The Birth of Orientalism / / Urs App.

Modern Orientalism is not a brainchild of nineteenth-century European imperialists and colonialists, but, as Urs App demonstrates, was born in the eighteenth century after a very long gestation period defined less by economic or political motives than by religious ideology.Based on sources from a do...

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Bibliographic Details
Superior document:Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Asian Studies Backlist (2000-2014) eBook Package
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Place / Publishing House:Philadelphia : : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [2011]
©2011
Year of Publication:2011
Language:English
Series:Encounters with Asia
Online Access:
Physical Description:1 online resource (568 p.) :; 20 illus.
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Other title:Frontmatter --
Contents --
List of Figures and Tables --
Preface --
Introduction --
Chapter 1. Voltaire's Veda --
Chapter 2. Ziegenbalg's and La Croze's Discoveries --
Chapter 3. Diderot's Buddhist Brahmins --
Chapter 4. De Guignes's Chinese Vedas --
Chapter 5. Ramsay's Ur-Tradition --
Chapter 6. Holwell's Religion of Paradise --
Chapter 7. Anquetil-Duperron's Search for the True Vedas --
Chapter 8. Volney's Revolutions --
Synoptic List of Protagonists --
Notes --
Bibliography --
Index
Summary:Modern Orientalism is not a brainchild of nineteenth-century European imperialists and colonialists, but, as Urs App demonstrates, was born in the eighteenth century after a very long gestation period defined less by economic or political motives than by religious ideology.Based on sources from a dozen languages, many unavailable in English, The Birth of Orientalism presents a completely new picture of this protracted genesis, its underlying dynamics, and the Western discovery of Asian religions from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. App documents the immense influence of Japan and China and describes how the Near Eastern cradle of civilization moved toward mother India. Moreover, he shows that some of India's purportedly oldest texts were products of eighteenth-century European authors.Though Western engagement with non-Abrahamic Asian religions reaches back to antiquity and can without exaggeration be called the largest-scale religiocultural encounter in history, it has so far received surprisingly little attention-which is why some of its major features and their role in the birth of modern Orientalism are described here for the first time. The study of Asian documents had a profound impact on Europe's intellectual makeup. Suddenly the Bible had much older competitors from China and India, Sanskrit threatened to replace Hebrew as the world's oldest language, and Judeo-Christianity appeared as a local phenomenon on a dramatically expanded, worldwide canvas of religions and mythologies. Orientalists were called upon as arbiters in a clash that involved neither gold and spices nor colonialism and imperialism but, rather, such fundamental questions as where we come from and who we are: questions of identity that demanded new answers as biblical authority dramatically waned.
Format:Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
ISBN:9780812200058
9783110649772
9783110413458
9783110413618
9783110459548
DOI:10.9783/9780812200058
Access:restricted access
Hierarchical level:Monograph
Statement of Responsibility: Urs App.