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European Images of India Before the Rise of Orientalism in the Late Eighteenth Century

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European Images of India Before the Rise of Orientalism in the Late Eighteenth Century European Images of India before the Rise of Orientalism in the Late Eighteenth Century KYOKO MATSUKAWA A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of MPhil: The London School of Economics and Political Science. University of London. 2000. 1 UMI Number: U148238 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U148238 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 F 77SZ POLITICAL Abstract This thesis concerns Europeans’ encounters with India and its inhabitants, and the historical process of the former categorising the latter as the ‘Other’. The following questions are asked regarding this subject: what sort of cultural orders existed behind the encounters? How did both sides, Europeans and Indians, respond to each other, bound to their own cultures? How did the historical change in European cultural order bring about the categorisation of Indians and their practices and beliefs as ‘Hindus’ and ‘Hinduism? What sort of historical and cultural interaction between Europeans and Indians led to the rise of Orientalism in the late eighteenth century? To answer these questions, this paper traces a history of the Europeans’ encounters with India from the end of the fifteenth century, when the Portuguese ships led by Vasco da Gama arrived in the sub­ continent, to the middle of eighteenth century, the dawn of the rise of ‘modern Orientalism’. The span of these two and half a centuries can be marked by three phases according to transformations of the European images of India’: the early encounter between the Portuguese and Indians; the arrival of the Jesuits and the introduction of the Inquisition in India in the middle of the sixteenth century; and the rise of new European powers such as the English and the Dutch over the seventeenth century. Europeans gradually transformed the meaning of Indians from ‘fellow Christians’, whose formation was affected by the myth of the imagined Christian king in the East, to ‘Hindus’, who possess their own religious creed. By showing the process of Europeans’ categorisation of India as the land of ‘Hinduism’ towards the rise of Orientalism, this paper suggests that we should take historical and cultural background into account in order to clarify a interwoven process of one culture’s understanding of the other. 2 Ackno wle dge me nts While I wrote this thesis, I became indebted to many people. I am grateful to Dr. Masakazu Tanaka of Kyoto University for his advice and supports when I planned to come to study at the London School of Economics. My supervisors at Osaka University, Professors Junji Koizumi, Naoki Kasuga and Satoshi Nakagawa, gave some useful comments at the early stage of developing the ideas of this thesis. They also helped me cultivate anthropological knowledge when I was at the University. Professor Peter Loizos, who supervised me in the first year of the London School of Economics opened my eyes to a tradition of British social anthropology. During the stages of developing this thesis, I was especially indebted to Professor Chris Fuller, my supervisor. Without his insightful advice and continual encouragement, I could not have completed the thesis. Mr. Francis Radice helped me improve my writing skill in English. Ms. Juliet Lushington did proof reading for me. Last, but not the least, I would like to express my gratitude to my parents. Their financial support and encouragement enabled me to keep on going. 3 C ontents pages Acknowledgements 3 List of Illustrations, Maps 7 Chapter One. Introduction: Understanding ‘the Other’, Orientalism and India 8 1-1 Anthropological examination of Europeans’ understanding of India 10 1-2 Orientalism and its criticism 11 1-3 The application of Orientalism to the Indian case 12 1-4 What led to the ambivalent attitude of British Orientalism towards India? 15 1-5 Towards the era of the Enlightenment and the emergence of Orientalism 18 1-5-1 An increase in circulation of printed books 20 1-5-2 The rise of a concept of the diversity of human beings and ‘religions’ 21 1-6 Orientalism and India 22 Notes 26 Chapter Two. The Encounter of the Portuguese and ‘Christians’ 27 2-1 The ancient and medieval view of India’ 29 2-2 The Portuguese body of knowledge about India’ and Indians’ before Vasco da Gama’s arrival in India 31 2-2-1 Christians and Muslims: The voyage o f Vasco da Gama traversing the Indian Ocean in 1497-98 31 2-2-2 Encounter with Indian ‘Christians’? 