A Chinese scholar's journey to Tibet

The Oeconomy begins with a short ‘Advertisement to the Public’ followed by a 13-page letter to the ‘Earl of ––’, dated Pekin (Peking), 12 May, 1749.Footnote ¹⁰ These provide an introductory framework that puts the main part of the book into context.

From the outset, the ‘advertisement’ introduces an air of intrigue. The owner of the manuscript has been inspired to publish it because of the “spirit of virtue and morality which breathes in this ancient piece of eastern instruction”. Nevertheless, there are unspecified reasons that make it proper to conceal, not only the editor's own name, but also the name of his correspondent in China. Apparently, these reasons would not subsist long because the correspondent planned to return to England. However, as will be seen, this promise was never fulfilled: no author or editor ever publicly acknowledged responsibility for the book.

The letter from Peking offers further details on the discovery of the manuscript:

The learned in China had long been of the opinion that ‘some very ancient books have for many ages been concealed’ in the archives of Lhasa. The Emperor was determined to find out whether this was so, and selected Cao-tsou, a high-ranking Chinese scholar, to travel to Tibet. Cao-tsou's qualifications included the fact that he had learnt Tibetan from a lama who had spent many years in Peking. The Emperor provided him with a letter to the Grand Lama, and this begins with an appropriately deferential salutation:

The letter then explains the purpose of Cao-tsou's journey:

The letter was successful. Cao-tsou was allowed to stay in apartments in the ‘Sacred College’ for six months and, assisted by one of the most learned lamas, he “had the satisfaction of finding many valuable pieces of antiquity”. One of these was of particular interest:

Cao-tsou translated the manuscript into Chinese, and it attracted widespread attention in Peking and all over the empire. There were conflicting views on the original author among the “Bonzees and the learned doctors”. Some attributed it to Confucius, and others to “Lao Kiun. . . founder of the sect Taossee”. Yet others attributed it to Dandamis, the leader of the Gymnosophists or ‘naked philosophers’ who, as discussed below, is said to have met Alexander the Great in India. Cao-tsou himself seemed to agree with this view:

However this might be, the Peking correspondent decided to make an English translation of Cao-tsou's text, noting in his letter to the ‘Earl of ––’ that he was “the more easily induced to make this trial as, very happily for me you cannot judge how far I have fallen short of the original, or even of the Chinese translation”.

The letter concludes with a postscript about the “little drawing inclos'd”: this was a copy of one found with the original manuscript, which Cao-tsou attached to the Chinese translation (p. xx). This is a reference to the frontispiece in the early editions which shows a Moses-like figure receiving a document from a hand descending from the clouds above: the implication is that the text is divinely inspired. The surrounding palm trees imply a certain exoticism, but there is no explicit link to China, Tibet or India.

The Oeconomy's Precepts

The translator offers an apology for the style which he says followed naturally from the “great energy of expression and shortness of sentences” in the original. The result was that he found himself writing in a language and style reminiscent of the Old Testament in the Authorised Version of the English Bible. However, the Oeconomy's philosophy is Deist – affirming a reverence for God – without being explicitly Christian. This is apparent from the first paragraph:

The Oeconomy's Deism is representative of a strand of Enlightenment thinking in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, whose exemplars included Lord Herbert of Cherbury (d. 1648) and Mathew Tindal (1657–1733) in England, as well as Voltaire (1694–1778) in France.Footnote ¹⁴ While believing in God as the ultimate creator, the Deists emphasised reason rather than a belief in miracles, and challenged both the theology and the hierarchical governance of the established churches.

