History of East-West Psychology:
An Indo-centric Approach to the Early Development of Psychology in the West
Many people believe that East-West philosophy and East-West psychology are new or modern subjects. This misconception arises, largely, due to a European historiography that recognizes colonial thinkers, and overlooks the historical interaction between the philosophies of the East and West and its impact. Eastern philosophy began entering and influencing Europe through Jesuit priests in the sixteenth century. Philosophers sought to understand Eastern thought, whose influence is evinced both by clear cultural exchanges as well as by conceptual echoes, particularly in the field of psychology. Despite the interaction and influence evinced by the extensive history of intellectual exchange, its history has been obscured by the colonial narrative in order to establish hegemony. Wilhelm Halbfass asks if “the encounter between India and Europe, and the comparison of Indian and European philosophies, opened new prospects for philosophy itself?[i] This article reviews the historical timeline of cross-cultural interaction of Sanskrit literature, key intellectuals influenced, and looks at the impact this interaction had on the philosophy of mind and the creation of the science of psychology.
Psychological material plays an important role in Sanskrit literature and culture. Even the texts on drama (the earliest being the fourth century BCE), for example, contain theories about core affects and emotions and the mental perceptions which modulate them. These texts are not religious and have a separation between art, science and religion, something that has been a definition of modernity in the West.[ii] The nature of Sanskrit literature and the it’s philosophical traditions of mind have influenced almost all major streams of modern psychology, and while given little credit, they have done this for the last few centuries.[iii]
A review of the European interaction with Sanskrit literature and its various philosophies of mind reveal an overwhelming influence that speaks for itself. The first modern interaction with India began with the Portuguese who took control of Goa in order to control spice trading in 1510.[iv] Jesuit priests worked to understand the Indian languages and religions, similar to work being done on Buddhism in Japan.[v] Reports on Buddhism from China and Thailand, and Hinduism from India written by these Jesuit priests and traders[vi] filled European minds with wonder and philosophical debate. The first known full Sanskrit translation in Europe, since exchanges during the Hellenistic time period,[vii] was Bhartṛhari’s poems translated in 1651 into Portuguese,[viii] and eventually German and French.[ix] The first work on Sanskrit grammar appeared in 1660 by the German Jesuit Heinrich Roth. The Upaniṣads then appeared in France from a Persian translation in 1671,[x] and mathematic and astronomical rules were published in 1691.[xi]
Pierre Bayle published his Dictionnaire Historique et Critque in 1697. His work summarized the known literature from contemporary Jesuits and other explorers of the East.[xii] It discusses Buddhism, Brahmanism, concepts of consciousness, mind and nirvana.[xiii] His exposition challenged the European Christian concept that everyone agreed (consensus gentium) on one god, and demonstrated that people without the ‘revelation of the Church’ had ethical principles, evolved and just societies, and brought into Europe the concept of religious tolerance. These Eastern concepts inspired discussion and created the space for scholars to question outside of church doctrine,[xiv] which inspired the Age of Enlightenment.[xv] Bayle’s dictionary was also a primary inspiration for David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature (1738),[xvi] which is considered one of the most important works in the history of Western philosophy.[xvii] Hume studied at the Jesuit Royal College in La Flèche which had teachers and alumni from Jesuit missions all over the world including scholars of India and China.
The Jesuit Royal College in La Flèche was visited by Jesuits such as Ippolito Desideri who had spent 1716 to 1727 in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and learned Tibetan fluently. Besides a manuscript on the philosophical foundations of Tibetan Buddhism, Desideri translated the work of the Buddhist philosopher Tsongkhapa into Italian explaining the concept of emptiness, karma, reincarnation, and meditation, and he talks about the Buddhist denial of the self.
Throughout the eighteenth century, Western intellectuals compiled resources on Eastern history and thought and created tools for their interpretation. In the 1720s, Johann Ernst Hanxleden, a Jesuit who learned Sanskrit from two Nambudiri Brahmans, composed a Sanskrit-Portuguese dictionary. James Fraser (1713-1754) lived in Gujarat for 16 years while working for the East India Company and brought over 200 Sanskrit and Avestan manuscripts to Oxford’s Bodleian Library. Voltaire, who was inspired by Eastern tolerance, received the Yajur Veda in 1760. Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil collected over 180 manuscripts in various Indian languages and almost all known Avestan language texts, which he gave to the Royal Library in Paris in 1762. Stories about the Empire of India (Hindustan) were published in 1764, and a Persian history of India (Hindostan) was translated in 1768. In 1776, a Sanskrit legal text compilation was translated with intent to understand India’s legal system better, particularly property rights.[xviii]
Intellectuals of this time period read these translations and universities hired professors of Orientalism. Wilhelm Halbfass questions the “repercussions which the study of India and the synoptic view of culture could have [had] upon the thinking European present.”[xix] The topics of European thought underwent a transformation as seen in Immanuel Kant’s 1781 Critique of Pure Reason which has themes similar to Yogacāra Buddhism.[xx] The open-mindedness of Hinduism was a revelation for Kant (and Europe).[xxi] We cannot ignore the influence of reading Buddhist literature and Upaniṣads on the thought of 18th century philosophers.[xxii] During Kant’s time period, there were discussions and articles about Indological topics published in intellectual journals,[xxiii] which in 1784, led to the founding of the Asiatic Society. In 1785, Charles Wilkins, who spent sixteen years learning Sanskrit in Varanasi, India, made the first full translation of the Bhagavad Gītā into English.[xxiv]
The popularity of these efforts to know and understand Eastern thought and culture were not limited to the contemplative works of academics, but influenced, also, popular culture. The works of Sir William Jones, in particular, evinces this popularity.[xxv] Jones, a hyper-polyglot who knew twenty-eight languages, helped to identify the Indo-European langue connection.[xxvi] He became the Supreme Court Judge in Bengal, studied Sanskrit philosophy in depth, and had many Sanskrit translation publications between the 1770s and the 1790s.[xxvii] Sir William Jones was a friend of Ben Franklin,[xxviii] and also impacted Joseph Priestley who lectured to John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.[xxix] Jones’ 1789 translation of Kalidasa’s The recognition of Sakuntala (fifth century) inspired the “Vorspiel auf dem Theater” in Goethe’s Faust (1829),[xxx]and, in 1835, Edgar Allen Poe quoted from Sir William Jones.[xxxi] Such examples illustrate the popularity and extent to which Jones’ Sanskrit translations were read.
In 1802, Anquetil published a Latin translation of the Persian translation of fifty Upaniṣads (Oupnek’hat or Upanischada). A. Rixner presented a sample from the Chāndogya Upaniṣad in German 1808.[xxxii] Henry Thomas Colebrooke worked for the East Indian Company, and learned Sanskrit and translated the Amar kosha (a synonym dictionary) in 1805, and Brahmagupta and Bhāsakārācārya’s works on Indian mathematics and astronomy in 1817.[xxxiii] Colebrooke translated works on Indian logic (Sāṁkhya and Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika) in 1824.[xxxiv] His works were very influential and quoted by many writers and philosophers. H.H. Wilson, among many other Sanskrit works, prepared the first Sanskrit-English dictionary in 1819. This sample of publications show the large availability of classical Indian literature to Western philosophers.
