Revealing the Secret in an Open Court: Heeralal Dhole, Paul Carus, and the Translation Assemblage

Print media played a pivotal role in the dissemination of transnational esotericism in the nineteenth century and served as one of the main platforms by which South Asian yoga traditions were promoted beyond their vernacular contexts.  This paper examines the work of one print entrepreneur, Heeralal Dhole (Hīrālāl Ḍhola), who published a set of texts that I argue played a complex role in the “western esoteric reception of yoga”[1] in the years prior to Vivekananda’s 1893 address at the World’s Parliament of Religions. The historical transformation of yoga in the colonial era was in part dependent on the transnational connections made between printers and book distributors, and the appetites of the market for emerging global discourses of yoga and esotericism.  Through a critical evaluation of primary sources related to Dhole’s publications, I will examine the context in which he worked, and connect that context to intricate networks of cultural transmission and assemblages of exchange through an analysis of Dhole’s connection to Paul Carus (1852-1919), who influenced the western reception of yoga discourses with his scientific-rationalist approach to South Asian religious traditions via his Open Court Publishing House. In doing so, I seek to indicate how vernacular agendas shaped and were shaped by audience reception and the demands of the anglophone reading public.

The paper will begin with a reconstruction of the social history of Dhole’s work and influence. What scarce scholarly attention has been given to Dhole has been through analysis of some of his publications, and little is available regarding his biography. To partially fill this gap, I will synthesize what can be gleaned from a variety of sources, including British surveillance of indigenous print culture as found in the Quarterly Lists published in The Calcutta Gazette, as well as contemporaneous print advertisements and other paratextual sources. Dhole’s contributions are significant: his “Vedanta Series” made available a number of yoga-related Sanskrit texts in English translation, including a reprint of Shrish Chandra Basu’s (Śrīś Candra Basu) English translation of the Śivasaṃhitā  as The Esoteric Science and Philosophy of the Tantras [1893], which has been discussed by Mark Singleton [2010][2] and more recently Keith Edward Cantú [2023][3] for its role in conditioning the western reception of haṭha yoga. 

The first section of the paper will provide the social and historical context of Dhole’s work, with emphasis on two titles that involved collaboration with the Bengali paṇḍit Kālīvar Vedāntavāgīś. Kālīvar helped to solidify the status of the Yoga Sūtra as a canonical text in the years before and after Vivekananda’s visit to the United States through a Bengali vernacular translation of the Yoga Sūtra published by Dhole [1884],[4] which includes a substantial preface by the translator that links the yoga of Patañjali to late nineteenth-century esoteric interests such as mesmerism.  The paper will then examine a trilingual edition of Sadānanda Yogīndra’s Vedāntasāra published by Dhole [1883], that includes Kālīvar’s Bengali translation, a Hindi translation by Pandita Ramabai [Ramabai Dongre, Paṇḍitā Ramābāī, 1858-1922] likely composed around the time she spent in Calcutta when she was conferred titles of traditional Sanskrit authority,[5] and an introduction and English translation by Nandalal Dhole [Nandalāla Ḍhola, d. 1887], who appears to have been Heeralal’s father.  The focus of this section will be the introduction, where Nandalal praises Kālīvar's work and places him in the context of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's (1831-1891) conception of Theosophy.[6] The analysis will demonstrate that Dhole worked within an assemblage that included both English and vernacular translations of Sanskrit.

The second section will investigate Dhole’s role as an agent for transnational exchange: an advertisement in an 1897 edition of The Calcutta Review announces Dhole as a “bibliopolist” or bookseller and agent for Paul Carus's Open Court Publishing Company, based in Chicago. Carus, whose works Michael Bergunder describes as an “important example for the esoteric transgression of boundaries between science and religion” [2016, 120], also published a journal, The Open Court: A Weekly Journal Devoted to the Work of Conciliating Religion With Science, which advertised and reviewed[7] Dhole’s “Vedanta Series.”  Through an analysis of that review and a discussion of Dhole’s role as an agent for Open Court, the paper will explore how the transnational exchange was linked to desires for spiritual transformation among print-reading publics. Exchanges between Dhole and Carus contributed to an emerging popularized discourse on spirituality.

The linkages between Kālīvar, Dhole, and Paul Carus alert us to the assemblage of actors in the years before and after Vivekananda's address at the World's Parliament of Religion who contributed to the reception of yoga in western esotericism. The paper will conclude with reflection on the ambiguous role of the “secret” in the networks of patronage and dissemination. As tensions between secrecy and accessibility were heightened by the advent of affordable print translations of Sanskrit, translation provided a medium for negotiating local and global concerns.

[1]      Julian Strube, “Yoga and Meditation in Modern Esoteric Traditions,” in Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies, ed. Suzanne Newcombe and Karen O’Brien-Kop (London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2020), 136.

[2]      Mark Singleton, Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 45.

[3]      Keith Edward Cantú, “Haṭhayoga as ‘Black Magic’ in Early Theosophy and Beyond,” in Esotericism and Deviance (Boston: Brill, 2023), 259, https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004681040_013.

[4]      Kālīvar Vedāntavāgiś, trans., Patañjal Darśan o Yoga-Pariśiṣṭa (127 Masjidbari St. and 210/1 Cornwallis Street, Kolkata: Hīrālāl Dhol, Victoria Press, and Bhuvanmohan Ghoṣ, 1884).

[5]      Robert Eric Frykenberg, Christianity in India: From Beginnings to the Present (Oxford University Press, 2008), 384, https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198263777.001.0001.

[6]      Nandalal Dhole, “Introduction,” in The Vedantasara, or Manual of Adwita Philosophy of Paramhansa Sadānanda Jogīndra.  With an Introductory Memoir on Matter and Spirit, ed. Heeralal Dhole (Calcutta: 1883).

[7]      A. H. Gunlogsen, “The Philosophy of the Vedanta [Review of Ḍhol’s Vedanta Series],” The Open Court: A Weekly Journal Devoted to the Work of Conciliating Religion With Science IV–2, no. 131 (March 6, 1890): 2131–33.