However, the Oeconomy is not so much a philosophical tract on the ordering of the universe as a series of moral precepts. The main part of the book consists of a series of aphorisms set out in seven main sections over approximately a hundred pages in most editions. These concern: ‘Duties that relate to Man consider'd as an Individual’; ‘the Passions’; ‘Woman’; ‘Consanguinity, or Natural Relations’; ‘Providence, or the accidental Differences of Men’; ‘Social Duties and Religion’. In a representative passage on ‘Application’, the Oeconomy proclaims the virtues of the work ethic:

In a similar vein, both parents and children are exhorted to display reverence for God. For example, in a section on the role of a good son, the Oeconomy proclaims:

The role of the ideal monarch is to support his industrious citizens by serving as a patron both of the arts and of commerce:

The section on ‘Religion’ is reminiscent of Psalm 8 in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer which runs:

The wording of the Oeconomy suggests a direct if unacknowledged inspiration:

However, the Oeconomy's comments on mankind's dominion introduce a characteristically eighteenth-century emphasis on the importance of reason:

The book concludes (p. 94) with a paean combining the Psalmist's reverence for the Deity with a middle class approbation of the virtues of prudence and temperance:

The references to Persia and Arabia suggest a vaguely Biblical flavour,Footnote ¹⁵ but there is no reference in the main text to India, Tibet or China. Similarly, there is nothing that points to an explicitly Buddhist, Confucian or even Gymnosophist origin, although – as will be seen – readers from a variety of schools of thought judged the book to be compatible with their own beliefs.

Who was the author?

The Oeconomy was one of several supposedly Oriental texts produced by eighteenth-century European authors. Other examples include Charles Montesquieu's Lettres persanes (1721) written from the viewpoint of two Persian travellers in Europe, and Oliver Goldsmith's Citizen of the World (1760–1761) which pretends to be a series of reports by a philosopher named Lien Chi Altangi, “a native of Honan in China”.Footnote ¹⁶ It is doubtful whether any contemporary reader took the claim of the ‘ancient Bramin’ at face value.

Instead, there were thought to be two main candidates for the authorship, neither of which had any personal connection – or even a close second-hand link – with India, Tibet or China:

The first was Philip Dormer Stanhope, the fourth Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773), who was a politician and diplomat, now perhaps best remembered for the posthumous publication of his letters to his son.Footnote ¹⁷

The second was Robert Dodsley (1704–1764), a leading author, bookseller and publisher in mid-eighteenth century London.Footnote ¹⁸ Dodsley was the son of a schoolmaster in Mansfield who had first come to London as a footman and then, having achieved a modest reputation as a poet, started a bookshop at Tully's Head in the passageway between Pall Mall and King Street. Dodsley benefited from the initial patronage of Alexander Pope, and served as the publisher of many of the leading writers of his generation including Samuel Johnson, Thomas Gray and Edmund Burke.

It seems that there were rumours of Chesterfield's authorship even before the Oeconomy was published, and a review in the Gentleman's Magazine of November 1750 states that the book was “attributed to a noble E. distinguished by his fine genius and the elegance of his writings and speeches”.Footnote ¹⁹ Even now, Chesterfield is occasionally cited as the author in library and bookseller catalogues, but no modern scholar supports this view.

The evidence for Dodsley's authorship includes the Oeconomy's somewhat confused publishing history. The first edition was brought out by Mary Cooper, a bookseller from Pater-Noster Row who was closely associated with Dodsley. It sold well and was soon followed by a putative Part 2, apparently composed in haste by a rival author. Dodsley issued an advertisement under his own name in the General Advertiser for 8 January 1751 denouncing the second book.Footnote ²⁰ The advertisement does not explicitly state that Dodsley is the author, but announces that new editions of the book have been printed for him and are available at his shop. All subsequent authorised editions from London were distributed from Tully's Head.

Although Robert Dodsley never formally acknowledged authorship, his younger brother James included the Oeconomy in a posthumous collection of Robert's Trifles published in 1777. As Ralph Straus notes in his 1910 biography of Dodsley, the two brothers routinely issued lists of books where the Oeconomy was cited along with other works by Robert Dodsley.Footnote ²¹ Further supporting – though still circumstantial – evidence comes from the quasi-Biblical style of the book: Dodsley had demonstrated an earlier taste for pastiche with the publication in 1740 of The Chronicles of the Kings of England which likewise was written in a pseudo-Biblical style, ostensibly by ‘Nathan Ben Saddi, a Priest of the Jews’.

