Will Sweetman
Biographic Data
| ID | 272174 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Will Sweetman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Will |
| FAMILY NAME | Sweetman |
| SIGNATURE | SWEETMAN W |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Otago |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8010-244X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Forgeries, Falsifications, Fictions, Fälschungen: Some Early Modern European “Vedas”
This article examines—and rejects—the idea that, in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Europeans who sought to obtain copies of the Vedas were repeatedly duped by having other works (purporting to be Vedas) passed off on them. The focus is on a text entitled “The Essence of the Yajur Veda,” produced by a Pietist missionary, Christoph Theodosius Walther (1699–1741), and a Brahmin identified only as Krishna, published in a Germ…
Absent Vedas
The Vedas were first described by a European author in a text dating from the 1580s, which was subsequently copied by other authors and appeared in translation in most of the major European languages in the course of the seventeenth century . It was not, however, until the 1730s that copies of the Vedas were first obtained by Europeans, even though Jesuit missionaries had been collecting Indian religious texts since the 1540s. I argue that the de…
Sisyphus and I: Or, Theologians I Have Known in Three Decades as Religionswissenschaftler
My work as a scholar of religion began in a Department of Religious Studieswhich had been the first in the United Kingdom not to be connectedto Theology. I now teach in a Religion programme which has recentlysevered its institutional connection to Theology. However, for many ofthe intervening years in my three decades in the discipline I worked incontexts which combined theology with religious studies. My researchbegan with reflection on the hist…
Rival Mission, Rival Science? Jesuits and Pietists in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century South India
Two European missionary teams, one Catholic and the other Protestant, encountered each other in the Tamil country in the first decade of the eighteenth century. They acted as if and thought that their goals were irreconcilable, even if the Protestants in Tranquebar admitted that the Catholic Jesuit proselytism in the region had been efficient as 'preparatio evangelicae' for the Protestant mission. Jesuits and Pietists were not only rivals; they a…
The Dravidian Idea in Missionary Accounts of South Indian Religion
The chapter looks at how an existing religious traditions got reinvented as a result of the project of colonial modernity. It critically looks at the construction of Dravidian culture in south India through the discursive intervention of Christian missionaries, who were credited with developing such hallmarks of modernity as print culture and the wide extension of literacy. It is arguable that the single most consequential missionary contribution…
Empire and Mission
The historiography of the entanglement of mission and empire in India has often taken the inclusion of the so-called “pious clause” in the East India Company’s 1813 charter to mark the end of a ban on missions in Company territories, and the beginning of a period of co-operation between church and company. This neglects the importance in this debate of the mission founded by German Lutherans in the Danish settlement of Tranquebar in south India i…
Bibliotheca Malabarica: Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg's Tamil Library
La Bibliotheca Malabarica est un catalogue annoté de la bibliothèque de manuscrits tamouls collectés par le missionaire luthérien allemand Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg pendant les deux premières années qu’il passa en Inde (1706–1708). La troisième section de ce catalogue, qui comprend 119 entrées incluant des ouvrages d’obédience hindoue et jaïne, offre un aperçu fascinant des ouvrages de la littérature tamoule en circulation à la veille du colonialis…
Converting Women: Gender and Protestant Christianity in Colonial South India – By Eliza F. Kent
Hinduism" and the History of "Religion: Protestant Presuppositions in the Critique of the Concept of Hinduism
The claim that Hinduism is not a religion, or not a single religion, is so often repeated that it might be considered an axiom of research into the religious beliefs and practices of the Hindus, were it not typically ignored immediately after having been stated. The arguments for this claim in the work of several representative scholars are examined in order to show that they depend, implicitly or explicitly, upon a notion of religion which is to…
Hinduism: An Implicit or Explicit Religion
.
