purohit culture

This paper will explore the encounter between Purohit Swami, W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot in the 1930s, the consequent production of the Swami’s texts at the heart of the Modernist establishment (sponsored by Yeats and published by Faber), and the Swami’s success in Britain, as a literary and a cultural phenomenon. It will present arguments on two levels: one, that the different responses of Eliot and Yeats to Purohit Swami illustrate the complexity of Modernism’s inheritance, from multiple contexts, of ideas of India, “the Orient”, and spirituality, as well as of language, culture, and tradition; two, that the Swami’s success in finding acolytes and influential supporters amongst elite social and intellectual circles in London was part of a broader tendency in Britain, into which Indian ideas had permeated through varied sources, and been reinterpreted and re-presented as aspects of contemporary culture. The paper will further argue that the use of Indian ideas within the literary and aesthetic works of the time authoritatively signalled their acceptance and integration into their adopted culture. 

Early twentieth century Britain inherited a cultural consciousness of India informed by a convergence of two distinct yet connected traditions; one of scholarly interest in Sanskrit philology, and Indian literature, religions and philosophy; the other of popular enthusiasm for spiritual and occult ideas associated with India. Modernist culture in Britain absorbed and reinvented aspects of these inheritances in various forms. T.S. Eliot’s study of Sanskrit at Harvard resulted in informed and sophisticated engagements with Sanskrit texts and ideas in his poetry and plays, essays and reviews. W.B. Yeats’ lifelong fascination with mysticism and occult practices led to his brief experimentation with Theosophy, and a more permanent interest in Indian spiritualism, which found expression in the active sponsorship of visiting Indians, as well as in his poetry and prose. Both poets, from countries with histories of colonial relations with Britain, and both in some measure in revolt against their particular cultural and religious backgrounds, found cosmopolitan cultural and intellectual identities for their writing within the world of cosmopolitan and imperial London.

Yet, in 1933, Yeats asked Eliot to provide introductions to the translations of Sanskrit texts, by a visiting Indian religeuse, Purohit Swami. Eliot was unenthusiastic, while Yeats spent a significant part of the last decade of his life collaborating with the Swami on a translation of the Upaniṣads, and writing introductions for his books. Eliot and Yeats, arguably the two most influential poets writing in English in the twentieth century, were manifestly concerned with questions of spirituality and with religion as well as poetry and philosophy. While they had few points of contact in their attitudes to poetry, religion, or spirituality, and were equally distinct in their approaches to Indian philosophy, their common concern with differing aspects of these subjects made them representative as well as productive of their cultural contexts.