If Maudave "was puzzled by the French Ezour-vedam to the point of doubting its authenticity" (Rocher 1984:80), Voltaire's reaction on receiving the text from Maudave in the fall of 1760 is even more puzzling.... [S]hortly after Maudave's visit, Voltaire wrote in a letter that he was going to establish contact with the Indian translator ("my brahmin") and joked that he hoped that this Brahmin would be more reasonable than the professors at the Sorbonne. Four months later, when he had thoroughly studied the text and expressed his confidence that he could "make good use of it," he described the translator as a "Brahmin of great esprit" who knows French very well and who produced "a faithful translation". In July 1761, at the time when he had decided to add a new chapter to the Essai about the Ezourvedam and then to present his copy of the manuscript to the Royal Library in Paris, he claimed that Maudave had received the Ezour-vedam from a Brahmin who was a correspondent of the French Compagnie des Indes and had translated it. After sending the manuscript to the Royal Library, Voltaire for the first time located this Brahmin translator in Benares, the center of Brahman orthodoxy. He repeated this last version until he encountered Holwell's work and learned that
the Shastah was far older than the Vedam and its commentary, the Ezour-vedam. ... Holwell claimed that the Vedam contained the relatively corrupt teaching of South India, whereas his Shastah was expounded by the orthodox Brahmins of Benares in the north. In 1769, after having read this, Voltaire once more changed his translator Story. Since (according to Holwell) Benares and Northern India are the home of the ancient Shastah and Southern India that of the far younger Vedam, Voltaire came up with a new narrative: the man who had translated the Ezour-vedam from the sacred Sanskrit language into French was now suddenly no more an orthodox successor to the oldest Brachman tradition from Benares but rather a mysterious "old man, 100 years of age" who was "arch-priest [grand pretre] on the island of Seringham [Cherignan] of Arcate province" in South India -- a man "respected for his incorruptible virtue" who "knew French and rendered great services to
the Compagnie des Indes". One would expect such a rare creature -- an eminent old Brahmin heading a huge clergy who wrote perfect French and rendered great services to the colonial administration -- to turn up somewhere in the French colonial records; but Rocher failed to find any trace of this man, even though, according to Voltaire, he had been a witness for the chevalier Jacques Francois Law in his conflict with Joseph Francois Dupleix.
What are we to make of this?
Today we know, thanks to the efforts of many scholars, that Voltaire's Ezour-vedam was definitely authored by one or several French Jesuits in India, and Ludo Rocher has convincingly argued that the text was never translated from Sanskrit but written in French and then partially translated into Sanskrit. Consequently, there never was a translator from Sanskrit to French -- which also makes it extremely unlikely that any Brahmin, whether from Benares in the north or Cherignan (Seringham) in the south, ever gave this French manuscript to Maudave. Whether Maudave was "a close friend of one of the principal brahmins" and how old and wise that man was appear equally irrelevant.
Voltaire's story of the Brahmin translator appears to be entirely fictional and also squarely contradicts the only relevant independent evidence, Maudave's letter to Voltaire, which named a long-dead French Jesuit as translator and imputed Jesuit tampering with the text. Since it is unlikely that Maudave would arbitrarily change such central elements of his story when he met Voltaire, the inevitable conclusion is that Voltaire created a narrative to serve a particular agenda and changed that Story when the need arose....
A few months later, when
Voltaire knew what use he was going to make of the manuscript, he
portrayed the Ezour-vedam not as a simple commentary but
as "the Gospel of the ancient brachmanes" and "the most curious and most ancient book that we possess, except for the Old Testament whose sanctity, truth, and antiquity you know"....
he even claimed that the Royal Library regarded his "very authentic" Ezour-vedam manuscript as "the most precious monument it possesses"!The new fourth chapter of the 1761 Essai, "On the Brachmanes; of the Vedam; and the Ezourvedam," begins with Voltaire's influential assertion about the antiquity of Indian culture and religion:
If India, of which the entire earth is dependent and which alone is not in need of anybody, must, on account of this very fact, be the most anciently civilized region, then it must also have had the most ancient form of religion. It is very likely that for a long time this religion was the same as that of the Chinese government and consisted only in a pure cult of a supreme Being, free of any superstition and fanaticism.
This oldest religion of the world was "founded by the Bracmanes" and subsequently "established in China by its first kings". Voltaire portrayed this religion as if it were his own: since it was built on "universal reason", it "had to be simple and reasonable," which was easy enough
since "it is so natural to believe in a unitary God, to venerate him, and to feel at the bottom of one's heart that one must be just". Long before Alexander's India adventure, this pure, original monotheism began to degenerate when the cult of God "became a job" and the divinities multiplied; but even under the reign of polytheism and popular superstition, a "supreme God was always acknowledged" and is still venerated today.... I have in my hands the translation of one of the most ancient manuscripts in the world; it is not the Vedam which in India is so much talked about and which has not yet been communicated to any scholar of Europe, but rather the Ezourvedam, the ancient commentary by Chumontou on the vedam, the sacred book which was given by God to humans, as the Brahmins pretend. This commentary has been redacted by a very erudite Brahmin who has rendered many services to our Compagnie des Indes; he has translated it himself from the sacred language into French....
