Hinduism in Brazilian Literature

Definition

Brazil and India are complex societies, with huge population and territorial areas and endowed with an extraordinary cultural diversity (Loundo 2013a). Despite this unique potential for effective interaction, the history of systematic intellectual exchanges between the two countries has been quite modest. This favored a relative dominance of orientalist and occidentalist stereotypes and prevented the development, within the sphere of Brazilian literature, of consolidated perceptions about Asia and, more specifically, about India. The origins of this diffused presence of India in Brazilian intellective imagination go back, symbolically, to the prolonged visit to the court of Emperor D. Pedro II (1825–1891), during the second half of the nineteenth century, of a Sanskrit professor who had previously attended to the court of British Queen Victoria. From that moment until the present date, the “alternative” spaces of dissemination of Yoga, “oriental” mysticism and Indian...