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Enabling Encounters: The Case of Nilakanth-Nehemiah Goreh, Brahmin Convert Richard Fox Young

n the preface of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall ous evidence. First, at the high end, the Indian corollary to an IDown: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Colli- “ivory tower” intellectual, I adduce Vitthal Shastri, a sion of Two Cultures, author Anne Fadiman, a self-described who taught at the Benares “cultural broker,” sets forth her reasons for writing the book. I College, which had been established with British patronage in find them more broadly relevant than she perhaps anticipated. the last decade of the eighteenth century. The missionaries, he They are intriguingly descriptive of the creative possibilities explained, “mistake our silence. When a reply which we think awaiting people who situate themselves between cultures, soci- nonsense, or not applicable, is offered to us, we think that to retire eties, and religions: “I have always felt that the action most worth silently and civilly from such useless discussion is more merito- watching is not at the center of things but where the edges meet. rious than to continue it. But our silence is not a sign of our . . . There are interesting frictions and incongruities in these admission of defeat, which the Missionaries think to be so.”3 places, and often, if you stand at the point of tangency, you can I shall return to Vitthal Shastri later, for the most interesting see both sides better than if you were in the middle of either cross-cultural intellectual activity taking place in Benares in- one.”1 The mission history of nineteenth-century , indisput- volved the Sanskrit College. For a sense of what was happening ably full of frictions and incongruities, suggests exactly that— in the more public spheres of Benares, however, I turn to standing at the point of tangency between and Chris- Pratapnarayan (1856–94), the editor of a local Hindi tianity could be transformative and sometimes was. One indi- periodical. In an essay entitled “The Useless Efforts of the Mis- vidual for whom this was true was the now out-of-vogue Indian sionaries,” Pratapnarayan tells of having silenced a missionary Christian theologian Nilakanth-Nehemiah Goreh (1825–85) of by challenging him to compare the Bible with the . Benares (more commonly or Kasi), whose conversion Chagrined at having his ignorance of the sacred text exposed, the urges us, even at this distance in time, to rethink where the edges missionary beat a hurried retreat. What makes the anecdote between Hinduism and Christianity might actually lie. especially noteworthy is that Pratapnarayan claims to be an admirer of Jesus, whose teachings he praises as “nectar for the On the Edges in Benares soul of man.”4 Like Vitthal Shastri, there may have been other moderates In mid-nineteenth century Benares, which was far from the who experienced more than a mere flicker of “active theoretical metropolitan centers of colonial India where Christian mission- interest” in Christianity, even though the evidence is yet to be ary endeavors had by this time attained a public notoriety, the found that would attest to it; likewise, there may have been other edges between Hinduism and Christianity were hardly notice- activists like Pratapnarayan Mishra who responded to “the able. One census put the number of Christians in the city at 390, foreign challenge,” even though a single instance of intervention most of them orphans, mestizo drummers of the East India only underscores how courteous most people were, most of the Company regiments, and outsiders from elsewhere in India— time. Relations with the missionaries were rarely adversarial; the even though by this time missionaries from the London Mission- worst the missionaries complained of was the occasional verbal ary Society, Church Missionary Society (CMS), and Baptist Mis- taunt or well-aimed brickbat from Hindu hecklers and rabble- sionary Society were active in the city. For a sample of the Good rousers, who were few. In Benares, a countervailing force for the News they proclaimed, consider a tract from the archives of defense of Hinduism never emerged, the likes of which one finds Princeton Theological Seminary, printed by the Presbyterians in around this time in the metropolitan centers of colonial India. It for distribution in Benares: “Beloved friends! Reflect seems all the more noteworthy, therefore, that when resistance to on this, that all people deserve to suffer in hell, for all have sinned Christianity began to manifest itself in the mid-1840s, it was a and provoked God’s wrath.” A bleak proclamation indeed! John Maratha youth, a Chitpavan Brahmin by the name of Nilakanth 3:16, the classic escape clause for substitutionary-atonement Goreh, barely nineteen years old, and from a backwater princely theology, comes next, followed by the Ten Commandments, lest state in Bundelkhand, acting alone, who took the lead. Nilakanth anyone mistake the Christian (moral order, religion) for did so by taking to the ghats, chowks, and bazaars where William an easy way out. And then a gratuitous slap on the face of Hindu Smith (1806–75) of the CMS was sure to be found, eager