Voltaire in the 1761 Essai for the first time published eight "quotations" from the Ezour-vedam.... one would expect faithful quotations from the sacred scripture. But already Voltaire's first two "quotations" prove such expectations wrong.... Voltaire presents both passages as continuous quotations from the Ezour-vedam that supposedly furnish "the very words of the Veidam" rather than those of two interlocutors.... In the Ezour-vedam ... Chumontou does not quote anything but simply responds to Biache's questions. To maintain his fiction, Voltaire had to omit not only the questions but also phrases (for example, those before the "four different ages") that clearly show this text to be part of a conversation.
The Ezour-vedam "quotation" beginning with "At the time when God alone existed" shows that he systematically misled his readers: the text that Voltaire presents as a continuous quotation from the Ezour-vedam actually shrinks eight pages of the Sainte-Croix edition to a fraction of their original volume. Some of Voltaire's additional changes are stylistic; but the majority is clearly related to content that Voltaire chose to omit or add for a variety of reasons. For example,
he cut the Ezour-vedam's explanation that after the creation of time, water, and earth, "the earth was completely submerged" and omitted God's order "that the water retract on one side and that the earth become stable and solid". This passage did not please Voltaire who opposed theories of universal flood and models of earth formation that involved total submersion in water. Likewise, Voltaire did not like the idea that God created three worlds, which is why he eliminated the information about the superior, inferior, and central world. The idea of monogenesis and primitive man's god-given wisdom also bothered him; thus, he omitted the Ezour-vedam's "In creating him he endowed him with extraordinary knowledge and put him on earth in order to be the principle and origin of all other men." The presentation of Adimo as father of Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu and of their birth from his navel and flanks certainly fit the agenda of the Ezour-vedam's Jesuit author(s) who wanted to highlight the absurdity of Indian mythology; but this was very much contrary to Voltaire's intention of presenting the wisdom of the Vedam as somewhat conforming to a deist's ideal of rationality. Therefore, he drastically demoted Adimo from father of India's three supreme gods to father of "Brama who was the legislator of nations and the father of the brahmins."...This pattern of Voltaire's editorial policy is repeated in much of the rest of his "quotations" from the Ezour-vedam.
A passage that explains the origin of the four Indian castes is falsely portrayed by Voltaire not as Chumontou's commentary but as "one of the most singular pieces from the Vedam".... Voltaire decided to omit about half of the Ezour-vedam's text (which, of course, was no Vedic quotation at all). Another flagrant example is Voltaire's fifth excerpt, which is a hodgepodge from the Ezour-vedam's sixth and seventh chapters presented as a continuous citation from the Vedam....
The Vedam continues and says: "The supreme Being has neither body nor form," and the Ezourvedam adds: "All those who ascribe him feet and hands are insane." Chumontou then cites the following words of the Vedam: ...
However, in the text of the Ezour-vedam all this forms part of Chumontou's conversation. Once again, Voltaire's transmutation forced him to eliminate all phrases proving that Chumontou was not citing the Veda but simply talking to Biache. Thus, he had to delete statements like "That's what the Vedam teaches. The sun which you have divinized is no more than a body". More than half of the Ezour-vedam's text in this supposedly continuous quotation suffered the same fate. Instead of a faithful presentation of "Vedic" text, Voltaire's readers thus got a blatantly tendentious pastiche of conversation fragments taken from two different chapters of a "commentary" containing not a single genuine quotation from the Veda.
In contrast to the Ezour-vedam, which in Voltaire's 1761 Essai was massaged until it fit Voltaire's idea of ancient monotheism and could please a deist, the "Cormoredam" (which is a misprint for Cormovedam) is severely criticized as a product of degeneration. This second text that Voltaire received from Maudave was presumably also donated to the French national library. In his 1761 Essai, Voltaire describes it as follows:
The Brahmins degenerated more and more. Their Cormoredam, which is their ritual, is a bunch of superstitious ceremonies that make anybody who is not born on the banks of the Ganges or Indus laugh -- or rather, anyone who, not being a philosophe, is surprised about the stupidities of other peoples and not amazed at those of his own country. As soon as an infant is born, one must recite the word Oum over him to prevent his being unhappy forever; one must rub his tongue with consecrated flour, say prayers over him, and pronounce at each prayer the name of a divinity. Subsequently one must put the infant outside on the third day of the moon and turn his head toward the north. The minute detail is immense. It is a hodgepodge of all the lunacies with which the senseless study of judicial astronomy could inspire ingenious but extravagant and deceitful scholars. The entire life of a Brahmin is devoted to such superstitious ceremonies. There is one for each day of the year....
Voltaire's description of the Cormo Veidam has a perfect match in another Pondicherry text, the "Zozochi Kormo Bedo," whose first part is entitled "Rite of the Ezour Vedam". According to the Jesuit Jean Castets, this part features detailed descriptions of rites (including those required at the birth of a male child) as well as long lists of prescribed/ auspicious or prohibited/inauspicious activities on particular days of the year.
Bowing to Voltaire's will,
the Ezour-vedam thus became a monument of a protodeist's monotheistic Ur-religion (primeval religion), while the Cormo-Vedam had the role of representing what India's deceitful clergy is catering to the superstitious masses. Voltaire's commentary shows to what degree he identified with the reformer Chumontou:The ancient purity of the religion of the first Bracmanes survived only with some of their philosophers; and they do not make the effort to instruct a people that does not want to be taught and does not merit it either. Disabusing it would even carry a risk; the ignorant Brahmins would rise up, and the women attached to their temples and their little superstitious practices would cry heresy. Whoever wants to teach reason to his fellow citizens is persecuted unless he is the strongest; and it almost invariably happens that the strongest redoubles the chains of ignorance instead of breaking them.
