Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction Shared Myths The Aryan Canon Methodology and Plan Part I. The Authority of an Absent Text 1. The Enlightenment and Orientalist Discourse on the Aryan The Enlightenment Background Voltaire and the Search for Authority Locus of Poetic Inspiration or Site of Cultural Decay? Conclusion 2. The Romantic Aryans Romantic Myth Theory Friedrich Schlegel and the Foundations of Romantic Linguistics Romantic Mythographers and the Upnekhata Romantic Indology: The Case of Max Muller Conclusion 3. Nietzsche's Aryan Ubermensch Introduction Reading Nietzsche Reading India Manu as a "Semitized" Aryan Sourcebook The Aryan as Ubermensch Christianity, an Anti-Aryan Outcaste Religion The Jew and the Aryan Conclusion 4. Loose Can[n]ons Racial Theory: An Overview Gobineau and the Aryan Aristocrat Houston Stewart Chamberlain: Aryan Publicist Alfred Rosenberg and the Nordic Aryan Conclusion Part II. Who Speaks for the Subaltern? 5. Rammohan Roy Reading Reform The Complexity of the Colonial Subject Scriptural Authority and the Hermeneutics of Sati Misreading Monotheism: Idolatry and Brahmin Perfidy Rammohan Roy's Syncretism and Its Challenge to Postcolonial Theory 6. Text-based Identity: Dayanand Saraswati's Reconstruction of the Aryan Self Introduction Dayanand's Canon and Hermeneutical Strategies for Reading the Aryan World Aryan Masculinity and the Teleology of Decay Conclusion 7. Aryan Identity and National Self-Esteem Introduction Justice Ranade and Lokamanya Tilak Swami Vivekananda Conclusion 8. The Anti-Myth Introduction The Aryan and Its Other Mahatma Phule Dr. Ambedkar Conclusion Afterword Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author

Dorothy M. Figueira is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Georgia. She is the author of The Exotic: A Decadent Quest and Translating the Orient: The Reception of Sakuntala in Nineteenth-Century Europe, both published by SUNY Press.

Reviews

"This is a marvelously learned and engaging book. It asks serious questions about the relations between language and race, and locates compelling answers in the texts that Indians and Europeans were reading simultaneously, often reinventing them for their respective purposes. The quality of the research and the vigor of the interpretations make this a valuable resource for cultural and intellectual historians, as well as for literary critics interested in emerging ideologies of 'right reading.'" - Gauri Viswanathan, author of Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief