UC Santa Barbara

In 1672 two Amsterdam publishing houses produced competing illustrated travelogues by authors Olfert Dapper and Philip Baldaeus about the Indian subcontinent. Both of these expensive, folio-sized books prominently featured full-page illustrations of the Dasávatāra (the ten earthly incarnations of the Hindu god, Viṣṇu). Books featuring illustrations and descriptions of anthropomorphic, multi-armed deities carried high stakes for the publishers and authors in terms of economic success, professional reputation, and intellectual impact not only in the Netherlands but across Europe. This project demonstrates how the handling of the subject and visualization of Hindu deities and cosmography revealed the producers’ positionality in terms of the intellectual debates surrounding comparative religion, conceptions of chronology, and depictions of race in the texts and images. The two divergent approaches in text and images, however, guide the reader to draw opposing conclusions about Hindu cosmography, the validity of Hinduism as a religion, and the people who hold these beliefs and worldview. By retracing Dapper’s and Baldaeus’ sources, contributions, and legacy, I demonstrate how the pervasive thoughts on comparative religions, race, and global chronology shaped European conceptions of Hindu belief. This project reveals how these two Dutch publishers appealed to newly found strengths in global trade and knowledge production to work through internal religious and political anxieties while simultaneously asserting themselves as a superior force on the world stage.