Nietzsche Hinduism, Nietzsches India

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Nietzsche's Hinduism, Nietzsche's India: Another Look

David Smith

The Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Issue 28, Autumn 2004, pp. 37-56

(Article)

Published by Penn State University Press

DOI: 10.1353/nie.2004.0015

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Nietzsches Hinduism, Nietzsches India:Another Look

David Smith

This essay attempts a provocative overview of Nietzsches relationship withHinduism and India.1 It is a reading that finds Nietzsche off balance and ata disadvantage, for its starting point is the fact that Nietzsche read the Laws ofManu [Manavadharmasastra]2the one Indian text that really excited himin a popular edition whose absurd annotation of the text gained Nietzsches cre-dence. I refer to Louis Jacolliots French translation.3 Manu was a relativelywell-known text in nineteenth-century Europe and Jacolliot was a popular andindeed notorious writer. Nietzsches choice of version shows, I suggest, igno-rance of both scholarly and popular writing on India. I shall also considerNietzsches relationship with other key Hindu texts and his other references toHinduism and India. In line with the starting point of Jacolliot, my discussioncontinues mainly in the context of French writers contemporary with Nietzsche,particularly Ernest Renan, the hugely successful author ofVie de Jsus andProfessor of Semitic Languages at the Collge de France, in some respects a tri-umphant alter ego of Nietzsche, being both philologist and wide-ranging thinker,though today their relative importance is reversed. I conclude with brief assess-ments of the eternal return and the bermensch in relation to Hinduism, andwith a look at Nietzsches own India, as distinct from his Hinduism.

Nietzsche, Jacolliot, and Manu

In Nietzsches day there was considerable academic and popular interest in Indiaand the religion of the majority of its inhabitants. Louis Jacolliot was not onlya translator of Manu but also was a major popularizer of Hinduism and India.After the first flush of Enlightenment and then Romantic enthusiasm, Europeanwriting on India had become unfavorable to Hindus and Hinduism. Jacolliotsextreme enthusiasm for early Hinduism and with what seemed to be long andwide experience of contemporary India was a more or less unique combination,and for a while a winning one. In his heyday, the 1870s, Jacolliots Hinduismand Jacolliots India were significant factors on the popular literary and culturalscenenot only in France but also in Britain, the United States, and India,notwithstanding that they were the product of the imagination of a silly man. It

Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Issue 28, 2004

Copyright 2004 The Friedrich Nietzsche Society.

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is bizarre to juxtapose Nietzsche with Jacolliot, the now immensely famous intel-lect with the forgotten fraud, but the juxtaposition arises from Nietzsches acqui-sition and reading of Jacolliots book. In Jacolliots favor is the fact that he did

know something about India, whereas Nietzsche is primarily an expert on him-self, and the world as seen in the mirror of himself, his work a bible for thesolitary man.4 Jacolliots India of occultism and dancing girls is the real thingmisunderstood and embroidered by his imagination; Nietzsches India is basedon Nietzsche. Marcel Conche said, Nietzsche and Buddhism, which means:Nietzsche and Buddhism as he wishes to see it5so too Nietzsche andHinduism.

Both Hinduism and Buddhism are of interest to Nietzsche not in themselvesbut as alternative positions from which to continue his attack on Christianity.

Nietzsche declares that the critic of Christianity is profoundly grateful to thestudents of India for making Buddhism available as a religion to compare withChristianity.6 It may fairly be assumed that Nietzsche felt a similar gratitude inrespect of the availability of Hinduism. Buddhism, as a pessimistic and deca-dent religion for Nietzsche, resembles Christianity but is a hundred times [. . .]more truthful, more objective (A23). Hinduism is an affirmative religion ratherthan a negative one like Buddhism and Christianity, but, like Buddhism, it is aproduct of the ruling orders (KSA 13:14[195]/WP 154).7

Nietzsche seldom referred to Hinduism; nor did he use the word Hinduism,

speaking rather of Brahmanism, the Vedanta, or Indian philosophy. However,the only extensive Indian text that he chose unprompted to read for himself wasa central text of Hinduism not relating to philosophy, namely, Louis Jacolliotsversion of the Laws of Manu. A valuable account of the defects of Jacolliotsbook has been given by Ann-Marie Etter. However, the question needs to beconsidered more widely. That Nietzsche read Jacolliots Manu with enthusiasmis astonishing, but no less remarkable are the implications for the state of hisprevious knowledge of Hinduism and India.

Misunderstanding has been aggravated by the fact that Louis Jacolliot, still a

well-known figure at the time of his death in 1890, quickly faded away intodeserved oblivion. For long it was thought simply that Nietzsche read the Lawsof Manu in translation and was excited by them. Thus even Wendy Doniger andBrian K. Smith in the 1991 Penguin translation of the Laws of Manu, when men-tioning what they admit is his extraordinary interpretation of the text, remarkin a footnote that presumably, Nietzsche knew Httners 1797 German trans-lation.8 However, it has been known from the publication of the Colli andMontinari edition of Nietzsche that Nietzsche uses Jacolliots Manu. It is one ofthe books he possessed, and it shows marks of attentive reading. He refers to

Jacolliot by name in one of his notebooks, and sometimes gives page numberswith the extracts that he translates into German. No other Indian text excitedNietzsche in this way. There is no record of his having read through any other

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hand resting on the great tome of Manuright up to the end of the nineteenthcentury.12 It would be fair to say that no single text is more important for under-standing Hinduism than the Laws of Manu; and of Indian texts probably only

Kalidasas play Sakuntala was more widely read in nineteenth-century Europe.Max Mller had declared decades earlier that, Instead of the Veda, theBrahmans of the present day read the Laws of Manu.13 No less than four otherEuropean translations were available at the time Nietzsche read Jacolliot.14

Nietzsches varied reading about Hinduism and Buddhism would have madeat least the name of Manu and his law book familiar. In 1865 a student at Bonn,Nietzsches notes on Schaarschmidts lecture course on the general history ofphilosophy include a reference to the Laws of Manu.15 Koeppen in his book onthe religion of the Buddha gives detailed references to Manu, and discusses

Manus treatment of chandalas;16 Nietzsche borrowed Koeppen from the uni-versity library in Basel in 1870. Thomas Brobjer notes that Nietzsche added areference to Manu to the index of OldenbergsBuddha, and suggests that thiswas done at the time Nietzsche was reading Jacolliot.17 However, if Nietzschewas hoping to find out more about Manu from Oldenberg, he looked in vain.Unlike Koeppen, Oldenberg has almost nothing to say about the Laws of Manuor indeed about caste. But almost every book on Indian religion mentionedManu. In the words of Monier-Williams, professor of Sanskrit at Oxford, Manuwas certainly one of the most remarkable literary works that the world has ever

produced.18 The significance of Manu went beyond specialized Indologicaltreatises. It is difficult to remember today how fresh and exciting Sanskrit textswere in nineteenth-century Europe. Schopenhauer, who quotes Manu twice inhisDie Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, refers to it as the oldest of all the codesof law.19 Schopenhauers enthusiasm was widely shared. To take only majorfigures in contemporary French writing, the following instances may be noted.Renan, like Nietzsche, a philologist by trainingthough he never abandonedphilologyrefers to Manu: four times, for example, in hisLAvenir de la sci-ence.20 Another up-to-date and forward-looking writer like Guyau (185488) in

hisLIrrligion de lavenir, a book in Nietzsches library, refers to Manu.21 EvenVictor Hugos novelNotre-dame de Paris (1831) set in the Middle Ages refersto the Laws of Manu. For those who had eyes to see, who did not refuse to seeIndia, Manu was everywhere.

