(First published in Eva-Maria Glasbrenner and Christian Hackbarth-Johnson (eds.), Einheit der Wirklichkeiten.

Festschrift anlässlich des 60. Geburtstags von Michael von Brück. Munich: Manya Verlag, 2009. Pp. 319-338.
Page numbers in the printed book are indicated in the text below in square brackets.
The author wishes to point out that the term ‘fundamentalist’ is used in this article not with the intent of
suggesting any speciic religious merits or demerits, but merely to denote an attitude that disregards histo-
ricity and does not take into account the fact that living cultural traditions are dynamic and change in various
aspects of thought and practice throughout the course of their histories.)

The Significance of Indian Religions

for the Science of Religion
Robert J. Zydenbos, München

[319] It will probably be known among the readers that the jubilaris of the present
Festschrift, Professor Michael von Brück, spent part of his academically formative years
in India and also taught in the University of Madras; and ever since then, the religions
that have originated in India have igured prominently in his writing and teaching. This
comes quite naturally for a scholar of Religionswissenschaft: whether Friedrich Max Müller
should be recognized as the actual founder of the modern science of religion may be a
matter of debate, 1 but it is clear that Müller’s work has greatly contributed to the early
development of the science of religion.
In the present essay I wish to elaborate somewhat, as an Indologist and a student of
religion, on the role which the study of Indian religious traditions ought to play in the
science of religion. The place of these religions already is quite prominent, but I will
attempt to clarify what still needs to be done for the science of religion to beneit more
from the study of the Indian traditions. There are important reasons for the prominence
of the Indian religions in the science of religion. South Asia is the birthplace of numerous
important religious traditions, including two religious complexes that are commonly
counted among the world religions. From the point of view of diversity and quality of
religious ideas, and of the seminal importance of those ideas, one could easily defend
the opinion that South Asia is the religiously most important part of the world. But
irrespective of how one may judge that question, it is beyond all doubt that South Asia
should be seen as the source of the most important religious alternatives to the ideas

1
Although Müller very signiicantly contributed to the birth of the new academic discipline of the
science of religion, one could argue that the scientiic turn took place in the work of the Dutch
scholar C.P. Tiele. See Wiebe, 1999 (b) and 1999 (c).

R.J. Zydenbos, The Signiicance of Indian Religions, p. 1 of 19

 and practices that originated in West Asia. Therefore, a comparison of the West Asian
Judaic, Christian, and Islamic traditions on the one hand and the Indian traditions on
the other provides the student of religion with probably the most important broadening
of awareness possible concerning the forms which ‘religion’ can assume.
The diversity of Indian religious thought is astounding, in comparison with [320]
the rest of the world, and one may say that the relative absence of religious intolerance
in India is a sign of the profundity and maturity of Indian religious thought. 2 However,
when one goes through most of the modern writing about Indian religions that appears
in the Western world, one generally fails to ind adequate mention, let alone a detailed
discussion, of that diversity. The reasons for this lack of awareness of the full range of
Indian religious diversity are basically twofold. Firstly, there is the obvious fact that
the number of researchers outside India who possessed the necessary (particularly philo-
logical) skills to access the primary sources of information about Indian religious and
philosophical thought has always been rather small, hence the amount of authoritative
information about Indian religions that has found its way to non-specialist scholars of
religion and to the general educated public outside India has been limited. Secondly,
there has been a clear tendency that whatever human resources were there were put to
such a use as to serve whatever interests were prevalent in current non-Indian religious
and philosophical discourse. One very clear example is that of Japan, where the study
of Indian religions (or rather, Indian culture in general) has traditionally been seen as
an adjunct of the study of Buddhism.

Western interest in Indian religions

In the West, mainly two tendencies can be discerned in the interest in Indian religions.
The earlier one, which dominated Indological studies in the nineteenth and much of the
twentieth century, was the result of certain developments in (then) unconventional reli-
giosity in the nineteenth century, of the kind which found institutional expression in the
Theosophical Society and other such organizations. This trend can briely be described
as a moving away from conventional European theistic notions (among them a single,
patriarchal god who is the creator and divine lawmaker, and who judges the individ-

2
I deliberately say ‘relative absence’ here, since it is necessary to counterbalance the popular over-
idealized view of India as a land of perfect religious tolerance. Indian history too has known
its episodes of ierce and violent religious intolerance and bloody persecution. The persecution
of the Jainas by Hindus in Tamilnadu (see Peterson, 1998), to give just one clear example, was
prompted by a mentality that expressed itself in a terminology similar to that of the darkest pages
of twentieth-century European history, and the present-day right-wing fundamentalist political
movement known as hindutva, which presents itself as ‘Hindu-ness’, is partly inspired by the
violent totalitarian political ideologies of twentieth-century Europe (Casolari, 2000).

R.J. Zydenbos, The Signiicance of Indian Religions, p. 2 of 19

 ual [321] human and determines the afterlife of that individual) and an emphasizing of
mysticism and of individual spiritual inquiry. India was discovered as a treasure trove
of contemplative techniques and mystical speculation which could be drawn from for
new experimentation. Because this new Western trend was individualistic and uncon-
ventional (if not anti-conventional), little attention was paid to the social and historical
aspects of the Indian traditions. On the contrary: ‘Eastern spirituality’ was viewed as
something eternal and unchanging, a pure source of truth that needed to be tapped in
order to restore at least a bit of timeless wisdom to Western man, who had become innerly
impoverished by the ‘Western materialism’ that dehumanized society through the natural
sciences from which all spirit and humanity were banished and the new technology with
the ensuing industrialization and social change which resulted from the application of
those sciences. 3 Indian religious ritualism was largely seen not as a historically grown, or-
ganic part of the totality of religious practice, but as a superstitious accretion, somewhat
like the priestcraft that prevailed in certain Christian churches; the political structure of
Indian society, with its caste system that received a justiication in brahminical theology,
was viewed in a romantically apologetic manner and fully, and utterly naively, in agree-
ment with that theology. There was a strong Western concern about wholeness, a desire
to overcome the cultural split that had occurred between man’s outer and inner worlds;
and perhaps naturally, though not necessarily, a fascination was felt for monistic think-
ing. This is the obvious reason why the variety of Indian philosophical thought known
as Advaitavedānta (popularly referred to as ‘Advaita’) came to be seen as the culmina-
tion of Indian philosophy. The historical reality, however, is that after Advaita acquired
its classical form at the hands of Śaṅkara (788-820 CE), new forms of Vedānta arose,
such as Viśiṣṭādvaitavedānta (of Rāmānuja, 1017-1137) and Dvaitavedānta (of Madhva,
1238-1317), as attempts at overcoming what were seen to be shortcomings in Advaita.
Notable modern Indian thinkers have pointed out the subordinate place of Advaita in In-
dian thought: Swami Vivekananda, himself an Advaitin, stated that Advaita is a minority
philosophy 4 in India, and Sri Aurobindo went so far as to state that [322] the attention
which Advaita received in India in his time was not because of any special inherent value

