P. Rabault-Feuerhahn, L'archive des origines (Douglas T. McGetchin)

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Francia-Recensio 2009/3 19./20. Jahrhundert – Histoire contemporaine

Pascale Rabault-Feuerhahn, L’archive des origines. Sanscrit, philologie, anthropologie dans l’Allemagne du XIX^e siècle. Préface de Charles Malamoud, Paris (Les Éditions du Cerf) 2008, VI–484 S. (Bibliothèque franco-allemande), ISBN 978-2-204-08559-5, EUR 35,00.

rezensiert von/compte rendu rédigé par

Douglas T. McGetchin, Jupiter, Florida

In this well-researched, groundbreaking new study of nineteenth-century German Indology (l’indianisme allemand, the German interest in India), Pascale Rabault-Feuerhahn examines the sciences of linguistics and anthropology using the focus of their search for origins. Her work is particularly important because she contributes to a deeper understanding of the context around which Indology in Germany developed during this formative era (p. 386).

Following the late Wilhelm Halbfass’s approach to the topic, she acknowledges that German Indology developed with interdependent international cooperation. Germans who participated in the study of India did so within a wide network of scholarship that was crucial in shaping their views. They were dependent on manuscript holdings in Paris and London and on British colonial contacts in the subcontinent itself. She also integrates her examination with the German national tradition that influenced German Indology’s development (p. 29). She persuasively argues that practitioners of Germany Indology constructed the disciplines that included the study of Sanskrit and other Indian cultural artifacts in an intellectual context shaped by its interaction with other disciplines. Classical philology, biblical exegesis, modern philology (comparative linguistics), and anthropology all had important influences on the development of the German Indology.

Germans who studied India in the Nineteenth Century chose several particular approaches. In the first decade of the century, Friedrich Schlegel’s study of Sanskrit was crucial in setting the philological roots of Indology in its quest to create an »Oriental Renaissance« of the Nineteenth Century to rival its Italian predecessor. During the 1820s, an antagonism developed between the Bonn and Berlin schools of Indology, the former under August Wilhelm von Schlegel’s more literary approach, while the latter followed Franz Bopp’s comparative, grammatical interests (p. 116–124). By the 1840s, the study of the Vedas gained special privilege because they were believed to be the oldest living documents of humanity. Rabault-Feuerhahn emphasizes the special connection the Vedas thus had to anthropology, as these texts were described as the »Aryan Bible« (p. 26–27). The historical emphasis on seeking an »Ur-« (original) language, people, and cradle of civilization was an important feature of the German search for roots in an Indian context (p. 18). Likewise, in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century, differentiating Aryans from Semites came to take increasingly important and sinister implications (p. 17).

Significantly, considering this important teleological issue, she traces a differentiation between Indologists about anti-Semitism. Bonn’s Christian Lassen did exhibit such statements, while others such as Albrecht Weber of Berlin did not, while yet other German Indologists such as Theodor Benfey were themselves Jewish (p. 297). The author unravels similarly complex positions of Indologists on the use of the word Aryan (Indo-European), whether it referred to racial type or just to language. She points out how some Indologists such as August Wilhelm von Schlegel and his successor Christian Lassen conflated race and language, while others such as Max Müller and Hermann Hirt came to opposed this practice vigorously (p. 285).

In her study, Rabault-Feuerhahn builds upon the foundational works of Raymond Schwab, »The Oriental Renaissance« (1950) and Walter Leifer, »India and the Germans« (1971), which have more recently been joined by works grappling with the implications of Edward Said’s »Orientalism« (1978) exploring the links between scholarship and colonialism. These studies include Wilhelm Halbfass, »India and Europe« (1988), Fred Dallmayr, »Beyond Orientalism« (1996), Carol Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, »Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament« (1993), and Eli Franco and Karin Preisendanz, »Beyond Orientalism« (1997). Said specifically excluded India from his critique of Western approaches to the Orient because Germany had no colonies in South Asia. Rabault-Feuerhahn surveys the adaptations of Said’s thesis by other scholars such as Ronald Inden (»Imagining India«, 1992) and Sheldon Pollock (»Deep Orientalism«, 1993), who have highlighted Indo-German interactions that were, respectively, positive and Romantic-scientific, the latter leading to an Orientalism directed inward towards other Europeans by the Nazis. Rabault-Feuerhahn weighs in on these debates about Orientalism by pointing out the difference of the German »interest« in India, which emphasized their coveting of intellectual rather than economic »treasures« (p. 14–15). Nevertheless, she balances this »anti-utilitarian« strand of German Romantic Indology with the teleological view of Indology as a Nazi precursor. Yet her analysis goes beyond these well-established positions.

Rabault-Feuerhahn’s work is at the forefront of a wave of new scholarship on Orientalism and the German study of India. These more recent works examining the Indo-German connection include: Kamakshi Murti, »The Seductive and Seduced ›Other‹ of German Orientalism« (2001); Dorothy Figueira, »Translating the Orient« (1991), »The Exotic« (1994), »Aryans, Jews, Brahmins« (2002); Todd Kontje, »German Orientalisms« (2004); Doug McGetchin, Peter K. J. Park, and Damodar SarDesai, »Sanskrit and ›Orientalism‹« (2004); Indra Sengupta, »From Salon to Discipline« (2005); Bradley Herling, »The German Gita« (2006); Jörg Esleben, et al., »Mapping Channels between Ganges and Rhein« (2008); Tuska Benes, »In Babel’s Shadow« (2008); Nicholas Germana, »The Orient of Europe« (2009); Dough McGetchin, Indology, Indomania, and Orientalism (2009); and Suzanne Marchand, »German Orientalism in the Age of Empire« (2009). In addition to providing primary research of her own, Rabault-Feuerhahn responds to and builds upon this emerging field of literature, providing a much-needed synthesis. What makes this work distinctive is her focus on the importance of anthropology, connecting German Indology to the development of this science. The work is also able to make important contributions through the many insights it derives from research into primary sources, as well as the connections it outlines between Indology and the other contemporary sciences.

Other useful parts of the work include the detailed appendixes that feature a comparative chronology between Germany, France and Great Britain between 1739 and 1917, and a comprehensive list of all professorial chairs at German-speaking universities, including not just Berlin and Bonn, but also lesser-known locations such as Giessen, Bale, Czernowitz, Dorpat, and Zurich. This work will be eagerly sought after not only by scholars examining Indo-German relations, but those examining any Orientalist, imperial, or colonial interactions. Other readers who are concerned with global exchanges will be interested in this insightful and thorough study.