, 513 Laukika Iddhi 483 law of the three stages. See also Comte 148 laws of nature. See nature laity 16, 30, 46, 56, 64, 66, 177, 189, 193 475 Le Liban, lodge. See Masonry Lebanon 125, 143, 149n27, 217, 293, 461, 463–8, 471 Lebensreform movement 186–9 Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religions of India  417 Leh. See Ladakh Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 104 Leipzig 187–9, 504 Lessing, Theodor 493 Leumann, Ernst 393 Lévi, Éliphas 172 Lhasa 54–6 libaitang (church) 230

Li Shicen 31 Li Si 385 Liang Qichao 31, 223, 386n18 Liang Shuming 31 liberality Liberal Age 112 liberal arts 77 liberal Judaism 486, 489 liberal professions 471 liberal theology 197f., 504 liberalisation 340 liberalism 356, 358 liberals 149, 201, 218, 240, 265, 309, 355, 466, 504 non-liberal 360 Lisco, Emil Gustav 240 literacy 14 Liu Shipei 31 Liu Xiang 27 logic 23, 97, 126, 130, 146, 152n39, 192, 194, 240, 352, 514 Buddhist logic 31, 36n11, 58n5, 400 logic of science 24 logical categories 99, 146, 291, 347 logical thinking 31, 291, 400, 411, 454, 469f., 492 Western logic 31 Logos theology 199, 201f. London 64, 81n5, 96, 121, 274, 342, 512f. Louis XIV 64 Lu 234n31, 385 Lu Jia 385 Lu Jiuyuan 389f. Lucknow Pact 265 Ludwig Maximilian University Munich. See university Lüshu 227, 402 Luther, Martin 25, 177, 223, 269f., 391, 519 machine 26, 57, 59f., 525 madaniyya. See civilisation madhhab 113, 119, 122, 428, 446. See also under Islam Madhyamaka philosophy 56, 60n9 Madras (Chennai) 274, 472, 514n7, 525n24 Madrasa Rahimiya 17 al-Madrasa al-Sulṭāniyya (Sultaniyya School) 141–3

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Index al-madrasa al-waṭaniyya (Homeland School)  126f., 293 magic 22, 123, 172, 174f., 176f., 178f., 182, 483 history of magic 174 magical practices 148, 174, 181, 244 magicians 25f., 177, 182 magnetism 177 Magnus, Albert 176 Mahābhārata 283f., 287 Mahabodhi Gesellschaft (Mahabodhi Society) 188 Maharashtra 415f., 424 Mahatmas 473 Mahayana 26, 31n3, 386, 397n13 Mahdi (mahdī). See Messiah Mahomet. See Muhammad Makāriyūs, Shāhīn 464 Makker 256 Malabar 432 Malaya 521 Malik Ashtar 322 Malunka 485 Malvan 415 al-Manār (The Lighthouse) 121, 124, 141n3, 152n38, 217, 293–8, 435 Mānava-Dharmaśāstra 277 Manchu 28, 54 Manchuria 382, 402f., 405f., 414 manhaj, manāhij (way) 129, 134 Manicheanism 182f., 270 mankind. See human Mann, Thomas 355 mantra (charm) 483 Marathi 415f., 418, 424n27 Marburg Neokantian School 487, 494 Marburg University. See university marriage 205n15, 276, 286, 291, 323 arranged marriage 278, 280, 287, 340 caste marriage 292 child marriage 276, 280, 284, 287, 416 intermarriage 63 marriage reform 280f. Marx, Karl 217, 251, 253–5, 258f., 262, 513 Mary Magdalene 432 Mary (Maryam) 285, 426, 432, 438n37 maskilic circles 339f. Masonry 172, 461f., 464f., 470, 472 anti-Masonic attitudes 465

Grand Orient de France (GOdF) 461–4, 466f., 469 Le Liban, lodge 461–8 lodges 119n14, 145, 345, 461–8 Masonic rites 462, 465 Masonic schools 461, 466f. Masons 185, 462–7 materialism 37f., 44, 46, 95, 96, 102, 128, 257, 269, 264, 406, 447, 487, 496, 498, 501, 517. materiality 65 materialist socialism 262 materialists 86, 128, 132n11 See also matter Matha 207 mathīl ʿĪsā (counterpart of Jesus) 429 Mathurā 278 matter material knowledge 70 material sciences 92 material world 65, 68, 70n21, 89, 131f. materiality 65 mind-matter debate (see mind) See also materialism Māturīdiyya 146 Maurice, Frederick Denison 197, 200f., 203 May laws 340 Máyá 207f. Mazdakism 338 Mazdaznan 188f. maʿrifet/maʿrifa (knowledge) 162 Mecca 121, 433, 439, 456n30 medeniyyet. See civilisation medicine 25, 65, 148, 374, 431, 441, 510 Medina (Yathrib) 115, 121, 262n17, 321, 322, 456 meditation 34, 41, 195n23, 389, 412, 472f., 510, 517 Meiji era 16, 216, 237, 239, 381, 393f., 401–5, 407f., 410f., 413n26 Melanchthon 177 Melanesia 521 Mencius 384–6, 388, 390 Mendelssohn, Moses 489, 493 Merzifon, American College at 334 mesmerism 175 Messiah 336n26, 428f., 435, 437f., 440, 452, 490, 492, 518n12

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Messiah (cont.) Mahdi (mahdī) 170, 307, 336n25, 428f., 438, 440 Messiah (ratu adil, Just King) 255 Messiah, promised 319, 428–30, 436, 441 See also Jesus, Yūz Āsaf metaphysics 31n4, 38, 97–9, 107, 148, 209, 268, 355, 358, 474, 485, 516 mettā (loving-kindness) 195 Middle Ages 2, 162n10, 174, 181, 184, 352, 391, 496, 510 Middle East, Near East 6, 15, 116, 150, 215, 217–9, 238, 265, 298, 369n2, 374f., 436, 443–5, 447, 461f., 467, 520 Midhat Pasha 126, 446 military 4, 21, 223, 262, 264, 374, 489 military affairs 261 military defeat or success 221, 228, 374, 512 military equipment and forces 227, 230 military leaders 227, 230, 263, 319, 353, 402, 428f., 458 military power 5, 68, 169, 227, 229, 273 military pressure 7, 13, 221 military schools 329 Mill, James 273 milla, millet (community) 129, 134, 301, 307, 327. See also under Islam al-Mināʾ 125 Minaret of Jesus 429 mind 25, 38, 49, 59f., 78, 84, 87, 92, 104, 156, 195, 208, 410n23 Aryan mind 191 buddha-mind 410n23 Chinese mind 22, 25 Confucian mind 386 European mind 476 human mind 23f., 86, 132, 184, 208, 508 mind-body practices 175 mind-matter debate 175 mind of the people 46f., 184, 227, 511 modern mind 21, 108, 393 Muslim mind 271 rational mind 152 religious mind 393, 403, 407–9, 414 states of mind 78 Ming dynasty 28, 231 min’gwŏn (people’s rights) 385

Ministry of Doctrine (Japan) 237f., 241, 244 Ministry of Public Works (China) 226 mitzvot 351 minzoku (ethnicity) 398 miracles 147f., 157, 176–80, 195, 362f., 416, 440, 482–4, 506 Mirandola, Pico della 177 Mīrzā Yūsuf Khān. See Khān, Mīrzā Yūsuf mission 203, 461 American missionaries 326–9, 334, 369, 467 Bapist mission 65, 274 British mission 201 Buddhist mission 187n6, 405n14, 412, 517 Catholic mission 369, 513, 523n21 Christian mission 7, 22, 64, 215f., 221, 223, 369, 375, 400f., 419n9, 426, 430f., 448, 517, 519–22 European mission 513 field of mission 524 mission of a people, faith 104, 347, 349–53, 356, 361, 412, 424, 491–3 mission societies 512f., 523 missionaries 5, 7, 17, 61n13, 65–9, 201, 217, 221f., 226n13, 227, 248, 273–5, 278, 280, 325–7, 333f., 364, 369f., 373, 387, 400, 429–31, 448, 467, 479, 481, 506–10, 513, 516, 520, 523–5 missionary activities and work 5, 64, 215, 217, 329, 369f., 371, 395, 398, 447f., 512, 517, 520–2 missionary apologetics 199–202, 216 missionary conferences 204, 512, 514–7 missionary impulse 81, 514, 515, 521, 524 missonary institutions 4, 65, 267, 327, 405n14 missionary literature and press 18, 65n6, 222, 329, 331n10, 526 missionary movement 369, 512, 516f., 518, 520, 524f. missionary schools, education 4, 14n2, 17, 115f., 123n37, 126f., 211, 267, 274, 334, 401, 468, 473, 526 Muslim mission 522 outward and inner mission 358, 517 prophetic mission 146, 263, 321, 449

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Index Protestant mission 4, 13, 65, 72–6, 201, 280, 285n41, 327, 334, 369, 373, 448, 512, 517 Western mission 68, 229 See also Iwakura Mission, Mission Laïque Française Mission Laїque Française (MLF) 468. See also laïcité Mithraism 173 Mitra 422 mleccha (barbarism) 283, 423 modernity 4, 19n10, 34, 43, 65, 111f., 116, 131, 174, 222, 353, 356, 443, 447 anti-modern 34, 112, 114 Buddhist modernism 30f., 34, 68f., 194, 237n2, 240f., 400f., 404, 411n24, 476 Chinese modernism 31, 221f. early modernity 4, 43, 440n39 Hindu modernism 77f. Indian modernism 275 Iranian modernism 307, 444f., 447 Japanese modernism 237n2, 240, 400, 411n24 Muslim and Islamic modernism 93, 102, 112, 114, 116, 125, 131, 143, 163, 253, 443f., 447 Ottoman modernism 114, 116, 301n18, 327n5 modern age 6, 30, 43, 47, 82, 112, 115, 117, 149, 172f., 211, 217, 272, 275, 369, 371, 374f., 400, 455 Modern Atomism 100 modern Christianity 497 modern companies 296 modern culture 100, 102, 259, 463 modern education, schools 14f., 126, 145, 222, 267, 374f., 473 modern Europe 107 modern Judaism 345, 502 modern man, people 82, 100–2, 104, 497f. modern miraculous phenomena 177, 181 modern religion 2, 5, 21, 44, 47, 115, 192, 225, 328f., 369, 373, 407n16, 498 modern professions 16 modern science 17, 19n10, 62, 65, 67f., 78f., 85f., 88, 102, 104–6, 149, 181, 192, 194, 215, 281, 293, 295–7, 355, 369f., 374, 485, 498

modern socialism 102 modern society 400, 403 modern state 6, 240, 253, 268, 383, 400, 403 modern thought and discourse 42, 47, 62, 85f., 108, 111, 112n3, 114, 126, 130, 143, 186, 194, 221, 325, 328f., 355, 400, 445, 447f., 500 modern world 1, 7, 102, 200, 253, 393 modernisation 1, 7, 21, 115f., 223, 296, 301n18, 327n5, 356, 379, 381f., 444 modernism 125 modernists 111n1, 112, 310f., 443, 445n7 postmodernity 517 Moghul. See Mughal Moḥammad ʿAlī Shāh 306f. Mohammed. See Muhammad moksha (religious realisation) 77f. monastery 15f., 55, 61, 189, 269, 434, 475f. monastic community 401, 411n24, 474 monastic education 55f., 70n19 Mongkut, prince. See Rama IV Mongolia 54, 58, 509, 522 Monier-Williams, Sir Monier 202 monism 38, 128, 187, 194 Monistic League 194 monkhood 20, 410 Buddhist monks 20, 30, 32, 52, 54f., 58, 61, 66, 71, 189, 193, 216, 434f., 474 Christian monks 177, 320, 433n26, 269 monotheism 4, 37, 122n30, 135, 148, 155, 216, 280, 296, 302, 314, 319, 321, 349, 357, 374f., 418, 435, 491–4, 499f. Monte Verità commune 189 Montesquieu 219, 309 morals 157, 163f., 167–9, 209, 232f., 270, 271, 301, 315, 407, 467, 469 authority, moral 394, 436, 447 basis, moral 373 breakdown of 437f. Buddhist morals 423f., 436 character, moral 210, 263, 409 Confucian morals 19, 215, 233, 237, 390n36, 407n17 consciousness, moral 269, 271 cultivation, moral (kyōka) 242 culture, moral 95, 406

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morals (cont.) guidance and education, moral 19, 276, 381, 390, 413n26 Hindu morals 277 Islamic morals 129, 132, 134, 153n43, 170f., 436, 439f., 447 morality 45, 83, 237, 277, 391, 410, 425, 447, 491, 496, 498, 502 national morals 166, 215, 225 norms, moral 112f., 119n15, 184, 480, 485, 494 philosophy, moral 373, 475, 480, 485 practice, moral 235 principles, moral 159 slavery, moral 343, 345–8, 353 society, moral 105, 157, 263, 495f. stances, moral 153n43, 516 Morgenstern, Christian 355 Morvi 278 Moses 148, 155, 318, 321, 449–51, 511 mosque 1, 14n2, 18, 94, 121, 126, 265–7, 371 Mott, John R. 512f. Moẓaffar al-Dīn Shāh 305f. Muʿāwiyya 322 Mufti of Egypt (Muftī al-diyār al-miṣriyya)  119–21, 142. See also fatwa Mughals 260, 273, 427 Muhammad (Prophet) 72f., 103, 117, 120n19, 122n30, 122n32, 127, 129f., 138, 141, 146, 148, 252, 259f., 262f., 321f., 326, 428, 431, 438f., 448f., 455–7 Muhammadan (adjective) 83 129, 131f., 134f., 456, 520, 522 Muhammadan community 132, 135 Muhammadans, Mohammedans 83, 135, 137–40, 509, 520 Mohammedanism 420, 508 Muhammad Ali. See Sayyid Muḥammad ʿAlī Muir, John 198, 201, 203 mujaddid (renewer) 427. See also tajdīd Müller, Friedrich Max 31n3, 80, 179, 199–201, 203, 354, 417, 419n10, 421n14, 434, 503–6 Mūlśaṅkar 278 Munich 190, 192n17, 268 Munk, Solomon 349, 351f. Murad V, Sultan 462 Musaylima 122

mushū muga (non-attachment and no-self)  395, 397 Muslim Hindu-Muslim relations 265f. modern Muslim 102, 163, 447 muslim 155 Muslim beliefs 113, 428–30, 438, 440n39 Muslim community 129, 146, 218, 263, 294, 296f., 316, 428, 436 Muslim country, region 260, 268, 336, 457, 515 Muslim culture 217 Muslim East 102, 219 Muslim empire and rule 112, 116, 162f., 170, 260, 336n24, 374, 523n21 Muslim intellectuals 7, 216, 253 Muslim leaders 261, 265, 268, 326, 462 Muslim legacy 96 Muslims 71, 73, 93, 95, 112f., 115f., 119f., 123, 126f., 129, 138, 150, 155, 163, 167f., 170f., 216f., 254, 258, 264–9, 271–5, 322f., 437, 447f., 462 Muslim nation 216f., 267, 272, 328, 335n21 Muslim orthodoxy 113 Muslim reform 111, 114f., 117, 119n18, 123, 143f., 217, 375, 426f., 435, 440, 443, 446f. Muslim scholars (ulama) 16f., 94, 97f., 111f., 114–6, 125f., 128, 135n16, 139f., 142, 144f., 148, 217, 293, 305f., 426f., 440, 443, 451, 464 Muslim schools and education 18, 125, 142, 296, 371 Muslim society 216f., 219, 260, 262n17, 269 Muslim state 216f., 261, 272 Muslim territories 7, 19n10 Muslim thought and discourse 160, 162, 271 Muslim theology 19, 128, 219 Muslim tradition 113, 117, 436 Muslim world 122n31, 141n1, 147, 163, 263f., 294 non-Muslim 7, 122n36, 150, 162f., 268, 321, 323, 328f., 448 See also Islam Muslim Brotherhood 298 Mustafa Kemal Pasha 261

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Index Mutsu Munemitsu 247 mysticism 97f., 102, 172, 178, 183 mystery 27, 109, 174, 176, 178, 180, 184f., 337 mystic techniques and experiences 99, 103, 178, 184, 506 mystical tradition 112f., 180, 446f. mystics 77, 101n19, 172 See also Sufism mythology 68, 179f., 275, 326, 424n29, 475, 504 mythical persons and beings 51n24, 71n24, 73n30, 180, 246n18–20, 284n39, 290n52f., 379, 421n14 Nablus, district of 114 al-Nabhānī, Yūsuf 14n2, 15, 20, 111, 114–7, 122n30, 122n36 Nāgārjuna 56, 60 nahḍa movement 142, 144, 375, 464 naichi (homeland) 405 Najaf 306 Najd 113, 122 Nakamura Zekō 402 Namah, Javid 110 Nanjing 30f. Napoleon the Great 23, 177 naql (transmission of knowledge) 129, 138 Nârada 81 Narai, king 64 Nāṣer al-Dīn Shāh 305f. naṣṣ (authoritative text) 129f., 135, 137 nation Asian nations 54, 75, 195n25 Chinese nation 222 Christian nations 406, 453, 457, 518 civilised nations 296, 301, 495 colonising nations 64n4, 513f. concept of nation 313f., 315–7, 343, 354, 359, 361f., 486, 491, 495 Eastern nations 263, 271 European nations 5, 150, 169, 195n25, 344, 453, 459, 513 formation of 4, 21, 167, 215, 358, 361, 411n24, 495, 513 German nation 487–9 historical nations 185, 337, 509