If Dodsley was indeed the author, why did he not formally acknowledge the fact? Part of the answer is that it was not especially unusual for the first editions of new works to be published anonymously either because they might prove to be controversial, or out of modesty, or simply to test the market. The initial publication arrangements for the Chronicles in 1740 followed the same pattern as the Oeconomy's in that they were initially sold anonymously at the shop of Thomas Cooper.Footnote ²² In the case of the Oeconomy there may have been an additional commercial consideration: the suggestion that a distinguished nobleman such as Chesterfield was the author would undoubtedly have boosted sales. Dodsley may or may not have originated the rumour, but he would have benefited from it, and evidently saw no great reason to contradict it.

Even the controversy surrounding the publication of Part 2 of the Oeconomy, ostensibly by a rival author, would have been brought beneficial publicity. Both parts were sold by Dodsley's ally Mary Cooper. James E. Tierney, the editor of the definitive edition of Dodsley's letters, suggests that he approved the publication of the second part as well as the first.Footnote ²³ Harry M. Solomon, Dodsley's most recent full-length biographer, goes a step further to speculate that he wrote the second part himself.Footnote ²⁴ Dodsley was a man of letters, but he was also a businessman who had an eye for his market.

The ‘naked philosophers’

The Oeconomy's introductory letter suggests that the original author of the text was the Indian Brahmin Dandamis. This suggestion makes a link with a much older tradition: the legends surrounding Alexander the Great's invasion of India in 327–325 bce and his encounter with a group of Indian ascetics who, because of their nudity, became known as the ‘Gymnosophists’ or ‘naked philosophers’. These legends are ultimately – if somewhat distantly – founded on historical events, but passed through many variations and embellishments before coming to Dodsley's attention in the eighteenth century.Footnote ²⁵

Alexander's invasion route took him to Taxila, to the north-west of the present-day Pakistani cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. There his army encountered a group of Indian ascetics, and Alexander sent Onesicritus – a Cynic philosopher and historian who was serving on his staff – to enquire about their beliefs. Onesicritus subsequently wrote an account of the meeting. The original text has not survived. However, it is thought to provide the basis for the summary which is included in the works of the Greek geographer Strabo, as well as the account of the philosophers’ ascetic way of life which appears in Geneva papyrus inv. 271 (c. 200 ce) and successive versions of the Alexander Romance.Footnote ²⁶

In Onesicritus's account as reported by Strabo, a philosopher named Calanus explained that man had become arrogant as a result of the luxuries of the Golden Age, and that Zeus had therefore appointed for men a life of toil.Footnote ²⁷ A second philosopher called Mandanis stated that “the best teaching is that which removes pleasure and pain from the soul”.Footnote ²⁸ Onesicritus may have felt some affinity with the naked philosophers in that Cynic philosophy likewise challenged the merits of worldly grandeur, and this raises the question whether his account reflected his own views rather than those of his Indian interlocutors. A further complication arises from the fact that he had to work through a series of interpreters,Footnote ²⁹ another example of the theme of multiple translations that keeps recurring in the story of the Oeconomy and its sources. However, Richard Stoneman, the British historian of the Alexander legends, argues that the early descriptions of the encounter do reflect the ascetics’ original beliefs, and speculates that they may have been Jains or – less likely – Buddhists rather than Hindu Brahmins.Footnote ³⁰

The story of the meeting with the Gymnosophists went through a series of elaborations in subsequent centuries, and appears in Hebrew and Arabic versions as well as Greek, Latin, French and mediaeval English. An early Greek version appears in a papyrus of about 100 bce (Berlin papyrus 13044), and shows Alexander interrogating the philosophers in person rather than using Onesicritus as an intermediary.Footnote ³¹ In some of the later versions, the story takes on a more overtly Christian tone. For example, in De gentibus Indiae et de Bragmanibus, which is attributed to Palladius the fifth-century Bishop of Helenopolis, Alexander appears as a seeker of wisdom who goes to visit Dandamis, the teacher of the philosophers.Footnote ³² Dandamis invites Alexander to live a simple life free of material things: his speech is an implicit recommendation of the ascetic virtues of the monastic life.