3
This simplistic polarizing idea of the ‘materialistic West’ versus the ‘spiritual East’ was also eagerly
snatched up by Indian religious leaders with political interests, most notably Swami Vivekananda,
who utilized it as a basis for creating a unifying Indian nationalism. It is still quite popular in India
today; and one must also admit that it is not entirely unfounded, even if it is usually exaggerated
beyond all reasonable limits.
4
“[ . . . ] these Sutras of Vyasa have been variously explained by diferent commentators. In gen-
eral there are three sorts of commentator in India now; from their interpretations have arisen
three systems of philosophy and sects. One is dualistic, or Dvaita; a second is the qualiied non-
dualistic, or Vishishtâdvaita; and a third is the non-dualistic, or Advaita. Of these the dualistic

R.J. Zydenbos, The Signiicance of Indian Religions, p. 3 of 19

 of Advaita within the Indian philosophical context, but due to its popularity in the West,
which kindled curiosity among Indians. 5 Nevertheless it is quite common to read still
today, in Western secondary literature such as encyclopedias and philosophical lexicons,
that the terms ‘Advaita’ and ‘Vedānta’ are treated as though they were synonymous, and
that Indian thought as a whole can be summarized as that.
The second tendency in the Western interest in Indian religions is clearly much later
and is prompted by entirely diferent considerations. Since the middle ages, brahminical
religion 6 made a decisive comeback and succeeded in recovering ground which it had lost
to Jainism and Buddhism. While Jainism has survived to this day as a prominent minority
religion in India, Buddhism practically vanished from India, except in areas where India
borders on Tibet and Myanmar. 7 In a land where still today a considerable part of the
population is illiterate, these simple devotional cults (simple in comparison to the more
[323] sophisticated forms of religion which previously were culturally dominant), in
which bhakti, the personal devotion towards a divinity that is thought to be a person to
whom one can establish a personal relationship, are the religions of the masses; and in
the second half of the twentieth century the humanities became increasingly inluenced

and the qualiied non-dualistic include the largest number of the Indian people. The non-dualists
are comparatively few in number” (Vivekananda, 1992 (d), pp. 358-359 = Vivekananda, 1985,
pp. 83-84).
5
“It is only recently that educated India accepted the ideas of English and German scholars, imag-
ined for a time Shankara’s Mayavada to be the one highest thing, if not the whole of our philos-
ophy, and put it in a place of exclusive prominence.” (Aurobindo, 1997 [1919], p. 128).
6
The brahminicalness of the devotional cults to which I am referring here is, so one may justiiably
argue, a highly dubious matter. But it is a fact that in the vast majority of cases, brahmins suc-
ceeded in assimilating these cults to their own Hochreligion as found in the purāṇas and other
works of Sanskrit religious literature and then used these cults to reestablish their cultural and
political dominance in Indian society.
7
Buddhism was reimported to India from Sri Lanka as recently as in 1956 by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar,
the ‘father of the Indian constitution’ and political leader of the dalitas (the better known, but
nowadays politically incorrect term for this section of Indian society is ‘untouchables’). This was
a political act, because Ambedkar believed that social injustice in India could only end if Hin-
duism were destroyed (as he stated in his oft reprinted 1936 essay Annihilation of Caste), and the
irst step towards achieving this would be to withdraw as much social support and acceptance
from Hinduism as possible, by converting to other religions. He embraced Buddhism, because
it was considered an indigenous Indian religion without the political stigmas that were attached
to Christianity and Islam, and a few millions of his followers followed his example. This ‘Neo-
Buddhism’ is not a natural continuation of an indigenous tradition, and there are some problems
in considering it a genuine variety of Buddhism rather than a supericially modiied Hindu devo-
tional cult.

R.J. Zydenbos, The Signiicance of Indian Religions, p. 4 of 19

 by the social sciences, hence sheer numbers came to be seen as a matter of importance.
In addition to this, two more factors played a role: (a) the spread of one particular
form of Vishnuite bhakti religion in the Western world, namely, the one propagated
by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), and (b) the increased
attention given by traditional Western religious groups to interreligious dialogue. Here
too, the interest in the study of Indian religions is prompted by developments in religious
thinking in the West rather than by a desire to understand Indian religious culture. Both
these factors need to be seen in proper perspective.
Bhakti (which is commonly translated as ‘devotion’ or ‘devotional religion’) is in it-
self not a typically Indian phenomenon. In fact, the Abrahamic religions of West Asia,
especially Christianity and Islam, are characterized in India as typical bhakti cults. Per-
sonal devotion towards a personal god is considered so ordinary in the Christian and
Islamic world that especially among less learned lay persons this devotion is considered
essential to religion in general. In order to understand the signiicance of bhakti in India
it is necessary to realize that such devotion arose only relatively late in Indian religious
history and still today is not considered essential for religion per se. Ancient Vedic re-
ligion knew no bhakti, nor did Jainism and Buddhism in their original forms show any
trace of it. These religions recognized a cosmic order, but this order did not depend on
the will or whim of an unseen divine person who was thought to communicate, for some
obscure reason, with only certain elect individuals of unclear qualiications. There was
a belief in divine beings, and it was also believed that certain individuals had a special
gift of understanding the laws of the cosmos, but the ancient religions were either athe-
istic or deistic in nature. The quality of the afterlife depended on one’s understanding of
those cosmic laws and one’s living in agreement with those laws, not on the will or fancy
of a god. It was only after the seventh century CE that bhakti religion acquired a mo-
mentum in southeast India and from there spread throughout the Indian subcontinent. 8
The earliest literary records [324] of this type of religiosity are Śaiva (Sivaistic), with
Vaiṣṇava (Vishnuistic) examples following a few generations later. Although Vaiṣṇava
bhakti appears to be a historically later development, it has come to dominate Vaiṣṇav-
ism (Vishnuism, or Vaiṣṇava Hinduism) far more thoroughly than Śaivism through the

8
Some authors (also Indian authors who lived and worked centuries ago) assert that the roots of
bhakti reach back to the time of the Upaniṣads, if not to the Vedas (for instance, Madhva in the late
thirteenth century claims that the meaning of the Vedas is the gloriication of Viṣṇu). However,
the religiosity of texts such as the Śvetāśvataropaniṣad (a text in which Śiva is depicted as the
highest god, and which is one of the later Upaniṣads) is more deistic than theistic in character,
and such assertions are theological constructs rather than sound, philologically based historical
work.

