Translating Dharma: Scottish Missionary-Orientalists and the Politics of Religious Understanding in Nineteenth-Century Bombay

Mitch Numark

doi:10.1017/S002191181100009X

Translating Dharma: Scottish Missionary-Orientalists and the Politics of Religious Understanding in Nineteenth-Century Bombay

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 June 2011

Mitch Numark

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Abstract

A consideration of colonial Bombay enriches the understanding of the activities and ideas of Christian missionaries and Orientalists in India and elucidates British conceptions of “the religions of India” and the production of colonialist knowledge. This article focuses on nineteenth-century Scottish missionary-Orientalists and examines how they and other Bombay-based Protestant missionaries understood the concept of religion, Christianity, and the structure, similitude and distinctiveness of “the religions” at the crucial moment when newly “discovered” religions were gaining recognition and a new vision of “world religions” was coming into being. It considers the writings on the religions and ethnographic scholarship of the Bombay Scottish missionaries, as well as their extensive and multifaceted interactions with Bombay's Hindu, Muslim, Jain, Parsi, Jewish, Roman Catholic and Andivasi communities. More specifically, it details the ways in which Bombay missionaries applied and related the concept of religion to diverse configurations of language, text, and practice that they understood as isomorphic species of the religion genus. By examining how Christian missionaries who were also Orientalists conceptualized a number of “religions” and interacted with numerous communities this article seeks to elucidate the presuppositions that shaped the ways in which Hinduism and the other “religions” of nineteenth-century Bombay were imagined.

Type: Research Article
Information: The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , May 2011 , pp. 471 - 500

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S002191181100009X [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2011

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References

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IA: Indian Antiquary
JASB: Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal
JBBRAS: Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society
JRAS: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland
OCS: Oriental Christian Spectator
AMP: American Mission Press
BTBS: Bombay Tract and Book Society
RTS: Religious Tract Society
WW: William Whyte

Indian Antiquary

Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal

Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland

Oriental Christian Spectator

American Mission Press

Bombay Tract and Book Society

Religious Tract Society

William Whyte

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