The Oeconomy refers to a ‘famous letter’ from Dandamis to Alexander, and the story of an exchange of letters already appears in the Collatio Alexandri et Dindimi, a Latin text, apparently based on a Greek original, dating from before 800 ceFootnote ³³ Variations of this text, which expands the debate between Alexander and Dandamis (or ‘Dindimus’) on the merits of the active and contemplative lives, appeared in mediaeval English literature, for example in a verse translation from Gloucestershire in 1340. One version relatively close to Dodsley's own time is a set of ‘Epistles and Discourses between Alexander the Conqueror and Dindimus King of the Brachmans’ in a ten-page chapbook published in London in 1683.Footnote ³⁴

In the 1683 chapbook Dindimus/Dandamis speaks in a somewhat aphoristic preaching style, for example:

There is no evidence of a direct link between this particular version and Dodsley's text, but it is nevertheless possible to see the Oeconomy as a late and rather distant echo of a longstanding Alexander tradition.

China, Tibet and the European Enlightenment

If the Oeconomy has a claim to originality, it lies not in the reference to Dandamis, but rather in the leap from the India of the naked philosophers to eighteenth-century Tibet, China, and on to London. This leap reflects specifically eighteenth-century pre-occupations in two important respects:

First, it draws – albeit rather distantly – on the knowledge gained from new geographic discoveries, particularly of China.

Secondly, and more importantly, it is an example of the way that European writers drew on their own interpretations of this somewhat limited knowledge to challenge older western conventions.

Dodsley's role was not that of an original enquirer, but rather that of a populariser and embellisher who helped transmit new information and ideas to a wider audience. In the process of transmission this information acquired new meanings that had not been intended by its originators, most of whom were Roman Catholic missionaries.

Jesuit Sources

In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the Jesuits were the main source of information in Europe on both China and Tibet. The Jesuits' China mission was founded by Francis Xavier (1506–1552). Its most famous luminary arguably was Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) who was one of the first Europeans to master the Chinese script and, like his eighteenth-century successors, was respected within China for his skill in mathematics and cartography. The Jesuits’ accounts of China had a significant impact on European philosophers such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) who went so far as to argue that Christian missionaries to China should be counterbalanced by Chinese missionaries who would teach Europeans the practice of ‘natural religion’.Footnote ³⁶

By the time that Dodsley was writing in the mid-eighteenth century, images of China ultimately originating from the Jesuits had helped promote something of a craze for chinoiserie in art and fashion as well as in literature.Footnote ³⁷ This helps explain why Dodsley placed the beginning of his narrative in China rather than India, with which the British already had much stronger political and commercial contacts. Also, in a paradox which likewise applies to later images of Tibet, China's comparative remoteness made it a more conducive location for European fantasies of the East.

While the Jesuits’ China mission is better known, the Society of Jesus also played a pioneering role in the development of western knowledge of Tibet. The first Jesuits to enter Tibet established a mission in Tsaparang (rTsa brang) in Western Tibet between 1624 and 1640.Footnote ³⁸ More importantly for an analysis of the Oeconomy's sources, the first Europeans definitely known to have visited Lhasa were two Jesuit fathers, Johannes Grueber (1623-c.1680) and Albert d'Orville (1621–1662), who travelled through the city in 1661 in the course of a journey from north-west China to northern India. Grueber's account of his travels was incorporated into China Illustrata, a major work published in 1667 by the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680).Footnote ³⁹

The next in the succession of Jesuits to visit Tibet was Ippolito Desideri (1684–1733), a brilliant scholar who lived in and around Lhasa from 1716–1721.Footnote ⁴⁰ However, only a small portion of Desideri's findings were available to a wider European public during the period when Oeconomy was published.Footnote ⁴¹ By contrast, the work of the French Jesuit Jean-Baptiste Régis (1664–1738) was more celebrated during his own life-time and – even though he never visited Lhasa – more influential in shaping contemporary European images of Tibet.

