Reclaiming the Vedas: Svāmī Karapātrī’s Critique of European Scholarship

Abstract

This paper examines Svāmī Karapātrī’s perspective on 19th and early 20th centuries European academic research on the Vedas, focusing on his 1943 article Prācīn Vedabhyāṣy aur Ādhunik Anusandhān (“Ancient Commentaries to the Vedas and Modern Research”), published in Siddhānt, a magazine he founded in 1940. In his article, Svāmī Karapātrī critiques European studies on the Vedas, with particular attention to their influence on the interpretation of the meanings of Vedic mantras (vedārtha). Svāmī Karapātrī argues that scholars like Max Müller and Rudolf Roth not only shaped European understandings of the Vedas but also influenced Indian perceptions of these texts, often at the expense of ‘traditional’ Vedic exegesis. This critique is contextualized within larger debates on colonial knowledge production, highlighting how European scholarship disrupted and threatened ‘Hindu’ interpretative traditions.