Jacolliots India

In 1985 Ann-Marie Etter took a careful look at Jacolliots translation and showed

how it departs from the received text of Manu.22 The text Jacolliot was work-ing from is not now available; he claimed that it was based on the ancient ver-sion of Manu, preserved, as he thought, in southern India. According to

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Jacolliots reading of his version of Manu, the ancient Near East was populatedby outcastes who had freed themselves from Brahmin domination by emigrat-ing from India. (Hence Nietzsches view in his letter to Peter Gast that the Jews

were a Chandala race which learns from its masters the principles of makingapriestly caste the master which organizes a people.)23 Etter briefly discussedJacolliots life, quoting the Grande Encyclopdie (Paris, 18851902) to theeffect that he was a judge in the French colonies, in Pondichery, Chandernagore,and later Tahiti and that in his long stay in India [he] collected a quantity ofmaterials which enabled him to publish some very interesting works, but in themromanticism often predominates over scientific truth, so that he must be con-sidered as a very brilliant vulgarizer rather than a scholar or historian. Etterrefers to two other of Jacolliots books, Le Spiritisme dans le Monde and

Chrishna et Christna, and correctly dismisses him as an India-fanatic whothought that everything in human culture and spirituality had its origin in India.

However, she is misled by Jacolliots own claims when she concedes that hemust have known India well, that he must have been an Indienkenner.24

Caracosteas valuable archival research published just a year ago has establishedthat Jacolliot was in India for only twenty-seven months,25 a far cry from thetwenty years residence recently credited to him by one French Indologist.26

Moreover, by only mentioning two other books by Jacolliot, Etter gives a veryinadequate impression of his place in the literary scene. Jacolliot was even less

authentic than she supposed and at the same time was far more prominent.His publications were numerous, including many books of travel writing and

several novels. His translation of Manu was one of his series of tudesIndianistes, comprising some thirteen volumes, republished as a handsomelybound complete set, which came to sit on the theosophist Madame Blavatskysbookshelf. Apart from portions of translations from modern Tamil plays, andpassages taken from Max Mller, his tudes Indianistes are worthless; however,they sold well. No less than ten of his travel books describe his experiences inIndia and Sri Lanka and several went into multiple editions. He was eagerly read

by occultistsas the New Age enthusiasts of the day were calledand also bythe general public. He might be characterized today as a combination ofDalrymple and Van Daniken, with an added element of sexual titillation.Performances by dancing girls and hints of sexual encounters are a constantbackdrop to the travel books. There must be some truth underlying the accountsof his experiences, but ten books about the very limited period of his stay in theregion, with at least some of his time taken up by official duties as magistrate,must mean that a considerable part was played by imagination.

The only novel Jacolliot wrote about India,Le Coureur des Jungles, appeared

the same year that Nietzsche discovered his Manu, 1888.27 When it is said ofthe French hero, the Jungle Hunter, What was the date of his arrival in the landof the lotus? No one knows,28 one cannot but be reminded of the mysterious

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and concealed length of Jacolliots stay in India. The novel is set in 185758,after the British had brutally put down what they called the Mutiny. The JungleHunter and his friends, commissioned by the old Emperor in Delhi. . . had made

war together again the English.29 For ten years he had traversed the length andbreadth of India, revolted by the rapacity of the British, and then managed toform, with Nana-Sahib, the vast conspiracy that resulted in the war against theinvading British. One of the closing highlights of the novel has the Jungle Hunter,disguised as a fakir, hypnotize Sir John Lawrence, placing on the head of theViceroy his two hands charged with magnetic fluid; with his eyes equally pour-ing forth mysterious effluvia against which the Viceroy strained vainly to strug-gle. The viceroy is made to believe himself an outcaste (pariah, or chandala)and then to walk like a dog. The Hunter loses self-control for a moment, such

is the expenditure of magnetic fluid that he has made to control the other man.There was a sort of counter shock. It is not rare in India to see fakirs graduallyexalt themselves to madness when they struggle against a subject with a fluidicforce superior to their own.30 The novel ends with the Hunter sailing off withNana Sahib for an unknown destination.

Mysterious powers feature in one of the two other books of Jacolliot referredto by Etter,Le Spiritisme dans le Monde.31 This work falls into two parts. In thefirst, larger part, he gives an account of life-stages and of various types of yogiand renouncer, with passing references to an earlier technologically advanced civ-

ilization. The second part, often cited by occultists, is the account of his exerienceswith a Hindu magician. Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was verymuch impressed by this part of the book. Jacolliot, Doyle reports, found amongthe native fakirs every phenomenon of advanced European mediumshiplevitation of the body, the handling of fire, movement of articles at a distance,rapid growth of plants, raising of tables. Their explanation of these phenomenawas that they were done by the Pitris or spirits, and their only difference in pro-cedure from ours seemed to be that they made more use of direct evocation. Theyclaimed that these powers were handed down from time immemorial and traced

back to the Chaldees.32 There is evidence that on his return in Paris in 1872, ifnot before, Jacolliot was a spiritualist and went in for table-turning.33

Nietzsche himself once went to a spiritualist sance. Beforehand he writes toKselitz (2 October 1882), This evening, a sensational manifestation of spiri-tualism at Leipzig, at the command of the spirits. They affirm that this sancewill be very important for the history of spiritualism: that a personality will beinvokedin short, I must be present at it, and six people await agitatedly whatI will say about it. But the bestmedium is in an advanced state of pregnancy.The spirits will make their apparition today, for instance the Russian nun and

the child. Two doctors will be present. The next day, he writes that spiritu-alism is apitiful deception and, after the first half-hour, boring. And this Prof.Zllner has let himself be cheated by this medium! Not a word more about it! Iwas expecting something else, and I had in advance provided myself with three

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fine theories, physiologico-psychologico-moral, but I didnt have to use my the-ories at all.34 Nietzsches reading in psychology and physiology bore no rela-tion to Jacolliots murky world.

Etter does not mention Jacolliots most famous and most significant book,La Bible dans lInde.35 La Bible sets the pattern for the rest of JacolliotsIndianist studies. We find an advocate pleading his cause in short high-pitchedparagraphs, harangue that in its repetitions becomes a rantIndia is the sourceof all civilization. It is true that a major historian, Michelet, was writing onlythree years earlier that primeval India was the original cradle, the matrix ofthe world.36 But Jacolliot sought to bolster his more extreme view by a naveand uncritical reading of Sanskrit texts. Jacolliot elaborates his claim with copi-ous extracts from Manu, sometimes with chapter and verse, more usually with-

out. Manu is Jacolliots core text, and it bore some relation to his duties as amagistrate. Manu forms the basis for part one of Jacolliots thesis. Part two isthat Christ is a reminiscence of Krishna, on whose life the life of Christ is based;but this rests on gross forgeries, bearing no relation whatsoever to originalIndian texts. They seem to have been produced to order by a Brahmin to sat-isfy Jacolliots need; he explicitly says that one particular Brahmin came upwith this information. In addition, there is some direct reportage of aspects ofIndian religion, for the most part from Jacolliots own experience, but vagueand of little value.

However, the book seems to have had considerable success. It would be inter-esting to study its reception in some detail. The reviewer of an 1882 counter-blast by a Spanish missionary noted that Jacolliots book, and another of theIndianist studies, Les Fils de Dieu, created a sensation when they appeared.Rationalists and freethinkers viewed it then as giving the deathblow toChristianity; freemasons thought him a great scholar and a profound thinkeruntil they actually read the books. However, for the general reader, says thereviewer, the books continue to be poisonous.37

In India, the translation, The Bible in India, was warmly received. Dayanand

(182483), founder of the Arya Samaj, an important Hindu reform movement,refers to Jacolliots book as showing that all sciences and religions found inthe world have spread from this country.38 The broader scope of Jacolliotsappeal in Europe is shown by Gladstones reference to Jacolliots proposed ety-mologies in one of his studies of Homer.39 Gladstones mention of The Bible inIndia brings down on him the wrath of John FiskeMr. Gladstone. . . doesnot. . . appear to suspect that it is a disgraceful piece of charlatanry, written bya man ignorant of the very rudiments of the subject which he professes tohandle.40 We may note that another of Fiskes books,History of the Intellectual

Development of Europe in German translation, was in Nietzsches library. Fiskeis almost certainly referring to Max Mllers attack on Jacolliot.

As Michael Ahlsdorf has pointed out, Nietzsche borrowed from the univer-sity library in Basel in 1875 the German translation of Max MllersLectures



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on the Science of Religion (1870/1874), in which Mller demolishes Jacolliotsclaims to scholarship.41 Mller notes that JacolliotsLa Bible dans lInde haslately attracted considerable attention, and declares that no Sanskrit scholar

would hesitate for one moment to say that [the passages cited from the sacredbooks of the Brahmans] are forgeries and that Jacolliot has been deceived byhis native teacher.42 It is amusing, by the way, to note that what specificallyand especially arouses Mllers contempt is that Jacolliot attributes to the Vedathe notion that woman is the soul of humanity.43 [I]t is not difficult to see,Mller writes, that this is the folly of the nineteenth century, and not of thechildhood of the human race. The real forgeries relate to the insertion of theJesus story into the Puranas. Only a verse or two of his original Manu differsfrom the standard text with regard to the status of women. Jacolliots summary

of the Hindu view of the importance of woman has a core of truth, if taken torefer to her intrinsic status in Hinduism as Shakti, (divine) power. It is alsoworth mentioning that Jacolliots view here is not novel. For example, in HugosnovelNotre-dame de Paris, decades before Jacolliot, the learned archdeacon deJosas is found quoting Manu in praise of women.44

The elements of Jacolliots appeal in the past are various. In addition to hisgrandiose attempts to establish himself as a historian of the human race, his briefaccount of magical feats in India received considerable attention, most notablythrough his being quoted by Madame Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophical

movement. She refers to Jacolliots books some fifty times in her first major pub-lication,Isis Unveiled, though even she refers to him as unreliable. Presumablybecause of adverse criticism of The Bible in India, references to Jacolliot are muchreduced in her magnum opusif that expression can be used for her manner ofcompositionThe Secret Doctrine. However, Jacolliots uncritical enthusiasmfor India, his ideas of Atlantis, and his proclaimed observations of psychic phe-nomenathough the latter plays only a very small part in his writingscombineto make him a major source and even inspiration for the early years of theTheosophical Society.

In May 1887, when Paul Deussen visited Nietzsche at Sils en route forGreece, Meta von Salis-Marschlins reports that their discussions included thetheosophic movements link to the Eastern religions.45 There is an interestingpassing reference in Guyaus Irrligiona copy of which Nietzsche pos-sessedto the Theosophical Society of the United States sending missionar-ies to India in 1879, or rather counter-missionaries to teach the majesty andglory of all the ancient religions.46 It would be interesting to know to whatextent Nietzsche and his interlocutors were aware of the activities of Blavatskyand the rest of the current New Age of his day. As mentioned above, he took

the trouble to attend a spiritualist sance in Leipzig. He makes passing refer-ence in his writings to somnambulism and hypnotism, and to the activities ofIndian fakirs.47

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Whether or not Jacolliots name came up in relation to theosophy or otheraspects of occultism, it can be proved that Nietzsche had heard of Jacolliot beforehe picked up his Manu. Brobjer points out that Nietzsche had read in 1884 an

article in The Atlantic Monthly entitled Maenadism in Religion, which refersto Jacolliot: There was, unfortunately, no Louis Jacolliot in ancient times towatch unseen the sacred midnight revels, and then give a glowing descriptionof them to the unilluminated.48 Gilman had already noted that Nietzsche pos-sessed this particular issue of The Atlantic Monthly, and had had an essay ofEmersons in it translated into German for him; and of particular relevance here,he had noted that Nietzsche read the article on Maenadism with great care, mak-ing some twenty annotations on each page, in the form of French or Germantranslations of particular words. Gilman remarks, The importance of this essay

for Nietzsche during the mid-eighties is evident. He was returning to the ques-tion of the Dionysian in a manner which altered many of his earlier ideas on theproblem. Here he was presented with a succinct summary of the leading viewsof ethnologists and historians of religion on this topic.49 Cheek by jowl withthese leading views is the reference to Jacolliot.