Régis was one of a group of mainly French Jesuits then based at the Manchu court in Peking, where they were held in high esteem for their expertise in the latest astronomical techniques as applied to map-making.Footnote ⁴² These skills made it possible to establish precise latitudes and longitudes, and thus to produce more accurate maps than any of their predecessors. In 1708 the Kangxi Emperor (r. 1661–1722) assigned them the task of preparing a survey of the entire Chinese Empire.

As in the Oeconomy's fictional account, the Kangxi Emperor's interests extended to Tibet, but for political as well as religious reasons.Footnote ⁴³ The Dalai Lama's religious authority extended to the various Mongol groups operating on the borders of north-west China. To the extent that the Manchu court could align itself with the Dalai Lamas, it would boost its own legitimacy in these regions. Equally, if the Dsungar Mongols – who were hostile to China – were able to draw the Dalai Lama to their side, this would pose a strategic threat to western parts of the empire.Footnote ⁴⁴ These political preoccupations no doubt encouraged the Kangxi Emperor to extend the map-making project to Tibet.

Instead of travelling to Tibet themselves, Régis and colleagues relied on two sets of emissaries from Peking. Although there is no definite proof, these may have provided Dodsley with the inspiration for Ca-tsou, a Peking scholar who likewise travelled to Tibet on behalf of the emperor.Footnote ⁴⁵

In 1709 the emperor sent a senior official called He Shou to Lhasa to provide political and military support for Lajang Khan, the Qōśot Mongol ruler who then controlled central Tibet.Footnote ⁴⁶ Alongside He Shou's political activities, members of his secretariat prepared maps of the country, and these were presented to Régis on his return to Peking in 1711.Footnote ⁴⁷ However, the Jesuits did not consider them to be sufficiently accurate.

The emperor therefore commissioned two lamas from Peking to make a second cartographical survey of Tibet, and they set out in around 1715. Citing the Daqing yi Tongzhi, Fuchs transcribes their names as ‘Culcim and Dsangbu Ramjamba’.Footnote ⁴⁸ They were qualified for their task because they had learnt geometry and arithmetic in a mathematical academy established under the protection of the emperor's third son.Footnote ⁴⁹ Apart from these details, little seems to be known about their background.

The geographical lamas spent approximately two years in Tibet. However, they were forced to cut short their investigations in 1717 because of the Dsungar invasion of Tibet which led to Lajang Khan's death and – in the longer term – to the series of events resulting in the establishment of the Chinese protectorate in Lhasa.Footnote ⁵⁰ Once they had returned to Peking, the two lamas presented their findings to Régis, and he incorporated them into the Huangyu quanlantu atlas which was presented to the emperor in 1718.

The Chinese version of the atlas soon became known in Europe. In 1735 Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (1674–1743), a Jesuit based in Paris, drew on Régis's findings to publish a four-volume Description géographique, historique, chronologique et physique de l'Empire de la Chine.Footnote ⁵¹ This was accompanied by an atlas of regional maps prepared from the Peking Jesuits’ originals by the great French geographer Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville (1697–1782). In 1736 a four-volume English translation appeared in London with the title: The General History of China.Footnote ⁵² Volume 4 includes Régis's account of Tibet, citing the experiences of the two map-making lamas.Footnote ⁵³

Régis's work – as transmitted by Du Halde and his English translator – was cited in A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels, which was published in four volumes by Thomas Astley in London between 1745 and 1747.Footnote ⁵⁴ Volume 4 is a carefully-footnoted distillation of the most important European accounts of Asia that had been published by that date. It includes a “Description of Tibet, or Tibbet”, and cites Régis as well as Grueber, Desideri and the Capuchins. It is thought that the geographer John Green edited both the 1736 translation of Du Halde and the New General Collection.Footnote ⁵⁵

One detail linking the New General Collection's fourth volume with the Oeconomy is its explicit dedication to the Earl of Chesterfield (as distinct from the putative Earl of ––). This may be no more than a coincidence but there can be no doubt that Dodsley had access to the New General Collection, or possibly the General History of China, because several phrases in the Oeconomy correspond closely with Régis's description of Lhasa as cited in the two books.