In the years between the publication of the 1761 Essai and the Homelies of 1767, Voltaire continued to exploit the Ezour-vedam for his purposes. Chapter 13 of the Defense de mon oncle (1767) is the last statement of his views before the effect of Holwell set in. Here
the Ezour-vedam is called "the most precious manuscript of the Orient" that "indisputably is from the time when the ancient religion of the gymnosophists began to be corrupted" and represents "apart from our sacred scriptures the most respectable monument of faith in the unity of God". Voltaire once more presented the first two of his sanitized quotations from the Ezour-vedam and defended his absurd argument from the Philosophie de l'histoire (1765) that the Ezour-vedam had to stem from the period before Alexander because its place names are not Greek-influenced....
His selection of a few fragments of the Ezour-vedam and his very invasive editing of them lead one almost to suspect that he sensed Jesuit involvement and perhaps even relished the thought of surreptitiously perverting their fundamental intention. The student and enemy of the Jesuits, it turns out, had a missionary agenda of his own.
He, too, was eager to advocate ancient monotheism and to denounce its later degeneration. But for him such degeneration included not just the theology of the "stupid Brahmins" but rather the infame itself: Judeo-Christianity, complete with its cruel God, deluded prophets, plagiarized texts, degenerate clergy, intolerant worldview, and parochial conception of history....
The editors of the Annual Register of 1766 published part of Voltaire's Philosophy of History in English translation, and in that very issue
Voltaire discovered lengthy excerpts from a text that soon was to replace the Ezour-vedam in his propaganda war: the so-called Shastah of Bramah contained in John Zephaniah Holwell's Interesting historical events. The review of Holwell's book mentioned that he had spent thirty years in Bengal and procured "many curious manuscripts relating to the philosophical and religious principles of the Gentoos, particularly two correct copies of their Bible, called the Shasta".
Having lost both the originals and his translation at the capture of Calcutta in 1756, Holwell "recovered some MSS. by accident" during his last eight months in Bengal. This enabled him to repair his loss "in some degree" and to present the hitherto best account "of the religion of the Gentoos, both in its original simplicity, and its present corruption". After an outline of the content of the Shastah's creation story and Holwell's genealogy of Indian sacred literature, the Annual Register's anonymous reviewer (
Edmund Burke) included the entirety of Holwell's translation from the Shastah along with his lengthy report of the burning of a widow....
Voltaire first mentioned this new source in the Homily on Atheism, which is an early effort on his second front. After stating flatly that
"we must begin with the existence of a God" and that this "subject has been treated by all nations",
Voltaire lectures his atheist readership that "this supreme artisan who has created the world and us" is "our master" and "our benefactor" because "our life is a benefit, since we all love our life, however miserable it might get". Thus, "one must recognize a God who remunerates and avenges, or no God at all." For Voltaire there was no middle ground: "either there is no God, or God is just". To support his radical theism, Voltaire always used the argument of universal consent:
"all civilized people [peuples polices], Indians, Chinese, Egyptians, Persians, Chaldeans, Phoenicians: all recognized a supreme God". And it is exactly here that the sacred literature of such people as Holwell's ancient Indians came in handy. Voltaire wrote,
The Indians who boast of being the oldest society of the universe still have their ancient books that according to their claim were written 4,866 years ago. According to them, the angel Brama or Abrama, the envoy of God and minister of the supreme Being, dictated this book in the Sanskrit language. This sacred book is called Chatabad, and it is much more ancient than even the Vedam that since such a long time is the sacred book on the banks of the Ganges. These two volumes [the Chatabad and the Vedam], which are the law of all sects of the brahmans, [and] the Ezour-Vedam which is the commentary of the Vedam, never mention anything other than a unique God..
As an illustration of universal consent on monotheism, Voltaire presented the first section of his newly found "oldest" text,
Holwell's Chartah Bhade Shastah, which "was written one thousand years before the Vedam" and ''treats of God and his attributes". But, as seen in Table 4, already Voltaire's first quotation from this oldest testament shows that he had not abandoned his efforts to improve on supposedly genuine ancient texts.
As with the Ezour-vedam, Voltaire molded the text to suit his views; but since Holwell's text had already appeared in print, the changes needed to be a bit more subtle.
Voltaire did not like that the God of Holwell's Shastah rules the world by providence and replaced "providence" by "general wisdom." As he was intent on proving the existence of God to atheists, he transformed the Shastah's prohibition to inquire into "the essence and nature of the existence of the Eternal One" into one that concerned only "his essence and his nature." As a Newtonian, he was -- unlike Holwell -- in favor of exploring the laws of nature; thus, the prohibition to inquire "by what laws he governs" was not acceptable to him and had to be eliminated. Since Voltaire missed God's goodness in Holwell's Shastah text and firmly believed in divine punishment and reward, he replaced Holwell's "mercy" by "goodness." Finally, Voltaire's religion focused not on base self-benefit but rather on devoted worship of God and excellent morality...In 1774 Voltaire published another translation of this text. It was destined for a different public, and Voltaire had heard that a French translation of Holwell's Shastah had in the meantime appeared in Amsterdam. Voltaire's new translation proves that the changes in his first translations were not due to the level of his knowledge of English. Rather, as is also evident from many letters containing
very different portrayals of particular events depending on the addressee, Voltaire was extremely adept at tailoring information to fit specific needs. As if to prove this last point, Voltaire published one more translation in 1776 that again edits out the Shastah's prohibition to inquire about God's existence.
