Snippets from some writings by an American woman Elizabeth Reed in the early 1900s illustrating some of the roots of the American strain of white indology. The peculiarly American conception of race consciousness was making its beginnings in indology. Remember this woman’s blatherings were studied as recommended textbooks in American colleges for years after her death. Her successors similar say similar things in more “sophisticated” language or the language of current usage.
All in all the American strain of white indology was and is more pernicious than the German strain for all its faults. The latter are merely a convenient handle to use for the Nazi argument which is so popular in the Anglosphere & its followers.
The gross tyranny of the Brahmans is admitted even by the native scholars. Lala Baijnath, the ex-Chief Justice of Indore, in his address before the International Congress of Orientalists, made the following assertion:
“Next to his slavish adherence to astrology which form such a prominent feature in the Hindu’s daily life, is his desire to serve the Brahmans. Everything good must be given to a Brahman-fresh fruit for the first time in season, new corn, milk of a cow which has calved for the first time, and many other things are given to the Brahmans in every Hindu household before any one of the family ventures to touch them.”
Note how some of these ideas were merely expressed in a more “polished” form by Radhakrishnan and internalized early by likes of the ba~ngAlI-s of brohmo -
Far better than modern idolatry was the primitive worship of mountain and sky — of starry heights and ocean billows. Better than the serpent and demon worship of to-day were the libations poured out to the storm king as he swept through the heavens on the wings of the wind. Better than human sacrifice on the altars of bloodthirsty Kali were the hymns to the fair goddess of the morning as she comes through the gates of pearl as “the leader of the days” and marshals her host in golden splendour before the children of men.
The never-aging white indological trope of buddhism as a protest against “brahmanism”.
CHAPTER II BUDDHISM: A PROTEST AGAINST BRAHMANISM
Long Series of Buddhas. Birth of Gautama. Great Renunciation System of Philosophy. Metempsychosis. Jataka Book. Buddha’s Hell. Atheism and Later Polytheism. Death of Buddha. Number of Adherents. Expulsion from India.
Ms Reed on hells of the H (On the quote - she says it MDS -2.26: such a statement cannot be found in the standard MDS there or near it).
Apparently believing that the subject of hell is one in which many people must be interested, the Hindu philosophers have elaborated it extensively. They have provided extensive accommodations for sinners of all classes and degrees in twenty-one hells of various descriptions, each of which is provided with unpronounceable names in addition to their other horrors. The word-pictures of these abodes of torture as given in standard Sanskrit works are appalling beyond description, but there is no crime so fiendish that it does not become innocent, provided only the culprit be a priest who retains his caste, and remembers a sacred text. Hence it is said in Manu: “A Brahman by retaining the Rig-veda in his memory, incurs no guilt, though he should destroy the inhabitants of the three worlds, and even eat food from the foulest hands!"
These words of Ms Reed would perhaps resonate with the modern liberal beef-stuffers:
an offence which is almost a crime. Even to sit in the presence of an Anglo-Saxon who is eating beef is not only sinful, but they claim it produces feelings of disgust far greater than those which an Englishman or an American would feel in sitting beside a Chinaman who was enjoying a feast of boiled rats!
And yet, when Dr. John Henry Barrows, late President of Oberlin College, invited Vivekananda to lunch in Chicago a few years ago, the Hindu astonished his host by ordering roast beef!
Every orthodox Hindu is fully persuaded that water if taken from the filthiest stream, provided it is a sacred river, and used for drinking purposes, or applied to his body, will purify his soul. Consequently, he will eagerly drink it, whereas the purest water is supposed to cause external and internal taint, if it should be accepted from a person of lower caste. Not only this, but it pollutes the whole of a well belonging to those of higher caste, if one of the lower caste presumes to drink water which has come from this sacred fountain.
