ABSTRACT

In response to the activities of the Baptist and Church Missionary Societies in India, British representations of Hindu loss of caste, a supposed consequence of Christian conversion, increased in the early nineteenth century. Loss of caste, or Brahmanical excommunication, entailed a denial of family, occupation, and/or social standing among Hindus. In British discourse near the turn of the century, it transformed from a reason to prevent missions to East India Company territories into evidence for the barbarism of Hinduism, and therefore a justification for conversion. This article supplies a much-needed investigation of its importance to fictions of the British Empire. By considering loss of caste in Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s The Indian Cottage (1791), Marianna Starke’s The Widow of Malabar (1796), Robert Southey’s The Curse of Kehama (1810), Mary Martha Sherwood’s Indian novellas, and Sydney Owenson’s The Missionary (1811), this article demonstrates that loss of caste, like sati, was both a narratological trope that routinely portrayed Hinduism as severe and a significant political issue that may have helped facilitate the utilitarian shift in British colonialism near the turn of the century.

摘要

为响应印度的浸信会和教会宣教会的活动，十九世纪初期，英国代表印度流放的种姓是基督教conversion依的一种应有的后果，印度人种姓的这种代表增加了。种姓的丧失或婆罗门教的驱逐，导致印度教徒否认家庭，职业和/或社会地位。在近世纪之交的英国话语中，它从阻止派遣人员前往东印度公司领土的理由转变为印度教的野蛮行为的证据，因此成为了转变的理由。本文对它对大英帝国小说的重要性进行了迫切需要的调查。考虑到雅克·亨利·贝纳丁·德·圣皮埃尔（Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre）的《印度小屋》（The Indian Cottage，1791）中的种姓损失，玛丽安娜·史塔克（Marianna Starke）马拉巴尔的寡妇（1796年），罗伯特·索西（Robert Southey）的《基哈马的诅咒》（1810年），玛丽·玛莎·舍伍德（Mary Martha Sherwood）的印度中篇小说和悉尼·欧文森的《传教士》（1811年），都证明了失去种姓（如萨蒂）既是一种叙事性的提法，通常将印度教描绘为严峻且重大的政治问题，可能有助于促进世纪之交之前英国殖民主义的功利主义转变。