Bio
Monier Williams and Max Muller, both eminent Victorian orientalists, enraptured the public imagination. Their research into ancient Indian religion, comparative philology, and the developing field of scientific comparative linguistics attracted widespread public interest; through this interest, these intellectuals and the fields they defined came to assume an imperial character. The development of the comparative approach was intimately connected with empire: only with the expansion of European political dominance over the world could the raw materials for large scale cross cultural comparison be obtained. Not only that, the producers and products of finished knowledge produced at Oxford and other European intellectual centers were regarded with almost mythological regard and ascribed intellectual superiority over the native cultural practices and religious beliefs from which they were constructed. This thesis explores how these two figures depended on cross-imperial interactions with Indian intellectuals, British bureaucrats, and missionaries to obtain knowledge of India, how their theories and conclusions were shaped by the political realities of empire, how they attempted to leverage their positions in the public imagination to effect political change, and finally, how their legacies were shaped by their imperial entanglements.