Hegel (1770-1831) discussed both Indian and Chinese philosophy in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy (given between 1819 and 1831).[xxxv] A dominating Christian hegemony can be seen in Hegel and other philosophers of his time, as they taught these lectures within the belief that the world was only a few thousand years old and that all people descended from Noah’s Ark.[xxxvi] Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was a German philosopher openly influenced by Vedānta, Buddhism and other Eastern philosophy. Schopenhauer was an admirer of the famous Indologist Sir William Jones and quotes him.[xxxvii] In 1814, Arthur Schopenhauer read Anquetil’s Latin translation of the Fifty Upaniṣads and called it the worthiest literature in the world to read.[xxxviii] Hegel, Schelling, Schopenhauer laid the foundation for western psychology to evolve and these ‘philosophers of mind’ were reading the latest Sanskrit translations and corresponding with the translators.[xxxix]
Translation of Sanskrit texts and their discussions in Germany during the 1800s and early 1900s was immense and English, French and Latin translations were quickly translated into German.[xl] Peter van Bohlen was a professor of oriental literature who published his translation/research on the psycholinguistics of Bhartṛhari in 1833 and the poetry of Kalidasa’s Ritusanhara in 1840. Christian Lassen, of the University of Bonn, was a prolific translator who was the first to publish Īśvarakṛṣṇa’s Sāṁkhyakārikā in 1832 under the name Gymnosphista. His later Anthologia Sanscritica did much to stimulate Sanskrit studies in the German Universities. Otto von Böhtlingk, who published his first Vedic grammar text in 1847, translated and expanded H.H. Wilson’s dictionary into the Sanskrit-German Petersburg Dictionary. Sir Monier Williams published many Sanskrit works between 1846 and 1897, and created his famous English-Sanskrit dictionary in 1870. Georg Bühler also translated numerous works between the 1870s and 1890s. There were circles where scholars and indologists regularly met.[xli] Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was influenced by Buddhism,[xlii] which he held in high regard.[xliii] Paul Jakob Deussen, a friend of Friedrich Nietzsche, was an orientalist who was influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer, published Sanskrit literature on logic, inquiry, and Vedanta between 1877 and 1922. These examples comprise only a few of the many Sanskritists of the 1700 and 1800s.[xliv]
The history above is an example of the huge amount of British, French and German orientalists and Indologists in the 1700s and 1800s. People such as Voltaire praised Indian intellectual history during this time period[xlv] and utilized it to support the philosophy of the Enlightenment.[xlvi] The Asiatic and Oriental research journals enjoyed an unprecedented popularity.[xlvii] Yet, another current in Europe did not appreciate the expansion and popularity of Sanskrit culture. In 1825, Goodrich’s Religious Ceremonies and Customs gave a derogatory comparison between Tibetan Buddhism and Roman Catholicism.[xlviii] British Indomania of the 18th and 19th centuries was systematically attacked by Evangelicals such as Charles Grant and James Mill, who saw the pagan culture as a danger to Christianity.[xlix] Beginning in 1757, the East India Company and its private armies ruled India,[l] and the evangelical view supported the British as political stakes in India began to demand more antagonistic views of ‘indianess’.[li] British colonialism utilized white supremacy to maintain power over their non-white colonies. In order to maintain this view, scholars patronized by the British denigrated local culture and promoted the myth that all philosophy originated in Greece and Rome and that Mesopotamia[lii] (the birth place of their religious founder) was the cradle of civilization. To avoid Christian criticism, publications such as the 1776 Sanskrit legal text compilation, facetiously stated that the author guarded against religious absolutism so that the Indians might not mistakenly get the idea that they have the truth.[liii] This same dynamic is present in modern psychology circles where techniques from Yoga are given other names to hide their origin in order to make them acceptable to the scientific community and the Christian laymen. This lack of acknowledgement leads to a loss of depth and understanding that happens when the origins of these various concepts and techniques, which have multiple interpretations, becomes hidden.
Interaction with Hinduism and Buddhism “initiated a cultural engagement that influenced Western theories of its own history, aesthetics, theology, science, linguistics, anthropology, comparative history, literature, philology and religion.”[liv] While the Church focused dialogue on morality, salvation, faith and views of the soul, the Hindu-Buddhist fascination with an empirical analysis of mind and its function impacted the philosophers of mind both in topic and thought process:[lv] Sanskrit concepts such as the self (ātman) and no-self,[lvi] self-reflective thought (vicāra) that identifies our mind as creating our reality,[lvii] models of reasoning and philosophical analysis,[lviii] phenomenology,[lix] differentiating the conscious perceiver from the senses, affects, emotions and thoughts that arise in the mind in order to study them (viveka), as well as awareness of the shadow self (pāpa puruṣa). Many have failed to distinguish and acknowledge the transition of European thought as it integrated Sanskrit ideas.[lx]
Not everyone appreciated the new ideas and Indomania slowly became Indophobia. After an Indian rebellion in 1857, the British Crown took control of India, and began increasing Babington Macaulay’s 1833 program to instil European superiority by discrediting Indian intellectual history and only teaching European philosophy in schools, only in English. Narratives that emphasized Indian’s ancient history, wealthy kingdoms, superior grammar system, algebra, or psychological concepts fell into disfavour, as they did not support the British governments program of oppression of “an inferior race.”[lxi] Within this context, Max Müller is one of the most famous German Indologists who published from 1844 to 1902 in English, and created the colonialist construct of Indian philosophy taught in academic institutions to the present.[lxii] The philosophical view of Müller and Monier-Williams was to translate Indian texts that were considered less evolved than Christianity with the intention of conversion.[lxiii]
British praise for Sanskrit subjects lessened, yet Sanskrit concepts were often appropriated without acknowledgement.[lxiv] Indology still flourished in Germany. Hermann Oldenberg was a German Indologist whose 1881 study of Buddhism remained continuously in print. He also translated Theravada Vinaya texts, Vedic Grhyastutras, and Vedic Hymns. New translations were regularly available in Germany through several Buddhist Journals (Der Buddhist, Buddhistischer Weltspiegel, Buddhistische Welt, Der Pfad, Zeitschrift für Buddhismus).[lxv] The most popular French translations were Burnouf’s Introduction à l’histoire du bouddhisme (1844), translations of the Ṛg Veda (1849), Saint-Hilaire’s Le Bouddha et sa religion (1850), and the Bhagavad Gita (1861).[lxvi] More Sanskrit works were translated in the 1800’s up until World War II than in the subsequent period to the present, and many of these remain the standard translations used by scholars of the field.[lxvii]
In the America, there was constant interaction with Indian products and ideas from the earliest time of the colonies.[lxviii] The first recorded Sanskrit teaching in the US was in City University of New York as early as 1836.[lxix] In the 1840’s began a big oriental period when Edward Salisbury started teaching Sanskrit at Yale University, and the Transcendentalist periodical, The Dial, began publishing Asian translations which made discussions of Buddhism more common.[lxx] In the late 1800’s, anti-dogmatism was promoted in magazines discussing Indian philosophy and religion, like The Path, Theosophical Magazine, Theosophical Forum, The Pacific Theosophist and The New Californian.[lxxi] William Dwight Whitney was one of the most influential Sanskrit translators and Vedic philologists who lived in Massachusetts and published a large amount of Sanskrit literature between 1856 and 1894. These writings were read by and inspired Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882),[lxxii] Henry David Thoreau (1843-1916), Walt Whitman[lxxiii] (1819-1892), William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) and T.S. Elliot[lxxiv] (1888-1965) all whom acknowledged inspiration from Sanskrit literature.[lxxv]
All the references above show the impact Sanskrit literature had on the great western thinkers, but there is another influence on Western thought from Indian grammar that cannot be under estimated.[lxxvi] Modern linguistics began in the late 1700’s centered around Indo-European studies.[lxxvii] Grammar is often thought of as a grade school subject in the West, but in Sanskrit it is an advanced philosophy about consciousness, thought and speech as important as religion.[lxxviii] The Sanskrit grammarian Bhartṛhari, was more of a psycholinguist than grammarian, with psychological discussions on language, perception and consciousness that have been appropriated without reference.[lxxix] William Dwight Whitney, similar to Bhartrhari and Sanskrit grammar, discusses the arbitrary nature of language signs and the social construction of language. This concept was expanded by the Sanskrit lecturer, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913),[lxxx] who taught Sanskrit and Indo-European languages at university of Geneva starting in 1892, and founded the school of structuralism.[lxxxi] Saussure’s ideas are said to have laid the foundation for modern linguistics and semiology,[lxxxii] and have been absorbed into how language is approached at such a fundamental level that it is not even noticed.[lxxxiii] The ideas of Whitney and Saussure exemplify the linguistic turn of the early twentieth century,[lxxxiv] which reconceived of language as constructing – rather than representing – the world we perceive.