Iranian nation 323 Japan, nation of 393, 400, 411n24 Jewish nation 180, 217, 339, 342f., 344f., 348, 352, 359, 450–3, 491, 514 Korea, nation of 378, 382 Muslim nation 216f., 270f., 307, 321f., 328f. nation building 4, 21f., 225, 356, 382 nation-state (see state) national church 194n21, 223, 513 national culture 215, 345 national identity and consciousness  43, 81, 129, 221, 271, 338, 342f., 345, 348 national independence 6, 13, 249, 254f., 268, 312, 519 national movement 215, 222, 374, 378, 499, 518, 520 national religion 25 28, 166, 215, 217, 223–5, 243, 355–60, 361, 364, 379 national schools and education 17n5, 41, 235 national values and ethics 149, 158f., 166, 270f., 494 nationality/subjects of a nation 166, 312, 336f., 343f., 362, 398, 414, 463 nations, plurality of 81, 83, 216, 312, 317, 331, 349, 352, 356n10, 414, 449, 456f., 459, 492, 509, 512, 525 non-Christian nations 519 transnational 1 Turkish nation 328, 337 Western nations 4, 21, 396 See also dynasty, nationalism, state National Assembly of Pakistan 426 National Socialism 494 nationalism 6, 102, 160, 249, 266f., 268, 329, 354, 358, 375, 486 German nationalism 354f., 358 Hindo nationalism 503 Indian nationalism 216, 266, 268, 374, 503, 520 Indonesian nationalism 250–5 Jewish nationalism 486 Muslim nationalism 217, 261, 267, 328 nationalists 217, 219, 224, 251, 266, 309, 328f., 344, 396 nationalist historiography 51n22

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nationalism (cont.) nationalist movement 223, 249, 294, 335n21, 344, 486 nationalistic religion 379 Polish nationalism 344 Russian nationalism 344 Turkish nationalism 325, 328, 335n21 Natorp, Paul 355, 487, 494 Natsir, M. 253 natural law 516 natural laws. See nature natural sciences. See science natural selection. See evolution Natural Religion 350f. See also religion Naturalism 46, 94, 97, 100f., 128n6 nature 24, 67, 73, 79, 92f., 98, 100, 132f., 154, 179, 186, 193, 195, 209, 267, 300, 359, 420f. conservation of nature 187, 195 forces of nature 101, 184, 285, 299, 472 human nature 234, 243, 483 laws of nature 67, 128, 132f., 174, 178, 184, 284, 297, 302, 440 natural phenomena 68, 108, 133, 421 natural philosophy 450 natural world 79, 128, 411 nature of God 87, 413, 420 nature of reality 58, 78, 85, 98f., 108, 204, 207, 422n19 nature of religion 33, 104, 146f., 149, 419n10 Naturopathy 186f., 190 Naumann, Friedrich 355 Na‌ʾīnī, Moḥammad Ḥoseyn 218f., 306–9 Neander, August 315 Near East. See Middle East Nebuchadnezzar 451f. nechari (Naturalist) 94 Neo-Confucianism. See Confucianism Neoplatonism. See Plato Nepal 198, 522 New Buddhism. See Buddhism New Guinea 188, 521 New Testament. See Bible Newton, Isaac 84 Newton, James Rogers 178 neiwu (internal affairs) 21 Neixueyuan (Institute for Inner Studies) 31 neẓām-nāme-ye eslāmī. See constitution

Nicholas II (Czar) 54 Nietzsche, Friedrich 45f., 99, 101f., 107, 268 Nimr, Ibrāhīm al-Yāzijī Fāris 464 Nirvana 32, 36, 38, 47n7, 74, 474, 482, 484 niʿma (grace, favour) 147, 152 Nordau, Max 341f. North America. See America North Korea. See Korea Notovitch, Nicolas 434 Nudism 187 Nuns of Loudun 179 nuqṭa-yi muḥammadiyya. See Muhammad Nūrī, Shaykh Faẓlollāh 306, 309f. Nürnberg 186, 190 Nushirvan 316 nushūʿ (development, evolution) 128 Nyanatiloka (Anton Gueth) 189 Nyingma 55 ōbō buppō sōi 240 occultism 172–175, 177, 179f., 182, 472 Odessa 217, 339f., 342f. Oghuz Turks 335, 338 Olcott, Henry Steel 401, 403n8, 472–478 Old Testament. See Bible Omayyad. See Umayyad opium wars 221 Opleidingsschoolen van Inlandische Ambtenaren (Training School for Native Civil Servants, OSVIA) 252 Order of the Golden Dawn 175 Orient 327, 434, 470 Oriental languages 217, 354 Oriental studies 18, 325, 354, 434, 448, 470 Orientalism 203n12 Orientalist critics 203 Orientalist manner 67 Orientalists 326f., 354, 370, 400, 415, 446, 476, 503 Origin of Species. See Darwin orthodoxy 113, 126, 176, 181, 223, 234n32, 334, 363, 365, 380n7, 434, 489, 493, 503f. Osan-School 41 Ottoman Empire 17n5, 113–116, 122n36, 125–27, 129, 160–165, 169, 265, 293f., 298, 301–303, 325, 333–335, 374f., 444–446, 462–464, 467

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Index Ottoman Caliphate 263n19, 265f., 295, 298, 336 Ottoman government 141, 462, 467 Ottoman intellectuals 161, 165 Ottoman period 111f., 114, 116, 129, 160, 327 Ottoman state 112–114, 116, 161, 169, 337 Ottoman reforms 164, 327n5, 333n13, 443f., 459n31 Ottoman world 444 Ōuchi Seiran 241, 401 Ouyang Jingwu 14–16, 19f., 30–34, 38, 241n9 Oxford. See university P’yŏngan 41, 378 P’yŏngyang 378f. Paektusan-in 71 paganism 68, 174, 181, 183, 482, 519, 521 Pak Ŭnsik 377–382, 388n28 Pakistan 268, 426, 432 Pale of Settlement 340. See also Eastern Europe Palestine 114, 127, 189, 217, 341f., 344, 432, 450, 452, 463, 491 Pāli 55, 66f., 70n21, 393, 433f., 483 Pali canon. See Tripiṭaka Pallegoix, Jean-Baptiste 64–66 pan-Asianists 396 Pan-Islamism 114, 253, 294 pancasila 473 Pāṇḍavas 283f. Paṇḍharpur 416 panjiao (hierarchy of teachings) 32 pansil 473 pantheism 37, 482, 500 Paris 121, 142, 160f., 165f., 168, 238–240, 294, 341, 396, 504 Paris Peace Conference 392, 395–398 parliament 114, 218, 260f., 305, 307f., 310 parliamentarism 308–310 Parliament of Religions 80, 371, 402, 513, 519n15 Parsis 274 patriotism 102, 167, 261, 346f., 375, 380, 400, 443, 461, 463, 466, 489, 519 pen-name 41, 49n16 Pentecostal movement 379 People’s Liberation Army 54, 56

Peripateticism 401f. Persia 63, 102, 263f., 283, 299, 306, 313, 375, 431, 447, 451, 521 Persian language 145, 267, 275, 283n33, 307, 309, 444, 447 Persian poem 91, 447 Persian Shah 325 Persian Constitutional Revolution 305n2, 516 person Impersonal, the 37, 88–92 personal deity 85, 416 personal devil 88 personal experience 36, 68, 103, 472f. personal God 37, 88–91, 192 personality 52, 88, 97, 103f., 106, 166, 187, 208, 429, 480 personification 119n19, 181, 421n14 petition 216, 226, 237–239, 392 Phaya Naga 71 Phenomenology 38, 517 philanthropy 341n8, 461f., 465 philology 31n3, 357, 371, 415, 419, 503f. philosophy 32–40, 42–44, 47, 51, 56, 81, 100, 102, 107f., 126, 172–174, 179–184, 257–259, 267f., 309, 311, 338, 351, 363, 400, 407n17, 446f., 450f., 454, 459, 466, 475–477, 486–488, 491, 493f., 501, 510 Buddhist philosophy 60n9, 192n18, 479–481, 485 Hindu philosophy 78, 199f., 204, 422n18 Islamic philosophy 98, 128, 130n9, 135n16, 139n27, 145, 268, 306, 313n20 Jewish philosphy 499 moral philosophy 373, 475 philosophers 24n, 32, 37f., 45f., 75, 79, 85, 98, 135n16, 145, 182f., 185, 341n7, 346f., 350f., 353, 355, 386f., 410, 422, 450, 454, 457, 459n31, 486f., 494 philosophical ideals 47, 51, 257, 259 philosophical theology 99 religious philosophy 174, 351 Western philosophy 77, 96, 200, 267 See also ḥikma Phra Khlang (minister of the royal treasury)  63, 67 physics 82, 100, 103, 419n10 physicists 78, 85, 88 Planchette 178

