Tom Green (University of Cambridge)
A Real Mahaatman: Swami Vivekananda and Friedrich Max Müller’s representation of Ramakrishna to the West
In 1896 Friedrich Max Müller and Swami Vivekananda exchanged correspondence before meeting at Müller’s house in Oxford. Müller was hoping to gain more materials for a book he aimed to publish on Ramakrishna; Vivekananda was beginning to realize that his ‘Master’, Ramakrishna, could help rather than hinder his efforts to spread his modernized brand of Hinduism in the West. In this paper I will explore what was at stake in this collaboration between the venerable Professor, who was seen by many as the world’s leading expert on Indian culture and religion, and the irrepressible Swami, who had already made his mark in America as the first Hindu missionary in the Western world. In particular I will argue that Müller and Vivekananda were united by their desire to depict Advaita Vedanta as the ‘authentic’ religious tradition of India to audiences in Britain who had perhaps been swayed by the populist esotericism of Madame Blavatsky. Ramakrishna was thus portrayed by Müller as a real ‘Mahaatman’ in opposition to the Himalayan sages supposedly consulted by the theosophists, and Vivekananda was able to bring to audiences in Britain the image of Ramakrishna as the universalist teacher of Vedanta.