After his discovery of Holwell's Shastah, Voltaire's interest in the Ezourvedam abruptly ceased. It had done its duty and was rather unceremoniously dismissed before it was even published. The article on the Ezour-vedam in
Voltaire's Questions sur l'encyclopedie of 1771 is exceedingly short; in fact, almost the only information it offers is a joke about Adimo and his wife. Voltaire, whose critique of such monogenetic tales invented by pigheaded Brahmins has already been mentioned, asked the reader whether the Jews had copied their Adam and Eve story from the Indians or the Indians their Adimo story from the Jews -- only to add sarcastically a third possibility: "Or can one say that both have originally invented it and that the beautiful minds have met?". While the Ezour-vedam passed into oblivion because
the Veda is only "a recent law given to the brachmanes 1,500 years after the first law called shasta or shasta-bad', Voltaire turned into an ardent champion of Holwell's Shastah whenever the argument required it. In his letter to Bailly of December 15, 1775,
he calls the fragments of the Shastah that were "written about 5,000 years ago" nothing less than "the only monument of some antiquity that is extant on earth"....Toward the end of his life, in the Lettres chinoises, indiennes et tartares of 1776,
Voltaire recapitulated his view of Indian sacred literature. The oldest source, "written in the sacred language during the present world-age by a king on the banks of the Ganges named Brama," is the holy Shasta-bad translated by Holwell and Dow; it is 5,000 years old. As much as 1,500 years later "another brachmane who, however, was not king" proclaimed the "new law of the Veidam". What Voltaire had long regarded as the world's most valuable and ancient sacred text, the Veda, was now presented as a much later product, a "new law" that Voltaire butchered as follows:
This Veidam is the most boring hodgepodge [fatras] that I have ever read. Imagine the Golden Legend, the Conformities of St. Francis of Assisi,
the Spiritual Exercises by St. Ignace, and the Sermons of Menot [1506] all put together, and you will still only have a faint idea of the impertinence of the Veidam.
The Ezour-vedam, which Voltaire had long showered with praise as a commentary of the Veda that supposedly contained genuine Vedic quotations,
was now elegantly moved to the realm of enlightened philosophy:
The Ezour-Veidam is a completely different thing. It is the work of a true sage who powerfully rises up against the stupidities of the brachmanes of his time. This Ezour-Veidam was written some time before Alexander's invasion. It is a dispute of philosophy against Indian theology; but I bet that the Ezour-Veidam receives no credit at all in its country and that the Veidam is regarded as a heavenly book....
Already in 1771, while Voltaire continued to trumpet the wonders of the Shasta-bad, he slipped an insidious couple of questions into his discussion of Indian sacred doctrine:
"How could God provide a second law in his Veidam? Was his first one [in the Shasta-bad] therefore no good?" A year later he targeted Holwell's Shasta-bad when he joked about "novels [romans] about the origin of evil" whose "extreme merit" is that "there never was a commandment that one must believe them". Thus, even Holwell -- the man who according to Voltaire "had not only learned the language of the modern brahmins but also that of the ancient bracmanes, who has since written such precious treatises about India and who translated sublime pieces from the oldest books in the sacred language, books older than those of Sanchuniathon of Phoenicia, Mercury of Egypt, and the first legislators of China" -- even the heroic Holwell "cannot be trusted blindly". And in an aside that reveals for a moment his true opinion about Holwell's Shasta-bad, Voltaire mischievously added,
"But at any rate he has demonstrated to us that 5,000 years ago the people living on the Ganges [Gangarides] wrote a mythology, whether good or bad".However Voltaire evaluated such "oldest texts of the world," his conviction that India is the world's oldest civilization did not budge even when Jean Sylvain Bailly challenged it in a series of letters. They were published in 1777, one year before Voltaire's death, in Bailly's Letters on the origin of the sciences and of the peoples of Asia. Insisting that Holwell is "truth and simplicity in person" Voltaire used Holwell's Shastah to support his rejection of Bailly's argument for the Siberian origins of humankind. Whatever arguments Bailly pressed upon him, Voltaire politely but firmly clung to his idea and declined to change his view of India as the cradle of civilization. It was this opinion of his that, hammered into public consciousness through a ream of books and pamphlets, played a seminal role in turning the European public's gaze toward India and its religious literature....
Like Voltaire three decades later,
La Croze was convinced that vestiges of early monotheism could be found in the Indies and that they would throw light on the earliest phase of human history:
Nothing ... should evoke more interest for them [the Indians] than to see that, in spite of the grossest idolatry, the existence of the infinitely perfect Being is so well established with them that there can be no doubt that they have preserved such knowledge since their first establishment in the Indies.
Whereas with the Greeks and Romans "the existence of the true God" was "known only to a small number of philosophers and played no role at all in the religion of the people," evidence from India indicated to La Croze that
the Indians not only had pure monotheism in the remote past but preserved it ever since. Their antiquity far surpassed that of the Greeks:One sees them form a large crowd [multitude nombreuse] from the centuries when Greek history begins to emerge from the darkness of ancient mythology, and this -- in combination with other reflections -- gives one the right to regard them as one of the most ancient peoples of the world.
While La Croze did not want to discuss the exact origin of this monotheism and found that it would be "badly managed erudition" to pinpoint exactly which son of Noah had transmitted his religion to the Indies, it is clear that
the ark of Noah and the biblical creation Story loomed in the back of his mind. All signs indicated that Noah's pure religion had made its way to the Indies soon after the deluge and was preserved there:One can even suppose, as a very probable fact, that in ancient times they had a quite distinct knowledge of the true God and that they worshipped him in an inner cult [culte interieur] that at the time was mixed with no profanation at all. Some of their sages who until today preserve this doctrine ... make this conjecture so probable that there seems to be no possible counterargument....