37 4 2-3 The Portuguese understanding of Indians in the writing of Duarte Barbosa 43 2-4 Concluding remarks 46 Notes 47 Chapter Three. The Portuguese Building ofEstado da India, the Catholic Missionaries' Attempts at Conversion and Their Image of ‘Hindus' 4 8 3-1 The image of Indians from the perspective of administration 52 3-1-1 The Charter of Local Usages 54 3-1-2 Inter-racial marriage between the Portuguese and local women 57 3-2 Against Heretical Gods: From the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition to the Goa Inquisition 60 3-2-1 The Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition 60 3-2-2 The Beginning of the Goa Inquisition 65 3-3 The Attitudes of the Jesuits towards Hindus 69 3-3-1 The establishment of the Jesuits and the embarkation on missionary endeavours to the East 71 3-3-2 The Jesuits' attitudes towards Hindus and Hinduism 72 3-3-2-a Francis Xavier: Total antipathy for Hinduism 73 3-3-2-b Jacobo Fenicio: The writer of the manuals for missionaries in India about Hindu customs, the fervent observer 76 3-3-2-c Roberto de Nobili: The transformation of the concept of ‘Hinduism’ from a mere heretical religion to a religion with theology 80 3-4 Concluding remarks 86 Notes 88 5 Chapter Four. The Decline of the Portuguese Empire and the British and Dutch Successors: Continuity and Change in the Images of India’ and ‘Hinduism’ 90 4-1 The decline of the Portuguese Empire and the rise of the English and Dutch: Mercantilism and the concept of ‘Hindus’ and ‘Hinduism’ 98 4-1-1 Ralph Fitch: A vague picture of 'Hindus'from the eyes o f one ‘First of English men in India’ 100 4-1-2 John Huyghen van Linschoten: Transition towards a more concrete idea about ‘Hindus’ and ‘Hinduism’ 102 4-2 The Rise of ‘Hinduism’ as a Systematic Body of Knowledge 107 4-2-1 ‘India’ and ‘Hindus’ and the Mughal Empire: Sir Thomas Roe and Edward Terry 107 4-2-2 Philippus Baldaeus: ‘Hinduism’ as a systematic body of knowledge 112 4-3 Towards the emergence of British Orientalism in India: circulation of books and evolutionary theory on human diversity 117 4-3-1 The rise in circulation of books and the image of ‘India’ strengthened 118 4-3-1-a The early development of the image of India’, ‘Hindus’ and ‘Hinduism’ through printed books in Europe 118 4-3-1-b Travel writings compiled by Hakluyt and Purchas 121 4-3-2 The recognition of plural religions and the transition from ‘Religious History ’ to ‘Natural History ’ 126 4-4 Concluding remarks 132 Notes 134 Chapter Five. Conclusion 135 Bibliography 141 6 List of Illustrations pages 1. Picture of St. Francis Xavier in the museum of Cathedral of St. Thomas, Mylapore 51 Maps a. The map of the route taken by Vasco da Gama, 1497-1498 35 b. India, circa 1600 101 7 Chapter One Introduction: Understanding ‘the Other’, Orientalism and India This thesis is an attempt to shed light on our way of dealing with ‘the Other’, and it tries to understand the issue from an anthropological point of view. Probably, as a starting point, we should consider ‘the Other’ as a social category. In our life we constantly face the need of differentiating ourselves, ‘Us’ from other people. Under certain labels such as ‘British’ and ‘Japanese’ we are able to categorise people and those who belong to the same group are considered as ‘Us’. But in reality things are more complicated. Can people who hold British passports be just called the British? Does a person of British nationality who is of Indian origin describe him/herself as British? Even in Japan, which is said to be a more homogenised country, there are some people who cannot call themselves Japanese. Many of those whose origin is Korea were born in Japan and speak Japanese. Their background is almost the same as other Japanese. But they are not allowed to have full Japanese citizenship. The present author is Japanese and now in Britain, and therefore took these two examples. But in the modern world, in which people move widely and become a ‘diaspora’, we can find many cases of people who do not fit certain categories. Then do we stop differentiating ourselves from ‘the Other’? No, we do not. The important thing is that although categories are not absolute as we found in cases of nationalities, we always differentiate ‘the Other’ from ourselves by relying on those categories in order to define ourselves. In this sense, to make a distinction between ourselves and ‘the Other’ is related to being aware of who we are.
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