The linguistic turn influenced Gottlob Frege (1848- 1925), one of the founders of analytic philosophy, and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), who influenced many analytic thinkers, logicians, and philosophers of mind.[lxxxv] These thinkers and others are indebted to the concepts within Sanskrit, which are fundamental to their frame of thought.[lxxxvi] Ken Wilber calls this linguistic turn “just another name for the great transition from modernity to postmodernity. Where both premodern and modern cultures simply and naively used their language to approach the world, the postmodern mind spun on its heels and began to look at language itself.” Wilber states that, “in the entire history of human beings, this, more or less, had never happened before.”[lxxxvii] Wilber’s ideas, like the ideas of so many others, fall prey to a Western-centric narrative that overlooks the influences of cross-cultural exchange on linguistic concepts. The majority of ideas contained within the linguistic turn are traditional Sanskrit concepts generally unacknowledged.[lxxxviii] Heidegger[lxxxix] and Postmodernism[xc] are heavily influenced by these specific type of Sanskrit ideas.[xci] Buddhist, Vedāntin, and other schools of Sanskrit thought focused on logic, reasoning, perception and the nature of mind. As Western culture could be said to have a more historical approach, Sanskrit culture could be said to have a more psychological approach. In this way, the focus of Sanskrit literature heavily influenced the thought processes of philosophers of mind, language and other sciences (which at that time were less diversified).[xcii]
There was no discipline of psychology in Europe or America before the late 1800s. Early psychological writings were called metaphysics[xciii] During the early 1800s there was debate in the writings of Kant and Reid about whether ‘psychology’ was something to study scientifically or whether it was meant to be philosophized about. Then Wilhelm Wundt, a German scientist and philosopher of physiology, social anthropology, cosmology, language, neurophysiology, sensory perception and cultural psychology, became the first scientist to experiment with self-consciousness in 1879.[xciv] His psychological laboratory was at the University of Leipzig, one of the centers of research in linguistics and grammar inspired by Sanskrit. His peers and the topics of his time period were directly influenced by Sanskrit literature, and his process theory, in particular, shows an influence of Saṁkhya philosophy (popular at that time), which focuses on mental causality, efficient cause, sensory stimuli, mental structure, self-inquiry and observation.[xcv] Wundt is considered the first “psychologist” and defined the new science of psychology as the study of the general principles of the inner experience in its immediately subjective reality.[xcvi] Wundt made the distinctions between philosophy, the metaphysis of the soul, physiology and the newly established science of psychology. While not to lessen the work of any early philosopher of mind (now psychologist), it is important to acknowledge the thought that inspired them. Swami Vivekananda commented how European culture has been greater explorers of the external physical world, while Indian culture has been greater and equally scientific experts exploring the inner mental sphere of consciousness.[xcvii]
While Wundt focused on the empirical science of mind, others focused on a more spiritual approach to the topics in the Sanskrit literature. In 1879, the same year Wundt set up his laboratory, Helena Blavatsky moved to India and with her Theosophical Society, began developing the “New Age” approach to Indian philosophy.[xcviii] Many of the Sanskrit-English translations utilized today are based on research by the Theosophical Society. Smaller movements of Indian philosophy in the early 20th century also influenced the West through Indian teachers such as Swami Vivekanada (1863-1902), Sri Aurobindu (1872-1950), Swami Sivananda (1887-1963), Paramhamsa Yogananda (1893-1952), Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986), and others.
William James is considered the father of American Psychology. He was a Harvard professor and philosopher who helped establish the field of psychology as a logical and empirical discipline, and was the first American professor to teach a psychology class.[xcix] William James was openly interested in Buddhist philosophy and its views on consciousness,[c] and had friends who were scholars of Sanskrit literature.[ci] His interest in Indian philosophy and parapsychology led him, in 1882, to become a member of the Theosophical Society which was translating and discussing Sanskrit literature with Indian scholars.[cii] The Principles of Psychology, published by James in 1890, was the most popular psychology text book in America and set the guiding questions American psychologists focused on for the next few decades.[ciii] His continuing interest in the Buddhist science of mind can be seen by his invitation to the Sri Lankan Buddhist, Anagarika Dharmapala, to lecture in his Psychology class in 1903 and his following comment that implied the West still had a lot to learn from Buddhism.[civ]
Sir John George Woodroffe (1865–1936) started as a Judge in the Calcutta High Court and rose to become the Chief Justice of India. He translated and commented on over twenty Sanskrit Tāntric texts from 1913 to 1922 under the pseudonym Arthur Avalon. He was a specialist in the realm of Yoga and Tantra, and brought into popularity concepts such as non-dualism, śakti, chakras and the transformative power of kuṇḍalini, which inspired many early scholars like Heinrich Zimmer[cv] and psychologists like Carl Jung who eventually wrote his own thoughts on kuṇḍalini.[cvi]
In a clinical setting, Freud began changing the discussion of psychology in 1895,[cvii] and Carl Jung in the early 1900’s. Jung was introduced as a teenager to Indian and Chinese philosophy through the works of Schopenhauer[cviii] and his theory of the collective unconscious was inspired by his cross cultural study of Eastern mythology and symbolism.[cix] Jung states that it was his professional practice as a doctor interested in the treatment of psychic suffering that drew him to Buddhist thought.[cx] He had a familiarity with Indologists such as Max Müeller, Oldenburg and Duessen, as well as discussions with his friend Herman Keyserling.[cxi] Jung spent a lot of time contemplating Eastern concepts and appropriating aspects he appreciated.[cxii] He practiced Yoga[cxiii] and wrote that the “Buddhist psychological criticism” of The Tibetan Book of the Dead had been his constant companion which stimulated many ideas, discoveries and insights.[cxiv] In Germany, Indologists regularly lectured to psychotherapists, not just on philosophy but topics such as Yogic autogenic training.[cxv] Books on Psychoanalysis and Yoga were not uncommon.[cxvi]
Olga Fröbe, who had studied Theosophy, Vedānta and other Indian spiritual paths, founded the gatherings of Eranos (a banquet of ideas) in 1933 Switzerland, to bring together various multi-disciplinary scholars.[cxvii] The Eranos conferences had a goal of bridging the East and West.[cxviii] The theme of the first conference was “Yoga and Meditation in East and West” (1933), and the second conference was “East-west Symbolism and Spiritual Direction” (1934). At these gatherings, people like Carl Jung and the art and myth Indologist Heinrich Zimmer (1890-1943) became friends and shared ideas.[cxix] Zimmer’s methods of research and Jung’s depth psychology had an interactive impact on each other.[cxx] If we compare the literature on myth previous to Zimmer and Jung, we see anthropologist-psychologists like Wundt discussing Myth in the context of religious (adhidaivika) and nature explanations (adhibautika).[cxxi] Zimmer and Jung promoted the Sanskrit psychological (ādhyatmika) aspect of myth which is used in depth psychology.