La Croze was convinced "that
the ancient Indians had been colonies of Egypt" and that
"the origin of the superstitions of the Indies must be attributed to those of the Egyptians with which they maintain to this day a surprising conformity". Among the superstitions mentioned by La Croze, we find not only
"Egyptian-style" metempsychosis or transmigration of souls but also the mortifications that fascinated and repelled so many Europeans...
La Croze also saw an Egyptian origin of Indian
phallic worship, animal worship, the distinction of castes, vegetarianism, and monasticism complete with tonsure and celibacy. All this convinced La Croze -- who as a Protestant of course also remarked on the Egyptian origins of Catholic monasticism and rites -- that
Egypt is "the mother and the origin of ancient superstitions and of all sorts of errors and idolatries". If this was the source of a misguided cult that "the Bramines entertain for their own particular interests",
they were also the guardians of an ancient monotheistic teaching that the priests kept hidden from the common people. This theme of an exoteric and an esoteric teaching (the latter of which is hidden and encoded by priests) was already present in Plutarch's book on Isis and Osiris and was widely regarded as a characteristic feature of Egyptian religion. In Kircher's misguided efforts to translate Egyptian hieroglyphs -- for example, in his Obeliscus Pamphilius of 1650 -- it played a central role, since his whole method rested on
the dichotomy of exoteric and esoteric teachings and the idea that the latter represented primeval monotheism encoded in sacred symbols. ...
Already in Ricci's and de Nobili's time, around the beginning of the seventeenth century, the claim surfaced that
the Vedas of India were the repository of ancient Indian monotheism. Of course,
the approach of Nobili and his successors in the Jesuit Madurai mission was anchored in the idea that India had once been a land reigned by pure monotheism; but
the locus classicus for the monotheism of the Vedas is the description in Diogo do Couto's Decada Quinta da Asia of 1612. Schurhammer has shown that Couto plagiarized the report by the Augustinian missionary Agostinho de Azevedo, but
it was through Couto that this view of the Vedas as a monotheistic scripture, hidden by the Brahmans from the people to whom they preached polytheism, became popular. ... [A] summary by Philip Baldaeus will suffice:
The first of these Books treated of God and of the Origin and Beginning of the Universe. The second, of those who have the Government and Management thereof. The third, of Morality and true Virtue. The fourth of the Ceremonials in their Temples, and Sacrifices. These four Books of the Vedam are by them call' d Roggo Vedam, Jadura Vedam, Sama Vedam, and Tarawana Vedam; and by the Malabars Icca, Icciyxa, Saman, and Adaravan. The loss of this first Part is highly lamented by the Brahmans....
La Croze was certain that this would bring about a revolution in knowledge not only about India but also antiquity in general:
There is hardly any doubt that in this respect one could go much further if the Vedam, which is the collection of the ancient sacred books of the Brachmans, was translated into Latin or one of Europe's [living] languages. It is likely that one would find in it antiquities [Antiquitez] that the superstitiously proud Brahmins withhold from the people of the Indies whom they regard as profane and to whom nothing but the exterior [exterieur] of religion is conveyed, buried in fables that are at least as extravagant as those of Greek paganism.
For La Croze, the Vedas represented the monotheistic core of Indian religion that the Brahmans jealously guarded as a secret while feeding the exoteric surface to the crowds. But since this "interior" doctrine of the Vedas was still unknown, information from other sources was all the more important. As royal librarian of Prussia, La Croze could make use of a very broad range of publications, but as a linguist and philologist, he was partial to authors who could read local languages....
La Croze prized the information furnished by Bartholomaus ZIEGENBALG most highly: "He is preferable due to his accuracy and the care he took to report
only what he had himself observed and what he read in the books written in a language that had become as natural to him as the one he sucked with his mother's milk" ...
While partly modeling his Genealogy of Malabar Divinities of 1713
on the lists of gods in the "Diwagaram [Tivakaram]",
Ziegenbalg omitted the "symbol of Tamil religiosity," Murukan, from his list. Instead he began his Genealogy in the manner of a Christian theology book, with a chapter on "Barabarawastu" who in Ziegenbalg's view is "the supreme divine being and origin of all divinities", even though it is not listed in the Tivakaram. As natural monotheists, so Ziegenbalg thought, the Indians must since antiquity have worshiped a supreme divine being who was not just one god among others but rather the very origin of all gods and the world.These heathen know by the light of nature that there is one God. This truth has not only been communicated to them by Christians but is so firmly implanted in their mind by the evidence of their conscience that they would regard it as the greatest impiety if they would learn that there are people in this world who do not posit a divine being who is the origin of everything, preserves everything, and reigns over everything -- the kind of atheism that has found entry even among Christians and particularly among learned people here and there.
Ziegenbalg compared such European atheists of the early eighteenth century with
"heathen" Indians who are not only naturally monotheist but even profess faith in the very same God that the German pastors evoked in their sermons: "a God who created everything, reigns over everything, punishes evil, rewards good deeds, and who must be feared, loved, worshipped, and prayed to". The faith in this God had not only led the Indians to "establish a law and write many books of religion" but also to "introduce all kinds of sacrifices, build pagodas, and establish everywhere in their lands a formal service that in their opinion serves God".
