Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Preface
Chapter One: Orientalism and the Language of Disenchantment
Chapter Two: "A Disease of Language": The Attack on Hindu Myth as
Verbal Idolatry
Chapter Three: "One Step from Babel to Pentecost": Colonial
Codification, Universal Languages, and the Debate over Roman
Transliteration
Chapter Four: "Vain Repetitions": The Attack on Hindu Mantras
Chapter Five: The Hindu Moses: Christian Polemics against Jewish
Ritual and the Secularization of Hindu Law
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Robert A. Yelle is Assistant Professor in the Department of History and the Helen Hardin Honors Program at the University of Memphis. He received a Ph.D. in the History of Religions from the University of Chicago. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he is the author of Explaining the Mantras and The Semiotics of Religion, and co-author of After Secular Law.
"The Language of Disenchantment is a rich contribution to
scholarship on the growth and globalization of Christian language
ideology [Yelle] effectively shows how various British colonial
legal and religious projects in India were underpinned by
Christian, specifically Protestant, language ideologies [I]n
pointing out the Christian roots of secularization, Yelle
demonstrate[s] that 'what we call secularization appears in some
cases to represent the
process by which a particular religion has attempted to transcend
its own past and limits."--Reviews in Anthropology
Yelle trac[es] some of the ways in which colonial-era scholarship
and rule effectively transferred from Europe to India a hermeneutic
that proclaimed itself secular and rational yet whose roots lay in
key themes from Europe s Judaeo-Christian heritage, from the
writings of St. Paul through to the Reformation Yelle s scholarship
stretches across colonial encounters with Hindu myth, Indian
languages and the practice of using mantras and is intended to
take
forward arguments made by Max Weber and developed by the likes of
Talal Asad about the Protestant Christian roots of disenchantment ,
modernity and the religious-secular dichotomy The result is a
highly
readable account Yelle offers the sort of balance and clarity with
which postcolonial writing has not always been synonymous.
--Journal of Ecclesiastical History
"The exactness of the present volume's title belies its successful
demonstration of a much larger claim: that British colonialism in
India was a profoundly protestant project Yelle's achievement lies
in how he demonstrates [this] through detailed use of a range of
sources from protestant theology, the Hindu reform movements and
colonial debates It is certainly the case that the intellectual
history of British India has not given the same attention to
the
protestant roots of secular governmental enterprises as its
metropolitan counterpart. Yelle has produced a densely packed,
highly nuanced argument. The richness and range of examples will
add greatly to our
understanding of the protestant dimensions of British India and
give new vigour to the enduring debate about colonialism and
modernity."--Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History
"Yelle is able to ambitiously engage with the history of
colonialism in a way that is both unique and engaging--through his
analyses, he is able to add a new and valuable theological
dimension to the conversation about India's engagement with British
colonial powers Yelle has written a book that effectively
contributes to the fields of India Studies, Postcolonial Studies,
and Hindu-Christian Studies. Yelle is successfully able to debunk
claims to the
universality of Western reason as produced by Protestant,
post-Reformation thought Yelle concludes that by continuing to
expose the origins of the myth of disenchantment-- as he has done
in this book--we are
able to broaden our awareness about the impact of this mode of
thinking and its pervasiveness in our quest for
modernity."--Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies
Theoretically rich and provocative...will command a place on
reading lists of South Asian history seminars for generations to
come. Yelle offers an excellent account of how Protestant
literalism in the guise of attacks on Indian religions by
Christians and Orientalists alike actually derives from older
polemics aimed at, in earlier guises, Jews and Catholics, and then
neatly reappearing in colonial India. This allows him to argue that
the disenchantment Weber
famously articulated actually has, like Orientalism and secularism,
theological roots in the Christian world. Yelle s research is
meticulously documented and presented. --Journal of Colonialism
and
Colonial History
"Theoretically rich and provocative...will command a place on
reading lists of South Asian history seminars for generations to
come."--Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
"Yelle's scholarship is impeccable and nearly exhaustive-patently
first-rate. The writing is precise, clear, and rich. Most
importantly, the historical thesis about the theological roots of
disenchantment and the Christian origins of modernity is, in my
opinion, unanswerable. The book is profound and makes a very real
and very important contribution to the fields of intellectual
history, history of religions, Indian history, the history of
Christianity, the
history of the study of religion, and, perhaps most interesting of
all, the philosophy of language."--Jeffrey J. Kripal, J. Newton
Rayzor Professor of Religious Studies, Rice University
"Highly creative... Yelle directly challenges modern secularists
who claim that modernity represents the triumph of rationality over
religious superstition and of supposedly neutral, value-free
judgment over prejudice... Yelle has written a fascinating, if also
controversial, book, one that has important things to say to a wide
number of disciplines." --The Marginalia Review of Books
"Yelle s work on British critiques of South Asian mythological,
ritual, linguistic, and legal traditions offer new insights on
modernity, secularization, religious literalism, and colonialism."
--New Books in Religion
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