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Plato 210, 440n, 454 Platonic philosophy 180f. Neoplatonism 173 plurality 79f., 98, 129, 187n5, 215, 270, 370–373, 376, 474f. pluralisation 13, 20 pluralism 7, 215, 403n10 poetry 56, 94, 99, 104, 117n, 127n4, 148, 186n, 267f., 415f., 447, 490, 496, 498f., 502 poets 28, 32, 55, 94, 98, 101n, 186n, 267, 354, 389n34, 416, 424, 443, 471, 498, 504 Poland 340, 344, 490, 493, 496f., 501 Polgasduwa Island 189 politics 18, 21f., 27f., 44, 80, 102f., 125, 127, 216f., 238f., 240, 242f., 253, 257, 264, 265f., 271, 298, 311, 320, 327–329, 333n14, 355f., 375, 396, 403f., 434, 516 policy 13f., 18, 22, 94, 114, 183, 216, 222, 237–240, 242, 245, 260, 265f., 273, 303, 340f., 394n9, 443, 468, 501, 523 political activities 160, 238, 295, 524 political activism 119n14, 218, 381 political elites, circles 131, 240, 464 political freedom 348, 352 political history 56, 97, 494, 501 political identity 112 political ideology 80, 217f., 240 political institutions 237 political Islam 298 political movements 40, 114, 298, 339–41 political power 125, 219, 276 political propaganda 115, 255 political reform 114, 215, 219, 221, 228f., 234, 374f., 443 political thinkers 355 political Zionism 341f. politieke orde 358 political system, polity 64, 240, 245, 247, 250, 252, 258, 265, 269–271, 312, 369, 407n17 politicians 22f., 75, 165, 239, 245, 247, 281, 379, 409f., 461, 467 polygamy 68f. polytheism 216, 275, 277, 280, 319, 363, 418 polytheistic religions 314 Pontus documents 334 Poona, Pune 415 pope 176, 227n14, 230, 285f., 320, 457, 459, 477, 515n

Port Arthur (Lüshun) 227, 402 Portugal 64, 273 prajñā (wisdom) 32 Prārthanā Samāj (Prayer Society) 415–418, 421n12, 424n27 precepts 36, 192f., 350, 401, 473, 515 press 188f., 392, 394, 416, 465, 469, 526 printing press 16, 31, 65, 274 priests 20, 26f., 66, 82, 121, 168, 182, 192f., 206, 228, 235, 237f., 240f., 247f., 276, 288, 392, 400f., 405n14, 411n, 423, 451, 455, 465, 474, 477f., 509 priesthood 102, 172n primitivity primitive peoples 513, 518, 521 primitive beliefs 68 progress 22, 46, 78, 95, 147, 179, 263, 275f., 296f., 301f., 406, 410, 447, 449, 456, 458f., 467 national progress 28, 254, 456 progress of communities, nations 28, 245, 297, 414, 451f., 459, 461 progress of science and knowledge 44–46, 94 progressive intellectuals, newspapers 377, 396 progressive movement 187f., 194 progressive politics 311, 317 progressive reform 400, 447 religious progress 349f., 491, 507 taqaddum (progress) 302 taraqqī (progress) 128, 296, 301n18 proof 52, 59, 61, 83, 92f., 129f., 138, 142, 146, 148, 151f., 156, 184, 210, 362, 427, 432–436, 440f., 449, 457 prophethood 262, 450, 456f., 498 prophecy 96, 123f., 148, 181, 202, 205, 210, 332, 445, 494, 500 Prophet, the 73, 97, 103, 107, 117, 119f., 122, 127, 129f., 135, 146, 168, 219, 252f., 259f., 262f., 296, 309f., 318, 321–323, 326, 359, 431, 437–439, 455, 494, 496, 498, 500 prophets 73, 83, 122n32, 147f., 151f., 155, 177, 186, 188, 201, 263, 308, 313, 321–323, 326, 356, 428, 430–432, 438f., 444, 449, 453n, 456n27, 498, 514 prophetic eulogies 115 prophetic tradition. See hadith

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Index Protestantism 28, 66, 126, 248, 276, 285n, 327, 329, 359f., 362–364, 371, 374f., 400, 475, 488, 497, 513, 516–518 Protestant Buddhist 477 Protestant Christianity 16, 123, 194n21, 378, 401, 404n12 Protestant Churches 177, 204, 327n4, 364 Protestant groups 149n24, 370, 513 Protestant mission 13, 65, 72n27, 201, 274, 280, 285n, 327, 334, 373, 375, 448, 512f., 515, 517 Protestant theology 357, 493f., 498 Protestants 119, 177, 240, 333, 364, 369f., 472, 477, 490, 493 Pṛthivī 421 Prussia 15, 64n4, 227n16, 247, 447, 487, 489 psychic medium 172 psychology 97, 100, 102–108, 178f., 390n37, 488n9, 495 public, general 14, 41f., 82, 93, 143, 145, 167, 169, 186, 230, 245, 303, 382, 505 publishing 43, 65, 145, 187f., 190, 403n9 Pune. See Poona Punjab 105, 267, 272, 279, 421, 427, 429, 432n22, 435 Punjab Legislative Assembly 268 Purāṇas 424 Pusan 402 Puyi 54 Pythagoras 450 Qadian 427, 429, 442 Qādiriyya Order 115. See also Sufism al-Qādiyānī, Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad  426–438, 440, 442 Qalamūn 293 al-Qalamūnī, Shaykh Rashīd 124 Qin dynasty 26, 231, 385 Qin Shihuang 385 Qing dynasty 21, 28n11, 54, 221f., 224, 227n17 Qinghai 54 Quillard, Pierre 168 Quilliam, Abdullah (William Henry) 371 Quinet, Edgar 470 Quran 23, 77, 83, 93, 115, 117, 124, 130, 135–137, 140, 146, 148, 150–152, 156, 309, 318, 320f., 323f., 427, 430, 435, 438–441, 444, 447, 449, 452, 456

Quranic exegesis 94, 136n20, 252, 294 sura, Quranic 124, 146, 456n27 Rabindranath Tagore 32, 190, 374 racism 195n25, 354 Radhakrishnan, S. 281 Raj 54 Rajagriha 434 Rajayoga 78 Rama III, king 63f., 66 Rama IV, king 63f. Ramakrishna 77 rationality 492 irrational, supra-rational 68, 78, 93, 248 ratio 36, 99, 128–130, 134, 138–140, 275, 401, 415, 419, 494 (see also ʿaql) rational Buddhism 401 rational critique 36 rational doctrine 280 rational faculties 79, 314 rational philosophy 139n27, 494 rational proof, argument 68, 129f., 138, 140, 169 rational religion 419 rational sciences 129n8, 134 rational theology 98, 144 rational understanding 68, 78, 96–98, 152f., 253 rational worship 275, 415 rationalist 83, 144, 340 ratu adil 255. See also Messiah realism 37f. reality 97–100, 105f., 108f., 209, 266, 362, 456, 520 human reality 451 inner reality 78 most real, the 99, 107f. nature of reality 58, 78, 204, 207 objective reality 104 social reality 80, 239 substantial reality 207 true reality 393 Ultimate Reality 97, 100, 422n19 reason 58f., 77–81, 82–4, 89f., 98, 154, 157, 199, 245, 247, 313, 357, 409, 491f., 494 reasoning 30, 33f., 37, 77f., 129, 182, 313n20, 487

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reasoning (cont.) independent reasoning 112f., 118n10 modern reasoning 62, 88 new reasoning 57–62 scientific reasoning 5, 59f., 192 reassertion 215f., 218, 265, 370f., 373 Reb gong region 55 reform 15, 113f., 144, 192–4, 221, 369, 374f., 384, 506 anti-reform 111, 113f., 116f. Buddhist reform 32, 66f., 237f., 240f., 401, 403f., 411n Confucian reform 20, 29, 215, 221–4, 228f., 234f., 379, 382, 384, 386f., 391 educational reform 13, 119n19, 218, 241, 294, 297 Hindu reform 216, 281, 374f., 416 individual reform 192 Islamic reform 111–114, 118n11, 144, 294, 296, 298, 301, 426, 443f., 467 modern reforms 111f., 114, 444, 447 religious reform 13, 25, 44, 112–117, 119n19, 123f., 215f., 218–220, 275, 278, 294, 374, 415, 446 reform literature 187 reform-minded 126 reform movement 7, 21, 66, 109, 111, 118n11, 144, 186–188, 192, 240f., 374, 415, 426, 446, 451 reform periods 64, 164, 221–4, 327, 379, 403, 443f., 451 reform schools 17, 125–128, 293 reformers 32, 66, 68, 106, 111–115, 117–119, 123f., 130, 143, 186, 189, 238, 273, 277, 280f., 284n40, 375, 379, 400, 404, 416, 444–447, 459n31 reformism 114, 125, 141, 144, 219, 294, 296, 298 reformists 111f., 114, 117, 131, 141, 143f., 217–219, 293, 427n4, 435, 443–445, 447, 463, 466f. social reform 6, 188, 215f., 273, 275–278, 281, 374, 415f., 461, 465, 467 See also renewal, islāḥ, Meiji era, Tanẓīmāt, Lebensreform movement Reformation 105, 177, 183, 235, 285n41, 369, 391, 484, 509 Rehoboam 451