to talk up Benares, gloved in the cadences of Sanskrit: “Fools who afflict the Gospel. themselves with the pains of asceticism, who worship idols of When Nilakanth took to the Benares streets to confront clay, metal, and wood, cannot attain salvation.” missionary Smith, it was not only because Smith’s no-other-way- When the missionaries presented Christianity in this man- than-faith-in-Christ-the--of-God Hindustani preaching style ner, it comes as no surprise that there was “no sign of active irked him greatly. To Nilakanth, Benares was under spiritual theoretical interest” from the learned communities of Benares, or siege, not by ordinary mortals but by the same destabilizing that representatives of Sanskritic Hinduism, the , were forces lurking in the cosmos that were always undermining cool toward it and made “no attempt to . . . enter into a ‘dia- dharma. Nilakanth articulated this perspective on Christianity in logue.’”2 This was certainly so; still, one wonders why. Fortu- the idiom of antiquity, drawing on stories about fraudulent nately, we have from Benares a range of helpful contemporane- who propagate fraudulent religions— and Bud- dhism are generally implied—by propounding fraudulent scrip- Richard Fox Young is the Timby Associate Professor of the History of Religions, tures to deceive the witless and hapless and thereby establish Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey. adharma (moral disorder, religious anarchy). Missionary Smith

14 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 29, No. 1 well knew the biblical corollary, for he spoke of equipping philosophical systems), also in Hindi, dating to 1860.9 Ample himself with the “full armor of God” before going out to the scope is afforded by these three texts for a diachronic view over streets: “[O]ur struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, a twenty-year period, most of which transpired in Benares, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic where Nilakanth served the CMS as a catechist and appropriated powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of the freedom to individuate himself and assert his identity, often evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12). In short, a colossal— in opposition to the one missionary Smith envisioned for him. probably overdramatized—confrontation was in the making. Even in these early years Nilakanth came into contact with other European Christians who broadened the horizons of his Saboteur or Seeker? emerging self-identity. Before turning to those individuals, it must be emphasized that the early postconversion Nilakanth It may seem counterintuitive, but Nilakanth the saboteur was was virtually the mirror image of missionary Smith, who, to actually a seeker, and so the denouement of his confrontation reinforce his new Christian’s wavering commitments, had with missionary Smith need not be delayed by withholding the Nilakanth out on the thoroughfares of Benares in no time, fact that Nilakanth eventually apostatized and converted to proclaiming the no-other-way-than-faith-in-Christ-the-avatar-of- Christianity, receiving at baptism the name “Nehemiah.” How- God message that had irked him so much initially. For an ever, once we take into account certain predictors of a future individual almost pathologically indecisive, the routine and conversion experience, the hunch seems valid enough that events rigor of CMS discipleship was genuinely reinforcing. The dark would take this course. The ties of Nilakanth’s household to the side, however, was that Nilakanth was plagued to his very prestige of declining princely families in rural Bundelkhand, deathbed by an unshakable regret that his conversion had not Nilakanth’s ties to an overprotective father at whose feet he been like the apostle Paul’s, which is to say, sudden, ecstatic, precociously mastered Sanskrit, his ties to a tyrannical uncle so mystical, and once-for-all, according to the conventionalized orthodox that Nilakanth could not mingle with students of the account of it that, inspired by the Book of Acts, dominated in Sanskrit College, where the action most worth watching in Evangelical circles. As a lad in Yorkshire, missionary Smith had Benares was then occurring—all these factors indicate an iden- experienced a conversion of that very kind. tity tightly bounded by family and community. Why exactly the Evangelical idiom of metanoia resonated so Obviously, Nilakanth might never have transcended such resoundingly with Nilakanth remains unclear, because the Ver- an identity had missionary Smith not gotten in the way, offering dict, his preconversion treatise on Hinduism and Christianity, unsolicited critiques of other peoples’ religion and envisioning talks of sin only abstractly as a problem of theodicy. But resonate for them a new identity grounded in a different reality, which it did, and the reason perhaps had to do with fear, the kind of fear necessarily placed the Christian dharma in tension with the that might have been instilled in him by the same bleak message Hindu dharma. In that tension, however, Nilakanth became more that was conveyed by the Presbyterian tract mentioned earlier; keenly aware that he could change his mind about life’s funda- later