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6 For a sampling, see Ray, Ajit Kumar, The religious ideas of Rammouhun Roy: a survey of his writings on religion particularly in Persian, Sanskrit and Bengali, New Delhi: Kanak Publications, 1976 Google Scholar; Sen, Amiya, Rammouhun Roy: a critical biography, New Delhi: Penguin, 2012 Google Scholar; Bayly, C. A., Recovering liberties: Indian thought in the age of liberalism and empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007 Google Scholar. For the extent of the controversy, see Tyagananda, Swami and Vrajaprana, Pravrajika, Interpreting Ramakrishna: Kali’s child revisited, New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2011 Google Scholar.

7 Brown, Cheever Mackenzie, Hindu perspectives on evolution: Darwin, dharma, and design, London: Routledge, 2012 CrossRefGoogle Scholar: Killingley, D., ‘Hinduism, Darwinism and evolution in late nineteenth-century India’, in Amigoni, D. and Wallace, J., eds., Charles Darwin’s Origin of species: new interdisciplinary essays, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995 Google Scholar: Raina, Dhruv and Habib, S. Irfan, ‘The moral legitimation of modern science: Bhadralok reflection on theories of evolution’, Social Studies of Science, 26, 1996, pp. 9–42 Google Scholar; Chakrabarti, Pratik, Western science in modern India: metropolitan methods, colonial practices, New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004 Google Scholar.

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12 De Michelis, Elizabeth, A history of modern yoga, London: Continuum, 2008 Google Scholar. For the encounter with evolution, see Cheever Brown, Hindu perspectives on evolution.

13 Killingley, D. H., ‘Vivekananda’s Western message from the East’, in Radice, W., ed., Swami Vivekananda and the modernization of Hinduism, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 138–57Google Scholar; Radhakrishnan, S., Eastern religions and Western thought, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1940 Google Scholar.

14 For images, see Galvin, Paul V. Library Digital History Collection, Illinois Institute of Technology, ‘World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893’, http://columbus.gl.iit.edu/ (consulted 18 March 2019)Google Scholar.

15 Nordstrom, Justin, ‘Utopians at the parliament: the World’s Parliament of Religions and the Columbia Exposition of 1893’, Journal of Religious History, 33, 2009, pp. 348–65Google Scholar.

16 Ibid., p. 353.

17 The Japanese were particularly outspoken: see Ketelaar, James, ‘Strategic occidentalism: Meiji Buddhists at the World’s Parliament of Religion’, Buddhist–Christian Studies, 11, 1991, pp. 37–56 Google Scholar; and Snodgrass, Judith, Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: orientalism, occidentalism, and the Columbia Exposition, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003 Google Scholar.

18 Seager, Richard Hughes, The World’s Parliament of Religions: the East/West encounter, Chicago, 1893, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995 Google Scholar.

19 Sophie Kim Jung, ‘Rethinking Vivekananda through space and territorialised spirituality, c.1880–1920’, PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2018, p. 41.

20 See Banerjee, Sikata, Make me a man! Masculinity, Hinduism, and nationalism in India, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005 Google Scholar, especially ch. 3.

21 Das, Shinjini, Vernacular medicine in colonial India: family, market and homoeopathy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 2019.

22 Prabuddhaprana, Pravrajika, Saint Sara: the life of Sara Chapman Bull, the American mother of Swami Vivekananda, Calcutta: Sri Sarada Math, 2002, pp. 85–9Google Scholar.

23 Baha’i Archives, Wilmette, IN, M. R. Ford, ‘Sarah Farmer’, p. 1.

24 This term is used by Albanese in Republic of mind and spirit, ch. 6.

25 This essay, considered one of Emerson’s best, is in Robinson, David M., ed., The spiritual Emerson: essential writings, Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2003 Google Scholar. See also Versluis, , American Transcendentalism, pp. 51–79 Google Scholar; Pike, , New age and neopagan religions, pp. 49–50 Google Scholar. Hanegraaff, , New age religion, p. 238 Google Scholar, Emerson still viewed the religion of the East with some disdain.

26 See Albanese, , Republic of mind and spirit, pp. 160–3Google Scholar.

27 Tumber, , American feminism, p. 123 Google Scholar.

28 Prabuddhaprana, Pravrajika, Saint Sara, pp. 61–3Google Scholar.

29 Ibid., p. 62.

30 Baha’i Archives, Wilmette, IN, S. Farmer, ‘The Green Acre ideal’, n.p., 1898, p. 2.

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33 Kemper, Steven, Rescued from the nation: Anagarika Dharmapala and the Buddhist world, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015, pp. 33, 93–5 Google Scholar.