Followers of Jung have sought to obscure his Taoist, Tibetan Buddhist and Indian yoga influences because they see these as antagonistic to scientific objectivity.[cxxii] Many early famous psychologists had Eastern practices, like the feminist Freudian psychologist Karen Horney who spent time in a Zen monastery or the Jungian psychologist Hans Jacobs who wrote Western Psychotherapy and Hindu Sadhana.[cxxiii] These Eastern associations often remain less known or are ignored because there is either a belief that the association makes one less scientific or there is fear that these associations have non-Christian religious content that common people reject. The biggest loss from this is that it has created a lack of education about Eastern philosophies in the psychological field, and people therefore rely and tertiary sources and understanding, and still see Eastern concepts as foreign.[cxxiv] There are even recent scholars who believe that Indian Yoga teachers have taken techniques from modern psychology as many practices from the last two centuries give no reference to their earlier inspiration.
The Eastern paths of Buddhism, Taoism, Vedāṇta, Yoga and other Sanskrit views do not fit the Western concept of religion and actually more resemble philosophies and psychotherapies.[cxxv] This lack of difference between Eastern spirituality and psychology created an internal struggle for Carl Jung, which western culture is still struggling with.[cxxvi] Jung also struggled between his own Christian and colonial thinking and the psychological implications of Vedānta and Buddhism, which our Universities are still struggling with.[cxxvii] Jung, following Eurocentric views of his time, saw all religions/cultures other than European-Christian as inferior and therefore the westernizing of Eastern concepts was considered to benefit them.
Indian thought has not been included in discussions of philosophy because of Hegel’s views of Indian philosophy as being a lower stage of European evolution.[cxxviii] Hegel’s views supported the British Eurocentric white supremacist prejudice that was standard in the universities of America until the 1960s, and these ideas still persist in latent forms within various theories. Some university philosophy programs are still arguing in 2017 that only European thought is considered philosophy.[cxxix] Because of this attitude, many modern psychologies are using techniques of Eastern philosophies, stripped of their cultural clothing and unacknowledged.[cxxx] The Eastern concepts have been put into a western psychologism language, which is a belief system (similar to religion) in itself.[cxxxi] And the majority of modern psychologists have no knowledge of the history of these techniques.[cxxxii] Many people associate Indian philosophies’ influence on the West with the hippy movements of the 1960s and the Yoga movement of the 2000s, but this is indicative of the lack of acknowledgement of the role of Sanskrit philosophy on modern psychological thought.[cxxxiii] Recent research and publications by scholars of the post-civil rights generations have begun to present a more even viewpoint, but the system is slow to change. As more psychological benefits of Yoga have been scientifically documented in the last few decades, some researchers have made statements that apologize for Yoga being the source of their findings,[cxxxiv] as they can no longer change the name of the techniques to mask their source.[cxxxv]
Conclusion
As this article has demonstrated, the lack of understanding Sanskrit literature’s impact on Western culture is a remnant of Colonial rule. We can see Sanskrit literature’s influence in some of the most influential minds of Western thought. The transformation of ideas and philosophy in the last four hundred years cannot be seen outside of the context of Sanskrit philosophy’s impact on western consciousness, and the development of western psychology seen within this context has the potential to broaden western clinical practice by deepening the roots of ideas and theories utilized today.
There is a lack of diverse plurality of philosophical traditions and practices within Western universities and a need to decolonize and teach more Eastern philosophy.[cxxxvi] Research needs to acknowledge the Eastern sources for western ‘discoveries’ so that students and researchers have a greater depth when studying. Allusions and vague references to Aristotle or Plato is not enough. The cultivation of a pluralistic outlook towards thousands of years of debates about aspects of logic, reasoning, perception, imagination, consciousness, and the diverse views of mental health throughout the Eastern and Western traditions can be accessible for the modern student. Psychology schools can look deeper at the influence of their founders, and begin teaching more of the Eastern thought associated with the school’s ideologies, in a method that does not label it as alternative. Books can have a chapter on their antecedents, such as a book on phenomenology could have a chapter on Buddhist phenomenological discussion, a book on Jungian therapy could have a chapter on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, consciousness studies can reference Kashmir Śaivism. In this way, Eastern thought will have the respected place it deserves in the psychological literature and the understanding of psychologists.
[i] Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (New York: SUNY, 1988), 374.
[ii] Sheldon Pollock, A Rasa Reader: Classical Indian Aesthetics (New York: Columbia University Press), 4.
[iii] I use the term Sanskrit and Sanskrit literature instead of Indian or Hindu. I avoid the term Indian, as the classical literature was written in Sanskritic Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal and modern day India. I avoid the term Hindu as it blurs the line between an ethnic connotation and a religious connotation. Sanskrit literature contains Vedic, Hindu, Jain, Buddhist and non-religious literature such as texts on mathematics, laws, astronomy, art, poetry, etc. The proper Sanskrit term would be Sanskriti, which means Sanskrit culture.
[iv] There were two main routes to China, controlled by the Portuguese and the Spanish. The Portuguese route stopped in Goa. D.E. Mungello, The Great Encounter of China and the West 1500-1800 (Lanham, Maryland: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2005), 34.
[v] Urs App, The Cult Of Emptiness: The Western Discovery of Buddhist Thought and the Invention of Oriental Philosophy (Switzerland, University Media, 2014).
[vi] Alessandrini, Nunziatella. “Images of India through the Eyes of Filippo Sassetti, a Florentine Humanist Merchant in the 16th Century.” Sights and Insights: Interactive Images of Europe and the Wider World 2 (Universidade Aberta, Lisbon, 2007): 43.
[vii] Thomas C. Mcevilley, The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies (New York, NY: Allworth Press, 2001). For a critical look, see also Wilhelm Halbfass, “The Philosophical View of India in Classical Antiquity,” India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (New York: SUNY, 1988), 1-23.
See also Parkes, Graham, Heidegger and Asian Thought (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987).
[viii] Gaurinath Sastri, “History of the study of Sanskrit in the West”, A Concise History of Classical Sanskrit Literature (Motilal Banarsidass, 1987), 1. Previous to this, Portuguese translations from Marathi were taking place, with parts of the Jñāneśvarī translated in 1560 by Manoel d’Oliveira.
[ix] Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (New York: SUNY, 1988), 46.
[x] Tathagatananda, Swami. Journey of the Upanishads to the West (Vedanta Society of New York, 2002).
[xi] Giovanni Dominico Cassini published astronomical rules brought from Assam by M. de la Loubiére in 1691. G. R. Gaye, Hindu Astronomy Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India, No. 18 Archaeological Survey of India (New Delhi: Bengal Offset Works, reprint 1998, original 1924).
[xii] Jesuit reports filled with philosophical content were published regularly in Lettres édifiantes et curieuses.
[xiii] Bayle compares Spinozism with the pagan scholars of India and Persia. Urs App, The Cult Of Emptiness, 225.
[xiv] Urs App, The Cult Of Emptiness, 219.
[xv] All major authors of the Enlightenment were familiar and aware of their present period knowledge about Eastern philosophies. “The Age of Enlightenment was characterized by a very distinct association between a general interest in non-European traditions and the motif of criticizing contemporary Christianity and Europe. Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (New York: SUNY, 1988), 69.