Comparing Texts

In these passages Régis may himself be drawing on Grueber as transmitted by Kircher in China Illustrata. Grueber's account of Tibet is tantalisingly brief, but it contains certain details in common with the Oeconomy. For example, it includes the alternative name ‘Barantola’ for Tibet; and it is the first European text to refer to the Potala (‘Bietala’), and to include an illustration.Footnote ⁵⁶ Grueber also refers to the pilgrims’ worship of the ‘Great Lama’ (magnus Lama). He was not admitted to an audience with the lama, because he did not share the same faith, but describes him as sitting in a raised place on a cushion (in eminenti loco supra culcitram) in a dark palace.Footnote ⁵⁷ The text is accompanied by a somewhat imaginative illustration showing the lama in this position.

Régis as reported in the New General Collection describes the lama in similar terms:

In the same vein, the Oeconomy reports:

Grueber's account continues by recounting how the faithful prostrate themselves before the lama as though he were the Pope, a practice which he attributes to the deceptions of the devil.Footnote ⁵⁹ In the New General Collection version, Régis does not refer to the Pope but likewise emphasises the humility of the pilgrims:

The Oeconomy's version is:

In modern academic circles, Dodsley would certainly be blamed for failing to give a proper citation, and might even face accusations of plagiarism.

An Enlightenment Re-interpretation

In any case, the origin of Dodsley's geographical conceptions is less important than the literary and philosophical use that he makes of them. Here his Jesuit sources might not have been best pleased in that the Oeconomy proposes a view of the Deity and of right living which implies that it is impossible to achieve spiritual wisdom without the benefits of the Christian revelation or the ministrations of the church hierarchy.

In this respect, the Oeconomy reflects a wider eighteenth-century pattern concerning Enlightenment views of China, and extends them to Tibet. The Jesuits had presented a favourable assessment of Chinese philosophy and political governance, and argued that the church could engage with Confucianism in much the same way that the early Church Fathers had engaged with pre-Christian Greek philosophy. However, as the American historian D.E. Mungello puts it, the Jesuits’ argument was “persuasive in a way that boomeranged on them”.Footnote ⁶¹ Secular Enlightenment thinkers argued that, if China could achieve great heights of civilisation without the church, then perhaps Europe did not need the church either. Voltaire in particular used the Jesuits’ reports of what appeared to be a prime example of ‘natural religion’ in China to launch a series of polemical attacks on the church.

Dodsley became Voltaire's English publisher,Footnote ⁶² and may have been in broad agreement with many of his critiques of Christian belief and practice. For example, Tierney cites a letter written in 1741 in which Dodsley says that he and his wife are going to the “solemn foolery of a christening”.Footnote ⁶³ Nevertheless, the Oeconomy scarcely matches Voltaire's polemical style. It affirms the importance of reason, and makes no reference to miracles—but neither are there any explicit attacks on the church. The book's Deist opinions were consistent with those of an Enlightenment philosopher, but it contained nothing that would have caused offence to an archbishop.

An Eighteenth-Century Bestseller

The extent to which the Oeconomy matched the spirit of its times is attested by its popularity. In London, it ran through seven editions in seven months. French editions – among other foreign-language translations – appeared in London, Edinburgh, the Hague, Frankfurt and Leipzig. There were a series of imitations with titles such as The Oeconomy of a Winter's Day, The Oeconomy of Female Life and The Braman: an Eclogue. James Bawdoin (1727–1790), a governor of Massachusetts produced a verse paraphrase. A Hungarian edition, re-translated from a German version, came out in 1787.Footnote ⁶⁴ The British Library catalogue includes versions in – among other languages – Latin, Gaelic and Welsh. Altogether, some 200 editions appeared in the eighteenth-century, and another hundred in the first part of the nineteenth-century.Footnote ⁶⁵

