A01=Benjamin Leathley
antiquarianism
Author_Benjamin Leathley
Category=QRA
Category=QRAX
Category=QRD
Category=WTLC
comparative religion
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_travel
ethnography
Hinduism
India
Protestant mission
travel writing
VOC
Product details
- ISBN 9789087284367
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 19 Mar 2025
- Publisher: Leiden University Press
- Publication City/Country: NL
- Product Form: Paperback
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This book presents the first-ever English translation of The Open Door to Hidden Paganism, one of the earliest and most detailed studies of South Indian Hinduism. Written in 1651 by Abraham Rogerius, a Dutch East India Company clergyman and missionary, it offers an unexpectedly balanced account of the customs and traditions of the South Indian Brahmins. This made it a cornerstone of early European Indology. In addition to the Dutch original, this edition includes a full English translation, along with the extensive footnotes provided by an anonymous Dutch editor who contextualised Rogerius's account for a seventeenth-century audience. Text and footnotes together uncover a so-far hidden religious and philosophical conversation of global dimension. Equipped with a rich introduction and detailed endnotes, this comprehensive edition of 'The Open Door' dives into the fascinating intersection of missionary agendas, ethnography, and antiquarianism that created this unique work.
Benjamin Leathley is a PhD candidate at the Università di Bologna and Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona. His research interests include early modern travel writing and ethnography and its reception in Europe, as well as the conceptualisation of paganism and idolatry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