Unity and Plurality: Hinduism and the Religions of India in Early European Scholarship
A body of recent scholarship assumes that because European writers were constrained by a certain notion of what a religion is, they imposed an artificial conceptual unity on the diverse religions they encountered in India. But during the earlier phases of European contact with India, ‘religion’ had not yet fully undergone the process of reification first analysed by Wilfred Cantwell Smith. A study of descriptions of Indian religions from the sixt…
Unity and Plurality: Hinduism and the Religions of India in Early European Scholarship
A body of recent scholarship assumes that because European writers were constrained by a certain notion of what a religion is, they imposed an artificial conceptual unity on the diverse religions they encountered in India. But during the earlier phases of European contact with India, ‘religion’ had not yet fully undergone the process of reification first analysed by Wilfred Cantwell Smith. A study of descriptions of Indian religions from the sixt…
Hinduism" and the History of "Religion: Protestant Presuppositions in the Critique of the Concept of Hinduism
The claim that Hinduism is not a religion, or not a single religion, is so often repeated that it might be considered an axiom of research into the religious beliefs and practices of the Hindus, were it not typically ignored immediately after having been stated. The arguments for this claim in the work of several representative scholars are examined in order to show that they depend, implicitly or explicitly, upon a notion of religion which is to…
Bibliotheca Malabarica: Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg's Tamil Library
La Bibliotheca Malabarica est un catalogue annoté de la bibliothèque de manuscrits tamouls collectés par le missionaire luthérien allemand Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg pendant les deux premières années qu’il passa en Inde (1706–1708). La troisième section de ce catalogue, qui comprend 119 entrées incluant des ouvrages d’obédience hindoue et jaïne, offre un aperçu fascinant des ouvrages de la littérature tamoule en circulation à la veille du colonialis…
Absent Vedas
The Vedas were first described by a European author in a text dating from the 1580s, which was subsequently copied by other authors and appeared in translation in most of the major European languages in the course of the seventeenth century . It was not, however, until the 1730s that copies of the Vedas were first obtained by Europeans, even though Jesuit missionaries had been collecting Indian religious texts since the 1540s. I argue that the de…
Empire and Mission
The historiography of the entanglement of mission and empire in India has often taken the inclusion of the so-called “pious clause” in the East India Company’s 1813 charter to mark the end of a ban on missions in Company territories, and the beginning of a period of co-operation between church and company. This neglects the importance in this debate of the mission founded by German Lutherans in the Danish settlement of Tranquebar in south India i…
Unity and Plurality: Hinduism and the Religions of India in Early European Scholarship
A body of recent scholarship assumes that because European writers were constrained by a certain notion of what a religion is, they imposed an artificial conceptual unity on the diverse religions they encountered in India. But during the earlier phases of European contact with India, ‘religion’ had not yet fully undergone the process of reification first analysed by Wilfred Cantwell Smith. A study of descriptions of Indian religions from the sixt…
Hinduism: An Implicit or Explicit Religion
.
Hinduism" and the History of "Religion: Protestant Presuppositions in the Critique of the Concept of Hinduism
The claim that Hinduism is not a religion, or not a single religion, is so often repeated that it might be considered an axiom of research into the religious beliefs and practices of the Hindus, were it not typically ignored immediately after having been stated. The arguments for this claim in the work of several representative scholars are examined in order to show that they depend, implicitly or explicitly, upon a notion of religion which is to…
Converting Women: Gender and Protestant Christianity in Colonial South India – By Eliza F. Kent
Bibliotheca Malabarica: Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg's Tamil Library
La Bibliotheca Malabarica est un catalogue annoté de la bibliothèque de manuscrits tamouls collectés par le missionaire luthérien allemand Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg pendant les deux premières années qu’il passa en Inde (1706–1708). La troisième section de ce catalogue, qui comprend 119 entrées incluant des ouvrages d’obédience hindoue et jaïne, offre un aperçu fascinant des ouvrages de la littérature tamoule en circulation à la veille du colonialis…
Empire and Mission
The historiography of the entanglement of mission and empire in India has often taken the inclusion of the so-called “pious clause” in the East India Company’s 1813 charter to mark the end of a ban on missions in Company territories, and the beginning of a period of co-operation between church and company. This neglects the importance in this debate of the mission founded by German Lutherans in the Danish settlement of Tranquebar in south India i…
The Dravidian Idea in Missionary Accounts of South Indian Religion
The chapter looks at how an existing religious traditions got reinvented as a result of the project of colonial modernity. It critically looks at the construction of Dravidian culture in south India through the discursive intervention of Christian missionaries, who were credited with developing such hallmarks of modernity as print culture and the wide extension of literacy. It is arguable that the single most consequential missionary contribution…
Rival Mission, Rival Science? Jesuits and Pietists in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century South India
Two European missionary teams, one Catholic and the other Protestant, encountered each other in the Tamil country in the first decade of the eighteenth century. They acted as if and thought that their goals were irreconcilable, even if the Protestants in Tranquebar admitted that the Catholic Jesuit proselytism in the region had been efficient as 'preparatio evangelicae' for the Protestant mission. Jesuits and Pietists were not only rivals; they a…
Sisyphus and I: Or, Theologians I Have Known in Three Decades as Religionswissenschaftler
My work as a scholar of religion began in a Department of Religious Studieswhich had been the first in the United Kingdom not to be connectedto Theology. I now teach in a Religion programme which has recentlysevered its institutional connection to Theology. However, for many ofthe intervening years in my three decades in the discipline I worked incontexts which combined theology with religious studies. My researchbegan with reflection on the hist…
Absent Vedas
The Vedas were first described by a European author in a text dating from the 1580s, which was subsequently copied by other authors and appeared in translation in most of the major European languages in the course of the seventeenth century . It was not, however, until the 1730s that copies of the Vedas were first obtained by Europeans, even though Jesuit missionaries had been collecting Indian religious texts since the 1540s. I argue that the de…
Forgeries, Falsifications, Fictions, Fälschungen: Some Early Modern European “Vedas”
This article examines—and rejects—the idea that, in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Europeans who sought to obtain copies of the Vedas were repeatedly duped by having other works (purporting to be Vedas) passed off on them. The focus is on a text entitled “The Essence of the Yajur Veda,” produced by a Pietist missionary, Christoph Theodosius Walther (1699–1741), and a Brahmin identified only as Krishna, published in a Germ…
Philosophy (8 works) · Religious studies (6 works) · History (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Art (4 works) · Hinduism (4 works) · Indian and Buddhist Studies (4 works) · Classics (3 works) · Literature (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works)