Will Sweetman

University of Otago, School of Social Sciences, Faculty Member

University of Otago, Religion, Faculty Member

Followers

524

Following

180

Public Views

Leslie Orr

Concordia University (Canada)

Johannes Bronkhorst

University of Lausanne

Saraju Rath

Universiteit Leiden

Kiyotaka Yoshimizu

Toyo Bunko

Madhulika Chebrol

University of Cambridge

Vasudha Narayanan

University of Florida

Timothy Lubin

Washington and Lee University

Jason Schwartz

Stanford University

McComas Taylor

The Australian National University

InterestsView All (10)

Uploads

Papers by Will Sweetman

Forgeries, Falsifications, Fictions, Fälschungen? Some Early Modern European “Vedas”

Entangled Religions, 2024

This article examines—and rejects—the idea that, in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth ... more This article examines—and rejects—the idea that, in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Europeans who sought to obtain copies of the Vedas were repeatedly duped by having other works (purporting to be Vedas) passed off on them. The focus is on a text entitled "The Essence of the Yajur Veda," produced by a Pietist missionary, Christoph Theodosius Walther (1699-1741), and a Brahmin identified only as Krishna, published in a German missionary periodical in 1740. This text is examined in the context of a series of similar works produced by Indian intellectuals with, or at the behest of, European missionaries and colonial officials in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Rather than seeing these works as fakes, it is argued here that they are better understood as the outcome of distinctive modes of composition, transmission, and translation of Indian religious literature emerging from the early modern encounter of Indian and European scholars.

Download

Missionaries and Orientalists

Oxford Bibliographies: Hinduism, 2021

The best accounts of Hindu religious beliefs and practices to reach Europe before 1800 came overw... more The best accounts of Hindu religious beliefs and practices to reach Europe before 1800 came overwhelmingly from the pens of missionaries. There are several reasons why this was so. Their missionary task obviously motivated them to attempt to understand Hindu religion even if they ultimately rejected it as a false religion. Beyond this, missionaries were more likely than other Europeans, such as travelers or colonial officials, to spend the bulk of their lives, often several decades, in India. They were more likely to be well-educated, to learn Indian languages, and, especially, to read Indian literature. Although many remained in European coastal enclaves, in the early period they were also much more likely than other Europeans to spend extended periods beyond the colonial frontier, living and working in the hinterland. They were also usually required to give an account of their activities to their superiors in Europe. Their letters and reports are also more likely than those produced by independent travelers (although not colonial officials) to have survived by being preserved in European archives. Although missionary scholarship has continued into the 20th century and even beyond, it was gradually eclipsed by colonial and later professional scholarship from the end of the 18th century. The emphasis here will be on works emerging from the earlier period. Scholarship on missionaries has, until quite recently, been very largely the domain of historians of mission, many of whom were missionaries themselves. This has begun to change as the value of missionary accounts have been more widely recognized, and there has been a welcome shift from the often frankly hagiographic character of earlier secondary scholarship.

Sisyphus and I: Or, Theologians I Have Known in Three Decades as Religionswissenschaftler

Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 2019

My work as a scholar of religion began in a Department of Religious Studies which had been the fi... more My work as a scholar of religion began in a Department of Religious Studies which had been the first in the United Kingdom not to be connected to Theology. I now teach in a Religion programme which has recently severed its institutional connection to Theology. However, for many of the intervening years in my three decades in the discipline I worked in contexts which combined theology with religious studies. My research began with reflection on the historical origin of the academic study of religion. This article reflects on the relationship between theology and religious studies as I have experienced it, and argues that it is crucial to maintain the distinction and to communicate it clearly to those outside of our discipline.

Reading Jesuit Readings of Hinduism

Jesuit Historiography Online, 2019

The Absent Vedas

Journal of the American Oriental Society, 2019

The Vedas were first described by a European author in a text dating from the 1580s which was sub... more The Vedas were first described by a European author in a text dating from the 1580s which was subsequently copied by other authors and appeared in translations in most of the major European languages in the course of the seventeenth century. It was not, however, until the 1730s that copies of the Vedas were first obtained by Europeans, even though Jesuit missionaries had been collecting Indian religious texts since the 1540s. I argue that the delay owes as much to the relative absence of the Vedas in India—and hence to the greater practical significance for missionaries of other genres of religious literature—than to reluctance on the part of Brahmin scholars to transmit their texts to Europeans.

