Unearthing the secrets of the Brahmans in seventeenth-century leiden. Ethnography, antiquarianism, and missionary ambition in the open door to hidden paganism

This dissertation is a study in context of the Open Door to Hidden Paganism, one of the most detailed European ethnographic descriptions of India of the early modern period. The Open Door is remarkable not only for its rich first-hand observations collected by the Dutch predikant Abraham Rogerius, but also for the ambitious antiquarian footnotes that were furnished by an anonymous scholar in the United Provinces. Together the authors unearth the secrets of South Indian society and especially those of the Brahmans, with a clear focus on the religious aspects of this group. The ethnographer Rogerius maintains a highly localised view, opposed to the scholarly perspective of the annotator, who builds a global comparative ethnological framework. Both authors are heirs to a long line of intellectual developments; the first part of this study therefore traces and discusses the various discourses through serial contextualisation. In part two I discuss how the combination of the two authors’ treatises gave an unprecedented impression of ‘Indian religion’. I investigate how a picture of Brahman civility is created that may be distinguished from Brahman religion, how Brahman priesthood is conceptualised by the authors, and what role the portrayals of worship and sacrifice play for the presentation of Brahman religion. Providing an analysis and interpretation of Rogerius’s ethnography, the annotator’s depiction of idolatry and superstition contributes to the scholarship on paganism and idolatry, incorporating the Brahmans into existing ethnological-genealogical models. Finally, I investigate how Brahman religion and belief are depicted, and how differing interpretations on Brahman monotheism emerge. Concluding, I discuss how ‘Indian religion’ as a coherent system emerges out of the interplay of both texts, how views on religion and the Brahmans differ between the authors and how this relates to the missionary field, ending with an overview of the legacy of the work.