Because they relied exclusively on reason that "since the Fall is entirely misguided and spoiled," they eventually "let themselves be seduced by Satan in various ways." Nevertheless, from time immemorial, they fundamentally accept and worship an invisible divine being and have texts to prove this:Such truth gained from the light of nature is not a recent thing with them but a very ancient one; they have books that are said to be more than 2000 years old. These form the basis of their opinions in these matters, and they hold that their religion is the oldest of all; it may have originated not long after the deluge. They not only believe in one God but have by the light of nature come so far as to accept no more than one single divine being as the origin of all things. Even though they worship many gods, they hold that all such gods have sprung from a single divine being and will return therein; so that in all gods only that single divine being is worshipped. Those among them who are a bit learned will defend this very obstinately even though they cannot deliver any proof of it.
The best among the Indians regard "this Barabarawastu, which means Highest Being or Being of beings" as an immaterial being without any shape. They have hundreds of names for it, for example "Savuvesuren, the Lord over everything; Niddia Anander, the eternally supreme one; or Adinaiagen, the first lord of all who is supreme"....Ziegenbalg ... [says in] his introduction to Malabar Heathendom ...:
The fourth reason [for transmitting such information] is that teachers and preachers of atheism, which is fashionable among many in Europe, can be refuted through the principles of these heathen. Even though they are heathen, one will see consistently in these books that they believe in a divine Being who created all, reigns over everything, and eventually will reward virtue and punish evil; and that bliss awaits the faithful and damnation the evil. All of this, as a matter of fact, is denied by many Christians who rely on chance and live much worse than the heathen. ...
[W]ho were these Gnanigol, the authors of the Indian texts whose translations so much inspired Ziegenbalg, La Croze, and their readers?
When Ziegenbalg arrived in the small Danish colony of Tranquebar on the coast south of Madras (Chennai) in 1706, he first had to learn some Portuguese... he soon met an eminent native who seemed to be the answer to his prayers:...
It was this gifted man, Alakappan or Aleppa, who introduced Ziegenbalg to the intricacies of the Tamil language and to the vocabulary needed for his mission....
When Ziegenbalg and his associate Grundler needed more European support and were preparing for Ziegenbalg's journey to Germany, Denmark, and England, they paid Aleppa to write letters from exile in answer to the missionaries' questions....
Aleppa repeats what he apparently learned so well since his youth and discussed so many times with the missionaries:The fact that God is a unique God [einiger Gott] is known and professed by all. ... We also say that among all [gods] there is only one who is the highest being, called at times Barabarawastu [Skt. paraparavastu, divine substance] and at times Tschiwen [Shiva], Tschatatschiwum [Skt. sadasiva, eternally graceful one], or Barabiruma [Skt. para-brahma, supreme Brahman]. This God has created all others, given each of them his duties and tasks, and ordered that they must be worshipped and prayed to. All of this is written in our law [Gesetz] and is commanded in old history books. Therefore it is among us everywhere customary to pray to the said persons. At the same time it is written in our books of law that God promised various modes of recompensation to those who worship such persons and accept them in faith and love.
The ordinary people of South India were thus depicted as fundamentally monotheistic, even though they had a tendency to worship the true God under different names and forms. But Aleppa also mentioned radical monotheists:
Other than that, there are also people among us who worship God the supreme being alone and always honor only this lord while they renounce everything in the world in order to keep contemplating God in their heart at all times. It is said of these [Gnanigol] that God unites with them and transforms them into himself [in sich verwandele], and also that they become invisible in the world....
He clearly tried to present his own religion in the best light and had adopted the Europeans' fundamental conviction that
monotheism was good, while polytheism and idol-worship were evil and the devil's work. ...
During a phase of persecution in a neighboring region, a Jesuit missionary's library was stored in Tranquebar, and Ziegenbalg found himself suddenly in possession of much interesting materials that included
a Tamil translation of the New Testament. This stroke of luck made him an heir to Jesuit research on terminology that had flourished since the days of Roberto de Nobili....At this early stage he thus began to employ de Nobili's loaded terminology; for example, he often used the word Caruvecuran (Skt. sarvesvara, lord of all) for God. According to Jeyaraj ,
the twenty-six Tamil sermons of de Nobili contain many words picked up by Ziegenbalg -- for example, the Tamil words for God, angels, devil, world, man, soul, death, salvation, remission, and eternal life. Ziegenbalg's Tamil community was likely to learn, just like de Nobili's flock a century earlier, how important it is for manusan (Skt manusa, man) to avoid pavam (Skt. papa, evil), to embrace punniyam (Skt. punya, virtue), and to worship Caruvecuran (Skt. sarvesvara, lord of all) in the form of Barabarawastu (Skt. paraparavastu, divine substance) because there is no other path to the other shore (karai-erutal) of motcam (Skt. moksa, liberation).
Apart from terms for God such as Caruvecuran and Barabarawastu, the juxtaposition of jnana (knowledge, wisdom) and ajnana (ignorance) was particularly important for Ziegenbalg's view of Indian religions and his mission enterprise.