34 Vivekananda, ‘Stray remarks on Theosophy’, in The complete works of Swami Vivekananda, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda/Volume_4/Writings:_Prose/Stray_Remarks_on_Theosophy (consulted 25 February 2019).

35 For his activities, see Lewis G. Janes, Lewis G. Janes: philosopher, patriot, lover of man, Boston: James H. West, 1902. The school’s work is described in ‘Comparative religion notes’, Biblical World, 8, 1896, p. 166.

36 Tumber, , American feminism, p. 25 Google Scholar. Chautauqua assemblies were named after a lake in south-western New York, and the name was American Indian in origin. The travelling schools were modelled after the original institution in western New York.

37 James, William, Varieties of religious experience, New York: Dover Publications, 2013 (first published 1902), p. 114 Google Scholar.

38 Braude, Ann, Radical spirits: spiritualism and women’s rights in nineteenth-century America, Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1989 Google Scholar. As early as the mid nineteenth century, some female spiritualists had deserted Presbyterianism because of its perceived harshness.

39 Pike, , New age and neopagan religions, pp. 48–9Google Scholar; Delp, Robert W., ‘Andrew Jackson Davis and spiritualism’, in Wrobel, A., ed., Pseudo-science and society in nineteenth-century America, Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1987, pp. 100–21Google Scholar.

40 Braude, , Radical spirits, pp. 206–20Google Scholar.

41 ‘The divinity of man’, Detroit Free Press, 18 February 1894, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda/Volume_3/Reports_in_American_Newspapers/The_Divinity_of_Man (consulted 25 February 2019).

42 Gottschalk, Stephen, Rolling away the stone: Mary Baker Eddy’s challenge to materialism, Bloomington, IN: Indiania University Press, 2006, p. 120 Google Scholar.

43 Cited in ibid., p. 83.

44 Vivekananda to his Brother disciples, 25 September 1894, in Complete works, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda/Volume_6/Epistles_-_Second_Series/XLVII_Brother_disciples (consulted 25 February 2019).

45 Beckerlegge, Gwilym, ‘The early spread of Vedanta societies: an example of “imported localism”’, Numen, 51, 2004, pp. 296–320, esp. p. 299CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Both cited in Swami Vivekananda and his guru, with letters from prominent Americans, the alleged progress of Vedantism, London and Madras: The Christian Literature Society for India, 1897, p. iv Google Scholar.

47 Vivekananda, letter to the Sisters, 31 July 1984, in Complete works, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda/Volume_6/Epistles_-_Second_Series/XLIV_Sisters (consulted 25 February 2019).

48 Vivekananda to Mary Hale, 22 June 1895, in Complete works, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda/Volume_8/Epistles_-_Fourth_Series/XLVI_Sister (consulted 25 February 2019).

49 Vivekananda, letter to the Sisters, 31 July 1984, in Complete works, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda/Volume_6/Epistles_-_Second_Series/XLIV_Sisters (consulted 25 February 2019).

50 These quotations all come from Vivekananda, ‘The religion of India’, in Complete works, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda/Volume_9/Notes_of_Lectures_and_Classes/The_Religion_of_India (consulted 25 February 2019).

51 Vivekananda, Raja yoga, ch. 3, in Complete works, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda/Volume_1/Raja-Yoga/Prana (consulted 25 February 2019).

52 Green, Thomas J., Religion for a secular age: Max Müller, Swami Vivekananda and Vedanta, Farnham: Ashgate, 2016, p. 5 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Brekke, Makers of modern Indian religion. For the different currents of Vedantic thought, see Hatcher, B. A., Eclecticism and modern Hindu discourse, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006 Google Scholar; Malkovsky, B., New perspectives on Advaita Vedanta, Leiden: Brill, 2000 Google Scholar; Sen, A. P., Hindu revivalism in Bengal, 1872–1905: some essays in interpretation, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993 Google Scholar.

53 Vivekananda, Raja yoga, ch. 7, in Complete works, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda/Volume_1/Raja-Yoga/Dhyana_And_Samadhi (consulted 25 February 2019).

54 Ibid., ch. 1, in Complete works, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda/Volume_1/Raja-Yoga/Introductory (consulted 25 February 2019).

55 Vivekananda, ‘Sayings and utterances’, in Complete works, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda/Volume_5/Sayings_and_Utterances (consulted 25 February 2019).

56 Dixon, Joy, Divine feminine: Theosophy and feminism in England, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001 Google Scholar.

