87 – Traditional Indian Scholarship on Advaita Vedanta in Colonial India

October 3, 2025
8:30 am
H06
It is still largely unexplained in scholarship how the now hegemonic view that Advaita Vedanta is the central philosophy of Hinduism came about. In addition to Vivekananda, the influence of European Orientalism is usually cited. Otherwise, research concentrates on the pre-colonial period and mostly on the supposed classics. The reception of Advaita Vedanta in colonial India by traditional Indian scholars has received only limited attention. This applies on the one hand to Brahmanical Sanskrit scholarship, but at least as much to "vernacular Vedanta" (Michael S. Allen), i.e. the diverse scholarly discourses in the so-called "vernacular" languages. The panel aims to shed more light on this neglected aspect by focusing on different regional and vernacular contexts.

Convenors

Michael Bergunder
Julian Strube

Presentations

Tantra and Advaita Vedanta in the Writings of Bengali Shakta Pandits
Strube Julian - Chair of Religious Studies, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
Ramchandra Shukla as translator of Ernst Haeckel’s “Welträtsel”: Vedanta, Monism and the Search for a Modern Rational Religion
Sperner Philipp - Department of Literature, Art and Media Studies, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany
Positing Krishna against Sankara: An Analysis of Lajpat Rai’s The Message of The Bhagawad Gita and and Yogiraj Srikrishna
Kumar Sunny - HSS, IISER, Mohali, India
One Caste, One God and One Religion: An Interpretative Analysis of the Advaita Doctrines of Sree Narayana Guru
Kumar Mukesh - Asian and Orient Institute, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Non-Brahmin Approach to Advaita Vedanta in Colonial Western India
Kale Sonali Purushottam - Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany
The Sanskritic production on Advaita Vedānta in brahmin settlements from the Kaveri delta, 1700-1950
Duquette Jonathan - University of Cambridge, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Non-Brahman scholarship on Advaita Vedanta in the Tamil language in the 19th century and its eclipse by the Saiva Siddhanta revival
Bergunder Michael - -