The writer on Maenadism, who lamented a lack of a Jacolliot in ancient times,may well have had in mind his account in his Voyage au pays des perles of wor-ship of the female principle (shakti-puja) in the Nallur Kandaswamy Temple,Jaffna, Sri Lanka, where he sees, so he says, the worship of the goddesses degen-

erate into an orgya more public event than the private parties he usuallydescribes; and where he compares the participants to bacchantes and satyrs.Jacolliot tells us that he spies on proceedings from a secret hiding place. Thethree girls representing the goddesses, the temple dancers, and a hundred andfifty beautiful young women from the local town, all adorned with flowers, forman erotic tableau. Ascetics bring in jars of intoxicating liquors. Everyone wasnaked. I dont know how to portray the overwhelming effect produced on meby the sight of all these fresh young womens bodies rising up, in ecstatic poses,from a bed of rose petals [. . .] and blue lotuses, in the midst of the sculpted

columns and all the marvels of Hindu architecture. At a signal from the chiefpriests, all the women interlaced their arms and legs to form a crown around thethree who represented the goddesses. Never in his senseless dreams has theimagination of a smoker of opium conceived anything more bizarre, moreextraordinary, more magnetic, more unnerving. . . than the spectacle of thesewaves of human flesh on an ocean of flowers. The Brahmins and their guestsworship the goddesses. Dishes of all sorts of food, meats of every kind for-bidden at ordinary times were brought in, heaped high. After offerings to thegoddesses the men and women jumped up and threw themselves pell-mell on

the food and drink which they held to be consecrated, vying with each other toeat and drink the most. At the signal of a firework, the three Brahmin priestspublicly perform the deed of generation with the three young women who rep-



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resent the Goddesses. At once the three hundred men and women deliriouslythrow themselves upon each other like two troops of rutting tigers who havejust met in the jungle. [. . .] and when these bacchantes and these satyrs reach

the last degree of exaltation, they will no longer even distinguish between thesexes. It will be understood that I must stop here in painting these shocking cus-toms which still today soil the religious mysteries of India, mysteries that thiscountry transported by emigration through the entire ancient world.50

Jacolliot eats his cake with one hand and throws it away with the other. Hedelights in alluding to his own sexual encounters, and at the same time is hor-rified by an orgy sanctified by religion. In all his books he praises ancientHinduism and scorns modern Hinduism. Indeed, Jacolliots primal Hinduismbears a striking resemblance to Christianity, being monotheist and free from the

divisions of caste, free too from Brahmins. It is difficult to say whether or notthe description he gives here is fabricated, though with Jacolliot fabrication isalways likely. He almost certainly has in mind literary descriptions and con-temporary paintings of ancient Greece and Rome as parallels, but this would bethe case whether or not he made up his description.

Nietzsches Knowledge of Indian Literature

Nietzsche had no interest in supposedly direct firsthand accounts of Dionysiacor any other kind of experience of India, but he was interested in the hierarchi-cal structure of society and in asceticism. Michel Hulin refers to Nietzsches pas-sionate and highly selective reading of the Laws of Manu; Nietzsche isfascinated by the historical success of the Brahmanic caste, which he imaginesto have ruled over Indian society for millenia.51 But as Brobjer shows, Manu byno means represents Nietzsches political ideal. Manu, like the Roman Empire,represents stability, but Nietzsches full approval is reserved for the affirmativeand creative values of the Renaissance and ancient Hellas.52 My aim here is to

show that it was surprising that he was so taken by a book so obviously unschol-arly; and surprising also that he had not heard of Jacolliots other works. The keyconclusion here from Manu is that Nietzsches knowledge of the scholarly andthe popular literature on Hinduism must have been remarkably slight.

This seems to the case as well with other preeminent Hindu texts. Sir WilliamJones did not translate only the Laws of Manu; he also translated Kalidasasancient Sanskrit play Sakuntala, a work that took educated Europe by storm,and was praised by Goethe, the most famous literary figure in Europe. ButNietzsche had not read this play until it was shown to him by Meysenbug in

1877. And then he did not like it.53 It may further be noted that Wilamowitz inhis review of The Birth of Tragedy remarks upon the absence of any referenceto Sakuntala.54 Nietzsches position on this matter can perhaps be justified as a

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matter of personal taste, but for the author of The Birth of Tragedy to be igno-rant of what was first thought to be the oldest of all dramatic forms, which hadswept across Europe in various translations, surely shows a mind closed to dra-

matic art in wider dimensions as well as closed to India.This impression is confirmed when we look at other popular Indian texts, pop-

ular, that is, in Europe at the time. The oldest Sanskrit texts, and the most ven-erated, are the Vedic hymns. The one significant use of a Vedic hymn byNietzsche is the motto forDaybreak,55 and the title ofDaybreakitself, but thiswas the suggestion of Heinrich Kselitz (Peter Gast).56 Nevertheless, the promi-nent position of the Vedic quotation is emphasized by the reference to India inalmost the last words of the book. The only other reference to a Vedic hymn, asdistinct from the Upanishads and the Vedanta, and as distinct from notebook ref-

erences to the Vedas in Manu, is the copying out in a notebook of a verse fromthe famous creation verse Rig-Veda X 129, one of a series of extracts from avolume of Max Mllers essays. Nietzsches claim in Ecce Homo that the poetsof the Veda are priests and are not worthy to loose Zarathustras sandals (EHZ6),57 would seem to be based on almost total ignorance of the Vedic hymns,ignorance that would be reprehensible were he still a philologist. To this mightbe contrasted a remark of Renan in his LAvenir de la sciencea remark thatmight have been at the back of Nietzsches mindthat there is much to be donebefore Sanskrit is perfectly understood, and that it might be regretted that a quite

big volume had been written on the sandals of the Hebrews before the Vedashad found an editor.58 Nietzsches boast is in fact an accurate reflection of hisgeneral relationship with Hinduism, namely, that his own views and creationsare superior to Hinduism, a relationship discussed below in respect to the ber-mensch and eternal return.

Another major text Nietzsche might have been expected to know was theRamayana. Johann Figl claims that Nietzsches interest in Indian ideas goesback to his schooldays at Pforta and discovers a reference to fate in relation tothe Indian epics in the draft of an essay on the Nibelungen Song: Such a pro-

found conception of fate shines outeven if visible to only the sharper of sightfrom those folk poems in which the spiritual and emotional world of a wholenation comes to light in primordial magnificence and purity, in the Iliad andOdyssey, the Ramayana and Mahabharata, in the Nibelungen and Gudrun(BAW 2, 445Nachbericht). Figl claims that that contemporary scholarship onIndia was taken account of at Pforta.59 But the mere mention of the titles ofthe two Indian epics by Nietzsche means little. While it is true that Nietzschedoes not say much about any of his reading in his published works, there is noreason to suppose that Indian poetry was of any interest to him at all, a view

confirmed by his antipathy to Sakuntala.All the same, theRamayana was well known in Europe. Consider Michelets

La Bible de lhumanit, a work that has been suggested as a possible source of



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the distinction Nietzsche makes between Apollo and Dionysos, and that mayhave been introduced to Nietzsche by Meysenbug, who had met Michelet.60

Michelets popular work begins with a lyrical evocation of the Ramayana: a

Colossus, five hundred times higher than the Pyramidsthe gigantic flower ofIndiathe divineRamayana;61 a comparison that surpasses Michelets com-ments in the Le Peuplea book of his that Nietzsche possessed in GermantranslationtheRamayana, theMahabharata, gigantic pyramids in front ofwhich all our little Western works should be humble and respectful.62 Micheletproclaimed the death of God but wanted to replace Christianity by a new reli-gion of the people, and Nietzsche had little sympathy for his view: Everythingthat pleases me is foreign to him.63 For Michelet, the high point of theRamayana is Rama embracing his monkey companion-devotee, Hanuman, see-

ing here the reverse of the caste system in the brotherhood of beings. This read-ing overlooks the significant incident, notorious today among the Dalits, asNietzsches chandalas are now called: Rama ordering the immediate death of alow-caste man who has the temerity to become an ascetic; but at least Michelettook the trouble to read the epic.