57 Vedanta Society of Northern California Archives, San Francisco, Mrs J. H. Morrison to Sarah Bull, 19 December 1894.

58 There are many works on Ramakrishna. The most controversial is Kripal, Jeffrey J., Kali’s child: the mystical and erotic in the life and teachings of Ramakrishna, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995 Google Scholar. The full response and critique from the Ramakrishnan Mission scholars is Tyagananda, Swami and Vrajaprana, Pravrajika, Interpreting Ramakrishna: Kali’s child revisited, New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2011 Google Scholar. See also Sarkar, Sumit, ‘“Kaliyuga, ”, “Chakri, ” and “Bhakti, ”: Ramakrishna and his times’, Economic and Political Weekly, 27, 29, 1992, pp. 1543–66Google Scholar; Sharma, , A restatement of religion; Sudhir Kakar, The analyst and the mystic: psychoanalytic religions on religion and mysticism, Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1991 Google Scholar; Rolland, Romain, La vie de Ramakrishna: essai sur la mystique et l’action de l’Inde vivante, Paris: Éditions Stock, 1929Google Scholar; Sen, Amiya, Three essays on Sri Ramakrishna and his times, Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 2001 Google Scholar; Sil, Narasingha P., Ramakrishna Paramahamsa: a psychological profile, Leiden: Brill, 1991 Google Scholar; Sil, Narasingha P., Ramakrishna revisited: a new biography, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1995 Google Scholar.

59 Ramakrishna, ‘Advice to an actor’, http://www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/gospel/volume_1/22_advice_to_an_actor.htm (consulted 25 February 2019); this famous phrase in Bengali is ‘Kama Kanchana’.

60 Saradananda, Swami, Sri Ramakrishna and his divine play, trans. Swami Chetanananda, St Louis, MO: Vedanta Society of St. Louis, 2003 Google Scholar.

61 The literature on Sarada Devi is enormous, but see the recent and authoritative Chetanananda, Swami, Sri Sarada Devi and her divine play, St Louis, MO: Vedanta Society of St. Louis, 2015 Google Scholar.

62 Purnatmananda, Swami, ed., Reminiscences of Sri Sarada Devi by monastics, devotees, and others, Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama, 2004, p. 9, n. 1 Google Scholar.

63 Prabuddhaprana, Pravrajika, Saint Sara, p. 315 Google Scholar.

64 Mukerjee, Mani Sankar, The monk as man: the unknown life of Swami Vivekananda, Gurgaon: Penguin Books India, 2011, pp. 1–90 Google Scholar.

65 Vivekananda to his Brother disciples, 25 September 1894, in Complete works, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda/Volume_6/Epistles_-_Second_Series/XLVII_Brother_disciples (consulted 25 February 2019).

66 Vivekananda to Alasinga Perumal, 1 July 1895, in Complete works, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda/Volume_5/Epistles_-_First_Series/XLIII_Alasinga (consulted 25 February 2019).

67 This problem was acute for Sister Nivedita, or Margaret Noble, who described it in her letters, Basu, Sankari Prasad, ed., Letters of Sister Nivedita, 2 vols., Calcutta: Nababharat Publishers Google Scholar, and intermittently in ‘The master as I saw him’, in Atmaprana, Pravrajika, ed.,The complete works of Sister Nivedita, 5 Google Scholar vols., 5^th reprint, Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama, 2014, vol. 1.

68 Vivekananda to Margo [Margaret Noble], 1 October 1897, in Complete works, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda/Volume_8/Epistles_-_Fourth_Series/CX_Margo (consulted 25 February 2019).

69 Ford, ‘Sarah Farmer’, p. 6.

70 Ibid., pp. 11–12.

71 Schmidt, , Restless souls, pp. 195–6Google Scholar.

72 Ford, ‘Sarah Farmer’, p. 15.

73 Ibid., p.12.

74 de Bellaigue, Christopher, The Islamic enlightenment: the modern struggle between faith and reason, London: Bodley Head, 2017, pp. 140–4Google Scholar.

75 For more on the early Babist movement, see Amanat, Abbas, Resurrection and renewal: the making of the Babi movement in Iran, 1844–1850, Los Angeles, CA: Kalimat Press, 2005 Google Scholar.

76 Garlington, William, The Baha’i faith, Greenwood, CT: Praeger, 2005, p. 25 Google Scholar.

77 For evolution as religion, see Hanegraaff, W., New age religion, pp. 462–82Google Scholar.

78 Quoted in Garlington, Baha’i faith, p. 25.

79 Ford, ‘Sarah Farmer’, p. 13.

80 For these confusions, see Garlington, , Baha’i faith, pp. 77–8Google Scholar; and Peter Smith, ‘The American Baha’i community, 1894–1917, a preliminary survey’, Studies in Babi and Baha’i History, 1, 1982, pp. 100–2.