R.J. Zydenbos, The Signiicance of Indian Religions, p. 5 of 19

 cults of Rāma and, especially, Kṛṣṇa (Krishna).
Kṛṣṇa is probably the best-known Indian religious igure in the West today. In 1966
a Vaiṣṇava mendicant from Calcutta, Abhaya Caraṇa Bhaktivedānta Prabhupāda, trav-
elled to New York to do missionary work. 9 Beginning with practically nothing but a few
personal belongings and a strong sense of purpose, he created his international religious
organization, ISKCON, within just a few years. Most Indians think of ISKCON as a quaint
fundamentalist sect that evokes an amount of sympathy because it romantically points
back to pre-modern ‘good old days’ of Indian culture; it also fascinates, because it is
seen as the subject of a success story of exporting ‘Indian spirituality’ to the West, just as
Swami Vivekananda had done a century earlier. 10 ISKCON also stirs up envy, and thereby
a bit of fear, because in comparison with traditional Indian religious institutions it is i-
nancially quite wealthy and uses its wealth for conspicuous large architectural projects
in India, such as its temple in Bangalore, that was completed in the late 1990s and at-
tracts much attention by means of its modern multimedia presentations of devotional
mythical material.
One cannot but admire Prabhupāda’s self-conidence and courage in under- [325]
taking his adventure of spreading Vaiṣṇavism in the West. 11 Whatever the real impor-
tance of ISKCON for the Western religious landscape may be, and however its variety
of kṛṣṇabhakti stands comparison to the more traditional and widespread forms of bhakti
in India, the appearance of ISKCON and the initial interest it attracted among Western
youths who were disenchanted with traditional, established Western forms of religion
drew a great deal of attention from scholars of religion. Particularly in North America,
the amount of attention that is given in academic studies to ISKCON and its ancestral
Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism (a particular kind of Vaiṣṇavism of Bengal) is clearly disproportion-
ate to their social and historical signiicance in India. This can only be explained by the

9
There is a persistent, popularly held belief, especially in India, that ‘Hinduism is not a missionary
religion’. This is a patent falsehood. Throughout history, missionary activity has occurred in all
the major Indian religions. It is only in most recent times that this historical falsehood has gained
popular acceptance, for political reasons. To what extent such activity is in itself good or not,
and if so, what forms it should assume, is of course a diferent matter.
10
Practically nobody in India is aware of just how few Westerners are followers of ISKCON, or
what the popular image of the organization in the West is. Similarly, practically nobody in India
knows that today, Vivekananda is almost totally forgotten; but he lives on in popular modern
Indian mythology as the holy man from India who conquered the materialistic West with the
power of Indian spirituality in his speeches at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in
1893 (which, again, practically no Westerner knows about).
11
ISKCON has brought out a lengthy and detailed biography of its founder: Śrīla-Prabhupāda-līlāmṛta
(Goswami, 1983).

R.J. Zydenbos, The Signiicance of Indian Religions, p. 6 of 19

 presence of followers of this religion in the West and the attention which they demand
for themselves through their missionary activity.

Desiderata in the study of Indian religions

One problem in the ield of Indian religious studies is that knowledge outside India about
the breadth and diversity of Indian religious thought is quite limited, that is to say: nar-
rowed to only a few schools of thought that have been studied more than just super-
icially. This is largely a matter of limited personnel resources, and of the available
personnel having limited language skills, but also of a naive and serious methodological
failure: till today, the vast majority of Western scholars of Indian religions have held
a simplistic unilinear view of Indian religious history. In this standard view, religion
in South Asia begins with the Vedas, then reforms itself in the period associated with
the Upaniṣads, a time in which the symbolism of Vedic rituals undergoes philosophical
scrutiny, and this results in a new, more introspective and internalized kind of religiosity
in which (for instance) the term ‘karma’ no longer primarily refers to a Vedic sacriicial
act but to the various efects, on the short as well as (especially) long term, and in various
spheres of reality (physical, mental, metaphysical), that result from any kind of act, be
the act physical, verbal, or mental. The Upaniṣads are therefore also termed ‘Vedānta’
or ‘end of the Veda’, because they are the outcome of a natural historical process. This
kind of thinking assumed the form of philosophical monism, more particularly the [326]
Advaitavedānta of Śaṅkara, which is thought to be the ‘mainstream’ of ‘Hindu’ philo-
sophical and religious thought, besides which exist a few ‘sectarian’ schools of thought,
such as those that are based on the work of Rāmānuja and Madhva. Apart from these
relatively late ‘sectarian’ developments (11 th and 13 th century CE, respectively), there
were instances of very early ‘sects’ in pre-Christian times, among which the most promi-
nent are Jainism and Buddhism, which arose as ‘sectarian protests against the Vedic
sacriicial cult’. 12 – In short: Indian religious history is commonly thought of as a linear
process leading from the Vedas via the Upaniṣads to the monistic thinking of Advaita,
and anything else that has happened in South Asia is either a sectarian deviation from
this mainstream or a vulgarization for the sake of simple, illiterate folk, a process in
which less sophisticated folk cults are reinterpreted and assimilated.
This view of Indian religious history is so common that it is unnecessary to give ref-
erences. Any number of general reference works (encyclopedias, but also more speciic
lexicons of religion and theology, such as the Catholic Sacramentum mundi, and the writ-
ings of the present pope 13) relect the view which I have outlined in the above paragraph,

12
For instance, S. Radhakrishnan speaks of “the protestant movements of Jainism and Buddhism”
(Radhakrishnan, 1983 [1927], p. 18).