reincarnation. See incarnation religion 19f., 32, 34, 42f., 65, 70, 78, 82–85, 94–96, 107f., 140, 179, 225, 239f., 314–316, 397–399, 419f. ancient religions 58, 507, 509, 511 Chinese folk religion 25, 223f. Christian religion 57f., 60f., 74, 123, 201, 359f. concept of religion 21, 80, 117, 329, 403, 407 false religion 73, 75, 202 future religion 44, 47f., 203 global religion 77, 203 modern religion 44 national religion 25, 28, 166, 215, 217, 224f., 355–362, 364 Natural Religion 350f. nature of religion 33, 104, 419n10 new religions 20, 22, 48f., 51n23, 102, 173, 372, 376, 379 religion (chonggyo) 383n religion (dīn) 129, 134, 150n29, 302n19 religion (diyāna) 129 religion (jiao) 33, 226f., 233 religion (kyō) 242–248 religion (kyōhō) 242f., 248 religion (kyōmon) 242 religion (shūkyō) 47n11, 246, 407, 410n22 religion (shūshi) 245–247 religion (zongjiao) 21, 33, 35, 225 Religion of Confucius (kongjiao) 25–29, 380–383 religionists 25, 50, 436 religiosity 225n10, 372, 476, 491, 493, 496, 498f., 502 religious actors 369 religious belief 167, 239, 395, 398, 412, 420 religious community 40, 80, 112, 218, 302, 327, 333n12, 345, 361, 364, 381, 461, 502 religious contact 16, 144f., 354, 372, 474, 493 religious despotism 219, 307, 323 religious doctrines 93f. religious experience 19, 98–100, 105 religious experts 99f., 121n24, 512 religious faith 78, 340, 406, 409f., 413, 419, 505f. religious field 22, 375

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Index religious groups 334, 338, 345, 375 religious history 22, 148, 354, 363, 415, 421 religious ideal 51, 271 religious identity 112, 265 religious instinct 417 religious institutions 15, 93, 215, 273, 404n12, 467 religious life 66, 97, 99, 102–106, 238, 298, 362, 493, 508, 515 religious mind 393, 403, 407–409, 414 religious Other 198, 202–204 religious plurality 129, 370–373, 376, 403n10 religious policy 22, 237–239 religious sentiment 249–252, 254, 259, 470 religious superiority 48, 82, 203, 211, 216, 357, 427, 447 religious systems 79, 174, 253, 415, 492, 507, 510 religious thought 111, 168, 270, 421 religious titles 50n19, 125 religious traditions 13f., 44, 66, 79f., 112, 173, 200f., 215, 219, 280, 329, 447 religious values 67, 103, 134, 218, 257, 490 Revealed Religions 77, 416f. state religion 22, 216, 224, 379 traditional religion 22, 45f., 476 true religion 73, 134, 155, 202, 277, 320, 326, 331, 372f., 452, 491, 514 understanding of religion 18, 163, 372, 506, 517 unification of religions 44, 47, 49f., 52, 357 unitary religion 224 universal religion 72, 372 Western concept of religion 18, 33, 203, 345 world religions 25, 80, 173, 329, 358, 449, 514f., 519 See also Religious Studies Religious Humanism 186f., 190 Religious Studies 6, 80, 199, 240, 354f., 357, 371f., 503 comparative study of religions 64, 68, 80, 217, 357, 504, 506f., 509f. history of religions 80, 94, 190, 202, 354, 357, 363, 371, 514

ren dao (human way) 225 renaissance 46, 344, 350, 375, 493 Renan, Ernest 240, 271, 355 renewal 21, 144, 219, 253, 384, 391, 493 biological renewal 102 inner renewal 369 religious renewal 113, 221, 360, 373, 427, 451 spiritual renewal 102 See also reform, tajdīd, mujaddid, xin min Reshad, Sultan Mehmet 334 Restoration Shintoists 237 Reuchlin, John 177 revelation 19, 108, 129f., 133, 136, 140, 202, 276, 331, 350, 363, 415, 420, 498 Christian revelation 182, 201 divine revelation 45, 49f., 351, 417, 420f., 441, 452, 456 general revelation 417 religions of revelation 193 sharʿ 129f., 133, 136, 140 special revelation 417, 441 revolution 64, 192, 209, 257f., 263, 298, 344, 373, 419, 516 Counterrevolutionary 344 French Revolution 82, 149, 177, 343n13, 346 industrial revolution 93, 276 Iran’s Constitutional Revolution 218, 305 Meiji Revolution 216, 237 religious revolution 192, 421 Young Turk Revolution 115, 165, 516 See also revolt revolt 102, 115f., 142, 252n, 270, 340. See also revolution, Sharīf Ḥusayn Ṛg-Veda 23, 179, 207, 279, 288n47, 290n52, 417, 421f., 503f. riba (usury) 262 Riḍā, Muḥammad Rashīd 17, 111f., 117, 121, 127, 143, 152n38, 217–219, 293–298, 430, 435, 446 Riḍwī, Sayyid Naṣīr al-Dīn 432 Rig-Veda, Rigveda. See Ṛg-Veda riḥla fī ṭalab al-ʿilm (journey in pursuit of knowledge) 163 Rinzai University. See university Rinzai Zen 241, 400

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ritual 16, 45, 66, 68, 80, 94, 102, 113, 149, 158, 173, 182, 194, 231, 235, 277, 279, 282n30, 284n40, 288, 316, 326, 338, 373, 416, 422–424, 475 Riyahi, Hurr ibn Yazīd 319 Rnying ma 55 Roem, M. 253 Roerich, George 55 Roman Catholicism. See Catholicism Roman-Semitic culture 195 Romantic poet 503f. Rome 105, 182, 248, 313, 318f., 321, 357, 351 Roosevelt, Theodore 409 Rosicrucianism 172 Rosny, Léon de 248 Rothschild, Baron de 341 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 192, 219, 270, 272, 309 Roy, Rammohun 275, 277, 280 Royal Thai family 63 Rozabal 432 Ṛṣis 422, 424 Rückert, Friedrich 354 Rudra 207 rūḥ (soul, spirit) 106, 141 rūḥ allāh. See Jesus rujia. See Confucianism Rumi 101 Russell, Bertrand 33, 37–39 Russia 54, 105, 221, 247, 259, 323, 353, 374, 379, 434, 489, 496f. Russian Empire 340 Russian Jews 339, 341, 343f., 489, 493, 501 Russian nationalism 344 Russian revolution 58n7, 516 Russo-Japanese War 378, 402, 405n13, 414 Rūznāme 309 al-sāʿa (the Last Hour) 427f., 431, 436 Sachi 207 Safavid Empire 325f., 332n sahabat 256 saints 92, 106, 177f. Catholic saints 90, 181, 183 Indian saints 108f., 416, 424n27 Sufi saints 113f., 122n33, 432, 453n24 sainthood 113, 296, 302 Salafi movement 127 Salafism 144

Salāḥ al-Dīn 458 Salem 179 salons 175 salsabīl (river of paradise) 454 Samana 72, 509 Samanhudi, Haji 249 Samarra 306 Sāṃkhya school 422 samun (Our Culture) 384, 386f. Sanatkumâra 81 Sankrityayan, Rahul 55 sannyāsī (renunciant) 278. See also Sanyási Sanskrit 55, 199, 275, 277–279, 282f., 393, 415, 419n10, 423f., 509 Sanskrit literature and texts 199, 273, 276f., 279f., 282n31, 291n57, 415, 421n13, 424n29, 433, 503 Sanskrit manuscripts 55 Sanskrit poetics 56 Sanskrit studies 31n3 Sanskrit tradition 280, 416 Sanskritists 279, 415f., 419n10, 504 Sanyási 206. See also sannyāsī Sarekat Dagang Islam/Islamic Trade Association (SDI) 249f. Sarekat Islam/Islamic Association (SI)  249–252, 254f. Ṣarrūf, Yaʿqūb 149, 464 sarwar-i kāʾinat (lord of all truths) 457 Sasaniks 483 Sástras 211, 277 Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa 290f. Saudi Arabia 122n31, 298. See also Najd, Arabia saviour 118, 360, 423, 425 Saviour of Mankind 211, 422 Savitṛ 421 Sayyid Aḥmad Barelwī 429 Sayyid Muḥammad ʿAlī 445 scepticism 47, 274, 418, 501 Schelling, Friedrich 504 Schopenhauer, Arthur 107, 192 Schroeder, Leopold von 434 Schubert, Franz 504 science 14, 18f., 47, 68, 78f., 85, 93f., 99–102, 160, 178, 184f., 295f., 300f., 351f., 357, 364, 388f., 485, 498f. age of science 87, 95, 115, 295 Christian Science 472

