Envisaging India —A Essay on Zimmer, Eliade and Dumont

In this paper, three Western scholars, namely,Heinrich Zimmer (1890-1943), Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) and Louis Dumont (1911-1998), whose works on Indian religious culture had far-reaching influence in the second half of the last century, are discussed and evaluated. Zimmer's works on Hindu Geistesleben, especially esoteric imagination, form a new point of departure in terms of Indian studies in the States after World War II. Mircea Eliade's idea of homo religiosus, which became the dominant theme in the studies of religion after 1960 in the States, as he stated, is from his Indian experience. Louis Dumont's bold idea of homo hierarchicus on explicating the ideological configuration of caste system begins a new era in the studies of Indian society. The three scholars are all European origin