The title of the first pamphlet from the brand-new Tamil mission press in Tranquebar reads: "The Veta-pramanam (Skt. vedapramana, Vedic norm) demonstrating that akkiyanam [ajnana] must be detested and how those in akkiyanam can be saved". In the very first sentence Ziegenbalg comes straight to the point: "We have come to you in order to save you from akkiyanam". Grafe summarizes the pamphlet's contents as follows:
(1) What is a-jnana? -- It is idol worship and moral perversion according to Rom. 1:21-32. (2) How a-jnana spread in this world. -- It did so because of the devil's deceit and men's guilt and not because of God. (3) There is much a-jnana in the whole of Tamilnadu. (4) How detestable a-jnana is. -- Because by a-jnana soul and body will be perverted and punished. (5) How God is helping those in a-jnana to be saved. -- Jesus Christ took upon himself the burden of a-jnana and delivers from ajnana saving soul and body. (6) What the things are which those who wish to be saved from a-jnana have to do .... (7) The trials and tribulations which those who give up a-jnana and enter the Church experience in the world for the sake of righteousness. (8) The benefits promised to those who give up a-jnana, accept true religion and stand in the Christian faith unshaken.
It is clear that Ziegenbalg used the word ajnana (ignorance) for sin, heathendom, and idolatry. On the other hand, ajnana (knowledge or wisdom) stood for monotheism and the acceptance of Jesus as savior. For Ziegenbalg, ajnana involves the veneration of false devas and the worship of vikrakams (Skt. vigraha, forms or shapes) made of earth, wood, stone, and metal. By contrast, jnana signifies the exclusive worship of Baribarawastu (Skt. paraparavastu, divine substance). The point Aleppa kept making in his apologetic letters was exactly that his native religion was fundamentally a monotheistic jnana, rather than a heathen ajnana, and it seems that he was highly motivated to help the missionaries find Tamil texts that proved exactly this point.
The text that Ziegenbalg most often quotes to illustrate Indian monotheism was already used by de Nobili for the very same purpose: the Civavakkiyam, a fourteenth-century collection of poems by Civavakkiyar who belongs to the Tamil Siddha tradition....Among the three Hindu religious paths to salvation (jnana, the way of knowledge; karma, the way of work; and bhakti, the way of devotion),
the Siddhas emphasized the path of knowledge....
Siddha Civavakkiyar's work promotes civam mysticism and is
critical not only of the worship of images and brahmans but also of the Vedas and Vedic practices....
Such Tamil Siddhas belonged to the class of men that Ziegenbalg referred to as "Gnanigol or the Wise". "Gnanigol" is Ziegenbalg's transcription of the Tamil nanikal, which is the plural of nani (Skt. jnanin, a wise or knowing one). They are saints in the fourth path (pada) of Shaivite Siddhanta agama. Ziegenbalg called these four paths "Tscharigei" (carya, proper conduct), "Kirigei" (kriya, rites), "Jogum" (yoga, discipline), and "Gnanum" (jnana, knowledge). The Gnanigol are most frequently mentioned by Ziegenbalg, and
quotations from their texts make up the bulk of his evidence for Indian monotheism. In the first chapter of his Genealogy, where he discusses the pure Indian conception of monotheism, Ziegenbalg explains:
One still finds here and there a few who destroy all idolatry [Gotzen-Wesen] and venerate this sole divine Being without images. Among them are those called Gnanigol or the Wise who have written only such books that lead exclusively to a virtuous life wherein only the sole God is to be worshipped. The most excellent among such books are: I) The Tschiwawaikkium [Civa-vakkiyam], in which polytheism along with many heathen errors is totally rejected in thoughtful verses and the worship of a single God is advocated. 2) The Diruwakkuwer, which treats of morality. 3) Nidisharum which presents some rules of life in in the form of parables. 4) Gnanawenpa which contains wisdom teachings and testimonies of the one God.
The book that leads this list, the Civavakkiyam, is also the one that Ziegenbalg most frequently adduced in his discussions of Indian monotheism.
La Croze's argument for Indian monotheism, too, is almost entirely illustrated by quotations from Ziegenbalg's rendering of verses by Civavakkyar....Though Ziegenbalg wrote that the two main divisions of Malabar heathendom are "again divided into four kinds that are found both among the followers of Shiva (Tschiwapaddikaren) and those of Vishnu (Wischrnupaddikaren)" his explanations show that these "kinds" are not subsects but rather "differens etats de la vie" (different stages of life), as La Croze put it. As we have seen, these
four stages on the religious path are "Tscharigei" (carya, proper conduct), "Kirigei" (kriya, rites), "Jogum" (yoga, discipline), and "Gnanum" (jnana, knowledge); and according to Ziegenbalg, these stages are identical for the followers of Shiva and Vishnu. The observances at each stage are different. The first stage is for householders who cannot strictly follow the prescribed observances; the second for those who strictly follow outer observances, for example, clergy like "the Brahmanes, Pantaren, and Antigol"; the third for those who do not care about the many divinities and ceremonies but rather devote themselves single-mindedly to meditation, remain or become again celibate, and perform manifold austerities; and
the fourth for those who have abandoned everything and reached "Gnanum or wisdom". This fourth and highest stage is that of the Gnanigol who have left behind all ignorance (ajnana) and who for Ziegenbalg represent the purest wisdom (jnana) of monotheism:Those who have thus become Gnanigol not only consider the ways of the world as foolish but also every other thing in which people seek bliss. They reject the many gods that others revere so much; as one of them writes in a book called Tschiwawaikkium [Civavakkyiam]: You are nothing but lies, prayer-formulas are lies, the disciplines of erudition are lies. Bruma and Wischtnum [Brahma and Vishnu] are fabricated lies, and Dewandiren [Devendra] too. Whoever abandons the lusts of the flesh that seem sweet as honey, dies to that which seems beautiful to the eyes, and hates the habits of man while worshipping only the True supreme being: to him all of these things appear as false and full of lies.
