Sir William Jones (1748-1794): The "Good" Orientalist?, Part II - Page 3
© Joseph Sramek
Yet this leaves us with a glaring inconsistency. If on one hand, Jones believed in British superiority, and was somewhat critical of Indian culture and traditions, how could he also be someone who was reverential toward Indians? Cannon refuses to tackle this question outright, failing to see that Jone's work had any racist undertones at all. Mukherjee is more balanced yet fails to explain how Jones could be both at the same time. It is almost as if he wants it both ways; on the one hand to point out that Jones should not be seen as an innocent scholar or one that was pro-Indian, as Cannon and James Mills respectively have seen him, but on the other hand to argue that Jones was essentially a "good" Orientalist who played an invaluable role in causing an Indian "renaissance" which led to the Indian nationalist movement.
Footnotes:
[1] Garland Cannon and Kevin R. Brine, eds., Objects of Enquiry: The Life, Contributions, and Influences of Sir William Jones (1746-1794), (NY and London: New York University Press, 1994), pp. 46-7.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid., p. 34.
[5] Ibid., p. 43.
[6] Ibid., p. 46.
[7] S.N. Mukherjee, Sir William Jones: A Study in Eighteenth-Century British Attitudes To India, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 120, 125.
[8] Ibid., p. 125.
[9] Ibid., p. 120.
[10] Edward Said, Orientalism, (NY: Vintage, 1979), p. 78.
[11] Ibid., passim.
[12] Mukherjee, pp. 140-1.
[13] Ibid., p. 141.
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