81 Abdu’l-Baha, , Tablets of Abdul-Baha Abbas, vol. l, New York: Baha’i Publishing company, 1940, p. 278 Google Scholar.

82 Ibid., pp. 281–2.

83 Ibid., p. 287.

84 Ibid., p. 293.

85 Ibid., p. 302.

86 Carus, Paul, ‘A new religion’, Open Court, 18, 578, 1904, p. 403 Google Scholar; Carus’s account seeks to deny these rumours.

87 Schmidt, , Restless souls, p. 186 Google Scholar.

88 Vedanta Society Archives, San Francisco, Sara Bull papers, Rena R. Haskell to Sarah Bull, 21 November 1901.

89 Schmidt, , Restless souls, pp. 181–227 Google Scholar.

90 Ford, ‘Sarah Farmer’, p. 13.

91 Prugh, Linda, Josephine MacLeod and Vivekananda’s mission, Chennai: Ramakrishna Mission, 1999 Google Scholar.

92 Bodhasarananda, Swami, ed., The story of Ramakrishna Mission: Swami Vivekananda’s vision and fulfilment, Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama, 2006 Google Scholar.

93 Many letters which reveal Landsberg’s personality are available in Sara Bull’s correspondence at the Vedanta Society of Northern California Archives, San Francisco.

94 Sturdy’s criticisms were expressed to Josephine MacLeod in a letter of 23 December 1899, Vedanta Society of Southern California Archives. stenographer, Vivekananda’s, Goodwin, J. J., was an exception: see Pravrajika Vrajaprana, ‘My faithful Goodwin’, Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1994 Google Scholar.

95 For one of the most ardent, see Marie Louise Burke (Sister Gargi), Swami Trigunatita, his life and work, San Francisco: Vedanta Society of Northern California, 1997.

96 For recent titles, see Som, Reba, Margot: Sister Nivedita of Vivekananda, New York: Viking, 2017 Google Scholar: Mazumdar, Amiya Kumar, ed., Nivedita: commemoration volume, reprint, Kolkota: Advaita Ashrama, 2016 Google Scholar; and Jnanandaprana, Pravrajika, ed., The divine legacy: Sister Nivedita’s 150^th birth anniversary publication, Kolkata: Sri Sarada Math, 2017 Google Scholar.

97 See Atmaprana, Pravrajika, Complete works of Sister Nivedita, vol. 3, pp. 491–511 Google Scholar.

98 Noble, Margaret E., Kali the mother, New Delhi: Indigo Books, 2007 (first published 1900)Google Scholar.

99 Fabish, Rachael, ‘The political goddess: Aurobindo’s use of Bengali Sakta Tanrism to justify political violence in the Indian anti-colonial movement’, Journal of South Asian Studies, 30, 2007, pp. 269–92Google Scholar.

100 See Vivekananda to Josephine MacLeod, 18 April 1900, in Complete works, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda/Volume_6/Epistles_-_Second_Series/CLVIII_Joe (consulted 25 February 2019).

101 There are those who say that she was taken to New Hampshire without her consent; others imply that friends acted benignly. See Schmidt, Restless souls, pp. 210–11.

102 Stockman, Robert H. , Abdu’l-Baha in America, Wilmette, IN: Baha’i Publishing, 2012 Google Scholar.

103 See Carrie Kinney’s account of the rescue of Sarah Farmer from Dr Cole’s sanatorium, unpublished manuscript in the Baha’i Archives, Wilmette, IN.

104 Prothero, Stephen, ‘Hinduphobia and Hinduphilia in U.S. culture’, in Lannstrom, Anna, ed., The stranger’s religion: fascination and fear, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004, pp. 13–37 Google Scholar.

105 Brady, Jacqueline, ‘Wise mother? Insane mother? Sara Chapman Bull and the disarticulated subjectivities of turn-of-the-century motherhood’, in Florescu, Catalina Florina, ed., Disjointed perspectives on motherhood, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013, pp. 201–16Google Scholar.

106 Hutchinson, Sandra and Hollinger, Richard, ‘Women in the North American Baha’i community’, in Kelller, Rosemary S. and Ruether, Rosemary R., eds., Encyclopedia of women and religion in North America, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006, p. 777 Google Scholar.

107 Ibid., p. 776.