Abstract
AbstractThis article demonstrates how, in the 1760s, two British East India Company servants, John Zephaniah Holwell and Alexander Dow, constructed a particular interpretation of India's ancient religious past through creative misrepresentations of mysteriously sourced texts. This had broad ramifications for contemporary understandings of Indian religion, and has important implications for the historiography of Orientalism in this period. Just as forgeries in the literary sphere challenged notions of history, introducing scepticism, alternative narratives and national mythologies, so in the field of Orientalist letters they shaped an idea of Indian religion that could both challenge European assumptions and facilitate imperial ideologies.
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