R.J. Zydenbos, The Signiicance of Indian Religions, p. 7 of 19

 which thus appears to have gained the status of ‘common knowledge’. But there are a
few problems. First of all, nobody seems to have noticed that in the ‘development’ of
Vedic into Upaniṣadic thought karma, which was a cause, has miraculously been turned
into an efect. A Vedic ‘karma’ (in the sense of a sacriicial ritual act) was performed with
a view to bring about a certain efect, whereas in later, ‘Vedāntic’ thought (just as in –
and this is highly signiicant – the so-called ‘heterodox sects’ of Jainism and Buddhism)
karma is an efect, namely, the latent result of an act.
[327] If one makes an efort to go into the systemic internals of the various schools
of Indian thought, one will encounter several more such problems. If one limits oneself
to those schools that profess to be ‘Vedic’ and that are traditionally taught by brahmins
(i.e., by the hereditary priestly class that claims spiritual and general intellectual author-
ity over most of Hindudom), one already inds very serious diferences of opinion on a
number of basic issues, such as the ontological status of phenomenal reality, or the ques-
tion of personalness of the supreme being. Although this has been known to scholars
for a considerable time already, surprisingly few researchers seem to have understood
that this historical fact should have consequences for an adequate understanding of the
overall history of Indian thought.
The background of this methodological failure is quite simple. Early Western re-
searchers have innocently, and utterly naively, given credence to what their Indian teach-
ers and informants told them: not only where learning the Sanskrit language was con-
cerned, but also about how to understand and evaluate what was read in that language.
The standard view of the history of Indian religion and philosophy, as it is found today in
innumerable works of secondary literature, both scholarly as well as intended for a more
general readership is, in a very condensed form, the teleological view of Advaitavedānta,
which presents itself as the culmination of Indian thought. On the one hand, those per-
sons in the West in the nineteenth century who took an interest in Indian thought (for
instance, in theosophical circles) were particularly receptive towards monistic ideas; on
the other hand, Advaita is also the ideology of the most overtly politically active section

13
Ratzinger (2004, p. 38 n. 33, and 39), referring to the theologian H. Bürkle, takes the „upani-
schadische Identitätserfahrung des tat tvam asi“ (“the Upanishadic experience of identity [with
brahman, RZ] that is expressed in tat tvam asi”) as typical of Hinduism and believes that this
cannot serve as a basis for human dignity (p. 39). Elsewhere (p. 165), however, he shows that
he has taken notice of the notion that ‘Hinduism’ is a blanket term for various religions („ein
Sammelname für vielfältige Religionen“), but it has apparently escaped his notice that among
those various religions there are some that are metaphysically rather similar to Christianity, such
as the forms of Vaiṣṇavism in which there is a god who is the undisputed supreme ruler of the
cosmos and whom to serve as a servant or slave (dāsa) is the best possible life a human can lead
(for which reason male initiates of groups such as ISKCON acquire new names ending in ‘dāsa’).

R.J. Zydenbos, The Signiicance of Indian Religions, p. 8 of 19

 of brahmins, the Smārtas. 14 It should not come as a surprise that the main Indian medi-
ators between Indian and Western philosophical and religious thought were Advaitins:
persons such as S. Radhakrishnan and M. Hiriyanna, 15 but also missionaries like the du-
plicitous Vivekananda, who on the one hand claimed, in typical Advaitin fashion, that
he did not want to [328] convert anybody, 16 and on the other hand proclaimed that
India must conquer the world with its spirituality. 17 The very terminology that is used
by Radhakrishnan, Hiriyanna and others says enough about their scholarly attitudes: if
Jainism and Buddhism are spoken of as ‘heterodox sects’, then this obviously presupposes
that there is such a thing as an ‘orthodoxy’, the original (and correct and true) doctrine
from which these ‘sects’ have deviated. (This doctrine is, ‘of course’, Advaitavedānta.)
Another problem is that neither the Jainas nor the Buddhists claim to be a sect: these
religions present themselves not as purer or more truthful forms of a primeval Vedic re-
ligion but as independent religions in their own right. Indeed it would seem, upon closer
analysis, more reasonable to assume that Jainism and Buddhism have evolved from an
entirely diferent source of religious ideas and later, in the course of many centuries,
have exchanged ideas and ritual practices with the brahminical tradition. 18 Thus any-

14
,,Die Smārtas [ . . . ] machten sich zu unentbehrlichen Gehilfen und Ratgebern der Herrscher und
sich selber zu Nutznießern einer reichen Pfründe. Dafür mußten sie ihre eigene religiöse Über-
zeugung, falls sie eine andere als die des Königs hatten, in der Öfentlichkeit zurückstellen. [ . . . ]
In der Regel aber war das mit Hilfe der monistischen Lehre vom Brahman einfach und mittels der
Unterordnung anderer Götter unter den höchsten Gott auch für Vishnuiten und Shivaiten nicht
unmöglich“ (Stietencron, 2001, p. 75).
15
See, for instance, Radhakrishnan, 1983 [1927] and Hiriyanna, 1979 [1949].
16
“Do I wish that the Christian would become Hindu? God forbid. Do I wish that the Hindu or
Buddhist would become Christian? God forbid. [ . . . ] The Christian is not to become a Hindu or
a Buddhist, nor a Hindu or a Buddhist to become a Christian. But each must assimilate the spirit
of the others and yet preserve his individuality and grow according to his own law of growth”
(Vivekananda, 1992 (c), p. 24 = Vivekananda, 1985, p. 18).
17
“I am an imaginative man — and my idea is the conquest of the whole world by the Hindu race.
[ . . . ] This is the great ideal before us, and every one must be ready for it – the conquest of the
whole world by India – nothing less than that, and we must all get ready for it, strain every
nerve for it. Let foreigners come and lood the land with their armies, never mind. Up, India,
and conquer the world with your spirituality! [ . . . ] We must go out, we must conquer the world
through our spirituality and philosophy. There is no other alternative, we must do it or die. The
only condition of national life, of awakened and vigorous national life, is the conquest of the world
by Indian thought” (Vivekananda, 1992 (b), pp. 276-277 = Vivekananda, 1985, pp. 237-238).
18
In India it is becoming increasingly common to think of two main sources of religious and philo-
sophical thought, the śramaṇa (from which Jainism and Buddhism have evolved) and the brāh-
maṇa traditions (see, for instance, Pande, 1978). The word śramaṇa (meaning ‘monk’ or ‘ascetic’,

R.J. Zydenbos, The Signiicance of Indian Religions, p. 9 of 19

 one who speaks of Jainism and Buddhism as ‘heterodox’ is, knowingly or unknowingly,
participating in brahminical inclusivism and, so to say, toeing the Advaitin line. Adher-
ents of this self-proclaimed ‘orthodoxy’ have at times been remarkably unscholarly in
the face of scholarly challenges to their view of Indian intellectual history and of their
place in that history. George Thibaut, the German translator of classical commentaries
on the Brahmasūtras (the basic text of Vedānta) by Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja, experienced
the aggressiveness of this ‘Hindu orthodoxy’ when he [329] expressed his view, based
on a sober philological study, that the commentary of the Viśiṣṭādvaitin Rāmānuja was
closer to the spirit of the Brahmasūtras than the one by the Advaitin Śaṅkara. 19
Instead of critically examining a broad variety of Indian historical and doctrinal doc-
uments and reaching scientiically sound conclusions, Western scholarship has for a long
time permitted itself to be hoodwinked into accepting a history of Indian thought that is
not based on impartial scholarship but is, rather, the theology of religions of one partic-
ular minority school of Indian thought 20 that is intimately associated with a particular
section of society that from its beginnings has concerned itself with political control; its
illusionistic monistic ideology was a tool for gaining and preserving that control. 21
Indian religious history is far more complex than the standard view claims it to be. In
a lecture given in 1969 Jan Gonda stated 22 that Vaiṣṇavism and Śaivism are so diferent
that it was obvious to him these should properly be treated as two diferent religions.
Heinrich von Stietencron carried this investigation further and concluded that Hinduism
as a religion simply does not exist, and the word ‘Hinduism’, if one wants to use it, can

derived from the Sanskrit verb śram ‘to exert oneself, to make an efort’) was used as a self-
designating term by both Jainas and Buddhists.
19
“The question as to what the Sûtras really teach is a critical, not a philosophical one. This distinc-
tion seems to have been imperfectly realised by several of those critics, writing in India, who have
examined the views expressed in my Introduction to the translation of Śaṅkara’s Commentary. A
writer should not be taxed with ‘philosophical incompetency,’ ‘hopeless theistic bias due to early
training,’ and the like, simply because he, on the basis of a purely critical investigation, considers
himself entitled to maintain that a certain ancient document sets forth one philosophical view
rather than another” (Thibaut 1976 [1904], ix). “Among the remarks of critics on my treatment
of this problem I have found little of solid value. The main arguments which I have set forth,
not so much in favour of Râmânuja’s interpretation, as against the validity of Śaṅkâracârya’s
understanding of the Sûtras, appear to me not to have been touched” (ibid., p. x).
20
To avoid possible misunderstandings, it perhaps should be noted that there is no religious or
philosophical majority of any kind in India, and that therefore all schools of thought are minority
schools.
21
Stietencron, 2001, pp. 29, 75.
22
Gonda, 1970.

R.J. Zydenbos, The Signiicance of Indian Religions, p. 10 of 19

 only be used as a blanket term for a number of religions that originated and developed
in South Asia. 23 The brahmin clergy claims the Vedas to be the holiest of all scripture,
and the brahminical religions are commonly referred to as vaidika, ‘Vedic’; but, as [330]
decades ago Louis Renou has pointed out, 24 there is no substantial Vedic base, nor has
there been any for centuries, for the religions that are known as vaidika. If, for instance,
ISKCON claims to spread ‘Vedic religion’, or if an increasing number of Westerners claim
to practise ‘Vedic astrology’, then these claims are historically practically baseless. In
efect, the word ‘Vedic’ is a sociological label that means nothing more than ‘approved
by brahmins’. 25

Religious pluralism as an intellectual advantage

Under the label of ‘Hinduism’, the majority of the populace of South Asia are actually
followers of a plurality of religions, and to these should be added the religions of which
the followers never have considered themselves vaidika or ‘Hindu’ in the sense that they
never recognized the religious authority of the brahmin varṇa. 26 This old and established
pluralism has given the religious culture of India a unique richness and dignity. By con-
trast, the dominance [331] of Christianity as the leading religion in Europe, and therefore
of the Western world, could only be achieved through centuries of exploitation of po-

23
Stietencron, 2003, pp. 46, 48; Stietencron, 2001, pp. 7-10.
24
Renou, 1960, translated into English as Renou, 1965.
25
The key to Vedicness lies in the question of authority. According to ancient theory as found in the
dharmaśāstras or handbooks of religious law, the higher three varṇas or classes in Aryan society
had the right of adhyayana, to study the Vedas, but only the highest varṇa (viz. the brahmins)
had the right of adhyāpana or teaching. As in the course of centuries the original meaning of the
Vedas became increasingly irrelevant to the changing socio-religious setting, and new religious
and philosophical thoughts supplanted the original sacriicial cult to the extent that the purport
of some Vedic hymns was completely forgotten and only very little of the original Vedic literary
heritage remained in use at all, the Vedas were practically reduced to an empty shell, of which
convenient parts could be quoted and illed with new meanings, and the only persons who had
the authority to do so were brahmins. Thus ‘Vedicness’ throughout almost all of Indian religious
history has very little to do with the original Vedic texts or the thoughts contained in them, and
radically diferent philosophies are claimed to be ‘Vedic’, if they are taught by brahmins.
26
Disagreement about the deinitions and importance of the terms ‘Hindu’ and ‘Vedic’ sometimes
leads to interesting discussions. For instance, Vīraśaivism is the dominant form of Śaivism in
Karnataka state, and Śaivism is generally considered to be a part of Hinduism; but there is a
minority section among the Vīraśaivas that does not want to be considered ‘Hindu’ but followers
of an independent non-Hindu religion, because the brahmin varṇa has never held any position of
special religious or social authority whatsoever in Vīraśaivism and the Vedas are not held to be
supreme scripture.

R.J. Zydenbos, The Signiicance of Indian Religions, p. 11 of 19

 litical inluence, which reached its climax in the persecutions and wars with which the
Roman Catholic church attempted to suppress the Reformation and retain its hegemony.
Such a religious homogenization by force happily never took place in India. This does
not mean that there have been no such attempts, and in fact there are such attempts
still today; 27 rather, no religious group has succeeded in acquiring suicient political
power for suppressing and eliminating rival groups, although some groups declined or
disappeared.
As far as we can tell, India has always been a multi-religious land. There have al-
ways been contacts between followers of diferent religions, and there have always been
exchanges of ideas. What is particularly fascinating in this religious landscape is the es-
tablishing of a common intellectual base on which these exchanges took place. Modern
religious scholarship can gain valuable advice from this.
Historically, the science of religion in the West originated in a religiously relatively
homogenized Christian landscape and acquired its irst institutional academic form in the
Netherlands, 28 against a background of liberal Protestantism. One diiculty of this newly
evolving academic discipline was (and to some extent still is) precisely this socio-geo-
graphic background: ‘religion’ was, irst and foremost, Judeo-Christian religion, which
to some extent shares a common history with Islam, the geographically neighbouring
religion. ‘Religion’ was not just theistic, but monotheistic, the older non-monotheistic
European religions having been supplanted by Christianity many centuries earlier. In
spite of one and a half centuries of studies in the science of religion, religious studies
still tend to focus on ‘God’ and man’s relationship to ‘God’, which is detrimental to the
discipline if it wants to be a science.
Because of this background of the science of religion, it often becomes apparent that
researchers have problems when facing religious traditions that are not monotheistic,
or that have radically diferent perceptions concerning [332] the nature of religious au-
thority, including scripture and priesthood. A scientist of religion would therefore be
well-advised to see how Indian thinkers dealt with questions of understanding other tra-
ditions in an environment where a plurality of views on a variety of religious questions
were held, where a clear majority view did not (and today still does not) exist and there-