[xvi] Gopnik, Alison. “Could David Hume Have Known about Buddhism?: Charles François Dolu, the Royal College of La Flèche, and the Global Jesuit Intellectual Network.” Hume Studies 35, no. 1 (2009): 5-28. See also https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/how-david-hume-helped-me-solve-my-midlife-crisis/403195/
[xvii] Don Garrett, Hume (New York: Routledge, 2015),14. http://phil871.colinmclear.net/readings/garrett2014.pdf
[xviii] This was translated by Nathaniel Brassey Halhed while in service of the East India Company in hopes to improve British implementation of law in India where British law was used for general matters and Hindu or Islamic law was used for religious matters. It was followed by a Bengali grammar text in 1778. Halhed later translated Tipu Sultan’s book of Dreams (1810) and various parts of the Mahabharata. His Upaniṣad translation was unpublished and is only available at the British Museum. See Rosan Rocher, “Nathaniel Brassey Halhed on the Upaniṣads (1787).” Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute 58/59 (1977): 279-89. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.sfpl.org/stable/41691698.
[xix] Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (New York: SUNY, 1988), 45, 79.
[xx] Gopnik, Alison. “Could David Hume Have Known about Buddhism?: Charles François Dolu, the Royal College of La Flèche, and the Global Jesuit Intellectual Network.” Hume Studies 35, no. 1 (2009): 5-28. http://www.alisongopnik.com/papers_alison/gopnik_humestudies_withtoc.pdf
[xxi] Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (New York: SUNY, 1988), 407.
[xxii] Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (New York: SUNY, 1988), 420.
[xxiii] Details of lectures and discussions can be found in Tathagatananda, Journey of the Upanishads to the West, 2002.
[xxiv] Charles Wilson, The Bhagavat Geeta: or Dialogues of Kreeshna and Arjoon in Eighteen Lectures with Notes (London: C. Nourse, 1785) http://lf-oll.s3.amazonaws.com/titles/2369/Wilkins_Bhagvat_Geeta_1785.pdf
[xxv] Thomas R. Trautmann, Aryans and British India (Berkely: University of California Press, 1997), 28-61. See also Amit Ray, Negotiating the Modern: Orientalism and Indianness in the Anglophone World (New York: Routledge, 2007), 42.
[xxvi] The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could have been produced by accident; so strong, indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists. From Vasunia, Phiroze, The Classics and Colonial India (Oxford University Press, 2013), 17.
[xxvii] He is also known to have carried on a ten year correspondence about Jyotiṣa with Samuale Davis, another orientalist who was a diplomat for the East Indian Company.
[xxviii] Thomas A. Tweed and Stephen Prothero, Asian Religions in America: A Documentary History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 43.
[xxix] Thomas A. Tweed and Stephen Prothero, Asian Religions in America: A Documentary History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 44-49.
[xxx] Georg Forster produced the German prose translation of Jones’ English version of “Sakuntala” and sent a copy to Goethe who wrote,
“If in one word of blooms of early and fruits of riper years,
Of excitement and enchantment I should tell,
Of fulfillment and content, of Heaven and Earth;
Then will l but say “Sakuntala” and have said all.”
“How Kalidasa’s Works Reached Germany,” Indian Review, accessed 25 March 2017, http://indianreview.in/essays/literary-studies/indian-literature-how-kalidasa-reached-germany
[xxxi] Thomas Ollive Mabbott, ed., Edgar Allen Poe: Complete Poems (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 116.
[xxxii] Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (New York: SUNY, 1988), 35.
[xxxiii] This is the first official translation, but there is dispute about how much of this came into Europe earlier through Jesuit Priests. Bhāsakāra II (1114-1185 CE) and Madhava Sangamagrama (1340-1425), the founder of the Kerala school of mathematicians, used calculus before either Newton or Leibniz. There are various theories about this work entering Europe though open translations made by Jesuit priests, particularly the German Jesuit astronomer/mathematician Clavius who was investigating how other cultures calculated their calendars. Almeida, D. F., J. K. John, and A. Zadorozhnyy. “Keralese mathematics: Its possible transmission to Europe and the consequential educational implications.” Journal of Natural Geometry 20, no. 1/2 (2001): 77-104.
Gheverghese says “For some unfathomable reasons, the standard of evidence required to claim transmission of knowledge from East to West is greater than the standard of evidence required to knowledge from West to East.” Indians Predated Newton’s ‘Discovery’ by 250 Years, posted 13 August 2007, accessed 16 August 2017, http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/indians-predated-newton-discovery-by-250-years . See also Joseph, George Gheverghese. The crest of the peacock: Non-European roots of mathematics. Princeton University Press, 2011. For an activist anti-racist discussion of the history of mathematics see C.K. Raju, Archive for the ‘History and Philosophy of Mathematics’ Category, assessed 16 April 2017, http://ckraju.net/blog/?cat=9.
[xxxiv] Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1, no. 1 (1824). http://www.jstor.org/stable/25581686. This is referenced by Hegel in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion.
[xxxv] Oliver Crawford, Hegel and the Orient, accessed 25 March 2017, https://cambridge.academia.edu/OliverCrawford . A sample of Hegel’s Indian philosophy is available here: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hp/hporiental.htm . A comparison of Hegel’s thought and Indian philosophies is available here: http://www.unipune.ac.in/snc/cssh/ipq/english/IPQ/1-5%20volumes/03-3/3-3-4.pdf .
[xxxvi] Urs App, The Birth of Orientalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), xiii. See also Wilhelm Halbfass, “Hegel,” India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (New York: SUNY, 1988), 84-99. See also by Thomas R. Trautmann, Aryans and British India (Berkely: University of California Press, 1997), 53.
For a discussion of the cognitive dissonance that this brought up, see D.E. Mungello, The Great Encounter of China and the West 1500-1800 (Lanham, Maryland: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2005), 89.
[xxxvii] … how early this basic truth was recognized by the sages of India, since it appears as the fundamental tenet of the Vedānta philosophy ascribed to Vyasa, is proved by Sir William Jones in the last of his essays: “On the Philosophy of the Asiatics” (Asiatic Researches, vol. IV, p. 164): “The fundamental tenet of the Vedānta school consisted not in denying the existence of matter, that is solidity, impenetrability, and extended figure (to deny which would be lunacy), but in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending that it has no essence independent of mental perception; that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms.”
[xxxviii] Urs App, Schopenhauer’s Compass. An Introduction to Schopenhauer’s Philosophy and its Origins. University Media, 2014.
[xxxix] Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (New York: SUNY, 1988), 107. Hegel read Colebrooke as early as 1823, see Dale Riepe, The Philosophy of India and Its Impact on American Thought (Springfield, Illinois: Charles Thomas Publisher, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1970), 20.
[xl] Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (New York: SUNY, 1988), 70. See also Douglas T. McGetchin, Indology, Indomania, and Orientalism: Ancient India’s Rebirth in Modern Germany (Madison: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009).
[xli] For example, Nietzsche met Wagner in the house of the Indologist H. Brockhaus arranged by Nietzsche’s student E. Windisch who was also an Indologist. See Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (New York: SUNY, 1988), 124.
[xlii] Freny Mistry, Nietzsche and Buddhism: prolegomenon to a comparative study. Vol. 6. (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1981). https://books.google.rs/books?id=l2LgBtCzRKwC.
[xliii] Nietzsche’s high regard for Buddhism was my own entry into the world of Buddhism. My sophomore year of high school, I read the collected works of Nietzsche, and afterwards started reading Buddhist thought.
[xliv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Indologists
[xlv] “I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, – astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc… It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganges to learn geometry…But he would certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the reputation of the Brahmins’ science not been long established in Europe.” Voltaire, Lettres sur l’origine des sciences et sur celle des peuples de l’Asie letter of 15 December 1775, first published Paris, 1777. See “British Indomania”, by Thomas R. Trautmann, Aryans and British India (Berkely: University of California Press, 1997), 62-98.
[xlvi] Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (New York: SUNY, 1988), 49-68.