Among the book's admirers was the future American President Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) who in a letter written in 1771 included it in a selection of worthy books that might usefully form the basis of a gentleman's library.Footnote ⁶⁶ The Oeconomy falls in the section on ‘Religion’, along with works by Locke, Seneca, Cicero and Hume. Towards the end of his life Jefferson wrote The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, which was published posthumously at the end of the nineteenth century, and is also known as the Jefferson Bible.Footnote ⁶⁷ The Life is a biography of Jesus drawn from the Gospels, but with the miraculous elements removed. It is easy to see how the Oeconomy could have fitted in with Jefferson's worldview.

The Oeconomy's Theosophist Reincarnation

By the mid-nineteenth century the Oeconomy had begun to fade from view, perhaps because its message of bourgeois respectability fitted in neither with the new models of ‘scientific’ travel writing nor with the wilder reaches of romanticism. However, in the final decades of the century the Theosophist Society, which was founded in New York in 1875, had begun to play a major role in popularising eastern religious texts – including many of dubious origin – in North America, Europe, Ceylon and India.Footnote ⁶⁸

In 1886 Dr Elliott Coues, who was a prominent figure in the early development of the Society in the United States, published a new version of the Oeconomy. He gave the book a new title: Kuthumi. The True and Complete Oeconomy of Human Life, Based on the System of Theosophical Ethics. The name in the title is a variant spelling of Koot Hoomi, the Indian Mahatma or ‘great soul’ whom Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891), the co-founder of the Theosophical Society, claimed as a spiritual guide. Blavatsky maintained that Koot Hoomi was based in Tibet, and communicated with her and her associate A.P. Sinnett through a series of letters that were ‘precipitated’ by psychic means to unexpected places, such as the branches of a tree outside Sinnett's house and the interior of a railway carriage.Footnote ⁶⁹ In naming the new edition of the Oeconomy after Koot Hoomi, Coues was claiming an association with the same wellsprings of wisdom as Blavatsky herself, while at the same time giving Dandamis – or Dodsley – a new incarnation as a Mahatma.

The foreword begins by alluding in somewhat stilted language to the anonymity of the original edition of the Oeconomy as well as the futility of seeking to identify Kuthumi/Koot Hoomi:

The wording implies an acknowledgement of the uncertain origins of the Oeconomy, combined with the argument that the contents matter more than the source.

The rest of the foreword is a partial adaptation and elaboration of the supposed letter from Peking. For example, the account of the discovery of the text in Lhasa cited above is rephrased to include a reference to the Theosophists. Cao-tsou's “most ancient piece of writing” is now said to have been:

The foreword goes on to describe the book as a “system of theosophic morality such as hath been practised to some extent in the oeconomy of life through all the ages and in all places”.Footnote ⁷² The core of the book is reproduced almost verbatim, with only minor changes. For example, the introduction to the main text carries the extra heading “Kuthumi”.Footnote ⁷³

Coues was an eminent ornithologist, well-known for his scientific achievements,Footnote ⁷⁴ and at first sight it seems odd that such a man should have identified himself with a movement in which strange psychic phenomena played such a prominent part. However, the US-based historian Joscelyne Godwin argues that the Theosophists “often displayed a surprising affinity with Enlightenment scepticism. . . as if they were searching for a rational religion”.Footnote ⁷⁵ Be that as it may, Coues’ own scepticism contributed to a confrontation with Blavatsky and her close followers, and in 1889 he was expelled from the Theosophist Society.Footnote ⁷⁶

The Bramin's return to India

In the late nineteenth century the Oeconomy, which purports to be a western translation of an eastern original, underwent a new transformation from West to East.

