German Romantic Nationalism and Indian Cultural Tradition A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History By Alexei Vladimirovich Pimenov, M.A. Washington, DC November 18, 2015 Copyright 2015 by Alexei Vladimirovich Pimenov All Rights Reserved ii Alexei Vladimirovich Pimenov, M.A. Thesis Advisor: Catherine Evtuhov, Ph.D. Abstract This Dissertation examines the German Romantic fascination with India, the country thought by many German Romantics to be the original home of the Urvolk, considered by these thinkers to be the direct ancestors of the German people themselves. In analyzing this German Romantic self-representation through India within the context of the Romantic critique of European modernity, the Dissertation considers this phenomenon as a case of the Romantic re-integration project. The Dissertation juxtaposes four figures – Friedrich Schlegel, Otmar Frank, Joseph Goerres, and Arthur Schopenhauer – who are particularly representative of those German Romantic thinkers who were influenced by Indian culture and who applied the Indian models to their interpretations of world history. These interpretations were rooted in the models developed by the missionaries and the Enlightenment thinkers who looked for the original monotheism outside the biblical tradition. The Romantics, however, highlighted not only the religious but also the national dimension of the connection between the original home of the Urvolk and its descendants in the modern German-speaking realm. In tracing the Urvolk ’s migration from India to the West, Friedrich Schlegel used as his explanatory model the Brahmanic narrative of the degenerated warriors becoming barbarians due to their failure to observe the dharma. This model was in tune with Schlegel’s understanding of the Indian religion as a misread Revelation, and his understanding of the further world history as a degradation and fragmentation of the human race, but it was at odds with his German nationalist aspirations. With time, the correlation between these two dimensions changed. Frank proclaimed the return to the original Iranian-Indian heritage as the program of a religious and national reawakening of the German people; Goerres developed an all-embracing narrative of the original people and its Weltstaat ; Schopenhauer portrayed the religious/philosophical history as a conflict between the “wisdom of all ages” and the “biblical theism”. These theories represented four versions of a German-Romantic understanding of identity and otherness based on the Indian model, which predetermined the dualistic nature of German Romantic nationalism as dividing the human race not into multiple nations, but rather into the original civilization and the corrupt version of it. iii Table of Contents Introduction .............................................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter One. India in the Context of the Romantic Re-Integration Project (The Fragestellungen , Major Approaches, and Research Strategy) ............................................... 7 India within the Romantic Picture of the World: An Alternative to European Modernity . 11 The German-Indian Connection: In Search of Research Strategy ................................................. 20 The Romantic Social Weltanschauung and the Representation through India ....................... 28 Chapter Two. Britain’s Discovery of India: The Colonial Rulers and Their Fact- Finding Team ......................................................................................................................................... 37 The Concerns of the British Colonial Rulers, or The Importance of Learning Sanskrit ....... 38 The Scholarship and the Public Concern................................................................................................. 49 The Epistemological Foundations of the British Indology .............................................................. 56 Chapter Three. The German Indian Renaissance and its Historical Roots .................... 63 India within the German Cultural Landscape ....................................................................................... 67 The Two Indias in the German Mind ........................................................................................................ 69 Goethe’s Ambivalence: The Reiner Ost and the God-Beasts ............................................................ 74 Herder’s Enthusiasm: The Equivalency of Hinduism and Christianity ...................................... 79 The Influence of the Pre-British Scholarship on India on the German Thought: The Sources and Ideological Constructs .......................................................................................................... 84 The Literary Texts: The Indirect Renditions ......................................................................................... 86 The Ideological Framework: The European Search for Original Monotheism and India ... 88 The Missionaries, the First Indologists, and the Brahmins, India’s Intelligentsia ................. 89 The Enlightenment Quest for an Urreligion in India: The Ezour Vedam .................................... 99 The Model of India for the Romantics to Inherit .............................................................................. 107 The Romantic Re-Integration Project Begins: The Novalis’ Search for Mediators between Man and Divinity ............................................................................................................................................ 109 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................ 127 Chapter Four. Friedrich Schlegel: Indology as the Key to the National and Religious History of the World ......................................................................................................................... 130 India in Schlegel’s World ............................................................................................................................ 134 Schlegel’s Strategy: The Philosophy of Language ............................................................................. 140 Languages and Language ............................................................................................................................ 146 The Urvolk Leaves its Indian Homeland: The Evidences and Speculations ........................... 154 The Urvolk ’s Verfassung and World History ....................................................................................... 161 On the Verge of a Synthesis: Schlegel’s Reflections on the Ursprache and the Urvolk before 1808..................................................................................................................................................................... 164 Schlegel’s India: The Scholarship and the Ideology ......................................................................... 168 The Method and the Topic Synthesized: The Language, the Religion, and the History .... 169 Indian Thought as an Exegesis of the Holy Script ............................................................................ 171 The Language as a Clue to the History .................................................................................................. 173 iv The Schlegel’s Indian Philosophy: The Revelation Misread ......................................................... 186 The Trajectory of Error: From the Emanation Theory to Pantheism ...................................... 192 The Actors: The Urvolk ’s Warriors Colonize the West ................................................................... 199 The Romantic Philosopher and the Indische Verfassung : Schlegel Interprets The Laws of Manu .................................................................................................................................................................... 204 The Degenerated Kshatriyas in the On the Language and the Wisdom of the Indians and in The Laws of Manu .......................................................................................................................................... 206 Toward the Mountain of Meru: A Special Scenario for the Germans ....................................... 215 Schlegel's Discourse on India after 1808: The Aryan Urvolk and Urstaat ............................. 220 The Two Urvolks : The Urvolk Scenario in the Context of the Bible-Based Perspective ... 226 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................ 232 Chapter Five. Otmar Frank: A Breakthrough to the Alleged Iranian-Indian Roots of the Germans ......................................................................................................................................... 234 Frank’s Message: Bonapartism, Orientalism, and Nationalism .................................................. 234 Frank’s Scholarship: The Oriental Studies in the South German Context .............................. 238 Parsism as Historiosophy ........................................................................................................................... 244 Light as the Essence of the Universe