Nietzsche, however, does twice refer to a famous story best known from itsversion in the Ramayana, namely, what Salom called the Vedic story ofVisvamitra, that as she says, exemplifies the mutual dependence in Nietzschesthought of relentless suffering and self-deification.64 Marco Brusotti has

shown that Nietzsches phrasing and consequently his knowledge of the storycomes from his former pupil Jacob Wackernagels essay on Brahmanism.65 Thislively and significant story comes in the first book of the Ramayana, and wouldbe encountered early in reading the Ramayana, if one actually read theRamayana. The magical powers of ascetics are vividly described; by dint of hisascetic prowess the king Visvamitra becomes a rishi, and creates a new heavenfor his protg, a king whom his rivals sons had made a chandala.

The same source, Wackernagels essay, lies behind a passage in Daybreak:For those Brahmins believed, firstly that the priests were more powerful than

the gods, and secondly that the power of the priests resided in the observances:which is why their poets never wearied of celebrating the observances (prayers,ceremonies, sacrifices, hymns, verses) as the real givers of all good things.Nietzsche takes this superiority of men over gods as a goal to be imitated: letus first of all see to it that Europe overtakes what was done several thousandsof years ago in India, among the nation of thinkers, in accordance with the com-mandments of reason! (D, 96). One of the several verses he copies fromJacolliot that are not in the received text of Manu is the following: Where isthe god who would be capable of withstanding the solemnity and prayers of the

ascetic (yati) who has withdrawn into the forest? (KSA 13:14[198]). ButNietzsche does not meet such figures as Visvamitra in the context of theRamayana in their full literary environment.

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Indian Anticipations of Nietzschean Concepts

We now come to what has always been supposed to be the source of Nietzsches

strongest connection with Hinduism and India, his friendship with Paul Deussen,the great European expert on the Vedanta. Deussen gave Nietzsche copies of histwo books on the Vedanta, Das System des Vedanta and his translation ofSankaras commentary on the Brahmasutras. Certainly Nietzsche lookedthroughDas System des Vedanta, much the more accessible of the two, but infact was not in the least disposed to carry out the careful study that would benecessary to properly understand its rich contents. In On the Genealogy ofMorals, he refers to the Upanishadic notion of oneness with Brahman in deepsleep, and refers to Deussens translation of Sankaras commentary, but is happy

to move on to home ground with Epicurus at the end of the section (GM III.17).Salom declared that it was impossible to ignore the influence of Das Systemdes Vedanta upon Nietzsches own writings from 1883: one is tempted to writeexplanatory notes in the marginatmanand Brahman.66 But it did not occurto Nietzsche to use those terms.

If all the foregoing discussion has sought to downplay Nietzsches knowl-edge of Hinduism, nevertheless, the two teachings to which Nietzsche laid spe-cial claim, the bermensch and the eternal return both stand in a peculiar andremarkable relationship to Hinduism and Buddhism. Such at least must be the

conclusion of anyone familiar with those religions. In his reminiscences ofNietzsche, Deussen subjects his friends twin ideas to stringent critique. If oneclaims that the next period that the world will go through will take exactly thesame course in the least details as in the present period, that is an opinion entirelydeprived of any basis. In essentials the process will remain the same, but themodalities will be unceasingly new. He deftly knocks Nietzsches idea on thehead: three billiard balls, each with its surface made up of an infinite number ofpoints, never exactly reproduce the same mutual positions, and likewise thegame of the evolution of the world will have infinite variations.67 Eternal return

is physically and logically impossible.Deussen also gives the notion of the bermensch short shrift. From 1873

Nietzsche was saying to me that his goal was not the negation of the will but itsennoblement and, already at that period, I replied to him that one could not yetunderstand the negation of the will, if one did not see in it the greatest ennoble-ment. For classical antiquity and for many in modern times, says Deussen, thehighest task of morality consists in deciding the ways and means which lead themost surely to happiness. This Deussen calls the pagan group. It was theVedanta that headed the other group, which also includes Platonism,

Christianity, and the philosophy of Kant and Schopenhauer. When the Veda saysone should liberate oneself from the illusion of individuality and recognize thatone is the atman, it is saying exactly the same thing that Nietzsche wants: that



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the man in us be surmounted, in order that the bermensch may appear.68

Nietzsches notions of the bermensch and the eternal return have been minutelyexamined by many scholars and interpreted in numerous and diverse ways. My

point here is simply that to use them the way he did shows Nietzsche to havebeen oblivious of the obvious Indian parallels.

Brandes in 1889 suggested that the bermensch was a more dogmatic ver-sion of the scientific world rulers that Renan had postulated in his DialoguesPhilosophiques,a book that Nietzsche possessed.69 Renan finds it natural to usethe Sanskrit word for god, deva, in respect of his oligarchical brain-only super-men. Renan has been described as a kind of companionable, drawing-roomNietzsche,70 but Nietzsche sees him as his antipodesthough of course Renanis not the only antipodes for Nietzsche. Renan sought to exorcize the void left

by the death of God with the religion of science.71 His view of a future deityas the world reduced to a single super-entity, which absorbs all life into its burn-ing throat in a river of pleasure which again flows out in a torrent of life, wasonce described by Lionel Gossman as a fantasy of God only slightly less obvi-ous than the fantasies of todays porno culture.72 Gossman was writing in 1982,before the Internet and the novels of William Gibson. He was, however, writ-ing long after the theophany of theBhagavad Gita, where Krishna shows Arjunahis true form (modeled on Siva), swallowing up the whole universe into his gap-ing mouth. Renans vision also encapsulates the idea of Siva limitlessly pour-

ing forth the world from himself.As Hulin has pointed out,73 Schopenhauer gives a striking anticipation of

Nietzsches notion of the bermensch by postulating a man who found satis-faction in life and took perfect delight in it; who desired, in spite of calm deliber-ation, that the course of his life as he had hitherto experienced it should be ofendless duration or of constant recurrence. . . whose courage to face life was sogreat that, in return for lifes pleasures, he would willingly and gladly put up withall the hardships and miseries to which it is subject. But even better forSchopenhaueras later for Deussenwould be the man who understood the

truths of the Upanishads. For him, death would be an impotent specter. He knowsthat he himself is that will of which the whole world is the objectification or copy,to which therefore life and also the present always remains certain and sure. Thepresent is the only real form of the will. Therefore no endless past or future inwhich he will not exist can frighten him, for he regards these as an empty mirageand the web of Maya. Schopenhauer then declares that in the Bhagavad GitaKrishna puts his young pupil Arjuna in this position.74 What Schopenhauer doesnot specifically refer to is the magnificent and overwhelming theophany to whichArjuna is treated. Nietzsche too ignores this; he ignores the Bhagavad Gita

entirely,75 he ignores Sanskrit literature, for he makes his own way.Schopenhauer makes an intriguing reference to Siva in conjunction with

Dionysos in the first volume ofDie Welt als Wille und Vorstellung:

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Birth and death belong equally to life. [. . .] The wisest of all mythologies, theIndian, expresses this by giving to the very god who symbolizes destruction anddeath [. . .] to Shiva as an attribute not only the necklace of skulls, but also thelingam, that symbol of generation which appears as the counterpart of death. [. . .]It was precisely the same sentiment that prompted the Greeks and Romans toadorn the costly sacrophagi, just as we still see them, with feasts, dances, mar-riages, hunts, fights between wild beasts, bacchanalia, that is with presentationsof lifes most powerful urge. This they present to us not only through such diver-sions and merriments, but even in sensual groups, to the point of showing us thesexual intercourse between satyrs and goats.

