Orientalism: A Short Essay
The term “Oriental” had been
employed by various peoples like Chaucer, Mandeville, Shakespeare, Dryden, Pope
and Byron. It means Asia or the East, geographically, morally and culturally.
Occidentals could speak of an Oriental personality, atmosphere, tale, despotism
or an oriental mode of production and be understood.
The idea of the Orient had
different forms during the 19th and 20th century.
Firstly, in Europe there was an abundant literature about the Orient being
inherited from the past. The significance of the late 18th and early
19th century is the Oriental Renaissance. There was a sudden
awareness among the thinkers, politicians etc. resulting from the newly
discovered and translated Oriental texts in variety of languages like Sanskrit,
Zend and Arabic; it was also because of a newly perceived relationship between
the Orient and the West. Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 was a “model of a
truly scientific appropriation of one culture by another… still dominat(ing)
our cultural and political perspectives”. Orientalism during the 19th
century had made an enormous prestige. The Societe asiatique, the Royal Asiatic
Society, American Oriental Society etc. have generated tremendous progress. Professorships
increased and the means for disseminating Orientalism also increased.
“But how did and does
Orientalism work?” Considering Lord Cromer’s “The Government of Subject Races”
there is a seat of power in the west radiating to the east which sustains
central authority and command. The west coverts the human material, wealth,
knowledge into power. Thus, the Oriental becomes a subject race. The Orient
becomes subject of interest to the west. Cromer’s point is the management of
knowledge by society regulated first by the local concern and later by the
general concerns of a social system of authority. Orientalism can tell about the strength of the
west and the east’s weakness as seen by the west. Such view are intrinsic to
Orientalism as they are to any view that divides the world into large general divisions
, entities that coexist in a state of tension produced by what is believed to
be racial difference. For such is the issue raised by Orientalism can one
really divide human reality? To divide it more the reality seems to be already
divided into different cultures, histories, traditions, societies and races.
When there is the use of “us” and “them” the end is not admirable. The uses the
term like Oriental and Western creates polarization which limit the human
encounter between different cultures, traditions and societies.
What we know as Oriental or
Orientalism – a field of learned study- is said to have commenced from 1312 in
the Church Council of Vienne establishing studies in Arabic, Greek, Hebrew,
Syriac at Paris, Oxford, Bologna, Avignon and Salamanca. In the study of
Orientalism one has to consider not only the Orientalist but the geography,
culture, language, ethnicity of the Orient.
Till the mid-18th century
Orientalists were Biblical scholars, students of Semitic language, Islamic
specialists or Sinologists thanks to the Jesuits. A large part of Asia was not known
but with the arrival of Anquetil Duperron and Sir William Jones the richness of
the Avestan and Sanskrit was disseminated widely. The two excellent indices of
the growth of studies are the La Renaissance orientale (1765-1850) by Raymond
Schwab and Jules Mohl’s Vingt-sept Ans d’histoire des etudes orientales, a two
volume of Orientalism between 1840 and 1867. Mohl’s entry into Societe
asiatique led to the publication of Arabic, innumerable Indian dialects,
Hebrew, Pehlevi, Assyrian, Babylonian, Mongolian, Chinese, Burmese,
Mesopotamian, Javanese. Oriental studies covers everything from editing and
translation of texts to numismatic, anthropological, archaeological,
sociological, economic, historical, literary, and cultural studies in every
known Asiatic and North African civilization, ancient and modern.
But such eclecticism led the
Orientalists to overlook certain aspects. With exception made by Napoleonic
Institut d’Egypte much attention was not given to the academic study of the
modern or actual orient but more on the classical period of whatever language
or society they study. Moreover, the study made on the Orient was based on
texts and manuscripts unlike the Greeks through artifacts like sculpture and
pottery. Almost from the ancient the Orient was more than what was empirically
known about it. The boundary between the East and the West can be seen by the
time of Iliad. Aeschylus’s The Persians and The Bacchae of Euripides’s aspects
of the Orient remains the motive of European imaginative geography in which a
line is drawn making Europe powerful and articulated and Asia as defeated and
distant.