[xlvii] https://www.jstor.org/journal/jroyasiasocgrbi
[xlviii] Thomas A. Tweed and Stephen Prothero, Asian Religions in America: A Documentary History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 58.
[xlix] Thomas R. Trautmann, Aryans and British India (Berkely: University of California Press, 1997), 99-130.
[l] Discusses the East India Company, its politics and how India is perceived because of that: Roosa, John. “Orientalism, Political Economy, and the Canonization of Indian Civilization.” In Enduring Western civilization: the construction of the concept of Western civilization and its “others” edited by Silvia Federici, pages 137-155 (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 1995).
[li] Amit Ray, Negotiating the Modern: Orientalism and Indianness in the Anglophone World (New York: Routledge, 2007), 32
[lii] Mesopotamia is still often taught as the cradle of civilization to western students while archeology indicates the Indus, Chinese and Egyptian civilizations are all happening at the same time.
[liii] Amit Ray, Negotiating the Modern: Orientalism and Indianness in the Anglophone World (New York: Routledge, 2007), 40.
[liv] Amit Ray, Negotiating the Modern: Orientalism and Indianness in the Anglophone World (New York: Routledge, 2007), 31.
[lv] Edward Conze, “Spurious Parallels to Buddhist Philosophy.” Philosophy East and West 13, no. 2 (1963): 105-15. doi:10.2307/1396797.
[lvi] James Giles, “The No-Self Theory: Hume, Buddhism, and Personal Identity,” Philosophy East and West, Vol. 43, No. 2 (University of Hawai’i Press, 1993), 175-200). http://chinabuddhismencyclopedia.com/en/images/0/02/The_No-Self_Theory_-_Hume,_Buddhism,_and_Personal_Identity_-_James_Giles.pdf
[lvii] Tola & Dragonetti, “Philosophy of mind in the Yogacara Buddhist idealistic school,” History of Psychiatry, 16(4): 453–465. https://web.archive.org/web/20140325112856/http://www.tara.tcd.ie/bitstream/2262/51564/1/PEER_stage2_10.1177/0957154X05059213.pdf
[lviii] Jonardon Ganeri, Why Philosophy Needs Sanskrit, Now More than Ever, Lecture at Yale University, 6 April 2017, p.7. salisbury175.yale.edu
[lix] Edmund Husserl, the father of phenomenology, studied at the University of Leipzig (1876-1878), which is where many of the above Sanskrit translators also went to school and which led a movement in grammar based on Sanskrit. Husserl was also inspired by the lectures of Wilhelm Wundt. For a comparison of Buddhism to Phenomenology see Dan Lusthaus, Buddhist Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogacara Buddhism and the Ch’eng Wei-shih Lun. Curzon Critical Studies in Buddhism Series (London: Routledge, 2002), viii. And Nyanaponika Thera and ed. Bhikkhu Bodhi, Abhidhamma studies: Buddhist Explorations of Consciousness and Time (Somerville, Massachusetts: Wisdom Publication, 1998), 20. For articles discussing textual comparisons see Fred Hanna, “Husserl on the Teachings of the Buddha,” The Humanistic Psychologist 23, no.3 (1995), 365-372. And Kwok-Ying Lau, “Husserl, Buddhism and the Crisis of European Sciences,” Phenomenology and Intercultural Understanding: Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 87 (Springer, Cham, 2016). 53-66. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44764-3_4.
[lx] “From a psychological, historical and causal point of view, however, influence may be rather different. We know that psychologically, people can be influenced by ideas, even if they themselves forget the source of those ideas. In fact, this ‘source amnesia’ is the rule rather than the exception. Information about sources is actually encoded in a different kind of memory, ‘autobiographical’ or ‘episodic’ memory, while ideas or facts themselves are stored in more robust ‘semantic’ memory.” Gopnik, Alison. “Could David Hume Have Known about Buddhism?: Charles François Dolu, the Royal College of La Flèche, and the Global Jesuit Intellectual Network.” Hume Studies 35, no. 1 (2009): 7. http://www.alisongopnik.com/papers_alison/gopnik_humestudies_withtoc.pdf
[lxi] Discusses the colonial myth of Greece as the cradle of knowledge for imperial control over the colonies. For example, presenting mathematics and astronomy as a purely a European invention and omitting its actual development in the colonial territories to present the view that the empire has brought civilization to the uncivilized. Joseph, George Gheverghese, “Mathematics and Eurocentrism.” In Enduring Western civilization: the construction of the concept of Western civilization and its “others” edited by Silvia Federici, pages 119-135 (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 1995).
[lxii] Balaganapathi Devarakonda, “History of Indian Philosophy: Analysis of Contemporary Understanding of the Classical Through the Colonial,” Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, vol.19, 2012. http://inflibnet.ac.in/ojs/index.php/SHSS/article/viewFile/2951/2194
[lxiii] Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (New York: SUNY, 1988), 51.
[lxiv] Hans Thomas Hakl, Eranos: An Alternative Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century (Ithica: Montreal & Kingston, 2013), 33-42.
[lxv] Hans Thomas Hakl, Eranos: An Alternative Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century (Ithica: Montreal & Kingston, 2013), 33.
[lxvi] Dale Riepe, The Philosophy of India and Its Impact on American Thought (Springfield, Illinois: Charles Thomas Publisher, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1970), 19.
[lxvii] This has a similar correlation to publications of modern Indian philosophers, see Joel Katzav, “The disappearance of modern Indian philosophy from Mind and the Philosophical Review,” Digressions & Impressions blog, accessed 22 November 2017, http://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/2017/01/the-disappearance-of-modern-indian-philosophy-from-mind-and-the-philosophical-review.html
[lxviii] Dale Riepe, The Philosophy of India and Its Impact on American Thought (Springfield, Illinois: Charles Thomas Publisher, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1970), ix, 3-24.
[lxix] Dale Riepe, The Philosophy of India and Its Impact on American Thought (Springfield, Illinois: Charles Thomas Publisher, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1970), xiv.
[lxx] Thomas A. Tweed and Stephen Prothero, Asian Religions in America: A Documentary History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 62.
[lxxi] Dale Riepe, The Philosophy of India and Its Impact on American Thought (Springfield, Illinois: Charles Thomas Publisher, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1970), x and xiii.
[lxxii] Dale Riepe, The Philosophy of India and Its Impact on American Thought (Springfield, Illinois: Charles Thomas Publisher, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1970), 25-69.
[lxxiii] A comparison of Whitman’s ideas and poetry to the Sanskrit translations available at the New York public libraries during the time period he wrote Leaves of Grass: Rajasekharaiah, Tumkur Rudraradhya. The Roots of Whitman’s Grass (New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1970).
[lxxiv] Sri, Padmanabhan S. TS Eliot, Vedanta and Buddhism (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1985). See also: Kearns, Cleo McNelly. TS Eliot and Indic Traditions: A Study in Poetry and Belief (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). See also: Singh, Amar Kumar. TS Eliot and Indian philosophy (Sterling Publishers, 1990).
[lxxv] A book discussing the influence of Sanskrit concepts starting with Emerson and Thoreau and focusing on its extensive impact on modern culture. Goldberg, Philip. American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation–how Indian Spirituality Changed the West (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2010).
[lxxvi] Schlegel was the first to use the term “comparative grammar” which opened the dialogue of comparative philosophy through the Sanskrit literature concept of accepting different yet valid perspectives (a concept we take for granted now). “Schlegel considered the ‘merely empirical way of thinking’ which dominated his time to be even more deficient…” Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (New York: SUNY, 1988), 80, 420. Quoted from Schlegel’s Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians), 303. English Translation https://archive.org/details/aestheticandmis00schlgoog. See also Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe, 427.
