Thread by @HindooHistory

Hello friends, in my third post for the #HindooHistory Substack, I discuss the "Hindoo" and the Enlightenment view of religion. Please read, share, and subscribe!

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You might be surprised to learn that in an 1814 letter written to Thomas Jefferson, John Adams makes reference to the Juggernaut and then claims to be studying "Oriental History and Hindoo religion"

The appearance of both the "Jaggernaught" and the reference to Joseph Priestley's book in Adams's letter is fitting: Although the popular image of Buchanan's Hindoo dominated the American landscape, an intellectual engagement emerged among the American elite.

This process began with the foundation of the Asiatic Society in Bengal in 1784. Although the East India Company no doubt had selfish motives for studying the natives more closely, the fruits of the Society's labor were not confined to India.

By the early 19th century, translations of the Gita and the Manusmriti arrived on American shores, and became objects of study for scholars like Hannah Adams and Joseph Priestley.

Both Adams and Priestley were key figures in the early study of comparative religion, which was inextricably linked with a particular view of "religion" that emerged from the English Enlightenment.

Although the rationalist approach to navigating denominational difference did allow for a degree of religious pluralism, the Hindoo remained on the outside the category of "religion," relegated to the appendix in Adams's book, as a type of "heathenism"

In the endeavor to systematize religion weigh the claims of various Christian denominations, other systems of religious thought ended up getting sucked into denominational conflict, to play a "negative role in the parochial conflicts within Christendom"

We see this play out in Adams's Compendium. The "primitive monotheism" of the early Hindoo texts are leveraged as evidence for Christian truth, but Adams then presents what we can call the "standard model" of the Hindoo in America, what Altman calls the "declension theory"

On this model, the primitive monotheism of the Vedas degraded over time, with blame falling on the corrupt priesthood who led the masses to idolatry and heathenism. This critique recalled the anti-clerical discourse that prevailed among the English Deists.

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