Robert Yelle has written on this, perhaps articles as well (but I'm away from my files so can't verify). See his:
Explaining Mantras Ritual, Rhetoric, and the Dream of a Natural Language in Hindu Tantra (Routledge, 2003) Steven Lindquist Get Outlook for Android<https://aka.ms/AAb9ysg> ________________________________ From: INDOLOGY <[email protected]> on behalf of Finn Moore Gerety via INDOLOGY <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, August 16, 2025 8:33:38 AM To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: [INDOLOGY] Early Orientalist attitudes towards mantras Dear colleagues— I’m trying to substantiate my vague impression that some 19th-century Orientalists denigrated Sanskrit mantras as mumbo-jumbo and nonsense. I wonder if anyone on this list can point me to direct quotations or historiographic discussions of this. To be clear, I’m interested in early Orientalist discourse on mantras in particular—not critiques of other Sanskrit genres such as Vedic prose (à la Max Müller’s notorious “twaddle” quotation). Thanks in advance, Finn
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