The term Orient was not a
synonym for the Asiatic East but for the Islamic Orient. This was termed as “the
Asiatic tidal wave” by Henri Baudet which was the case in Europe through the 18th
century. What cultural memory gave us as a means to understand the Crusades,
Fall of Constantinople etc. to signify the menacing orients (Arabs or Ottomans)
began to change with the coming of d’Herbelot. If such events are to be
considered as signifying the “menacing Orient” we should keep in mind the rest
of Asia was left unconsidered. India was such a land since the early 16th
century who gave chances to foreigners for their presence to be felt. And after
some period the foreigners began to even dominate the political economic life
of the indigenous people. India never gave threat to the west but rather the
fall of the indigenous rulers threw the whole sub-continent for subjugation.
D’Herbelot’s sources for Indo-Iranian subjects were all based on Islamic
sources and until the 19th century Oriental languages were
considered as synonym of Semitic languages. Sanskrit, Indian history, religion
did not acquire interests until the coming of William Jones in the late 18th
century who first had prior interest in Islamic knowledges.
The desire to establish
authority in India was seminal to the Carnatic Wars fought between the British
and the French from the foreign lands until Britain emerge as the winner. Pre-Napoleonic
effort to study the Orient has been made by Anquetil-Duperron and William
Jones. Anquetil trying to prove the existence of a Chosen People and the
Biblical genealogies overshot and came to Surat and translated the Avestan.
William Jones succeeding Anquetil left England and reached India in 1783, by
then he was already a master of Arabic, Hebrew and Persian. His work entitled “
Objects of Enquiry During My Residence in Asia” made an investigation into the
laws of the Hindus and Mohammedans, modern politics and geography, best mode of
governing Bengal, arithmetic and geometry, mixed sciences of the asiatics,
medicine, chemistry, surgery, anatomy, poetry, rhetoric, morality, music, etc.
In 1784 Jones convened the Asiatic Society of Bengal becoming the founder of
Orientalism. The knowledge of the Orient was studied first from the classical
texts and then it was applied to the modern orient. With the incapability and
decrepit state of the Orientals, it was necessary for the European Orientalist
to salvage what the past has to offer in order to help in the restoration of
the past. The European Orientalist gave the modern Oriental facilitation and
ameliorations and his judgment of what was best for the modern Orient.
One thing to consider is
Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt harassing Britain’s Oriental empire by going
through Egypt in the first place. There are three reasons for Napoleon’s
invasion of Egypt (Orient). The Treaty of Campo Formio forced him to go to the
east. Even from his youth he was interested in the history of the Arabs. His
youth writing contains a summary of Histoire des Arabes. Napoleon knew Egypt
tactically, strategically, historically, textually, through the writing s of
classical as well as recent European authorities. So, for Napoleon Egypt was a
reality project from the inspired from texts. His invasion became the chances
for putting the Orientalist special expertise for colonial use when the
Orientalist had to decide whether to side with the Orientals or the conquering
West; but the Orientalist always tose the latter from Napoleon’s time. For
Napoleon, understanding the Orient was based from the classical texts and
interpretations made by the Orientalists which seemed useful for any actual
encounter with the real Orient.
During the 18th
century there was a significant change in the perception and understanding of
the Orient a part from the information passed down from the medieval and the
renaissance time. The general perception of the Orient was being extended
beyond Islamic lands. This was a result of continuing and expanding European
exploration of the rest of the world. The west continuous exploration has
brought the Orient into a more extensive study. But the widening extent of
Europe has made herself the priviledged center of such study. As Europe moved
outwards the strength in her cultural sense was strengthened with the discovery
of other new cultures and civilizations, which produces exciting tales of the
travellers that contributed to secure the ethnocentric perspectives. From the
point of historical anthropology the decline of Rome of the West could also be
seen from the perspective of the rise of Islam. The study of the Orient has
made the Europeans to know themselves better for which the 18th
century West confronted the Oriental source material with some detachment from
the Renaissance perspective which strongly treated the Orient as an enemy.
However, there were some thinkers who went beyond comparative study to survey
mankind by sympathetic identification. This is the third 18th
century element preparing the way for modern Orientalism. The fourth element is
the instinctive motive or impulse to
classify nature and man into types. In natural history, anthropology, cultural
generalization, a type had a certain specific character which makes it distinct
from others as Foucault says “a controlled derivation”. These types and
characters belonged to a system, a network of generalizations.