Such saintly Gnanigol, Ziegenbalg emphasized, are found among both the worshippers of Shiva and those of Vishnu;
"they lead a virtuous life after their fashion, worship only the supreme being of all beings, and lead their disciples and pupils toward a worship of God that is completely interior....
Interestingly,
Ziegenbalg linked these four stages of the religious path to the four Vedas...
These heathens have among them four small books of law: 1. the Urukkuwedum [Rg veda]; 2. Iderwedum [Yajur veda]. 3. Samawedum [Sama veda]; 4. Adirwannawedum [Athatva veda]. From these four books of law originated the four kinds [Sorten] ... among the worshippers of Shiva and of Vishnu, that is, 1. Tscharigei; 2. Kirigei; 3. logum; 4. Gnanum. The first law (Veda), according to some, contains what the Tscharigeikarer or people of worldly professions ought to do in order to reach bliss through their worldly tasks.
The first Veda, according to Ziegenbalg's information, thus contained mainly "Mandirum [mantras] or prayer formulas" and the second Veda what was needed for those who wanted to be saved by works [Werckheilige]. The third Veda, "according to some," has the instructions for Yogic practices, and
"the fourth book of law is said to contain everything which the Gnanigol who have reached wisdom and sainthood ought to perform and do."...Ziegenbalg also came across some Indian religions that did not form part of Malabar heathendom and thus delimited it in one more way:
Apart from the above-mentioned sects [Shaiva and Vaishnava], there are several others among the East Indian heathens which the Malabarians entirely exclude from their religion, taking them for heathens while regarding themselves as a people with an extremely ancient religion and worship [Gottesdienst]. Apart from themselves, they enumerate six other religion-sects [Religions-Secten], several of which are said still to exist in faraway countries, while others among them were completely extinguished and absorbed into their religion. The first sect is called Putter [Buddhism] from which they say they have their poetry. The second sect is called Schammaner from which they got the art of arithmetic along with other arts and learning. The third sect is called Minmankuscher [Mimamsakas], the fourth Miletscher [mlecchas] or the sect of barbarians, the fifth Wuddaler, and the sixth Oddier....
Of particular interest in our context are the first two religions regarded as ajnana by the Indian informants and in texts consulted by Ziegenbalg.
The Putter, also called "Buddergol" by Ziegenbalg, are said to have been expelled from India long ago. In recounting the ten transformations (Verwandlungen) of
Vishnu, the missionary says about the
sixth avatar: "Wegudduwa Awatarum, when he was born as a priest in the world, chased away the religion of Buddergol and Schammanergol, and had his twelve disciples, called Banirentualwahr, establish his religion everywhere".... Today we identify the Buddergol as Buddhists; but who were these Schammanergol? In Ziegenbalg's Malabar Heathendom there is little information about this "religion of the Schammaner" except that it was founded by a "Kanander by the name of Tschankuden" (p. 193), brought some arts to India, and was already long dead in Ziegenbalg's time. However, in the Genealogy of Malabar Divinities, Ziegenbalg goes into greater detail about the sixth transformation of Vishnu and summarizes what he found in a Tamil text:
There once were two nations called Buddergol and Schammanergol. They had a noxious religion and created evil sects. They blasphemed Vishnudom and Shiva's religion and forced the rest of the Malabars to take on their religion. Those who did not adopt it were much harassed. They neither put on Dirunuru [holy ash] nor Dirunamum [the Vaishnavite mark on the forehead]. They did not observe purity of the body. Though they worship images, they seemed to be of no religion. They did not differentiate between castes [Geschlechten] but regarded all as equally good. Thus all respect and esteem between high and low and between wise and unwise was effaced. They blasphemed the books of theology and wanted all men to like their ways.
It is noteworthy that Ziegenbalg again attributes a single religion to the Buddergol and Schammanergol "nations." This religion lacked some of the basic characteristics of Malabar heathendom and was opposed to (1) the worship of Vishnu and Shiva; (2) the display of their outward signs; (3) ritual bathing; (4) the division of castes; (5) the authority of Vedic scriptures; (6) the worship of cows; and (7) the idea that one belongs to the religion of one's fathers.... the attempt to convert people to another religion was also something that distinguished the Buddergol/Schammanergol religion from Ziegenbalg's Malabar heathendom; Indians were born into that religion rather than converting to it. According to Ziegenbalg, his Indian texts and informants thus regarded the Buddergol/Schammanergol religion not only as different from their Malabar heathendom but as opposed to it:
Their religion had no similarity with our Malabar religion nor with the moorish [Islam] and Christian religion; rather, it was the ruin [Verderb] of all religions. Therefore Vishnu wanted to exterminate it, adopted the shape of a human, joined them as if he were one of their priests, was with them for a long time, and ate and drank with them. Once he had well seen their doctrine and behavior [Wandel], he summoned his twelve disciples, called Banirentualwahr, and completely exterminated such religion....
[T]he Gnanigol described by Ziegenbalg appeared to La Croze as heirs of the world's oldest religion, the religion of Adam and Noah, who had safeguarded its pure "inner cult." But if the religion of the Gnanigol is the heir of the oldest religion of India, what is its relation to the Brahmans and the other Indian religions mentioned by Ziegenbalg? Given that the Gnanigol attacked central facets of Ziegenbalg's Malabar heathendom and fiercely criticized Vedic authority, the caste system, the Brahmans, etc., it was puzzling that they represent the fourth and highest stage of Malabar heathendom, are entrusted with the fourth Veda, and are revered by both of its great branches as saints....[Cont'd below]