on, Nilakanth would write, “It was the doctrine of everlast- mentals, that his identity need not be communally determined, ing punishment which shook my soul from the very bottom”10— and that he could choose a path for himself by himself. Mission- and, very probably, spurred him into taking the step he had long ary Smith did what missionaries do: he communicated choice.5 delayed. Once he took that step, the role of true-to-form Christian And in the exercise of choice that missionary Smith enthusiasti- convert that he assumed was already being scripted for him by cally encouraged, Nilakanth discovered the possibility of an missionary Smith, whose biography of him,11 fresh off the press individuated self, a possibility that Europe enhanced—inadvert- almost before the waters of baptism had dried, plays upon the ently—by overrunning India. etymological meaning of the common synonym for a Brahmin— Since in Nilakanth’s case it can be said that conversion was dwij or twice-born (i.e., a Brahmin who has undergone the also apostasy, a space on the edges between Hinduism and Christianity had been opened up by missionary Smith where Nilakanth could step back from both religions, the better to see The early postconversion them more clearly than if he had stood in the middle of either one. What Nilakanth saw at the point of tangency between Hinduism Nilakanth was virtually and Christianity were frictions and incongruities that would the mirror image of keep him preoccupied for many years. His conversion was not sudden but gradual, of the kind that involves cognitive issues, so missionary Smith. for now I simply note that his transition to the identity mission- ary Smith envisioned for him was agonistic, disorienting, and frightfully wrenching. sacred-thread initiation ritual)—to signify that Nilakanth had Naturally, the experience of Nilakanth the apostate/convert experienced a spiritual rebirth that conformed to the idealized will remain inaccessible. Fortunately, however, one can recon- Evangelical norm. Nilakanth, who anyway was learning to be a struct from his various writings what Christianity looked like to Christian by imitating the only available model, took to his role him as a Hindu, and—conversely—what Hinduism looked like with avidity. That is why the section on Christianity in his first to him as a Christian. That corpus is essentially threefold: first, piece of postconversion writing, the Inquiry, couches itself in the the preconversion Shastratattvavinirnaya (A verdict on the truth idiom of sin and grace: “Scholar or fool, celebrity or unknown, of the Scriptures) in Sanskrit, dating to 1844–45,6 which I dis- or ascetic, all alike are in the grip of the disease of cussed at length in Resistant Hinduism and will therefore use the sin. . . . May the Supreme Lord, Savior of the World, bestow his least;7 second, the early postconversion Vedant mat ka bichar (An grace upon you, so that you may escape the jaws of death and inquiry into ) in Hindi, dating to the very year of his attain eternal life and the highest bliss.”12 The text goes on like conversion, 1848, although printed later;8 and third, the late this, and on, metabolizing Evangelical metanoia into a Hindi postconversion Shaddarshandarpan (A mirror of the six Hindu idiom for the of Benares. One finds the same trope in each

January 2005 15 of Nilakanth’s postconversion writings, but other concerns— his postconversion career as a Christian apologist. Only a few more authentically his and not missionary Smith’s—start to years earlier, in his preconversion Verdict, he had defended surface around this same time. asceticism and world renunciation against the aspersions of John Muir (1810–82), whose work of anti-Hindu apologetics, the From Foolishness to Wisdom Examination of Religions,14 had been presented to him by mission- ary Smith, thus eliciting from Nilakanth his own work of anti- One very interesting concern reveals itself in Nilakanth’s Christian apologetics. A moderate Evangelical from Kilmarnock postconversion writings in the idiom he uses to describe his who had been educated at the Universities of Glasgow and transition from Hinduism to Christianity, which for him was not at the end of the Scottish Enlightenment, Muir had from sin or darkness or death to grace or light or life but from ajñana gone to Benares as the acting principal of the Sanskrit College, (ignorance and foolishness) to jñana (knowledge and wisdom). bringing in his baggage some of the Scottish school of common This more culturally appropriate idiom, however, does not ap- sense for local application. Michael Dodson has written of Muir pear all at once. There was an intermediate stage in which the two that he “subscribed to a developmental hierarchy of civilization, vocabularies intermingled while Nilakanth disentangled him- in which Britain stood at the top, distinguished by its commercial self from the Evangelical conversion paradigm and discovered prosperity, the operation of justice, and a religion supported by, his own. The hybridity of his idiom is especially evident in a and based in, science and rationality, rather than superstition.”15 longish, didactic tirade against Hindu asceticism and world- This, indeed, is the bias that oozes out of the Examination, renunciation in the early postconversion Inquiry: “People who when Muir implies that India would never rise higher on the renounce the world [i.e., become samnyasis] become self- ladder of nations without renouncing world-renunciation, which centered, and because they are of no use to anyone they stand is not only detrimental to its economic development but also before God as egregious sinners. . . . True renunciation is to religiously untrue (as in the monistic maxim of , detach oneself from the things of this world while remaining “I am ,” aham brahmasmi, which identifies the individual involved in worldly affairs, loving God above all else and being self with Brahman, the ground of being). The indictment of prepared to surrender everything, should God demand it.”13 Brahmin (mendicant ascetics, portrayed as so- These lines exemplify one of the most spectacular somer- cially parasitic) is as old as antiquity, except that the ones being saults Nilakanth felt compelled to perform in the early phase of indicted in antiquity for being like the Brahmin gymnosophists

16 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 29, No. 1 were the Christians. One hears in Muir’s idiom an echo of Smith, whose ignorance of Hinduism irked him the way it used theological Orientalism—perhaps of Presbyterian Orientalism!— to irk Nilakanth. It was in interacting with Ballantyne that which, as such, belongs to what postcolonial scholars call the Nilakanth finally disentangled himself from the Evangelical “discourse of domination.” That is to say, Muir justified British conversion paradigm and found a more congenial idiom in colonialism by depicting Hinduism’s traditions of jñana as too ajñana and jñana. Thus he began to remake himself in the image mystical, impractical, and effeminate to empower India to rise to of a Benares pandit, transformed by Christian wisdom and called the level reached by European—that is, Christian—civilization. by God to make that wisdom Indian wisdom. In responding to In the lines extracted above Nilakanth unwittingly mimics this this call, Nilakanth’s postconversion exegetical strategies for bias, but not for long, because the trope of world-affirmation engaging Hinduism changed in substance but not in method. versus world-renunciation vanishes from his follow-up The action most worth watching in Benares around this time postconversion writing, the more elaborate Mirror, even though was occurring at the Sanskrit College, for the project Ballantyne the agenda otherwise remains the same. Nilakanth, who eventu- was busy implementing exemplified a new strategy quite differ- ally renounced all financial support from Christian missionary ent from missionary Smith’s or Orientalist Muir’s for eliciting a agencies to live the life of a wandering Christian samnyasi, was response to Europe and a “dialogue” with Christianity. becoming aware around this time that Western Christianity was Ballantyne’s methodology was to invoke Indian antiquity to not so hostile toward contemplative practices as he had been led affect Europe’s modernity, thus to poke and prod India toward to believe. the modernity that Europe represented in India by means of To see more clearly that Nilakanth was a subaltern neither of Anglo-Indian institutions such as the Sanskrit College. Since the Evangelicalism nor of Orientalism, one must add to the list of project was essentially dialogic, Ballantyne saw it as hopeful for Europeans with whom he interacted a third figure, James Robert expanding the horizons both of India and of Europe. It was, of Ballantyne (1813–64), a Scot from Kelso who superintended the course, transparently—and unapologetically—biased toward Sanskrit College after Muir left. Although Ballantyne and Muir Christianity. were similarly shaped by the Scottish Enlightenment, they dif- The Ballantyne project unfolded progressively, commenc- fered in significant respects. Most important, Ballantyne was by ing in 1848 with publications in Sanskrit on secular knowledge no means a Presbyterian Orientalist. He was, in fact, openly anti- (logic, science, history) and culminating in 1860 with The Bible for Calvinist and in frequent conflict with the likes of missionary Pandits, a work of exegesis that was intended to undo the damage

January 2005 17 inflicted on Christianity by the likes of missionary Smith. Chro- who accommodated to the Vedanta, that intellectual mo- nologically, the Ballantyne project spans the period from nism rests uneasily on a foundation of intuitive theism. One can Nilakanth’s conversion (1848) to the second of his postconversion go at least part way with him in this respect.19 writings, the Mirror (1860). Although Nilakanth had a minor role But to go with Nilakanth into his second major argument is in Ballantyne’s project (Vitthal Shastri was the primary collabo- virtually impossible without a technical knowledge of Indian rator), his interest in it becomes evident only at the penultimate philosophy. He draws not from Scottish commonsense philoso- stage, when Ballantyne first addressed the subject of sacred phy but rather from the anti-Vedantic arguments of Vijñana knowledge in Christianity Contrasted with Hindu Philosophy. The Bhikshu’s theistic (late sixteenth