Download

Rival Mission, Rival Science? Jesuits and Pietists in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century South India

Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2019

Two European missionary teams, one Catholic and the other Protestant, encountered each other in t... more Two European missionary teams, one Catholic and the other Protestant, encountered each other in the Tamil country in the first decade of the eighteenth century. They acted and thought that their goals were irreconcilable, even if the Protestants in Tranquebar admitted that the Catholic Jesuit proselytism in the region had been efficient as “preparatio evangelicae” for the Protestant mission. Jesuits and Pietists were not only rivals, they also collaborated, uneasily and unequally, in collecting, processing and disseminating knowledge. Missionary linguistic and medico-botanical expertise was considered an indispensable proselytizing tool, in addition to showcasing their “scientific” achievements, admired and envied in Europe. Both Pietists and Jesuits of this period were fighting the early Enlightenment atheists, while feeding them the materials from the missions. Both missionary groups were also victims of the Enlightenment historiography. Despite their theological differences, the two missions were far closer in their practice than either the missionaries themselves or their historians—mostly writing from the same denominational perspective—have been willing to acknowledge. In part this was because the Protestants, especially the founders of the mission, were reliant on both texts and converts produced by their Catholic rivals.

The Dravidian Idea in Missionary Accounts of South Indian Religion

Sekhar Bandyopadhyay and Aloka Parasher Sen, ed., Religion and Modernity in India. , 2016

Download

Empire and Mission: Protestant Beginnings in India and the “pious clause”

The historiography of the entanglement of mission and empire in India has often taken the inclusi... more The historiography of the entanglement of mission and empire in India has often taken the inclusion of the so-called “pious clause” in the East India Company’s 1813 charter to mark the end of a ban on missions in Company territories, and the beginning of a period of co-operation between church and company. This neglects the importance in this debate of the mission founded by German Lutherans in the Danish settlement of Tranquebar in south India in 1706. The mission received direct patronage from the Company for almost a full century before 1813, and was invoked by both sides in the debate over the pious clause. A work published anonymously in 1812, purporting to be a new translation of dialogues between the first missionaries in Tranquebar and their Hindu and Muslim interlocutors, is shown here to be a skilful and savage satire on the dialogues published by the first missionaries.

The Cessation of the Oracles: Authenticity and Authority in Jesuit Reports of Possession in South India

Anand Amaladass and Iñes G. Županov, ed., Intercultural Encounter and the Jesuit Mission in South Asia. Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation, 156–76., 2014

Although a familiar feature of South Asian religious practice, possession has been marginalized i... more Although a familiar feature of South Asian religious practice, possession has been marginalized in the writings of both the elite representatives of South Asian religions and, until recently, those who have studied them. Missionaries often paid more attention to popular religious practice than other early European observers, but missionary sources, especially the earlier sources, remain little-studied. This paper is based on reports of possession in Jesuit missionary sources written from South India in the early eighteenth century. It examines the use of such reports in debate between Christians and Hindus, between Protestants and Catholics, and between Christians and sceptics in Europe. Authenticity, how far possession was regarded as “real” and how far as mere play-acting for a superstitious and gullible audience, is shown to be a key issue and to have a bearing on the question of the legitimacy of the Jesuit mission itself.

Download

Retracing Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg's Path

Grappling Across Cultural Borders: Tranquebar—A Place in South India, 2014

Download

Colonialism all the way down? Religion and the secular in early modern writing on south India

Timothy Fitzgerald, ed., Religion and the Secular: Historical and Colonial Formations. London: Equinox., 2007

Download

Heathenism, idolatry and rational monotheism among the Hindus: Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg's Akkiyanam (1713) and other works addressed to Tamil Hindus

Andreas Gross, Y. Vincent Kumaradoss and Heike Liebau, ed., Halle and the Beginning of Protestant Christianity in India. 3 vols. Halle: Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle, 2006

Download

The Prehistory of Orientalism: Colonialism and the Textual Basis for Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg's Account of Hinduism

New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, 2004

Download

'Hinduism' and the History of 'Religion': Protestant Presuppositions in the Critique of the Concept of Hinduism