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Index empirical science 13, 24, 108, 296 institutions of science 15, 123n37, 364, 470f. modern science 17, 19n10, 38, 57, 59, 62, 65, 67f., 78f., 85f., 102, 104, 126, 130, 149, 181, 194, 211, 215, 281, 293, 295f., 300, 369f., 371, 374, 498, 505 natural science 19, 82, 92, 100, 123n37, 125–129, 131–134, 154n51, 192, 194, 293, 295–300, 354n1, 374, 380n5, 419n10, 466, 505 occult science 172, 175f., 179f. practical science 162, 166f. rational science 129n, 134 religion of science 58, 179, 199, 419n10, 505f. science (fann al-ṭabīʿiyyāt) 132 science (ʿilm) 128, 131, 134, 162, 295 science (kexue) 22f. science and philosophy 34, 44, 47, 81, 108, 181, 477 science and religion 18f., 23f., 34, 44, 47, 58f., 61f., 78f., 82, 85, 94f., 99, 107f., 132, 179, 183, 187n2, 248, 295–97, 301f., 364, 371, 477, 492 Science of Judaism 359n20, 487f., 493, 499, 502 Science of Language 419n10, 507f. Science of Religion 82, 356, 504, 507f., 510, 514 scientific discoveries, progress 16, 19, 44, 78, 93–95, 98, 123n37, 126, 160, 164, 281 scientific education 470f. scientific ideology 34, 355, 479, 485 scientific reasoning, methods 19, 24, 31, 47, 57, 59f., 62, 67f., 78f., 107f., 169, 192, 354f., 370f., 483, 497 scientific spirit 221 scientific theories 19, 38, 172, 345, 479 scientists 60f., 79, 85, 103f., 108, 128, 165, 175, 325, 354n1, 357, 362, 459n31, 485 social sciences 146 theoretical sciences 166f. truth of science 24 Western science 31, 56, 65, 67, 78, 128, 161f., 164, 300 See also knowledge, reason Scientific Society 93, 463 Scotch Mission College 14n, 267

Scottish lodge 463. See also Masonry scripture 18f., 36, 60, 279, 332, 350 Buddhist scriptures 66, 195, 393, 473 Christian scripture 204, 514, 516 Hebrew scriptures 205 Hindu scriptures 57, 66, 204 holy scriptures 36, 67, 94, 150, 276, 349f. people of the scripture 300 Secret Doctrine 172, 472 secularity 217, 225, 240, 269, 294n4, 345, 377 secular culture 340 secular education 17, 131, 329, 373, 468, 517 secular knowledge 19, 82, 84 secular intellectuals 144, 443 secularisation 44, 80, 261n, 327n5 secularism 370, 372, 375 sei (politics) 242 Seidenstücker, Karl 187f. seigi (justice) 394 seishin kai (spiritual world) 406 Semitism, spiritual 191 Sen, Keshub Chunder 275, 415 Seoul 50n20, 378, 382n11 Septuagint 354 Serampore 274 sermon 68, 121, 318f., 321 Sermon on the Mount 83 Shāhzāda Nabī (the king’s son and prophet)  432 Shaivism 278 Shakk 93 Shaku Sōen 241, 400–405, 407n16, 409–411 Shakyamuni. See Buddha Shamans 23, 338, 509 Shanghai 21, 230 shangwu 21 Shankara 77 sharia, sharīʿa (religion, law, tradition). See Islam Sharīf Ḥusayn 115 sharʿ (revelation) 129f., 133, 136, 140 shayṭān (devil) 439 shen dao (Divine way) 225 Shia 145, 218, 326, 331n8, 332n, 336n25, 428, 432, 444, 446 Shiʿi holy sites 306 Shiʿi theology 308

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Shia (cont.) Shiʿi laws 448 Shiʿi messianism 145, 444 Shiʿi mythology 326 Shiʿi state concept 311 Twelver Shia 326, 338 Shibboleth 112 Shikoku 402 Shimaji Mokurai 216, 218f., 237–241, 243n15, 246n20, 248, 401 shin bukkyō (New Buddhism) 401 Shintō, kami 16, 215f., 237–240, 244n17, 246, 373, 400, 407–409 shinzoku nitai 240 Shīrāzī, Mīrzā Moḥammad Ḥasan 306 shitsu-u busshō 395, 397 shiye (industry) 21 shruti (revealed truth) 77 shū (sect) 244f. shūkyō (religion) 246, 407, 410n22 Shu[sun] Tong 385 Shumayyil, Shiblī 128, 136n18 shūrā (consultation) 294, 445 shūshi (religion) 245–247 shūyō (minds) 413 Sialkot 267 Siam, kingdom of 14, 17, 63–71, 73, 75, 521 Siamese intelligentsia 68 Sichuan 54 Sign of Jonah (Matthew 12:39f.) 431 Siddharta Gautama. See Buddha Sikhism 56, 427, 429 Sikkim 190 Simon, Jules 350f. Simon, Leon 344 Sind 272 Sinhala 474 Sirhindī, Shaykh Aḥmad 105 siyāsa (politics, leadership) 454 skepticism. See scepticism Skivra 339 slavery 90f., 103, 262f., 271, 317–323, 337, 343–348, 352f., 450–452 Smiles, Samuel 149f. socialism 217, 252f., 256, 359, 494 Social Darwinism. See Darwin Société des Missions Étrangères (French Foreign Mission) 64

society 22f., 26, 42–45, 103f., 129, 150, 157, 177, 186, 215f., 219–221, 233, 251, 256–264, 269, 272f., 277, 279–282, 297, 311–313, 383–387, 400f., 403f., 414, 416, 453, 461, 463, 465–468, 496 social criticism 466f. social democracy 258 social history 97, 494 social institutions 259, 378, 380n5, 406 social movements 257, 518f. social order 217, 271, 370, 519 social organization, structure 103, 269, 310 social position 15f., 20, 63, 126 social propaganda 255 social reality 80, 239 social reform 215f., 275–278, 374, 415f., 465 social reformers 273, 277, 280f., 284n40 social sciences 146, 148, 494 social theories 257, 378 socialism 102, 218, 252, 254–264, 305, 393 Society for Islamic Welfare 126f. Society for the Promotion of the Science of Judaism 488 Society of Psychical Research 172, 174 Socrates 451 Solo 249 Solomon 180, 451 Somnambulist 177f. soortnaam (association) 257 Sōtō Zen 241, 405n14 Sŏu hakhoe (West[-Korean] Friends’ Scholarly Association) 378 soul 32, 77, 87, 91f., 95f., 102, 106, 134f., 153, 157f., 208–211, 264, 300f., 303, 313n20, 319f., 335, 346f., 353, 363, 397n14, 422, 425, 431, 440, 449f., 452–455, 480, 501, 505f., 510 South Africa 265, 523 South Asia 93, 192n18, 266, 268, 294, 369, 374, 376, 401, 431f. Southeast Asia 218, 294, 369 South Manchuria Railway (SMR) 402f. Spain 98, 176, 350n31, 459 spirit 79, 86, 141, 151, 158f., 164n20, 207–11, 270–2, 413f., 425

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Index Holy Spirit 203 human spirit 422, 451, 499 national spirit 223, 301, 352, 378, 382, 403n10, 494f., 497f., 500–2, 519f. spirit of God 301, 452–5, 508, 525 spirit of the Buddha 434 spirit, evil 73 spiritism 175 (see also under spirituality, spiritualism) spirits 66, 75, 154, 175, 178, 230f., 451, 472 spirituality 65, 77, 86f., 99, 102f., 106–108, 178, 185f., 191, 221, 224, 263f., 270–2, 343f., 352, 372, 374–376, 378, 382, 424f., 440, 452–4, 455, 483, 497–502, 516f., 524f. spiritual and material perfections 264, 460 spiritual dimensions 449 spiritual diseases 297, 302 spiritual experience 106, 180 spiritual freedom 343 spiritual leader 49f., 52f., 379, 455 spiritual life 106f., 497, 502, 516, 524f. spiritual power 51, 221, 227, 356, 358, 454, 501, 517, 520, 525 spiritual reform 357f., 382, 452 spiritual resistance 46 spiritual sorrow 343 spiritual superiority 68, 447 spiritual world 65, 406f., 493 spiritualism 175, 472f. Sri Lanka. See Ceylon Srinagar 432, 435f., 441 St. Petersburg 339 Staatsocialisme 259 state 15, 46, 95f., 116, 126, 129, 157, 161, 169, 215–217, 228, 272f., 356, 358f., 361f., 365, 457, 461, 491, 502, 512, 518n11 Asian states 219f. Chinese state 221, 228f., 232f., 385 colonial state 221, 223 German state 362, 487, 489, 500–502 Islamic state 253, 261f., 268, 270–273, 308–11, 315f., 322 Japanese state 239f., 411n24 Jewish state 344, 500–502 Korean state 378f. Muslim state 116, 157, 217, 260, 270–273

