Posted on July 14, 2009 at 6:52 pm in Culture | RSS feed | Reply | Trackback URL
QUIZ: Who Coined the term ‘Hinduism’?
11 Comments to “QUIZ: Who Coined the term ‘Hinduism’?”
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My money is on the British. Unless you’re looking for a specific person who coined that term.
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Yes Kaffir, the person who is recorded to have used the term ‘Hinduism’ for the first time.
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If I had to take a wild guess, and taking into account that this may be a trick question, would it be Swami Vivekanand or Swami Dayanand Saraswati?
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none of the above
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Sarvesh ji, my guess would be some earlier orientalist like William Jones or Monier Williams…
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Sarvesh ji, after some googling I came to know that Raja Ram Mohan Roy had used this term way back in 1816 and that is the earliest reference I could find on internet. But I don’t think Roy babu would have coined this term…he must have definitely borrowed this term(as he borrowed many of his ideas) from some Briton
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Mystic Fire, you are absolutely right!!
It was the anglicised Ram Mohun Roy who is recorded to have used the term “Hinduism” for the first time, in the first decades of nineteenth century, and not in a very positive sense. No, he did not borrow the term although he did internalize the alien idea behind it. Max Mueller later wrote about this fact.
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Sarvesh,
Do you have any idea about the person who made this phrase “Hinduism is not a religion, but a way of life” ?Regards
Bharat -
Bharat, I can make a guess – Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan? or Anand Coomaraswamy?
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Sarvesh,
It was not meant to be a “quiz”. In fact I was looking for the right answer.
Swami Chinamayanda (commenting on the “way of life” phrase, ) refers to one “Irish Padre” who originated this phrase.
Regards
Bharat -
Please read as – *Swami Chinmayananda
भारतेन्दु 