“The Spirit of the Vedānta”: Occultism and Piety in Max Müller and Swami Vivekananda’s Interpretation of Ramakrishna

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Oxford scholar of Sanskrit, mythology, and religion, Friedrich Max Müller, produced two works on a contemporary religious figure, the Bengali Hindu holy man Sri Ramakrishna. Müller was assisted in the second of these efforts by Ramakrishna’s most influe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Numen
Main Author: Green, Thomas (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2017
In: Numen
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Ramakrishna 1836-1886 / Reception / Müller, Friedrich Max 1823-1900 / Vivekānanda, Svāmī 1863-1902 / Hinduism / Vedanta / Piety / Theosophy / Occultism
RelBib Classification:AG Religious life; material religion
AZ New religious movements
BK Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism
KBM Asia
Further subjects:B Swami Vivekananda Friedrich Max Müller Theosophy Sri Ramakrishna Vedanta Hinduism
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Description
Summary:Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Oxford scholar of Sanskrit, mythology, and religion, Friedrich Max Müller, produced two works on a contemporary religious figure, the Bengali Hindu holy man Sri Ramakrishna. Müller was assisted in the second of these efforts by Ramakrishna’s most influential disciple, Swami Vivekananda, who hoped to make use of Müller’s fame to present his master to a wider audience. Rather than measuring their fidelity or lack thereof to Ramakrishna’s teachings, as previous accounts have done, this article takes as its subject matter the late nineteenth-century ideas of Hinduism, religion, and the occult which emerge from Müller’s and Vivekananda’s efforts to make sense of Ramakrishna with a view to better understanding the concepts and attitudes which made such a collaborative work possible.
ISSN:1568-5276
Contains:In: Numen
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/15685276-12341461