In 1889 the Anglo-Jewish & Vernacular Press published an Indian reprint in Bombay.Footnote ⁷⁷ The Banaras Hindu University, which was founded in 1916 with the assistance of Theosophist leader and political activist Annie Besant, published another version in 1922.Footnote ⁷⁸ Also in the early twentieth century an undated Panjabi version produced by a Sikh publishing house appeared in Amritsar.Footnote ⁷⁹ In 1926 the Indian scholar Veturi Prabhakara Sastri published a Telegu version of the Oeconomy under the title Neeti Nidhi meaning a ‘treasure of aphorisms’, and this came out in a second edition in 1982.Footnote ⁸⁰ Sastri apparently intended to prepare a Sanskrit translation, but never did so.

In a chapter introducing the second edition of the Telegu translation, his disciple Veturi Anjaneyulu explains how it came about.Footnote ⁸¹ Sastri had not known English but – acting on the suggestion of a friend – arranged for a colleague to prepare a first draft in Telegu before revising it with the help of his brother. According to Anjaneyulu the outcome was “a translation that was not only precise but also an improvement on the English original”.

In his own comments, Sastri observed that there were “no strong grounds to say that the manuscript was written by a Brahmin”, but that it might be a Buddhist treatise. There was only one verse that would not be acceptable to a Hindu, presumably because it contradicts the belief in reincarnation. This comes from the second part of the Oeconomy and says of the soul:

Sastri speculated that the English translator had either changed the sentence or made an addition in accordance with his religious faith.Footnote ⁸³ His overall approval is a tribute both to his own generosity of spirit and to the ecumenical tone of Dodsley's original. Indeed, one factor which made it easier for the Oeconomy to cross cultural boundaries was precisely its blandness. The book contains no startling insights, but also – in twentieth-century India as in eighteenth-century England – no major source of controversy.

Arguably, the book also fitted into a wider pattern in that European scholars had played an important, though now under-acknowledged, part in the development of Indian historical research, starting with the foundation of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784.Footnote ⁸⁴ Similarly, the Theosophist Society, though founded in North America, had found a welcome in Indian and Ceylonese intellectual circles, and had served to reinforce a revived sense of confidence in South Asian spiritual traditions. Most twentieth-century Indian readers would have no knowledge of the eighteenth-century fashion for chinoiserie, and would have missed cultural references such as the Oeconomy's allusion to the Book of Common Prayer. It would have seemed quite plausible that an ancient Indian text could be transmitted via the West. Indeed, this transmission route might even have strengthened its authority.

At the time of writing in early 2009, both parts of the Oeconomy are still in print with an Indian publishing house, Samata Books in Chennai.Footnote ⁸⁵ Samata was set up by a disciple of Mahathma Gandhi, and specialises in Hindu religious texts.Footnote ⁸⁶ At least implicitly, the Oeconomy has therefore been welcomed into the canon of the Indian classics.

Conclusion: Gymnosophist Whispers

In her study of oriental tales in eighteenth-century English literature, Ros Ballaster refers to the parlour game ‘Chinese whispers’ where a message is passed from one person to the next until the final version – often completely transformed – is read out by the originator. The phrase ‘Chinese whispers’ echoes a sinophobic European tradition of representing spoken Chinese as “an incomprehensible and unpronounceable combination of sounds”.Footnote ⁸⁷ However, Ballaster argues that it can be taken as a useful metaphor in another sense:

The Oeconomy exemplifies this ‘whispering’ process in several respects: the story in the book itself purportedly describes the translation of a set of ideas from the “language of the Gymnosophists”, first into Chinese and then into English. Dodsley drew on an emerging body of knowledge of Tibet that derived via French and English geographers from the Jesuits in Peking. However, like many other Enlightenment writers, he used this knowledge to convey Deist ideas that fell short of Jesuit ideals. In its subsequent history, the book passed through further translations – both literally into new languages, and metaphorically in that it was used by a variety of different people with contrasting world views. In the parlour game, the humour – such as it is – lies in the distortion of the original. In the case of the Oeconomy, the joke is better still: there never was an original. Or, rather, it might be more appropriate to say that all the different versions of the book – and of the Alexander legends before it—are in their own way authentic.