The four elements – Expansion,
historical confrontation, sympathy, classification- formed an important part of
the 18th century thought on which specific intellectual and
institutional structures of modern Orientalism depends without which
Orientalism could not have taken place. Simply, modern Orientalism developed
from secularizing elements in the 18th century European culture. The
modern Orientalist in his view rescues the Orient and his research helped in
the patching of Orient’s lost languages, mores and even mentalities. The
techniques used by Orientalists like lexicography, grammar, translation,
cultural decoding helped in the reconstruction of the ancient, classical
Orient. But in the process the disciplines changed for they were reconstructed
and modernized; traditional disciplines were also brought into contemporary
culture. The important feature of modern Orientalist theory and praxis was not
because of an abrupt access to objective knowledge about the Orient but as a
framework inherited from the past which were reorganized using philology etc.
which began to accommodate the East. William Jones and Anquetil were
contributors to modern Orientalism. With every assertion made by Europe, the
East gained. However, if this gains led to the loss of originality which should
not be very surprising because since the inception the method was “reconstruction
and repetition”. The Orient is then a system of representations constructed by
various reasons and systems into western learning and later by Western empire.
“If this definition of Orientalism seems more political than not”, says Said, “that
is simply because I think Orientalism was itself a product of certain political
forces and activities. Orientalism is a school of interpretation whose material
happens to be the Orient, its civilizations, peoples and localities”.
With the expansion of Oriental
studies beyond the Islamic Arab, certain efforts were made to study India. The
decisive period in Indic studies began with the arrival of English civil
servants in Calcutta around 1780. Learning was not just the sole intention but
conquest. In order to establish their authority, fact-finding teams were
encouraged which could produce conclusive results quickly than individual
efforts. William Jones following in Anquetil’s footsteps made many linguistic
discoveries. He was a polyglot and mastered Persian grammar which was a rare
achievement in his time. When the British captured Bengal their objective was
to record the customs, laws and to establish authority they realized language
was the sole key to achieve it. Opposing Jones (Orientalist) were certain
Utilitarians who also came to be known as Anglicist argued that Western
knowledge in English should displace the Eastern. The most notable proponent of
Utilitarian ideas was James Mill, who wrote History of India which remained a
hegemonic texts throughout the 19th century.
The study of political economy
of Asia has led to the rise of the notion of Oriental Despotism and the Asiatic
Mode of Production also called AMP. The idea of despotic orient was first
formulated in Montesquieu’s Esprit des Lois, published in 1748. Asia which has
large river valleys with a climate hot or cold, was inhabited by people of
extreme temperamental people and they organized themselves into empires.
Because of this the political economic institutions, Asia differed from Europe.
Despotism and arbitrary rule by an autocrat over the populace is the mode of
political institutions in the East. The people made their living by using low
grade agricultural tools and the surplus of the self-sufficient village
community is extracted by means of taxes.
India’s history beginning with
the arrival of the Aryans attained her first empire under the Mauryas in the 4th
century B.C as an Oriental Despot then her decline dawned. This decline was
contributed by the Hellenistic invasion, Scythians and Turks. However, there
was a revival under the Guptas in the 4th and 5th
centuries A.D the decline which dawned with the coming of the Huns was never
reversed. India was an Oriental despot which acceded to conquest and failed. Despite
the repeated conquest- which in other case would change the whole structure of
the society- it did not bring an end to her civilization or even produced any
fundamental change in it. What is different about India is that despite
repeated conquest and invasions her ancient civilizations survived into the
present more or less unchanged.
But what is the nature of such
state which has survived for so long almost intact? What could be the
reason(s)? The answer could be found in the irrational form- caste system- an unique
institution supported or constituted by Hinduism. The representations of India
as a civilization dominated by caste, as a theocracy in which Brahmans, priests
and ascetics take precedence over kings, state are numerous. Caste is
associated with race, occupation, religion, and status, birth and death,
marriage and education. However, thought and action are separated from each
other. The Brahmanical order of varna is not the same but at odds empirically
and historically with the multiplicity of jatis, castes and subcastes and there
are always discrepancies between caste rules and actual behavior. Caste is then
the most vital part of Indian society. Indians do not shape or reshape their
world but by social, material reality of caste. The people of India do not make
their own history but by an institution called caste.