27
The ultra-right-wing political movement that ironically calls itself hindutva (‘Hinduness’) is clearly
high-caste Vaiṣṇava in nature, a fact that is not refuted by the participation of non-Vaiṣṇavas and
persons of other castes. That this movement calls itself thus is a curious act of appropriation not
only of a foreign word, but also of the accompanying alien concept, and projecting these as the
basis of a national identity. That this Indian identity is, was, or should be Vaiṣṇava is, of course,
completely unwarranted.
28
Kippenberg, 2003, p. 17.

R.J. Zydenbos, The Signiicance of Indian Religions, p. 12 of 19

 fore no one school of thought could use its socio-political clout to impose itself as a sort
of mainstream on the whole of religious and philosophical discourse.
India has a tradition of writing surveys of its philosophical landscape, which the In-
dologist Wilhelm Halbfass termed ‘doxographies’. In particular, two sub-traditions stand
out, namely the doxographies written by brahminical authors who were followers of
Advaita, and Jaina authors. 29 Comparing these two sub-traditions, Halbfass observes a
teleological tendency among the Advaitins, who present the diversity of Indian thought
as though it were a development that culminated in Advaita, and consequently this sys-
tem is presented last in these doxographies. Jaina doxographies, however, are diferently
structured, because the Jaina authors did not hold such a simple, unilinear, teleological
view of Indian philosophical history, and consequently the Jaina system is not presented
last.
What furthermore distinguishes Jaina thought is the absence of a written source of
presumed a priori religious truth that is quoted as an unquestionable authority, such as
the brahminical śruti and smṛti texts, and against which various systems of thought are
to be judged. The Jainas of course have their own literature which they consider sacred,
but the sacredness lies not in these texts being a kind of law books, full of laws that relect
the will of a creator to whom mankind owes obedience; the religious ‘laws’ are thought
to relect an understanding of how life relates to the universe and how the individual can
achieve supreme happiness. Essentially, the Jinas are worshippable because they have
recognized and taught those laws, not because we are obliged to follow them; however, it
is believed that if one does follow the spiritual path of the Jinas, one will attain the same
insights and thereby be able to conirm the correctness of those laws. In other words, if
the religious laws of most theistic religions (for instance, the Abrahamic religions of West
Asia) are quasi-juridical laws, the religious laws of Jainism (and a few other religions
of Indian origin, such as the older forms of Buddhism) can be characterized as quasi-
scientiic laws. [333] As a community, the Jainas are perhaps the greatest book-lovers
of India; but typically, their view of the sacredness of their sacred texts is remarkably
rational: not so much the letter of the texts is sacred, but the quality of the thoughts that
are contained in those texts. 30
The value of religious thoughts depends on their functional applicability for the re-

29
Halbfass, 1981, chapter XVIII.
30
The Jaina community basically exists of two sections or denominations, known as the Digambara
and Śvetāmbara. Whereas orthodox Śvetāmbaras claim that their texts contain the words of
the last jina, Mahāvīra (a view which is philologically diicult to uphold, considering that the
Śvetāmbara texts reveal diferent levels of linguistic evolution), the Digambaras openly say that
their canonical texts are much later summaries of oral teachings.

R.J. Zydenbos, The Signiicance of Indian Religions, p. 13 of 19

 ligious individual, 31 not on their presumed divine origin (and therefore: authority) in
revealed scripture. Therefore, the discussion of various systems of thought is not based
on scriptural exegesis. Instead, the Jaina authors concentrate on principles, logic, and
inner coherence of the systems under discussion.
This typically Jaina attitude in approaching other systems is exempliied in a verse
by the eleventh-century author Hemacandra:

bhavabījāṅkurajaladā rāgādyāḥ kṣayam upāgatā yasya

brahmā vā viṣṇur vā haro jino vā namas tasmai 32

[334] This can be translated (somewhat freely, without going into technicalities of Jaina
doctrine and the Sanskrit language) as “whoever has lost passions etc., which provide
the seed, sprout and water to worldly existence, be he Brahman, Viṣṇu, Śiva or the
Jina, I bow to him.” The soul passes through innumerable lives, bound to the cycle
of birth and death through inner attachment to saṃsāra, the worldly system in which
reincarnation takes place. In Jainism, the Jina or ‘victor’ (the word from which the
name of the religion, ‘Jainism’, is derived) is the most highly worshippable of all beings:
the exemplary person who has overcome such attachments and thereby has attained

31
It should perhaps be noted here that this principle applies in the case of the more sophisticated
members of the religious community. To impress the value of the laws on the minds of the more
simple believers there are other devices, such as emotional persuasion (which is very clear in the
propagation of the cardinal Jaina virtue of ahiṃsā or non-violence).
32
This verse can be found on a large number of Jaina internet websites and is quoted in modern
writings by Jaina authors, however without a precise reference. I have found it quoted in an
incomplete digital scan of a Hindi book titled Ācārya Hemacandra by Dr. V.B. Musalagāṃvakara,
published by the Madhyapradeśa Hindī Grantha Akādamī (date untraceable), which says it is
from a composition titled Śivastuti in sarga 5 of a work titled Dvayāśrayakāvya, which I have
not been able to trace. (As quoted by Musalagāṃvakara, the verse begins bhavabījāṅkurajananā,
“passions etc. that are the seed, sprout and birth of worldly existence.”) In the form quoted in
the main text (with -jaladā), which is the form in which it is most often quoted, I have found it
as verse 26 in the anthology Subhāṣitāvalī of Vallabhadeva in the Göttingen Register of Electronic
Texts in Indian Languages (Vallabhadeva, 1886). – Even if the verse is not by Hemacandra, its
popularity is highly signiicant, as it says something about a concept of religion that is evidently
current among the Jainas on a popular level. An earlier author, Haribhadra (757-827 CE), in his
Lokatattvanirṇaya composed a similar verse (I, 38): pakṣapāto na me vīre na dveṣaḥ kapilādiṣu /
yuktimad vacanaṃ yasya tasya kāryaḥ parigrahaḥ // yasya nikhilāś ca doṣā na santi sarve guṇāś ca
vidyante / brahmā vā viṣṇur vā maheśvaro vā namas tasmai // “I have no predilection for Mahāvīra,
nor do I hate Kapila, etc. What one must do is to embrace [a hero] whose words are reasonable!
He who has no fault at all, he who has all the good virtues, to him I pay homage, be it Brahma,
Viṣṇu or Maheśvara” (communication from Prof. O. Qvarnström, Lund).

