The Early German Reception of the Bhagavad Gītā

Abstract

Bradley L. Herling’s article "The Early German Reception of the Bhagavad Gītā" traces how the Gītā entered the intellectual and spiritual imagination of German thinkers during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, highlighting how the text became part of a larger fascination with the Orient during the German Romantic and Idealist periods. Beginning with Friedrich Schlegel’s 1808 Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier, Herling outlines how early figures such as Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, August Wilhelm Schlegel, and Baron Eckstein viewed the Gītā as emblematic of a sublime Oriental wisdom. He examines the tension between philosophical appropriation and philological rigor in how the Gītā was read: as both a mystical, universalist scripture and an exotic text embedded in a grand Romantic vision of India. The article also explores the evolving role of Sanskrit studies and the rise of Orientalist scholarship in Germany, culminating in competing trajectories of aesthetic admiration, philosophical synthesis, and emerging academic critique. Ultimately, Herling suggests that the German reception of the Gītā reflects broader anxieties and aspirations within European thought regarding selfhood, authenticity, and transcendence.