Method & Theory in The Study of Religion, 2003

The claim that Hinduism is not a religion, or not a single religion, is so often repeated that it... more The claim that Hinduism is not a religion, or not a single religion, is so often repeated that it might be considered an axiom of research into the religious beliefs and practices of the Hindus, were it not typically ignored immediately after having been stated. The arguments for this claim in the work of several representative scholars are examined in order to show that they depend, implicitly or explicitly, upon a notion of religion which is too much influenced by Christian conceptions of what a religion is, a conception which, if it has not already been discarded by scholars of religion, certainly ought to be. Even where such Christian models are explicitly disavowed, the claim that Hinduism is not a religion can be shown to depend upon a particular religious conception of the nature of the world and our possible knowledge of it, which scholars of religion cannot share.

Download

Unity and Plurality: Hinduism and the Religions of India in Early European Scholarship

Religion, 2001

Download

Books by Will Sweetman

Hinduism in India: Modern and Contemporary Movements (co-edited with Aditya Malik)

This book focuses on issues and changes that took place in Hinduism since about the end of the ei... more This book focuses on issues and changes that took place in Hinduism since about the end of the eighteenth century and in the post-colonial situation. The essays highlight central issues relating to Hinduism in the colonial and contemporary periods. Examining the relationship between Hinduism and India’s political systems thereafter, the papers highlight issues such as the relationship between Hinduism and economics and the position of Hindu women in arranged marriages in contemporary urban Indian society.

CONTENTS
Series Note
Introduction - Geoffrey A Oddie
The Emergence and Significance of the term “Hinduism” - Geoffrey A. Oddie
Hinduism and Modernity - Will Sweetman
Hinduism and Law - Timothy Lubin
Hinduism and Economics - Thomas Birtchnell
The Sacred in Modern Hindu Politics: Historical Processes Underlying Hinduism and Hindutva - Robert Eric Frykenberg
Media Hinduism - Ursula Rao
Modern Hindu Guru Movements - Michael James Spurr
Folk Hinduism: The Middle Ground? - Aditya Malik
Oral Traditions - Aditya Malik
Hinduism and Healing - Fabrizio Ferrari
Possession - Elizabeth Schömbucher
The Urban Hindu Arranged Marriage in Contemporary Indian Society - Reshmi Roy
Caste and Hinduism - Vinay Kumar Srivastava

Download

Hinduism: Critical Concepts in Religious Studies

Bibliotheca Malabarica: Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg’s Tamil Library

The Bibliotheca Malabarica is an annotated catalogue of Tamil manuscripts collected by the missio... more The Bibliotheca Malabarica is an annotated catalogue of Tamil manuscripts collected by the missionary Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg during his first two years in India (1706–1708). The third section of this catalogue, consisting of 119 entries covering works of Hindu and Jaina provenance, provides a fascinating insight into Tamil literary works in wide circulation on the eve of colonialism. The introduction assesses the character of Ziegenbalg’s library in the context of the sources from which he obtained manuscripts. Will Sweetman’s translation is then augmented by annotations which identify the works and comment on Ziegenbalg’s view of them. It identifies for the first time one text — the Tirikāla cakkaram — which was formative for Ziegenbalg’s view of Hinduism from his earliest letters from India to his magnum opus, the Genealogia der malabarischen Götter (1713). A concluding chapter considers other Tamil works mentioned in Ziegenbalg’s writings after 1708.

Download

Mapping Hinduism: ‘Hinduism’ and the study of Indian religions, 1600–1776

The process by which Hinduism came to be constituted as an object of European study is often take... more The process by which Hinduism came to be constituted as an object of European study is often taken to be the most egregious example of the invention of a religion through the reification of disparate traditions of belief and practice and the projection of theological preconceptions or imperial ambitions. In this work Will Sweetman offers both a theoretical reconsideration of the status of the term Hinduism and an alternative historical account of its emergence in the eighteenth century based on consideration of early Dutch, English, French and German sources, demonstrating that its scope owes more to Indian ideas of religious affiliation and the time of its emergence more to the evolving modern concept of India as a geographical entity than either does to theological preconceptions or imperial ambitions.

Download

Will Sweetman

Related Authors

Uploads

Papers by Will Sweetman

Books by Will Sweetman

Log In