[lxxvii] Harold G. Coward and K. Kunjunni Raja (1990). “The Philosophy of the Grammarians,” Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies Volume 5 (Princeton University Press, 1990). ISBN 978-81-208-0426-5.
Also see Shrikant Talegeri, The Aryan Invasion Theory: A Reappraisal (Dew Delhi:Aditya Prakashan, 1993), 15.
[lxxviii] For example, in the Sarvadarṣanasaṁgraha we see a summary of Cārvāka, Bauddha, Ārhata, Rāmānuja, Purṇaprajñā of Madhva, Pāśupata, Saivasiddhānta, Pratyabhijña, Raseśvara, Vaiśeṣika, Nyāya, Jaiminīya Mīmāṁsa, Pāṇinīya grammar, Sāṁkhya, Yoga and Advaita Vedānta, and another chapter on vyākaraṇa (grammar). The author was an Advaitan who ordered these in his perception of lowest to most developed philosophy. Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (New York: SUNY, 1988), 352.
[lxxix] Johannes Bronkhorst, Language and reality: On an episode in Indian thought. Vol. 36. (Danvers, MA: Brill Indological Library, 2011).
[lxxx] De Saussure references Pāṇini and Bhartṛhari as having the most significant influence on his grammatical ideas in his 1879 Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes (Memoir on the Original System of Vowels in the Indo-European Languages) and his 1881 De l’emploi du génitif absolu en sanscrit (On the Use of the Genitive Absolute in Sanskrit).
[lxxxi] Ferdinand de Saussure, Writings in General Linguistics (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006). Leonard Bloomfield, the father of American structuralism, also wrote on Sanskrit grammar-“On some rules of Pāṇini.”
[lxxxii] Saussure sees the need for close collaboration between linguists and psychologists (73) and mentions Humbolt, Hermann Paul, Wundt, and Whitney all in one section (185). He contemplates Whitney’s question whether we should ‘see language as a mechanism for allowing the expression of thought?’ (27, 140-150). Ferdinand de Saussure, Writings in General Linguistics (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006).
[lxxxiii] Paul Thibault, Re-reading Saussure: The Dynamics of Signs in Social Life (London: Routledge. 1996).
[lxxxiv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_turn
[lxxxv] One of the original analytic philosophers, Gottfried Leibniz, discussed the various opinions of Oriental scholars after the publication of Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire Historique et Critque. See Urs App, The Cult of Emptiness: The Western Discovery of Buddhist Thought and the Invention of Oriental Philosophy (Switzerland, University Media, 2014), 225-226.
[lxxxvi] “…That Sanskrit became richly imbricated within British and American intellectual and cultural histories, contributing significantly to the development of modern forms of higher education, aesthetic forms such as British Literary Modernism, intellectual traditions, such as American philosophy, and ideas about language, culture and religion, fundamentally influencing their future directions.” Sinha, Rajeshwari Mishka. “A history of the transmission of Sanskrit in Britain and America, 1832-1939.” PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2012.
http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.610357. See also Sinha, Mishka. “Orienting America: Sanskrit and Modern Scholarship in the United States, 1836–94” In Debating Orientalism, pp. 73-93. Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2013.
[lxxxvii] Wilber, Integral Psychology, 164-165
[lxxxviii] For example, Ferdinand de Saussure’s idea that a linguistic sign is composed of three parts – a material signifier (written or spoken word), the signified (a concept associated with the word), and the actual referent – was considered monumental. In the fourth century, Bhartṛhari taught that within the comprehension of sound there are three primary elements to perceiving. The first is the sound or word (śabda) which denotes an object, then the mental apprehension (pratyaya) of the meaning of the word, connecting the sound to the object. Then there is the actual object (artha) denoted by the word. The consciousness has pratyaya (apprehension) of artha (objects) and names those objects by śabda (word). The majority of ideas contained within the linguistic turn are traditional Sanskrit concepts, and was developed much more in later Sanskrit texts, yet its Indian source is only rarely referenced in European discussion.
[lxxxix] Parkes, Graham, Heidegger and Asian Thought (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987).
[xc] A direct look at the roots of postmodern philosophy influenced by Sanskrit thought. Olson, Carl. Indian Philosophers and Postmodern Thinkers: Dialogues on the margins of culture (New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, 2002).
[xci] Heidegger, who completed his doctoral thesis on psychologism in 1914, was said to be more influenced by Chinese thought and even attempted a translation of the Tao Te Ching, but by that time, Sanskrit ideas had already created the field of thought in German psychology as can be seen in Olson, Indian Philosophers and Postmodern Thinkers, 2002.
[xcii] The 18th and 19th century philosopher Friedrich Schlegel stated that “European philosophy depended on the impulses, admittedly often indirect and obscured, which it periodically received from Eastern thought, on an “alien ferment.” Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (New York: SUNY, 1988), 79. Quoted from Schlegel’s Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians), 305. English Translation https://archive.org/details/aestheticandmis00schlgoog
[xciii] Edward Reed, From Soul to Mind (Yale University Press: New Haven, 1997), 22.
[xciv] Wundt had published Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie (Principles of Physiological Psychology) in 1874, but his experimental psychology is dated to the founding of his laboratory.
[xcv] Saṁkhya philosophy is a non-theist philosophy of consciousness. It is non-theist because it says that god cannot be proven to exist or proven not to exist and is therefore not pertinent to the study of consciousness. What is pertinent between Wundt and Saṁkhya is the focus sensory perception, cognition, and volition. Many people often assume that Indian philosophy relates only to spirituality, as they have learned about Hindu religion, but have not learned about the long history of rational Indian theories of logic, physical science, mathematics and astronomy.
[xcvi] Alan Kim, “Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2016/entries/wilhelm-wundt/. See also Wilhelm Wundt, trans. Charles Hubbard Judd, Outlines of Psychology [Grundriss der Psychologie] (Leipzig, Wilhelm Engelmann, 1897). https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/wundt.htm. https://archive.org/details/b28108474.
[xcvii] Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (New York: SUNY, 1988), 399, 572; referencing 105 Vivekananda I, 128ff.
[xcviii] The ideals of the Theosophical Society influenced many other movements, including what came to be called psychology. The Society’s objectives were [1] To form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or colour. [2] To encourage the study of comparative religion, philosophy, and science. [3] To investigate the unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in man. This is the original meaning of the term ‘New Age.”
[xcix] In 1875/6 James taught Harvard University’s first course in physiological psychology called “The Relations between Physiology and Psychology.” His research went between physiology and philosophy and followed the German experimental research closely. See Courses William James Taught at Harvard, University of Kentucky, accessed 02 October 2017, https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/JamesTeachingSchedule.html.
[c] David Scott, William James and Buddhism: American Pragmatism and the Orient, Religion, Volume 30, Issue 4, October 2000, Pages 333-352 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048721X00902926.
[ci] Most closely was Josiah Royce with his knowledge of the Upaniṣads and the Harvard Sanskritist Charles Lanman. See Cleo McNelly Kearns, T.S. Eliot and Indic Traditions: A Study in Poetry and Belief (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 96.
[cii] Tony LySy, “William James, Theosophist,” Quest magazine, 88.6 November-December 2000): pg 228-233. https://www.theosophical.org/publications/1556
[ciii] “Many of his ideas such as the stream of consciousness (sota), constellation of mental states with changing satellite mental states, his pragmatic epistemology is the central deconstructionist tenet of the Madhyamika school of Buddhism, artha-kriya, as elaborated by the Buddhist logic school of Dignaga and Dharmakirti.” From Rajiv Malhotra, Being different: An Indian challenge to western universalism (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2011), 95, 390.