The classical artists, like the creators of Hindu mythology, wanted to show thatthe whole of nature is the [.. .] fulfilment of the will to live.76Perhaps, if Nietzschehad been given a book he requested for his seventeenth birthdayWollheim daFonsecasMythologie des altes Indienhe might have gone on to make some useof what Schopenhauer called the wisest mythology.77 Nietzsches many refer-ences to dance in Thus Spoke Zarathustra have often made subsequent readersthink of Dancing Siva, and Wollheim makes some reference to Siva as dancer, asNatesvara, lord of dancers, but in fact that form of Siva was almost completelyignored in the West until Coomaraswamys essay The Dance of Siva was pub-lished in 1914.78 It was necessary for people to see at least photographs of Cholabronzes for Dancing Siva to be properly appreciated outside India. But not onlydoes Siva resemble Zarathustra in some respects, but there are several points ofconvergence between Siva and Nietzsche/Dionysos/Zarathustra. Siva, the arche-type of the Indian wandering ascetic, ceaselessly walks across India, Siva whosehome is the Himalayas, the snow mountains, Siva the yogi, Siva the ascetic whosemagic power creates the world. Siva as ithyphallic, the wild dancer, resemblesDionysos, Dionysos, who came, as Nietzsche says, from India (BT, 20).Schopenhauer makes the link between Siva and bacchanalia quoted above not onthe basis of historical claims in Greek texts but on structural grounds, on a paral-lel duality of love and death in the two gods.

Nietzsches India

Will it perhaps be said of us one day that we too, steering westward, hoped toreach an Indiabut that it was our fate to be wrecked against infinity? Or, mybrothers. Or?

Daybreak, 575

India for Nietzsche is the land of Hindus. He shows little awareness that it was

under Muslim rule for several centuries. Other than words based on brahman,his usual term for Hindu is Inder or indisch. Only a handful of times doesNietzsche use the word Hindu.79 Nevertheless, India for him is the land of



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Hindus alone, not of Hindus and Muslims. At the same time, it is noteworthythat Nietzsche refers to almost none of the common stereotypes of India, otherthan the incapacitating nature of the heat. He does not refer, for instance, to devo-

tees throwing themselves under the wheels of theJagannath car, or the suicideof widows on their husbands funeral pyres, as do almost all Europeans whowrite even briefly about Hinduism, for example, Schopenhauer inDie Welt alsWille und Vorstellung and Renan inLAvenir de la science.80

How much did Nietzche know of the real geography and culture of India?81

One view of India that Nietzsche would have had was on stage, in opera. InDelibessLakm, which Nietzsche saw in Nice in the winter of 188788, priestsbring out ten-armed Durga from the temple in a palanquin, while the Hindussing that the goddess is golden in colour, the spirit of the Ganges who makes

everything change.82 This procession is the backdrop for the chief priestsattempted murder of Gerald. And apparently there was for Nietzsche somethingIndiansomething Hinduabout Bizets Carmen, which he went to so manytimes, since he says at the beginning ofDer Fall Wagner, each time that Iveheard Carmen, I have felt myself more of a philosopher, a better philosopherthan I usually feel: made so indulgent, so happy, so Hindu (so indisch) (CW,1). Was it the dance of Carmen that reminded him of India? But the dance ofCarmen is, as he says, Moorish, and he never hints at anything resembling theIndia of dancing girls beloved of Jacolliot; nor was the Indian origin of the gyp-

sies then widely known. It is remarkable that Nietzsche speaks of himself hereas Hindu (indisch), for the context in which he does so is revelatory of the empti-ness of his understanding of Hinduism, of its self-referentiality.83

Experience of India for NietzscheNietzsches Indiawas, I suggest, theother India for which he set sail at the end ofDaybreak, and where perhaps hewas shipwrecked; an India where no one lived but Nietzsche, that was not thereal India or any known land. In reality, going to India never crossed his mind.Far from going to India, even metaphorically, he could not even get to Paris, thecosmopolis of his dreams, the capital of the nineteenth century. Strange that he

could call his writings travel-books; they were written for himself aloneatleast that is what he suggests in his 1886 preface to the second volume ofHuman,All Too Human (HHII, P6). Rohde says of his last meeting with Nietzsche, inthe spring of 1886, that he had a new look, As if he came from a country wherenobody else lived,84 but was that really a new look? Perhaps his visit toJacolliots India was en route to a different continent altogether.

Department of Religious StudiesLancaster University

NOTES1. The most valuable treatment of this topic is still that of Mervyn Sprung. Sprungs paper has

been published twice: originally as Nietzsches Interest in and Knowledge of Indian Thought,

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in David Goicoechea, ed., The Great Year of Zarathustra (18811981) (Lanham, Md.: UniversityPress of America, 1984); and, with an additional paragraph, Nietzsches Trans-European Eye,in Graham Parkes, ed., Nietzsche and Asian Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1991). Sprung concludes that ideas from India penetrated Nietzsche as little as drops of waterpenetrate a gooses feathers (1984, p. 177).

2. The Laws of Manu [Manavadharmasastra or Manusmrti] is a Sanskrit text composedaround 200 b.c., informally known as Manu, which is how I shall generally refer to it in the text.

3. Louis Jacolliot, Les Lgislateurs religieux: Manou-Moise-Mahomet (Paris: A. Lacroix,1876). Symptomatic of Jacolliots inherent unreliability is the inaccuracy of title of the book: thecontents refer only to Manu, not Moses or Muhammad. Similar inaccuracies can be found in someof his other book titles.

4. Roger Scruton, Continental Philosophy from Fichte to Sartre, in Anthony Kenny, ed., TheOxford History of Western Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 232.

5. Marcel Conche,Nietzsche et le bouddhisme (Fougres: Encre Marin, 1997), 17.

6. Friedrich Nietzsche, Antichrist, section 20, trans. Walter Kaufmann, in The PortableNietzsche (New York: Viking Press, 1954). Nietzsches works will henceforth be cited in the textby abbreviation of the title (in English), followed by subdivision (if applicable) and sectionnumber. I rely chiefly on Walter Kaufmanns translations for Viking Press/Random House and R.J. Hollingdales translations for Cambridge University Press. Unpublished notes and fragmentsfrom theNachla are cited as KSAi.e., Smtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe, 15 vols., ed.Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1988)followed by appropriatevolume, notebook, and note numbers.

7. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (NewYork: Random House, 1967).

8. The Laws ofManu, with introduction and notes, trans. Wendy Doniger with Brian K. Smith

(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991), xx.9. Dans ltat actuel de la littrature sanskrite, en effet, la publication et la traduction destextes vaut mieux que toutes les dissertations possibles, soit sur lhistoire de lInde, soit surlauthenticit et lintgrit des ouvrages, LAvenir de la science (Paris: Calmann-Lvy, 1910),245.

10. Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1982).

11. Christopher Middleton, ed. and trans., Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche(Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996), 29798.

12. Raymond Schwab,La Renaissance Orientale (Paris: Payot, 1950).13. F. Max Mller, Chips from a German Workshop, 2d ed. (London: Longmans, Green,

1880), 2:308.14. Sir William Jones,Institutes of Hindu Law, or the Ordinances of Menu (Calcutta, 1794);

J. C. Httner, Hindu Gesetzbuch: oder, Menus Verordnungen (Weimar 1797)a translation ofJones; A. Loizeleur-Deslongchamps, Lois de Manou (Paris, 1833); and G. Bhler, The Laws of

Manu (Oxford, 1886). Brobjer has shown what a keen reader Nietzsche remained despite theproblem with his eyes, making full use of libraries, even checking out the size of the library beforehe visited a town; frequenting bookshops, and borrowing books from friends. Thomas Brobjer,Nietzsches Reading and Private Library, Journal of the History of Ideas 58, no. 4 (1997):66393. See also Brobjers article in this issue, Nietzsches Reading About Eastern Philosophy.Nietzsches nomadic life was not in itself a bar to knowledge of Hinduism and India.

15. Johann Figl, Nietzsches Early Encounters with Asian Thought, in Parkes, ed., 59.

16. Carl Friedrich Koeppen,Die Religion des Buddha und ihre Entstehung (Berlin: FerdinandSchneider, 1857), 1:3954.

17. Thomas Brobjer, The Absence of Political Ideals in Nietzsches Writings: The Case ofThe Laws ofManu and the Associated Caste-Society,Nietzsche-Studien 27 (1998): 300318.



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18. Sir Monier Monier-Williams,Brahmanism and Hinduism: or Religious Thought and Lifein India (London: John Murray, 1887), 51.

19. Arthur Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation, trans. E. F. J. Payne (New York:Dover, 1969), 1:336.

20. Renan,Avenir, 59, 148 (twice), 232.21. Jean-Marie Guyau,LIrrligion de lavenir: tude sociologique (Paris: Flix Alcan, 1887),

267.22. Annemarie Etter, Nietzsche und das Gesetzbuch des Manu,Nietzsche-Studien 16 (1987):

34052.23. For detailed discussion, see Bruce Lincoln, Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and

Scholarship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 10710.24. Etter, Nietzsche und das Gesetzbuch des Manu, 345.25. Daniel Caracostea, Louis-Franois Jacolliot (18371890): A Biographical Essay,

Theosophical History 9, no. 1 (January 2003): 1239. In outline, as established by Caracostea,

Jacolliots life was as follows. Born in Charolles in 1837, son of a legal functionary, he studiedlaw and practiced as a lawyer in Saint-Etienne. But after three years of this, in 1864, complainingof susceptibility to a sore throat, he applied for a French colonial magistracy. He was appointeddeputy-judge in Pondicherry and arrived there in December 1865. In June the following year, hewas promoted to Imperial Prosecutor, and two months later to Imperial Judge in Chandernagor.He was in Chandernagor just over four months, before resigning on account of ill health. He leftIndia on March 9, 1868, never to return. His stay in India lasted twenty-seven months. After somemonths in Tahiti he remained in France, giving lectures in Paris from 1873 to 1885, as policerecords show, supplementing the income from his writings. In 1887 he was elected mayor in thevillage of Saint-Thibault-des-Vignes, east of Paris, and remained in office until his death onOctober 30, 1890.

26. Catherine Champion, Limage de lInde dans la fiction populaire franaise aux XIXe etXxe sicles, in Denys Lombard, ed.,Rver lAsie (Paris: HSS, 1993), 54.27. Louis Jacolliot, Le Coureur des Jungles (Paris: Marpon et Flammarion, 1888). First

published serially.28.Le Coureur des Jungles, 4.29. Ibid., 19.30. Ibid., 607.31.Le Spiritisme dans le Monde. LInitiation et les sciences occultes dans lInde et chez tous

les peuples de lantiquit avec un aperu du spiritisme et du magntisme au moyen ge et jusqunos jours (Paris: Lacroix, 1875). Translated into English by Willard L. Felt as Occult-science in

India and among the ancients, with an account of their mystic initiations and the history of

spiritism (London and New York, 1884).32. Arthur Conan Doyle, The New Revelation (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1918), 23.33. Caracostea, Louis-Franois Jacolliot (18371890), 21.34. Nietzsche, Lettres Peter Gast, trans. Louize Servicen (Monaco: ditions du Rocher,

1957), 2:11415.35. La Bible dans lInde, vie de Iezeus Christna (Paris: Lacroix, 1869). Many reprints.

Translated into English as The Bible in India: Hindoo Origin of Hebrew and Christian Revelation(London, 1870). Several reprints.

36. Jules Michelet, The Bible of Humanity, translated from the French by Vincenzo Calfa(New York: J. W. Bouton, 1877), 8.

37. Comte de Charencey, review of Pedro Gual,A India Christan, ou Cartas biblicas contralos livros de Luis Jacolliot, translated from Spanish into Portuguese by J. Pinto de Campos (1882),

Revue des questions historiques, 1888, 31012.38. Satyarth Prakash, 333.

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39. William Ewart Gladstone,Juventus Mundi: The Gods and Men of the Heroic Age (London:Macmillan, 1869), 343.

40. John Fiske, (1872) Myths and Myth-makers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted byComparative Mythology (Boston and New York: Fiske Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1900),2056.

41. Michael Ahlsdorf, Nietzsches Juden, diss. Berlin 1990, cited by Andreas Urs Sommer,Friedrich Nietzsches Der Antichrist: Ein philsophisch-historischer Kommentar (Basel:Schwabe, 2000), 563.

42.Littells Living Age, no. 1366, August 6, 1870, p. 329. (I quote from the form of the textavailable to me.) However, most of the references Jacolliot makes to Manu are correct; it is thereferences to the Krishna Christ story that are forgeries.

43. La femme cest lme de lhumanit, La Bible dans lInde, 242.44. Victor Hugo,Notre-dame de Paris (Paris: J. Hetzel, 1880), 425.45. Gilman, Conversations with Nietzsche, 195; Meta von Salis-Marschlins, May 1887ff., 200.