century) to argue that school of Hindu philosophy that Ballantyne most explicitly Advaita invalidates each element essential to it by presupposing engages in this text is Advaita Vedanta, the monistic nondualism a cognizing self (jivatman) and a timeless power different from the transempirical Brahman (namely, , which conjures the appearance of empirical multiplicity). In short, duality is im- Ballantyne was engaging plied, though not admitted. The third argument seeks to demonstrate the logical absur- Vedanta in a way that was dity of Advaita monism on a number of particulars. Note here original and perhaps right. that in Nilakanth’s preconversion persona as the author of the Verdict, his work of Hindu apologetics, he had declared Advaita off-limits to rational inquiry because Brahman can be declared of Shankara, for which he felt a deep affinity: “Theologically, the only by the Veda, revelationally, and to appreciate the revelatory Vedantin, asserting that the Deity is nirguna, and the Christian, truths of the Veda one must have faith, which is divinely given. asserting that God is immaterial, are asserting the very same fact Instead of faith, from Nilakanth the Christian one hears a great in terms of separate theories. . . . Instead of holding, as [the deal about reason and about humankind’s innate powers of Vedantins] have been accused of holding, that God has no intelligence, which Vedanta deadens and Christianity revivifies. attributes in our sense of the term, they hold in fact, that He is all Revitalization of the intellect is for Nilakanth very much what the attribute,—sheer existence [sat], sheer thought [chit], sheer joy Good News is all about. The idiom of his argument is less alien [ananda].”16 In the entire Ballantyne corpus in Sanskrit, however, and more culturally appropriate than it might seem, however, I have yet to find that he actually used “Brahman” as the name of since Nilakanth draws upon the theological anthropology of God. On the contrary, God is always Parameshvara (Supreme Hinduism, which holds that reason differentiates human beings Lord) and is said to be saguna, endowed with countless attributes from all other forms of life. But the argument stops there, with the besides sat, chit, and ananda, such as justice, goodness, and truth,17 Vedanta in pieces and Christianity intact, only because Nilakanth which signifies that the transformed Vedanta Ballantyne envi- now declares Christianity off-limits to rational inquiry: God can sioned would not be monistic but theistic. be declared only by the Bible, revelationally, and to appreciate Legend has it (namely, the shastri legend, from the honorific the truths of the Bible one must have faith, a divine gift. title Christians later gave him18) that Nilakanth was an authority The circle thus becomes complete. A latent substratum of on the whole range of Indian philosophy before his conversion. Vedanta, evident in the subordination of reason to revelation, More accurately, he was a Vaishnava whose affinities for the remetabolized for Christian purposes, emerges and enables bhakti (devotional theism) of the exceeded his Nilakanth to speak in his own voice instead of Ballantyne’s, fondness for philosophical abstraction, although his bhakti was whose Benares project engaged the sacred knowledge of Hindu- tinctured with Vedanta, for that was the norm. Frankly, I find it ism and Christianity with the exhortation, “Let professing scrip- puzzling—and not a little disappointing—that Nilakanth de- tures be examined!”20 At this point the subordination of Christian fined himself in opposition to Ballantyne, for Ballantyne was revelation to reason was precisely what Nilakanth rejected. If the engaging Vedanta in a way that was original and perhaps even essentially right, but react he did, and in reacting, Nilakanth found the theological voice that was most authentically his, even Subordination of Christian though this voice is not the one I would most like to hear. For him, there was no convergence between Vedanta and Christianity, revelation to reason was and for Ballantyne’s mediation between the two, Nilakanth felt what Nilakanth rejected. considerable disdain. He therefore refashioned the Inquiry, his early postconversion work of apologetics, into the Mirror to restore to the Vedanta the concrete particularity and otherness bias in this seems stunningly obvious—one standard for Chris- that Ballantyne had drained from it. The text of the Mirror is too tianity, another for Vedanta—it was an acceptable bias in the complex to summarize briefly, but three strands of argument in tradition of Indian philosophical disputation called vada-vitanda. it deserve attention. Properly understood, they may help to On this point, B. K. Matilal observes: “It is quite feasible for a rehabilitate the image of Nilakanth, which has suffered in recent debater (or skeptic) to conduct an honest (nontricky) form of years, considering that so much Christian thinking has been debate consisting only in refutation. Such a debate . . . can be invested in the quest for a fundamental rapport with the Vedanta. undertaken by a genuine seeker after truth.”21 The Mirror is classic vada-vitanda, but because of my need to condense it, it Reparticularizing Vedanta seems more relentless and less civil than it really is. More than anything else, the Mirror reflects Nilakanth’s own image. First, if Brahman is the only actually existing reality, then Who, though, would speak in such a voice nowadays, when relationality becomes problematic. Time and again, Nilakanth so much Christian thinking is being invested in the search for a admonishes the Vedantins to follow their hearts instead of their fundamental rapport with the Vedanta? The question Max Müller heads, for he knows, because he was himself a sectarian Hindu raised after meeting Nilakanth in Oxford in 1877—by which time