R.J. Zydenbos, The Signiicance of Indian Religions, p. 14 of 19

 liberation from the cycle of rebirth. But a worshippable person need not formally be
an adherent of the Jaina tradition. What we have here is an expression of a general,
abstract view of religion that is characterized by functionality. For Hemacandra, religion
is an instrument that fulils a particular purpose, and he recognizes certain devices in
various religions that serve this purpose, such as devotion towards an idealized person
(who can also be spoken of as a god: Brahman, Viṣṇu, Śiva). Just how this person is
conceived of, the person’s historicity or ahistoricity, the ontological status of the person
and the nature of the relationship between that person and the religious believer – all
these matters are evidently considered of far lesser importance than the religious fact
that such relationships are thought to exist at all and that they can play an important
and useful role in religious practice.
This way of viewing religions signiies a fundamentally diferent focus, a shift of at-
tention, which I consider to be of crucial importance for the scientiic study of religion.
Essential to each religion is the dual search of the individual for orientation and meaning
in the broadest and deepest sense for that individual. This involves the question of tran-
scendence and how the individual relates to that transcendence; but precisely because
the transcendent being is just that (namely, transcendent), it can only be referred to by
means of what Karl Jaspers has termed a ‘cipher’ (Chifer). 33 The Judeo-Christian god is
such a cipher, just as the Jina and Śiva are.
The curious thing about the theology of the Abrahamic religions of West Asia, and
thereby also of much research in the science of religion, is the marked tendency to ap-
proach the relationship between transcendence and the religious individual from the
point of view of the transcendent, which by its very nature [335] surpasses the limits
of the intellect and language (hence Jaspers referred to it as das Umgreifende, ‘the En-
compassing’) and cannot be contained within the limits of scientiic discourse. Because
the transcendent cannot be thus fathomed, theology takes recourse to all-too-human,
supposed verbal expressions of the transcendent (i.e., scripture), whereby all too often
the transcendent is turned into an imaginary quasi-human conversational partner. More
often than not, religious thinkers lose sight of the fact that when they interpret scrip-
ture (for instance, when quoting from scripture in support of a religious argument), they
are projecting their own ideas onto the cipher. Such ‘discoveries’ of one’s own ideas in
scripture can lead to such religious thinkers actually believing that they speak on behalf
of their god. The social and political consequences of this psychological ‘inlation’, as
C.G. Jung has termed it, are well known: the countless murders and massacres that have
been committed in the name of a god, and the various kinds of religious fundamentalism
rampant in the world today.

33
Cf. Jaspers, 1950, chapter III.

R.J. Zydenbos, The Signiicance of Indian Religions, p. 15 of 19

 What Hemacandra did was to approach the relationship between the transcendent
and the individual from the other direction, namely, from the individual. From a scien-
tiic point of view this is far more satisfying, because the individual concretely exists and
therefore ofers a far more solid ground for rational investigation and discussion than
the scientiically inappropriate extraversion that characterizes the Abrahamic (as well
as most other theistic) theological traditions. Transcendence, the divine, the numinous,
simply is not perceived in outer, physical reality but within, in the consciousness of the
religious individual, through introspection and contemplation. Therefore the more in-
trospective approach, exempliied by Hemacandra but certainly not limited to him, is
the clearly more appropriate one.
It is not without reason that the hippies of the 20 th century, just like many spiritual
seekers before them, turned to India. Because of unique social and physical circum-
stances, India could develop a rich variety of religions, philosophies and psychological
theories that is unparalleled anywhere. In the absence of any one religion that could
politically impose itself as a supposedly universally valid order of life, there was an in-
tellectual freedom of inquiry in which the essentials of religiosity could be examined in
a more detailed and objective manner. By this I do not want to deny that also in India
there have been theistic developments that have had political consequences of the kind
that has marred most of the history of Christianity and Islam; but such developments
have fortunately remained exceptions. Because of a generally more introverted attitude
to matters of religious inquiry, the pitfall of assuming [336] an ontological absoluteness
of a divine person (or persons) could usually be avoided: each god remained a cipher.
In this situation notions of the divine were relativized in order to make comparison
at all possible, including comparison with atheistic or transtheistic 34 schools of thought
such as Jainism and Buddhism. This means that ‘methodological atheism’, which Donald
Wiebe advocates as a basis for a truly scientiic study of religion, 35 was realized in India
centuries before Western scholars began to understand its necessity.
Personally, I am highly sceptical about the value of activities such as ‘interreligious
dialogue’. Such undertakings are no doubt popular, and huge amounts of resources –
personnel and inances – are spent on them, and the participants come away with the
feeling that they have ‘done something’, have reached out to representatives of other
religious traditions, have had an exchange of thoughts, have learnt something and have
improved mutual understanding. The academically intellectual output, however, is usu-

34
The Indologist Heinrich Zimmer coined the word ‘transtheistic’ to describe Jainism as a religion
in which there is a belief in the existence of spiritual beings, none of which, however, holds a
place of authority over mankind. See Zimmer, 1988, p. 171.
35
See the contribution by D. Wiebe in this volume.