nation-state 6, 116, 131, 240, 245, 270f., 356, 358, 383, 400, 403, 407n17, 411n24, 487, 489, 498, 491, 495 Ottoman state 112–4, 116, 121, 123, 129, 161, 169, 337 state bureaucracy 15f., 27n9, 113, 126, 518n11 state church 193f., 225, 513 state officials 63, 238, 247, 410, 446 state religion 22, 216, 224, 239, 361f., 364, 379, 400, 509 state schools and education 15, 126, 161, 262, 362 state socialism 258–262 Western states 15, 21, 163, 168, 221f., 227, 228–30, 270 See also dynasty, nation Stuttgart 186f., 190 Śūdras 276, 283f., 287, 290–292, 423n23 Sufism 19, 95n9, 97f., 105–107, 109, 112–116, 121f., 129, 144, 326, 332n, 432 Sufi orders (ṭarīqa, ṭuruq) 113f., 125f., 129, 325f., 446 Sufi saints 113, 122n33, 453n Suharto 254f. Sui dynasty 26 Sukarno 217, 251, 253, 255 Sumatra West Sumatra 253 Sumangala, Hikkaduve 474–479 Sunna 115, 117, 152n38, 252, 297, 428 Sunni 111, 120n22, 146, 308, 316, 326, 328f., 335f., 427–430, 446, 464 sunnat Allāh (Divine habits) 152n38, 297 superiority 82, 153, 164, 170f., 203 military superiority 75, 169 religious or spiritual superiority 48, 68, 82, 216, 225, 289, 357, 390, 412, 427, 436, 447 superiority of a people 211, 283 technical superiority 5, 75, 447 Western superiority 68, 161, 204, 447 supernatural 66, 73n, 172, 178, 225, 288n48, 483, 505 superstition 21, 34, 37, 39, 66, 68, 73n, 82, 113, 174, 178–180, 183, 210, 215f., 219, 223, 247, 280, 302, 330, 373, 437, 466, 475, 482, 506

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sura. See Quran Surabaya 252 Sūrya 421 Susanoo no mikoto 246 Sutomo 250 Sutras 23, 36n, 74, 292, 406, 422n16 Suzuki Daisetsu (D.T. Suzuki) 241, 403, 405n15 Svāyaṃbhuva, King 284 Switzerland 195, 393, 519n19 Syed Mir Hassan 267 Symanzick, Lisbeth 187 Syria 122, 294, 457f., 461, 463, 466, 468–470 Taedonggyo. See Taejonggyo Taejonggyo 51, 379, 381 ṭāʿifa (community) 449 Taft, William Howard 409 Tagore, Debendranāth 275 Tagore, Rabindranath 32, 190, 374 al-Ṭaḥṭāwī, Rifāʿa 309 Taibi Keishun (Shaku) 402 Taiping: Taiping Movement 373 Taiping rebellion 227n17 Taixu 30, 32 tajdīd (renewal) 144 Takahashi Toru 50, 52 Takakusu Junjirō 392, 394n7 Ṭāleqānī, Āyatullāh Maḥmūd 307 talfīq 113 Tang dynasty 27f., 31, 235 Tang Yongtong 31 Tanẓīmāt reforms 164, 327n5, 333n13, 443. See also under Ottoman Empire taqaddum (progress) 302 taqiyya (concealment) 446 taqlīd (imitation, adherence) 112f., 115, 118n10, 148, 154, 320 taraqqī (progress) 128, 296, 301n18 ṭarīqa. See Sufism tawḥīd (unity of God) 141, 146f., 153, 437, 440 tawḥīd. See also under Islam ta‌ʾwīl (interpretation) 129f., 157 technology 65, 68, 93f., 221, 378, 466 teetotalism 192–194, 372 Tehran 310, 445 Tel Aviv 342

telekinesis 172, 175 telepathy 175 teman-sahabat 256 Temperance 187 Tercan 334 terminology 18, 101, 105, 128, 221, 240, 312, 353 Testament, New and Old. See Bible Thai 63, 65, 67, 70 Thailand. See Siam Thammayut 66, 68 theism 416f., 423 Theistic Society 275 See also Brāhmo Samāj theology 15, 79f., 179, 181–183, 240f., 288n50, 354, 357, 362–364, 490, 492, 504 Anglican theology 197–205 Catholic theology 357 Christian theology 18 fulfillment theology 371 Islamic theology 19, 112, 126–9, 139n27, 141–148, 151n32, 153n43, 219, 297, 306, 308, 315n22 (see also under Islam) liberal theology 197 philosophical theology 99 Protestant theology 357, 490, 492f., 498 rational theology 98 reformist theology 141 theologians 16f., 128, 135n16, 152n38, 158n63, 201, 203, 252, 310, 369, 371, 422, 490, 493, 501, 512 theological concepts 513, 519n17 theology of religions 199, 202 theology, comparative 179, 202 Theosophy 56, 177, 180, 187f., 372, 472f. Theosophical Society 472–476 Therapeutists 180 Theravāda monastic community 401 Theravāda Buddhism 58n8, 66f. theurgy 181, 184 Thiers, Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe 247 Thimme, Friedrich 490 Thiphakorawong, title of 63. See also Chaophraya Thiphakorawong Thomas, apostle 432 Three Articles of Instruction 237f., 243–245 Three Kingdoms 26 Tian Xingshu 227

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Index Tianjin incident 227 Ṭibb-i yūnānī (Greek Medicine) 431 Tibet 25, 54–56, 58, 60f., 189, 522 Tibetan dynastic period 55 Tibetan forces 54 Tibetan intellectuals 17, 55 Tibetan language 56, 393 Tibetan pilgrims 55 Tibetology 55 Tilak, B. G. 281 ting 408 Tjokroaminoto, Haji Omar Said 217, 249–255, 261–264 tobacco concessions 306 Tomlin, Jacob 65 Tonghak (movement) 40, 42, 49n16, 51, 379 Tongzhi era 227 Tönnies, Ferdinand 355 Torah 123, 449 torah 351. See also Bible trade 54f., 64, 125, 187n5, 227, 250, 276, 291n55, 352, 369, 373, 408, 496, 501f., 513 tradition 18, 27, 67, 73, 79, 94, 112, 119n15, 120n22, 123, 125f., 129, 140n30, 166, 173f., 198, 370f., 373, 376, 378, 390, 432f., 436, 438f., 447, 476, 500 Alevi tradition 336f. Buddhist tradition 31–33, 35, 61n12, 67, 240, 394, 404, 473 Christian tradition 200, 203–205, 219, 416, 436, 438, 477, 516f. Confucian tradition 380 Hindu tradition 199f., 203f., 275, 278, 280, 290n53, 415–417 Indian tradition 32, 80, 206n18, 219, 275, 284, 287n45, 289, 472 Islamic tradition 19, 113, 115–117, 130f., 144, 163, 217, 252, 272, 275, 295, 311, 324, 326, 429, 431, 436, 438, 444, 447 (see also hadith) Jewish tradition 200, 219, 340, 345 Korean tradition 382 medical tradition 431 oral tradition 441 Sufism tradition 112f. traditional education 40, 126f., 222f., 379, 473 traditionalism 125, 130f., 144, 336

Turkish tradition 329f., 337f. See also religion Trailokajñāna 58 trance 175 transcendence 18, 20, 147, 151, 172n, 240, 485, 494 transcendent consciousness 78 Treitschke, Heinrich von 487f., 490f., 499 Tripiṭaka (Traipidok) 66, 192n18 Tripoli 121n28, 125–127, 261, 293 Troelstra, P. J. 259 Troeltsch, Ernst 355, 490, 493f. Tsar 489 Tukārām 416f., 424 Tunis 374 Turayhi, Fakhr al-Dīn 318 Turkey 102, 170, 217, 261, 264, 299, 325, 329f., 334–338, 375, 462, 521 Turkish Hearth 334f. Turkish nationalists 217, 328f., 334n20 Turkish nationhood 217, 328f., 337 Turkish Republic 263n19, 266, 298, 328f., 334, 336 Turkish revolution 263 Turkish traditions, pre-Islamic 325f., 329f., 337 Turkish Unity 336 Turkish-Muslim nationalist movement 328f. See also Young Turks Twelver-Shia. See Shia 336n25, 338 tyranny 177, 183, 219, 305, 307–309, 312–314, 317f., 320, 323f., 439, 450, 455f. Uganda Scheme 341 Ukita Kazutami 47–49 Ukraine 172, 340 ulama (ʿulamāʾ, Muslim scholars) 94, 115, 306, 443, 451 Umayyad dynasty 319, 322, 326 ʿulūm (sciences). See ʿilm umma (community) 129, 253, 301, 316, 319–321, 323, 428, 439. See also milla ʿumrān. See civilisation 302 unbelief. See belief. See also atheism uniformity 495, 505 Unitarians 513 United States of America. See America