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*3 or more of the same title. Prices do not include shipping. Prices are subject to change without notice. January 2005 19 Nilakanth had transformed himself into an Anglo-Catholic and postconversion works of Christian apologetics seem a retro- was about to become a Christian samnyasi—still seems relevant: grade model for engaging Vedanta today. Even now, however, “Men such as Dr. Henry Brown were Christian Platonists at the otherness of Nilakanth Goreh poses serious challenges for Cambridge; why then should there be no Christian Vedantists, Hindus and Christians who endeavor to understand the trans- such as Nehemiah Goreh [could have been] in the beginning of formative power that comes from being on the edges between his career?”22 There is no denying that Nilakanth seems an Hinduism and Christianity. obsolete figure in Indian Christian theology and that his

Notes 1. Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong 11. W. Smith, Dwij: The Conversion of a Brahman to the Faith of Christ Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures (New (London: James Nisbet, 1850). York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1997), p. viii. This article is a condensed 12. Goreh, Inquiry, pp. 44–45, 56. version of one of the lectures given by Richard Fox Young at 13. Ibid., pp. 32, 53. Cambridge University as the Henry Martyn Lecturer for 2002. 14. John Muir, Examination of Religions (Calcutta: Bishop’s College Press, 2. On Hindu-Christian interaction in the prior period, see Wilhelm 1839). Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (Albany: State 15. Michael Dodson, “Re-presented for the Pandits: James Ballantyne, Univ. of New York Press, 1988), p. 437. ‘Useful Knowledge,’ and Sanskrit Scholarship in Benares College in 3. Quoted in James Robert Ballantyne, The Bible for Pandits: The First the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” Modern Asian Studies 36, no. 2 (2002): Three Chapters of Genesis Diffusely and Unreservedly Commented, in 271. Sanskrit and English (Benares: Medical Hall Press, 1860), p. xli. 16. James Robert Ballantyne, Christianity Contrasted with Hindu Philosophy 4. Quoted in Vasudha Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: (London: James Madden, 1859), pp. 45–46. Bharatendu and Nineteenth-Century Banaras (: 17. Ballantyne, Bible for Pandits, p. lxiii. Oxford Univ. Press, 1997), p. 112. 18. Shastri is one of the lesser titles bestowed on Hindu scholars for their 5. For this way of formulating the missionary endeavor, see Kenelm mastery of certain genres of Sanskrit literature. Though well-read in Burridge, In the Way (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1990), pp. 3–34, from many respects, Nilakanth’s attainments were too modest to merit which I draw heavily for idiom in this paragraph. this or any other distinction, for which, in any event, he disqualified 6. Nilakantha Goreh, Shastratattvavinirnaya (A verdict on the truth of himself by apostatizing from Hinduism. His preferred form of self- the Scriptures), ed. S. L. Katre (Ujjain: Scindia Oriental Institute, reference was pandit, a term broadly applied to anyone who had 1951). received a classical education. It was Nilakanth’s missionary 7. Richard Fox Young, Resistant Hinduism: Sanskrit Sources on Anti- “handlers” who invented the shastri legend to claim for him a Christian Apologetics in Early Nineteenth-Century India (Vienna: Univ. prestige he never enjoyed among his peers. of Vienna, Indological Institute, 1981). 19. For an Indologically informed theological appraisal of Vedanta with 8. Nehemiah Nilakantha Shastri Goreh, Vedant mat ka bichar (An inquiry respect to the problem of relationality, see S. Mark Heim, The Depth into Vedanta) (Allahabad: Christian Tract & Book of the Riches: A Trinitarian Theology of Religious Ends (Grand Rapids: Society, 1904). Eerdmans, 2001). 9. Nehemiah Nilakantha Shastri Goreh, Shaddarshandarpan (A mirror 20. James Robert Ballantyne, A Synopsis of Science (Mirzapore: Orphan of the six Hindu philosophical systems) (Calcutta: Calcutta Christian School Press, 1856), p. 151. Tract & Book Society, 1860). 21. Bimal Matilal, The Character of Logic in India (Albany: State 10. Nehemiah Nilakantha Shastri Goreh, A Letter to the from a Univ. of New York Press, 1998), p. 55. Converted Brahman of Benares (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1867), 22. Max Müller, Auld Lang Syne, 2d series, My Indian Friends (New York: p. 53. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1899), pp. 70–71.

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