R.J. Zydenbos, The Signiicance of Indian Religions, p. 16 of 19

ally too shallow to be of any serious use, the reason being that the exchanges take place
on the basis of externalities and supericial similarities that are the outcome of speciic
local historical and cultural developments that are not at all shared with other parts of
humanity and therefore sometimes carry vastly diferent underlying meanings that do
not readily appear on the surface. What ‘God’ and ‘soul’ mean to the adherent of one
tradition, may not appear to be ‘God’ and ‘soul’ to the adherent of another. Even when
those who engage in interreligious dialogue (who, typically, are members of the clergy
and / or unsophisticated lay people, and not scientists of religion) are aware of such
problems, the problems are not addressed but avoided, because of political pressures: to
‘achieve something’ and show results to the respective, also unsophisticated, followings
of the participants. Serious comparative studies of religion ought to focus on underlying
meanings and functionality (which is what a thinker such as Hemacandra did), and on
matters such as the psychology of religion and philosophical anthropology.
The relatively young science of religion has a good deal to learn from the works of
Indian thinkers. Their writings serve as fascinating objects of study, as expressions of
alternative kinds of religion; but also, and certainly not less importantly, the ways in
which classical authors have treated the [337] question of religion in general provide
valuable insights and suggestions. A modern science of religion of course cannot simply
adopt an old theology of religions from India as a model; but it should seriously look at
how thinkers in a rich pluralistic religious environment used that pluralism to arrive at
a critical basis for comparativism and an understanding of religion.

Bibliography

AUROBINDO, Sri, A Defence of Indian Culture, in: The Renaissance in India. Sri
Aurobindo Ashram: Pondicherry 1997 [1919]
BRAUN, Willi & Russell T. McCutcheon (eds.), Guide to the Study of Religion. Cassell:
London 2000
BÜRKLE, Horst, Der Mensch auf der Suche nach Gott. Die Frage der Religionen. Bonifatius:
Paderborn, 1996
CASOLARI, Marzia, Hindutva’s Foreign Tie-up in the 1930s. Archival Evidence, in:
Economic and Political Weekly, Jan. 22, 2000, pp. 218-28
GONDA, Jan, Viṣṇuism and Śivaism: A comparison. Athlone Press: London 1970
GOSWAMI, Satswarupa das, Śrīla-Prabhupāda-līlāmṛta. Bhaktivedanta Book Trust:
London 1981-1983
HACKER, Paul, Inklusivismus, in: Oberhammer, G. (ed.), Inklusivismus. Eine indische
Denkform, pp. 11-28. De Nobili Research Library: Wien 1983
HALBFASS, Wilhelm, Indien und Europa. Perspektiven ihrer geistigen Begegnung. Schwabe:
Bern 1981

R.J. Zydenbos, The Signiicance of Indian Religions, p. 17 of 19

HIRIYANNA, M, The Essentials of Indian Philosophy. Allen & Unwin: London 1974 [1949]
JASPERS, Karl, Einführung in die Philosophie. Artemis-Verlag: Zürich 1950
KIPPENBERG, Hans & STUCKRAD, Kocku von, Einführung in die Religionswissenschaft. C.H.
Beck: München 2003
KLIMKEIT, Hans-Joachim, Der politische Hinduismus. Indische Denker zwischen religiöser
Reform und politischem Erwachen. Otto Harrassowitz: Wiesbaden 1981
LANCZKOWSKI, Günter, Religion (B. History of Religion), in: Rahner, K. (ed.), Sacramentum
mundi. Bangalore: Theological Publications in India 1989, pp. 262-276
OBERHAMMER, Gerhard (ed.), Inklusivismus. Eine indische Denkform. De Nobili Research
Library: Wien 1983
PANDE, G.C., Śramaṇa Tradition. Its history and contribution to Indian culture. L.D.
Institute of Indology: Ahmedabad 1978
PETERSON, Indira Viswanathan, Śramaṇas Against the Tamil Way: Jains as Others
in Tamil Śaiva Literature, in: Cort, John (ed.), Open Boundaries. Jain Communities
and Cultures in Indian History. State University of New York Press: Albany, 1998,
pp. 163-185
RADHAKRISHNAN, S., The Hindu View of Life. Blackie & Son: Bombay 1983 [1927]
RAHNER, Karl (ed.), Sacramentum mundi. Theological Publicatiions in India: Bangalore
1989 [1968]
RATZINGER, Joseph Kardinal, Glaube – Wahrheit – Toleranz. Das Christentum und die
Weltreligionen. Herder: Freiburg 2004 [2003]
RENOU, Louis, Le destin du Veda dans l’Inde. Paris 1960
RENOU, Louis, The destiny of the Veda in India. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass 1965
SONTHEIMER, G.-D. & KULKE, H. (eds.), Hinduism Reconsidered. Delhi: Manohar: Delhi
2003 [1989], pp. 32-53
STIETENCRON, Heinrich von, Der Hinduismus. C.H. Beck: München 2001
STIETENCRON, Heinrich von, Hinduism: On the proper use of a deceptive term, in:
Sontheimer, G.-D. & Kulke, H. (eds.), Hinduism Reconsidered. Delhi: Manohar: Delhi
2003 [1989], pp. 32-53
THIBAUT, George, The Vedānta-Sūtras with the Commentary by Rāmānuja. Motilal
Banarsidass: Delhi 1976 [1904]. (Sacred Books of the East vol. 48)
VALLABHADEVA, Subhāṣitāvalī. Bombay: Bombay Sanskrit Series 1886 (online at
http://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de/ebene_1/iindolo/gret_utf.htm#ValSubh)
VIVEKANANDA, Swami, Abridged Edition of the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda.
Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama: Calcutta 1985
VIVEKANANDA, Swami (a), The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. Advaita Ashrama:
Calcutta 1992. 8 vols.
VIVEKANANDA, Swami (b), The Work Before Us, in: Vivekananda 1992 (a), vol. 3,

R.J. Zydenbos, The Signiicance of Indian Religions, p. 18 of 19

pp. 269-84
VIVEKANANDA, Swami (c), Addresses at the Parliament of Religions; Address at the Final
Session, in: Vivekananda 1992 (a), vol. 1, pp. 23-24
VIVEKANANDA, Swami (d), The Vedanta Philosophy, in Vivekananda 1992 (a), vol. 1,
pp. 357-65
WIEBE, Donald (a), The Politics of Religious Studies. St. Martin’s Press: New York 1999
WIEBE, Donald (b), Religion and the Scientiic Impulse in the Nineteenth Century:
Friedrich Max Müller and the Birth of the Science of Religion, in: Wiebe 1999 (a),
pp. 9-30
WIEBE, Donald (c), Toward the Founding of a Science of Religion: The Contribution of
C.P. Tiele, in: Wiebe 1999 (a), pp. 31-50
WIEBE, Donald, Modernism, in: Braun, W. & McCutcheon, R.T. 2000, pp. 351-64
ZIMMER, Heinrich, Philosophie und Religion Indiens. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main 1988
[1961]

R.J. Zydenbos, The Signiicance of Indian Religions, p. 19 of 19