[civ] “This is the psychology everybody will be studying 25 years from now.”
[cv] Harry Oldmeadow, Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions (Indiana: World Wisdom Inc., 2004), 103.
[cvi] C.J. Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
[cvii] Freud had little direct South Asian influence, besides the German preoccupation with understanding the psyche that was awoken with Sanskrit literature. Freud’s views seem to be based primarily on Plato, Kabala, experiences with hypnotherapy and his clinical research.
[cviii] Harry Oldmeadow, Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions (Indiana: World Wisdom Inc., 2004), 97.
[cix] Harry Oldmeadow, Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions (Indiana: World Wisdom Inc., 2004), 98.
[cx] C.G. Jung, trans R.R.C. Hull, Psychology and the East: from the Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volumes 10, 11, 13 and 18 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 209.
[cxi] Herman Keyslerling was a proponent for a synthesis of Eastern and Western philosophy. Jung was a pluralist highlighting differences and being critical of a unitive philosophy promoted by the Theosophical Society. Sudhir Kakar, Jung, Freud and India, accessed 21 March 2017, http://www.figs-india.org/Lectures/WPML/15.pdf, p.1.
[cxii] Jung took a colonialist approach to his use of Buddhist and Yogic practices as he believed he was taking out what had value and removing the more primitive culture associated with them, see Luis O. Gómez, “Oriental Wisdom and the Cure of Souls: Jung and the Indian East” in Curators of the Buddha, ed. Donald S. Lopez (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 202. Jung was invited to India by the Indian Science Congress in 1938. He suffered amoebic dysentery in the hospital for ten days and later said that “I got dysentery because I could not digest India,” see Jeffery Paine, Father India (New York: Harper Collins, 1998), 106. Jung had a hard time when he visited India as his European superiority didn’t allow him to be receptive to learning directly from the culture. He believed the Indians were civilized noble savages and mocked the Indian clothing (dhoti) as effeminate and complained about the Indian culture. The following statement reveals his attitude when he said that India has “no sense of persona; it only knows the archetype. And that is why I made no plans to visit Swamis or Gurus when I went to India. I knew what a Swami was; I had an exact idea of his archetype; and that was enough to know them all, especially in a world where extreme personal differentiation does not exist as it does in the West. We have more variety, but its only superficial.” Referenced from Sudhir Kakar, Jung, Freud and India, accessed 21 March 2017, http://www.figs-india.org/Lectures/WPML/15.pdf, 6.
[cxiii] C.G. Jung, recorded and edited by Aniela Jaffé, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 177.
[cxiv] C.G Jung, “Psychological Commentary” in W.Y. Wentz, ed. The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Boulder: Shambala, 1975), uu.
[cxv] Hans Thomas Hakl, Eranos: An Alternative Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century (Ithica: Montreal & Kingston, 2013), 33.
[cxvi] Most popular was Oskar A.H. Schmitz, Psychoanalyse und Yoga (Darmstadt: Otto Reichl, 1923).
[cxvii] Jung and Olga Fröbe had met previously while both studying in Hermann Keyserling’s Wisdom School founded in Darmstadt in 1920. Keyserling had travelled extensively in India, Ceylon, China and Japan before publishing The Travel Diary of a Philosopher in 1919.
[cxviii] Harry Oldmeadow, Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions (Indiana: World Wisdom Inc., 2004), 101. Referencing a direct quote from Olga Fröbe in Gerhard Wehr, Jung: A Biography (Boston: Shambala,1988).
[cxix] Harold Coward, Jung and Eastern Thought (SUNY Press, 1985).
[cxx] Harry Oldmeadow, Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions (Indiana: World Wisdom Inc., 2004), 104-5.
[cxxi] His folk psychology (which is an anthropological cultural psychology study) discusses myth through the religious lense of soul, salvation, and heaven of Christian culture and the natural rhythms of nature that are embedded in Greek nature myths (pages 414-426). His concepts of Buddhism were extremely Christian to the point of seeing Nirvana as similar to Heaven (pages 497-509). Wilhem Wundt, translated by Edward Leroy Schaub, Elements of Folk Psychology: Outlines of the Psychological History of the Development of Mankind (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1916).
[cxxii] Harry Oldmeadow, Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions (Indiana: World Wisdom Inc., 2004), 97.
[cxxiii] Harry Oldmeadow, Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions (Indiana: World Wisdom Inc., 2004), 325-6.
[cxxiv] “…of the encounter of Western psychology and Eastern spirituality we must face the melancholy fact that Western psychology, taken as a whole but especially in its academic aspect, remains astonishingly ignorant of the psycho-spiritual traditions of the East. Harry Oldmeadow, Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions (Indiana: World Wisdom Inc., 2004), 323.
[cxxv] Harry Oldmeadow, Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions (Indiana: World Wisdom Inc., 2004), 331. Referencing Alan Watts, Psychotherapy East and West (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), ix-x.
[cxxvi] And from the Christian side Jung faced accusations that “the talking cure” was similar to confession. Luis O. Gómez, “Oriental Wisdom and the Cure of Souls: Jung and the Indian East” in Curators of the Buddha, ed. Donald S. Lopez (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 199-200.
[cxxvii] Luis O. Gómez, “Oriental Wisdom and the Cure of Souls: Jung and the Indian East” in Curators of the Buddha, ed. Donald S. Lopez (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 197-250.
[cxxviii] Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (New York: SUNY, 1988), 146-7.
The Indian commentary on this has been to see the progress oriented (vikāsonmukha) standards (ādarśa) of western civilization as a way of avoiding a sense of inferiority (hīnabhāva). Halbfass, India and Europe, 261.
[cxxix] Jay L. Garfield and Bryan W. Van Norden, “If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is,” The NewYork Times, May 11, 2016, accessed 26 March 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/opinion/if-philosophy-wont-diversify-lets-call-it-what-it-really-is.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&moduleDetail=inside-nyt-region-4&module=inside-nyt-region®ion=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region&_r=0 and see also Amod Lele, “Why philosophy departments have focused on the West,” The Indian Philosophy Blog, posted 22 May 2016, accessed 26 March 2017, http://indianphilosophyblog.org/2016/05/22/why-philosophy-departments-have-focused-on-the-west/#more-2352
[cxxx] Harry Oldmeadow, Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions (Indiana: World Wisdom Inc., 2004), 312.
[cxxxi] “Psychologism can be described as the assumption that man’s nature and behavior are to be explained by psychological mechanisms which can be laid bare by a scientific and empirical psychology.” Harry Oldmeadow, Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions (Indiana: World Wisdom Inc., 2004), 313.
[cxxxii] An exception to this has been the modern mindfulness movement which has taken place in the last few decades where the environment does not support unreferenced appropriation.
[cxxxiii] A technical history that looks directly at the colonial mind-set and its denial of Sanskrit literature’s influence since the Renaissance: Clarke, John James. Oriental enlightenment: The encounter between Asian and Western thought (New York: Routledge, 1997).
[cxxxiv] There are many examples of this, but the most recent I read was in Amy Cuddy’s Presence, when she introduces the benefits of Yoga. There is almost an apology before she can discuss the benefits, as she is associating Yoga with the fad of the 2000s and not the ancient science and its influence on modern psychology.
[cxxxv] For example, both Jacobson’s progressive relaxation (1908) and Schultz’s system of “autogenic training” (1932) both are said to be ‘invented’ by them and rarely is there any reference to the yoga from which they were influenced.
[cxxxvi] Jonardon Ganeri, Why Philosophy Needs Sanskrit, Now More than Ever, Lecture at Yale University, 6 April 2017, p.2. salisbury175.yale.edu