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unity 105, 128, 148, 180, 193f., 208f., 251, 254, 269–272, 294, 336, 344, 386, 388, 390, 399, 448–450, 454, 466, 470, 499f., 505f. divine unity 147, 153, 437, 450, 454 (see also tawḥīd) essential unity of things 86 Hindu-Muslim unity 265f. Muslim unity 264, 294 national unity 357f., 361, 495 political unity 44 racial unity 490, 495 religious unity 44f., 48, 53, 146, 224, 271, 294, 348f., 357, 362, 399, 497, 519 spiritual unity 103, 497 unity of Neo-Confucion scholarship 16 universalism 49, 83f., 86, 88, 147, 162, 207, 244, 283, 316, 329, 343, 348, 372, 386, 417, 435, 454, 466, 485, 491f., 494 universal concept 84, 164 universal existence 91f., 413 universal knowledge 98, 163 universal law 492 universal principles 80, 270, 394 universal religion 72, 358, 360, 372, 513–515, 525 universality 33, 66, 164, 403, 407n16, 420, 447, 520 universe 23, 33, 46, 85–92, 98, 100, 108, 128, 151, 182, 270, 296, 301, 393, 421–424, 438, 464 university 15f., 50n20, 197, 200, 247, 342, 363, 415, 472, 474 Aligarh University 93 Cambridge University 95, 198, 200, 267, 446 Kaiser Wilhelm University Strasbourg 393 Keiō University 401, 410n22 Ludwig Maximilian University München 268 Marburg University 487f. Rinzai University 404 University of Berlin 354, 487, 504 University of Göttingen 354 University of Halle 354 University of Oxford 31n3, 504 Upaniṣads 422–425 Upāsaka 189

ʿUrabi. See revolt urban middle class 274 Urdu 93, 95n11, 267, 435 Urga region 58 Uṣas 421 uṣūl (principles) 129, 141, 159 uṣūl al-fiqh (Islamic legal theory) 306 Utilitarians 273 utilitarianism 274, 277, 288n48, 292n60, 447 vac (vâch) 202–204 vaccination, anti-vaccinationism 194 vakvereniging (unions) 258 Vaikuṇṭha 424 Vaishnavism 278 Vaiśyas 276, 283f., 290–292, 423n23 Varanasi 279 varṇas 276f., 281, 284, 287, 289–292, 423n23 Varuṇa 422 Vatican 64, 176, 515 Veda 23, 81, 276–282, 284–286, 288f., 416, 422f. Vedanta 77, 81, 86f., 90, 208 Vegetarianism 186–195, 372 Vermont 472 verzamelnaam (association) 257 Vibhajja vadt 481. See also Buddhism Vidyáchárya 198, 204, 206–208, 211 Vidyodaya College 474, 478 Vie de Jesus 240 virtue 115, 134, 166, 193n19, 195n23, 209f., 234, 246, 322, 385f., 394f., 398, 400, 407n17, 437, 450, 457f., 482, 484f., 502 Vīryānanda 278 Vishnu 206n19, 416 Visuddhi Marga 483 Viṭhobā 416 Viṭṭhal. See Viṭhobā Vivekananda, Swami 14n, 19f., 77–81, 281 vivisection, anti-vivisectionism 194 volksleger (civil armies) 261 Vollrath, Hugo 187f. Voltaire 72n28, 447, 449 Wagner, Christian 186, 192 Wahhabism 113f., 117, 122 waijiao (foreign relations) 21f.

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Index Wang Yangming 380f., 389f. Warmbronn 186 Warsaw 340 waṭan (homeland) 126, 129, 134, 463 Watanabe Kaigyoku 392 wealth 75, 95, 105, 125, 157, 219, 243, 262, 282n31, 284, 312, 314, 339, 413, 427, 433n26, 461, 467 Weihaiwei 227 weishi (Vijñapti mātra) school 31f., 38 welfare 126, 186–188, 190, 192, 293, 370, 393, 398, 403, 448, 454, 509 wenmiao. See Confucianism West Sumatra. See Sumatra West, the 4, 7, 22, 43, 65, 68f., 102, 112, 116, 161, 190f., 196, 203f., 224f., 253, 262, 268, 295f., 300, 311, 323, 340, 352, 369, 374, 384, 391, 393f., 403, 405, 408, 450, 493, 513 anti-Western 377 non-Western 186, 472 Western aggression 7, 439, 465 Western categories, terms 32–35, 481 Western civilisation 34, 39, 164, 195n25, 221, 262, 390, 394f. Western countries, societies 15, 22, 64, 67, 115, 227, 229, 257, 261, 378, 493 Western culture 67, 121, 473, 477 Western expansion 377 Western governments, leaders 261, 392, 394f. Western imperialism 221, 372 Western intellectuals, authors 80, 128, 252f., 256, 264, 290n53, 326f., 475, 503 Western knowledge 19, 65, 68, 161, 241 Western languages 66 Western missionaries 67f. Western observers 31, 328 Western philosophy 37, 77, 96, 268 Western powers, states 21, 221–223, 239, 373, 392, 395, 461, 468 Western reasoning, thinking 30–34, 65, 115, 195, 239n5, 252f., 259, 268, 307, 309, 311, 377, 395, 476 Western religion, concept of 7, 373, 375, 384 Western spiritism 175 Western studies 222, 267n6, 401

Western superiority 68, 204, 221 Western universities 77 Western world 79 Western-educated 417 Western-oriented factions 377, 379 Westerner 58, 221, 227f., 233, 264, 299f., 325, 406, 408f. Westernisation 162 See also Europe Western Europe. See Europe wetenschap (knowledge) 259 White Minaret in Qadian 429 Wilhelm II, German Emperor 170, 186, 195n25, 489 Williams, Rowland 18f., 197–205 Wilson, Woodrow 392, 396, 409 wijsgeerige idealen (philosophical ideals)  257 witch 177, 179 woeker (usury) 262. See also riba women’s education. See education women’s emancipation. See emancipation World Exposition (Expo) 513 world history. See history World Missionary Conference 512, 515–517 World Parliament of Religions 80, 371, 402, 513, 519n15 world religions. See under religion World War I, First World War 58n8, 190, 217, 219, 265, 294, 298, 330, 334n18, 392, 394, 486, 489, 514 World Zionist Congress 514 World’s Student Christian Federation 513 Wu Pei 230 Wu Zhihui 34 xiaoshuo (fiction) 21 xiejiao (evil teaching) 223 xin min (renewing the people) 222 Xiong Shili 31 Xuande 62 Xunzi 27, 384–386 Yaḥyā. See John, the Prophet Yakut Turks 338 Yājūj wa Majūj. See Gog and Magog Yamaguchi 238f. Yang Wenhui 30–32

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yaqin, yaqīn (faith, certainty) 93, 130, 138. See also knowledge Yaroe 19n9, 41 Yathrib. See Medina yellow peril 195, 398 Yemen 169 Yezid 326, 335f. See also Yazīd, caliph Yi Hangno 377 Yi Pyŏnghŏn 382 Yi Sŭnghŭi 382 Yi Tonhwa 14n, 19f., 40–44, 47n9, 50n21 Yi Wanyong 379 yili (principle) 231 yin si (illicit cults) 22, 230 yin gui (illicit spirits) 231 yinsi (illicit temples) 223f., 235 Yogācāra 32 yoganiruttara tantras 60 Young Buddhists’ Association 402 Young Ottomans 164 Young Turks 115, 160, 164f., 294f., 302n20, 330, 334n20, 375, 516 Younghusband, Colonel Francis 54 Yuan dynasty 28, 231 Yuan Xian 387 Yudhiṣṭhira 283f. Yūḥannā. See John, the Baptist yugyogye. See under Confucianism Yunnan 54 yurim. See under Confucianism Yūz Āsaf 432f. See also Jesus, Buddha

Zaghlūl, Saʿd 143 ẓāhir, ẓawāhir (literal content) 129f. zakat (almsgiving) 262 Zaynab (Muhammad’s step-daughter) 321 Zen 241, 400f., 403, 405n14, 410–412 Zeng Guofan 227 Zeus Pater 503 Zhang Binglin 31 Zhang Jiao 26 Zhang Junmai 31 Zhao 385 zhenli (truth) 37 Zhenjiang incident 227 zhenru, tathātā (absolute thusness) 37 zhexue (philosophy) 35f. Zhong wai ribao (Universal Gazette) 21 Zhu Xi 231, 380, 388–391 Zhuangzi 24 Zion 339, 346, 353, 514 Zionism 339–345, 486, 488, 491 Zionist congress 341n10, 486, 488, 514 Zionist ideas 344 Zionist movement 339, 342, 344 Zionists 217, 339, 341, 489, 494 See also Israel zongjiao (religion) 21, 33, 35, 225 zongli (leading personnel) 229 Zoroastrianism 173, 188n10 Zoroaster 179 Zoroastrian 180, 310, 509 Zou 385

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