46. Guyau,LIrrligion de lavenir, 301.47. GMIII.21, KSA 12:10[155]; GMI.6 and III.17, EHWise, 6, KSA 13:14[102].48. The Atlantic Monthly, October 1884, 498; Brobjer, The Absence of Political Ideals in

Nietzsches Writing.49. Sander L. Gilman, Nietzsches Reading on the Dionysian: From Nietzsches Library,

Nietzsche-Studien 6 (1977): 29394.50. L. Jacolliot, Voyage au pays des perles, 5th ed. (Paris: Dentu, 1879), 18790.51. Michel Hulin, Nietzsche and the Suffering of the Indian Ascetic, in Parkes, ed., 69.52. Brobjer, The Absence of Political Ideals in Nietzsches Writings.53. Sprungs comment is important: Nietzsche read it and his subsequent comments, as

recounted by Meysenbug, are, for myself, the single most revealing episode in the entire

documentary evidence available to us concerning his stance in matters of European andtranseuropean philosophy and culture (Nietzsches Trans-European Eye, 86).54. Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Mllendorff, Zukunfstphilologie (Berlin: Borntraeger, 1872),

trans. Hlne Poitevin in Michle Cohen-Halimi, ed., Querelle autour de La Naissance de laTragdie (Paris: Vrin, 1995), 95.

55. It is not clear which verse of the Rig-Veda the line is taken from.56. See editors notes, KSA 14, p. 203.57. [D]ie Dichter des Veda Priester sind und nicht einmal wrdig, die Schuhsohlen eines

Zarathustra zu lsen (KSA 6, p. 343).58. Renan refers to Anthony Bynaeus (165498), De calceis Hebrorum libri duo (Dordraci:

Ex officina vidu Caspari, & Theodori Goris, mdc lxxxii)well over 400 pages in the

duodecimo edition.59. Figl, Nietzsches Early Encounters with Asian Thought, in Parkes, ed., 5354. He refers

to theZ.D.M.G., and books by Lassen and Albrecht Weber.60. J. Michelet, La Bible de lhumanit (Paris: F. Chamerot, 1864); H. Wagenvoort, Die

Entstehung von Nietzsches Geburt der Tragdie, Mnemosyne 12 (Leiden, 1959), cited by CurtPaul Janz: Friedrich Nietzsche. Biographie (Munich: Hanser, 1993), 1:431.

61. Jules Michelet, The Bible of Humanity, trans. Vincenzo Calfa (New York: J. W. Bouton,1877), 7.

62. Jules Michelet,Le peuple (Paris: Hachette et Paulin, 1846), 229.63. KSA 11:26[403].64. Lou Salom, Nietzsche, translated from the German and edited by Siegfried Mandel

(Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 25.65. Marco Brusotti, Opfer und Macht: zu Nietzsches Lektre von Jacob Wackernagels ber

den Ursprung des Brahmanismus,Nietzsche Studien 22 (1993): 22242.



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66. Salom,Nietzsche, 144.67. Paul Deussen, Souvenirs sur Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. Jean-Franois (Paris: Gallimard,

2002) (Erinnerungen an Friedrich Nietzsche [Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1901]), 172.68. Deussen, Souvenirs sur Friedrich Nietzsche, 17378.69. Gary Shapiro, Nietzsche contra Renan,History and Theory 21, no. 2 (1982): 193222,

referring to Brandess pamphlet Friedrich Nietzsche: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism,3637. In 1904 Jean Bourdeau declared, le dva de Renan, cest lbermensch de Nietzsche, in

Les Matres de la pense contemporaine (Paris: Alcan, 1904), 129. For Renans speculations aboutthe future development through science of some of mankind into dvas, see DialoguesPhilosophiques, in H. Psichari, ed., Oeuvres compltes de Ernest Renan (Paris: Calmann-Lvy,1947), 1:61618; see also Guiliano Campioni, Les Lectures Franaises de Nietzsche, translatedfrom the Italian by Christel Lavigne Mouilleron (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2001),51108.

70. Lionel Gossman, review of Harold W. Wardman,Renan: Historien, Philosophe, History

and Theory, 21, no. 1 (1982): 10624, at 107.71. Campioni,Les Lectures Franaises de Nietzsche, 202.72. Gossman, review of Wardman, 123.73. M. Hulin, Schopenhauer et la mort-renaissance, in Roger-Pol Droit, Prsences de

Schopenhauer(Paris: Grasset, 1989), 13.74. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, 1:28384.75. Brobjer notes in his piece in this issue that Nietzsche made a marginal line beside the

passage just mentioned in Schopenhauer (Brobjer, Nietzsches Reading About EasternPhilosophy). But the impact of the passage on Nietzsche, I believe, was very transitory.

76. World as Will and Representation, 1:276.77. Ibid., 1:275. Nietzsches request is referred to by Figl, Nietzsches Early Encounters with

Asian Thought, 52. Figl also mentions that Nietzsche requested at the same time FeuerbachsEssence of Christianity and Thoughts on Death and Immortality. Note, in passing, that the formerwork mentions with approval the Laws of Manu; the latter closes with a strange epigram aboutMaya driving away the depression of Brahma (last epigram but two).

78. Wollheim gives a brief but interesting account of Sivas wild tandava dance, and tries tofind an etymological link between tandava and tanzen: A. E. Wollheim da Fonseca, Mythologiedes alten Indien (Berlin: Gustav Hempel, 1857), 7879.

79. KSA 13:11[245], 11[255], and 14[190].80. Renan inLAvenir de science mentionsJagannath twice, pp. 87 and 489; sati, p. 489. In

the notebook where he makes excerpts from Mllers essays, Nietzsche refrains from transcribingdetails ofJagannath and sati even where they are contiguous to the sections that he does choose.

81. For instance, inDer Gottesdienst der Griechen, Nietzsche puts Sanchi, the great Buddhistsite in central India, in Central Asia. Nietzsche, Le Service Divin des Grecs, trans. EmmanuelCarrin (Paris: LHerne, 1992), 66.

82. Leo Delibes,Lakm, act 2, scene 10.83. Cf. Nietzsches use of the term Buddhist. Marcel Conche begins his book on Nietzsche

and Buddhism by noting two instances of the term Buddhist being favorably applied toEuropeans: Re spoke of Lou Salom to Oldenberg in 1882 as a great Buddhist; and Nietzschein 1888 describes to Peter Gast a publisher keen to help him as a Buddhist. Conche, Nietzscheet le bouddhisme, 1415. As Brobjer notes at the beginning of his essay, Nietzsches ReadingAbout Eastern Philosophy, Nietzsche in a letter to Cosima Wagner claimed to be himself theBuddha.

84. Letter of January 24, 1889, quoted by Mazzino Montinari, Friedrich Nietzsche, trans.Paolo DIorio (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2001), 105.

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Documents

Nietzsche Hinduism, Nietzsches India