Ms Reed claims that Hindus built a hospital for the feeding and propagation of loathsome insects after World Congress at Chicago -
These forms through which all must pass are supposed to consist of 2,300,000 quadrupeds, 900,000 aquatic animals, 1,000,000 feathered animals, 1,100,000 creeping animals, 1,700,000 immovable forms such as trees and stones, 1,400000 human beings, and although there is no gradual rise in position it is only in this last form that final emancipation may be gained.
It is on account of this peculiar faith that every animal and insect is sacred in India, as even a fly or a flea might contain the soul of a priest or of a near relative. It is said that some of the Hindu visitors to the World’s Congresses in Chicago, in 1893, became interested in the hospital idea and went home and built a hospital-not for the suffering women and children, but for the feeding and propagation of loathsome insects!
Reed’s account of the tantra-s. White indology has truly ventured into the realm of the tantra-s only in our times and there is a whole industry of American sanskritists engaging in these pursuit -
They have never been fully translated into English, but some unhappy scholar of the future may be obliged to examine the loathsome pages more fully than has as yet been done. The nauseous taste repelled even the self-sacrificing industry of Burnouf when he found them to be as immoral as they are absurd.
A Brahman writing from Calcutta says:
The Tantras recommending human sacrifice are accepted as authority by the Brahmans of almost all classes throughout India. Yet in practice, the only animals usually sacrificed by the Shakti worshippers in Northern India are the sheep and the goat.
He might have added that the credit of nearly putting an end to human sacrifice in India belongs to the British Government. Nevertheless the crime is sometimes committed in remote districts and Crooke mentions significant instances of the kind as having taken place during the last few years.
The Tantrik and the Shivite cults being equally indecent, their gurus cannot ordinarily explain their true nature.
A report from American judge Henry Austin on a kAlI temple replete with trope the civilizing English
Shrine of Kali. It is also at Benares that we find the elaborate temple which is dedicated to Kali, the favourite wife of Shiva. Judge Henry Austin, who has recently visited Benares, and the famous temple of Kali, or Durga, gives a graphic description of this place of worship as seen by an eye-witness. He says:
It is sometimes called the Monkey Temple on account of the multitudes of repulsive monkeys that swarm there; they have become impudent from overkindness and unhealthy from overeating.
Within the temple, the centre of attention is the shrine of Kali, a bloodthirsty she demon whose thirst must be quenched daily. She loomed up as a hideous black figure with distorted face and open mouth, her tongue hanging to the waist line. About her body, huge serpents writhed and at her throat was a necklace of human skulls.
Idols of this engaging creature are in every village in India, but the centre of her cult is Benares. There in the court occur the daily sacrifices to her, which, thanks to the British rule, no longer consist in decapitating young children.
The early manifestations of white indological feminism. Tropes that continue to be repeated to the current date by their successors
Position of Widows. Even under the best circumstances we cannot expect the position of woman to be a very exalted one, in a country where the wife is declared to be “the marital property” of her husband and is therefore classed with “female camels, slave girls, she goats, and ewes.”
Marriages being concluded in many cases without the consent of either party, there is little chance for conjugal affection, but it is nevertheless true that a wife may sometimes be found who has little cause for complaint, except in the absence of freedom of thought and action; and she scarcely misses these, having been always accustomed to a condition of bondage.
Clean-hearted Anglo-Saxons
It is also true that Hinduism as taught in Europe and America is very different from the genuine article. These “missionaries from the Orient,” who are teaching the milder forms, and even misrepresentations of their own sacred books, are very careful to keep out of the sight of beginners those doctrines and ceremonies which would at once repel clean-hearted Anglo-Saxons.
They present vague, illusive, and often attractive theories without offering any definite form of proof, and indeed the class of people who are delighted with any new fad do not need any historical evidence. For instance a Hindu, who was evidently a Buddhist, in conversation with a Chicago lady discoursed eloquently upon the marvellous phenomena produced by the Mahatmas in the mountains of Thibet and elsewhere.